**REPORTED** remix seed appears to have ocean everywhere in the 'surface' layer above the mushroom layer

[esotericist]

Steam or GOG

Steam

Single Player/Multiplayer

Single

Operating System

Linux Other

Terraria Version

1.4.4.3

Controls Used

Keyboard/Mouse

i've for days now been trying to find a place to fish in order to get angler quest catches, and every single fishing hole i've managed to to set up so far returns ocean catches, and does not seem to produce quest fish despite seemingly being the right circumstances. i haven't had an ocean quest fish come up yet, presumably that will work, but it shouldn't be difficult to be able to attempt to do e.g. dirtfish, zombiefish, etc; all of the surface/underground 'forest' quest fish fail to be available to catch.

what exacerbates this is there doesn't seem to be any way tell if you're in an ocean area or not without a) ocean creatures spawning where you can perceive them (goblin scout, turtle, seagull, angler if you haven't gotten him yet) or b) actually fishing up ocean stuff. the wiki page for the remix seed suggests ocean music should play (which is what i would expect if it was the active fishing biome), but i have yet to hear ocean music at any point.

this is a medium-size world that was generated on 1.4.4 (not any of the point releases afterwards), if that matters.

 

[alaswing]

i've for days now been trying to find a place to fish in order to get angler quest catches, and every single fishing hole i've managed to to set up so far returns ocean catches, and does not seem to produce quest fish despite seemingly being the right circumstances. i haven't had an ocean quest fish come up yet, presumably that will work, but it shouldn't be difficult to be able to attempt to do e.g. dirtfish, zombiefish, etc; all of the surface/underground 'forest' quest fish fail to be available to catch.

what exacerbates this is there doesn't seem to be any way tell if you're in an ocean area or not without a) ocean creatures spawning where you can perceive them (goblin scout, turtle, seagull, angler if you haven't gotten him yet) or b) actually fishing up ocean stuff. the wiki page for the remix seed suggests ocean music should play (which is what i would expect if it was the active fishing biome), but i have yet to hear ocean music at any point.

this is a medium-size world that was generated on 1.4.4 (not any of the point releases afterwards), if that matters.

what i've found is that yes, ocean is potentially everywhere, you can find surface fish in the fores biome just over the mushroom biome, cavern fish you can find them if you dig up near going out and theres no corruption and so, so far getting crates for the biomes is annoying but doable.

 

[esotericist]

what i've found is that yes, ocean is potentially everywhere, you can find surface fish in the fores biome just over the mushroom biome, cavern fish you can find them if you dig up near going out and theres no corruption and so, so far getting crates for the biomes is annoying but doable.

i'm less concerned with crates right now than quest fish. is there a meaningfully reliable method to find a not-ocean section in the forest biome? i keep trying places with water, and end up getting ocean catches, but not necessarily right away, so it can take me up to a dozen catches to confirm i won't be able to get non-ocean quest fish there.

 

[Kazzymodus]

To explain what is happening here: when you are in the Caverns layer (the layer just above the Underworld itself) of a remix world, every fishing attempt is considered either "on the surface" or "underground" for loot purposes, with a 50% chance for either result. If your attempt is considered to be on the surface, there is an additional 33% chance that your attempt is also considered to be in the Ocean. This is to make up for the lack of an easily accessible Ocean in the remix seed, but the result of which is that trying to catch a Surface quest fish takes - on average - three times as many attempts.

While this is technically working as intended, I've brought your issue to the attention of the developers. I can't promise that they'll make any changes (for all I know these rates are intentional), but I just wanted to let you know that it is being looked in to.

 

[esotericist]

To explain what is happening here: when you are in the Caverns layer (the layer just above the Underworld itself) of a remix world, every fishing attempt is considered either "on the surface" or "underground" for loot purposes, with a 50% chance for either result. If your attempt is considered to be on the surface, there is an additional 33% chance that your attempt is also considered to be in the Ocean. This is to make up for the lack of an easily accessible Ocean in the remix seed, but the result of which is that trying to catch a Surface quest fish takes - on average - three times as many attempts.

While this is technically working as intended, I've brought your issue to the attention of the developers. I can't promise that they'll make any changes (for all I know these rates are intentional), but I just wanted to let you know that it is being looked in to.

i appreciate both this getting passed on and the explanation, but i want to add that some of us have spent entire in-game days fishing in a spot that should be valid by our intuitions -- and by your explanation -- without managing any catching. even with low tier fishing gear/crap bait*, catching surface/underground quest fish didn't take me a third of a day for a single quest catch in earlier versions.

is it possible there's another factor, or another balance change happened that i didn't see in the patch notes?

* also getting early bait going is remarkably laborious in remix. i'm sure there's some building tricks i just haven't worked out on my own yet in order to make getting bait easier, though, and i'm not reporting that as a specific issue just remarking on it as a complication that goes with the difficulty trying to catch quest fish. plus the bait problem tends to be naturally resolved once you start getting fishing gear, and that increasing both the speed at which you get quest fish as well as crates. both of which get you more bait

 

[Kazzymodus]

i appreciate both this getting passed on and the explanation, but i want to add that some of us have spent entire in-game days fishing in a spot that should be valid by our intuitions -- and by your explanation -- without managing any catching. even with low tier fishing gear/crap bait*, catching surface/underground quest fish didn't take me a third of a day for a single quest catch in earlier versions.

is it possible there's another factor, or another balance change happened that i didn't see in the patch notes?

* also getting early bait going is remarkably laborious in remix. i'm sure there's some building tricks i just haven't worked out on my own yet in order to make getting bait easier, though, and i'm not reporting that as a specific issue just remarking on it as a complication that goes with the difficulty trying to catch quest fish. plus the bait problem tends to be naturally resolved once you start getting fishing gear, and that increasing both the speed at which you get quest fish as well as crates. both of which get you more bait

Just to be sure we're on the same page, can you make a screenshot of where you're fishing (ideally a height indication) and the loot that you are getting? That will help me to pinpoint whereabout in the loot table you end up.

 

[esotericist]

Just to be sure we're on the same page, can you make a screenshot of where you're fishing (ideally a height indication) and the loot that you are getting? That will help me to pinpoint whereabout in the loot table you end up.

i can absolutely do that. note that in the session i had after my last post, i got a quest for an underground/cavern fish (bonefish, to be specific) and i stuck it out. like 7 enchanted nightcrawlers, plus i'm not sure how many journeyman bait, plus about nine in-game hours. but hey, it definitively demonstrates that the stuff can be caught. it just takes a lot longer than i'm used to.

sonar potions would help a lot in avoiding bait wastage, but coral is a bit tricky atm (unless it's possible to get it to grow in the 'surface' layer somehow?) since i'm before any bosses and afeared of the surface.

anyway, pool's 26x13. since this was my first quest fish, obviously i don't have any of the fishing gear yet, and i only have an iron fishing rod. weather was raining at the start of the day, transitioned to windy partway through. bait ranges from enchanted nightcrawlers (falling stars are easy to get, worms are still finicky, i'm intending to try to make a differently shaped grass farm to capitalize on rain) down to grasshoppers (sometimes i just exhaust all the good stuff).

for actual catches: i've been getting the now-expected mix; i don't have a hard list of catches for that session, didn't think to record them, but i have over the course of this run caught bass, stinkfish, trout, tuna, red snapper, shrimp, specular fish, armored cavefish, bomb fish, one of my early catches was a sawtooth shark (that was welcome), the whole range of non-biome crates (i've notably gotten two gold crates, and the first one kicked out an enchanted sword, so RNG is clearly on my side in some ways).

note, a bunch of that stuff i've caught in other fishing holes, but i'm certain everything except the sawtooth shark showed up in the one in this screenshot. i just never stuck with that one an entire day because i reached the (clearly erroneous) conclusion that i needed to find a hole that didn't count as ocean after i set it up, and i spent time at other holes instead spread out over the layer.

edit:yes, that's a mushroom pylon but the mushroom biome is well below this; i put this pool at this height to get out of range of the mushroom biome below. (you can see in the minimap there's another pool below that, which i made first, before going 'maybe i should not be in mushroom').

 

[Kazzymodus]

i can absolutely do that. note that in the session i had after my last post, i got a quest for an underground/cavern fish (bonefish, to be specific) and i stuck it out. like 7 enchanted nightcrawlers, plus i'm not sure how many journeyman bait, plus about nine in-game hours. but hey, it definitively demonstrates that the stuff can be caught. it just takes a lot longer than i'm used to.

sonar potions would help a lot in avoiding bait wastage, but coral is a bit tricky atm (unless it's possible to get it to grow in the 'surface' layer somehow?) since i'm before any bosses and afeared of the surface.

anyway, pool's 26x13. since this was my first quest fish, obviously i don't have any of the fishing gear yet, and i only have an iron fishing rod. weather was raining at the start of the day, transitioned to windy partway through. bait ranges from enchanted nightcrawlers (falling stars are easy to get, worms are still finicky, i'm intending to try to make a differently shaped grass farm to capitalize on rain) down to grasshoppers (sometimes i just exhaust all the good stuff).

for actual catches: i've been getting the now-expected mix; i don't have a hard list of catches for that session, didn't think to record them, but i have over the course of this run caught bass, stinkfish, trout, tuna, red snapper, shrimp, specular fish, armored cavefish, bomb fish, one of my early catches was a sawtooth shark (that was welcome), the whole range of non-biome crates (i've notably gotten two gold crates, and the first one kicked out an enchanted sword, so RNG is clearly on my side in some ways).

note, a bunch of that stuff i've caught in other fishing holes, but i'm certain everything except the sawtooth shark showed up in the one in this screenshot. i just never stuck with that one an entire day because i reached the (clearly erroneous) conclusion that i needed to find a hole that didn't count as ocean after i set it up, and i spent time at other holes instead spread out over the layer.

edit:yes, that's a mushroom pylon but the mushroom biome is well below this; i put this pool at this height to get out of range of the mushroom biome below. (you can see in the minimap there's another pool below that, which i made first, before going 'maybe i should not be in mushroom').

View attachment 385856

Okay, so having tested this myself, I originally couldn't get any quest fish either. The reason for this turned out to be that I was too low: there's a hard limit of 300 tiles counting from the bottom of the world which you need to be above, which on a Medium world is around 1930' depth (I'm not sure what the exact cut off point is). Judging from your minimap, your original fishing hole might have been too low, which would block all Surface and Underground quest fish - but also all Ocean spawns, which you were getting. When I moved up a bit, I could catch Surface and Underground quest fishes, so there seem to be two distinct issues here: the general rarity of Surface and Underground quest fishes on remix worlds and a 300 tile threshold issue. All in all, it does mainly seem to be the first issue in your specific case, so we'll have to wait and see what the devs decide.

 

[esotericist]

Okay, so having tested this myself, I originally couldn't get any quest fish either. The reason for this turned out to be that I was too low: there's a hard limit of 300 tiles counting from the bottom of the world which you need to be above, which on a Medium world is around 1930' depth (I'm not sure what the exact cut off point is). Judging from your minimap, your original fishing hole might have been too low, which would block all Surface and Underground quest fish - but also all Ocean spawns, which you were getting. When I moved up a bit, I could catch Surface and Underground quest fishes, so there seem to be two distinct issues here: the general rarity of Surface and Underground quest fishes on remix worlds and a 300 tile threshold issue. All in all, it does mainly seem to be the first issue in your specific case, so we'll have to wait and see what the devs decide.

thanks for the extra testing and the additional data. as an aside, i find it strange that the ocean catches also show up in biomes that would normally override ocean... for instance, i'm at a snow fishing hole (trying to get flinxfin), and getting trout alongside atlantic cod. if that is in fact intentional, that's a pretty substantial impact to fishing in general.

i have to wonder if there isn't another way the ocean stuff could have been handled, but at least the rules are getting clearer now; it's possible to work around this, it's just more tedious (and will make cavern layer fishing spans more critical for biome crate fishing, i suppose. that might be a feature for the design? idk)

on a semi-related note i've only gotten potions, bait, and gold from the angler so far (admittedly only three quest fish). very sad.

 

[smartygeefour]

thanks for the extra testing and the additional data. as an aside, i find it strange that the ocean catches also show up in biomes that would normally override ocean... for instance, i'm at a snow fishing hole (trying to get flinxfin), and getting trout alongside atlantic cod. if that is in fact intentional, that's a pretty substantial impact to fishing in general.

i have to wonder if there isn't another way the ocean stuff could have been handled, but at least the rules are getting clearer now; it's possible to work around this, it's just more tedious (and will make cavern layer fishing spans more critical for biome crate fishing, i suppose. that might be a feature for the design? idk)

on a semi-related note i've only gotten potions, bait, and gold from the angler so far (admittedly only three quest fish). very sad.

The only way to not have bad Angler luck is to not do Angler quests ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Kazzymodus]

thanks for the extra testing and the additional data. as an aside, i find it strange that the ocean catches also show up in biomes that would normally override ocean... for instance, i'm at a snow fishing hole (trying to get flinxfin), and getting trout alongside atlantic cod. if that is in fact intentional, that's a pretty substantial impact to fishing in general.

In the case of other biomes (with Desert as the sole exception) Ocean fish are the ultimate fallback, as in that you will only have a chance at an Ocean fish if you failed to get one from the biome you are fishing in. So if you get an Ocean catch, you were never going to get a biome specific catch either way.