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  1. #1
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    FFXI Fishing Math

    I spent a few months taking a serious look at fishing to figure out the math as it pertains to fishing rods. I found out some interesting things.

    First, fish have obvious skill caps, but they also have an apparent hidden "size" stat that is used in rod formulas. My testing has shown this magical stat is consistent in calculating the fishing rod's attack and miss stats that are sent to the fishing mini-game. I also believe this stat is used for determining if a rod is capable of catching the fish. If the fish "size" is greater than the rod's max size capabilities, the rod or line will break. If it's smaller than the rods minimum capabilities, you get the notorious "too small for this rod" message. I haven't gone as far as to calculate the rods min and max size support, but i started a spreadsheet and if i ever care to continue this endeavor, i'll release that info. This size is not to be confused with the unrelated length/weight stats that are affixed to certain large fish descriptions, although out of curiosity i figured out how those formulas work too.

    I'm sure most successful anglers know a lot of this info, but for the sake of the curious I will be reiterating some noteworthy info.

    With all that said, here's the stats/formulas for the nerds among us or those just curious after all these years. (note that i'm not claiming these are the exact formulas SE uses, but they do come to the same result)


    Rod Category
    Rods have 3 different categories, Wooden, Synthetic, and what I like to refer to as "Hybrid" which is the Ebisu. There is also the MMM Rod, but more on that strange thing later.


    Fish Stamina
    Fish have 'HP' aka Stamina, aka Endurance, aka the progress bar that goes down while you're fighting it. This number is calculated based on the fishing skill cap.

    Formula: Stamina = rand(95, 105) * floor((FishLevel + 36)/2)


    Rod Attack/Miss Regen
    Each rod has a static Attack and Miss Regen Multiplier that is set to it. These multipliers are used against the fish "size" stat that I discovered.

    Formulas:

    Fish Attack Damage = (FishSize + floor(FishSize * RodAttackMultiplier)) * 20
    Fish Miss Regen = (FishSize + floor(FishSize * RodRegenMultiplier)) * 10

    Arrow Delay and Rod Movement
    In the new fishing mini-game there is a delay of how long the arrows will stay on the screen allowing you to make a successful attack on the fish. There is a similar looking stat that I have dubbed "movement". It affects how often the rod bounces between left and right. I have calculated exactly how much each rod impacts these stats.

    Formulas:

    Arrow Delay = FishDelay + RodDelayModifier
    Rod Movement = FishMovement + RodMovementModifier

    Each rod has a separate modifier for small and large fish.

    The maximum value for both of these is 15. The rods only add 0-2 on each one depending on large/small fish/items. Only exception is MMM.


    Fight Time
    Each Rod has a maximum catch time that is sent in number of seconds. I have figured out these numbers. Most wooden Rods average 30 seconds with the exception of the Mithran and Clothespole and LuShang. Synthetics have strange odd numbered fight times.


    Fish Regen/Drain
    Not to be confused with “miss regen” which is the stamina the fish recovers when pressing the wrong arrow direction. This is the amount of stamina that automatically regens/drains depending on your skill level difference vs the fish’s skill cap. I have not done any legendary fish testing on this, but might someday. I does appear that Ebisu gets a fairly substantial boost to this. However, under normal circumstances, the following applies:

    The Regen/Drain stat has a base 128 value (No drain/regen). It is modified by level difference between Fish Skill Level and Player Fishing Level.

    13 levels and below will use a formula to add drain.
    25 levels and above will use a formula to add regen.

    I have spent a great deal of time trying to figure out this exact formula, but it is very odd.


    Legendary Rods and Legendary Bonuses
    Lu Shang and Ebisu have a few different bonuses. I never got to play with an Ebisu so most of the data I have on it is based off stats posted by various players that have one.

    From what I’ve tested and what I’ve read, I came up with the following results.
    LuShang and Ebisu get attack and fishing time bonuses against Legendary fish.
    This is also where I came up with Ebisu being somewhat of a “hybrid” rod. On non-legendary fish, it behaves much like a regular synthetic. On legendary fish, it gets a major boost. For instance, it’s normal attack multiplier is 0 like a synthetic, but on Legendary that multiplier goes up to 0.5. Similarly, the Lu Shang has a normal attack multiplier of 0.1, but on legendary, it goes up slightly to 0.3.

    The +1 versions of each rod adds 10 seconds to the fight time, and as far as I can tell, that’s the only visible stat related bonus they offer.

    Some legendary fish themselves operate on a different scale than others. It seems that certain fish have overrides to typical stat multipliers available that seem to go against all the other formulas. My thoughts are that legendary fish have a “legendary level” number stat that is used in the formulas, and in most cases this stat is 0. Its still to be investigated, but it appears that only a handful of the upper tier legendary fish utilize them.


    Fish Length/Weight
    This is fairly simple. Fish have a hard set min and max length (lm). A random number between the 2 is chosen. The weight (pz) is then calculated by multiplying the length against a random number between 4.65 and 5.15.

    Length Formula: FishLength = random(MinFishLength,MaxFishLength)
    Weight Fromula: FishWeight = floor(FishLength * random(4.65,5.15))


    Angler’s Sense and Critical Bites
    This is the last bit of testing that I started before I got bored with all of this. There are 4 forms of angler’s sense.
    Small Fish/Item
    Large Fish/Item or Monster (plays battle music)
    Critical Bite : Small Fish/Item (shows name of fish/item)
    Critical Bite : Large Fish/Item (shows name of fish/item and plays battle music)
    There is no angler’s sense for monsters that shows the monsters name.

    Critical bites occur more often depending on your skill level versus the fish/item skill level. I haven’t calculated the exact formulas for this yet, but it appears that they occur as much as 20 levels above your skill level, and gradually increase in frequency the closer to your level. When several levels above the fish, they occur at least 50+% of the time.

    Critical bites do a couple things. Obviously the first thing is that it shows the name of the fish or item. Next, the miss regen is reduced by a hard set 30%, (i.e. 100 miss regen becomes 70). Lastly they boost the Golden Arrow appearance rate by a significant amount.


    Angler’s Sense and Feelings
    When hooking a fish, you get a message stating how you feel about what you’ve hooked : “You have a good feeling about this one.” etc. I’ve done some research into these messages and it’s odd to say the least. I haven’t come up with any formulas for this as of now. I hooked two fish with the same exact visible packet stats and both had a different “feeling” One said good feeling, the other said not sure if i have enough skill. At first I thought it might be the randomizer used in calculating the fishes stamina, but then i had a situation where a fish with lower stamina gave me a “not sure feeling” over a fish with higher stamina giving me a “good feeling”, all other stats were the same. This leads me to believe that the size stat comes into play here and that there’s a hidden randomizer that comes into play when you hook a fish. And I believe this randomizer comes into play when hooking fish that are reaching bounds of a rods min/max size.

    My theory is this:
    Lets say your rod has a hidden min size of 10 and max 20. Then, lets say your fish has a size of 8. Obviously this fish is too small for your rod, but there is still a possibility you can catch that fish. But lets say the server generates a random number between 0 and 3 and adds it to the fish or subtracts it from the rod min size, you would be within bounds of catching the fish, but there’s still a randomized chance of failure when reeling in.
    For instance, while difficult, I have caught small fish with clothespole, but normally get the “whatever caught the hook was too small for your rod” message. This leads me to believe that there’s a random number that’s applied that gives you a chance to catch the fish even if it’s not good for your rod. And depending on what that number is and if your rod is within the bounds of that fish, you get different messages. There is a likely possibility that skill level difference plays a role, but I’m not there yet.


    Legendary Catch Message
    I gained 55 levels of fishing during my testing over the span of 4 weeks. After thousands upon thousands of test casts I’ve gotten this message maybe 3 times. After analyzing the data on the fish caught that gave that message, it would appear this message comes when the length/weight of the fish is within 15~% of the fishes max length/weight. But, with such a small sample size, I can’t say for sure. That just happened to be the case for those few fish. There’s also a possibility that the message is random regardless.


    That MMM Thing
    The MMM rod is a strange rod. There seems to be an air of mystery about it, so I did some fairly extensive research on it.

    Here’s a few things I discovered about it:

    For fish stamina, it ignores fishing skill level entirely and does a flat multiplier.
    Formula: Stamina = random(95,105) * 150

    For fish miss regen, it appears to be a flat 100, critical bite can modify this like any other rod.

    The skill level difference regen/drain seems to be on par with Ebisu in terms of it being a larger multiplier than regular rods.


    Also, unlike any other rod which generally only adds 0-2 to Rod Movement, the MMM rod adds 10.

    The rest of the stats appear to mimic standard synthetic rods.


    Moon Phase and Other Hard to Test Junk
    SE has specifically stated that Moon Phase and what not does have an impact on fishing. During my testing, I initially started tracking moon phase while I was casting and did notice obvious trends of critical bites going up/down, base golden arrow chance percentages going up/down, skill-up rates going up/down, but to accurately come up with the math on this, I would have to spend hundreds of hours logging catches over several weeks. Not going to happen.

    There is a JP fishing site I came across that tracks this data and it’s all over the place per fish per area. Based on the site’s graphs, it would appear that moon phase, day of month, day of week, time of day all have an effect on success rates. My guess is there’s multiplier tables for these, but the rates vary based on fish as well, so it’s anyone’s guess, but not mine

    The golden arrow percentage is hard to test because I think it’s tied into moon/day/time formulas among other things. The only thing I’ve noticed a definite impact on this is critical bites which adds like 50+%. I do know that the number can go above 100% but I don’t know what a number above 100% means. The game client when checking this number for the mini-game generates 2 random numbers 0-50 and adds them together to check against this percentage. Strange to say the least.


    Final Thoughts
    That’s it so far. I might revisit this topic at another time, but for now I’m taking a break. I spent a great deal of time skimming through the BG fishing thread looking for tasty info nuggets, and did come across a lot of interesting theories, some correct, some not.



    If yall have any other related questions, I might be able to answer anything I forgot to list here.

  2. #2
    i should really shut up
    You can safely ignore me I am a troll

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    I lack the privileges to move this thread to the Crafting subsection, but it should be in there.

    As for the thread, great work. Feel free to add this to the Fishing page if you care about your findings and hard work. Otherwise, threads tend to become lost to time.

    EDIT: Guess someone got to it. Kewl.

  3. #3
    Smells like Onions
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    need to really sticky this, we are asked in the fishing thread at least once every few pages ^^

    Trumpet Shell are a no go till around 80+ as the bite rate is way low. Tho they might be skill 63 bad idea unless you have a ton of time to burn.

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