Ocean Fishing Needs a Buff

[gloomy apex]

After testing and comparing, it’s clear ocean fishing is way underpowered compared to lake fishing:

• Fillet yields are too low (4 max per fish) despite requiring way more effort.
• Food made from ocean fish has the same stats but needs less incentivized ingredients (like embergrain dough).
• Fillets can’t be turned into fert directly like lake fish fillets—you have to cook them first.
• No boost to fish scale drop rates, even though they’re now needed for quests.
• You can’t teleport with ocean fish, and there are fewer, more distant spots to fish them.

More effort for worse returns isn’t a good design loop.

Suggested fixes:

• Increase fillet yield per ocean fish.
• Boost fish scale drop rate.
• Allow raw ocean fillets to be turned into fert.
• Improve food output or add unique benefits.

Ocean fishing should feel worth the extra time and travel and not like a punishment.

[alpine violet]

Not to mention you need chum to ocean fish which is more effort than bait because it requires hunting

[hazy prawn]

Adding to this from the cooking perspective, there's no reason to use ocean fish for fish sticks instead of using regular fish for fish&bulbs (most of what I craft so my settlement has good crafting/gathering speed).

None of the fishers want to catch them and the cooks don't want to deal with cooking bread when it could just be avoided with fish & bulbs instead :3

[tall rune]

I'm using t3 as an example here.
Oceanfish requires 10x (yes exactly 10x) the effort to get 1 oceanfish compared to 1 lake fish.
Oceanfish on avg gives 3 fillets and 1.5 oils
Lake fish on avg gives 1.5 fillets and 0.5 oils

Why is oceanfish 10x the effort while giving only 2x the filets and 3x the oil.

This along with it requiring chum, being a cargo item and usually miles out in the sea makes oceanfishing so bad.

No fisher wants to fish these because they're such bad ROI for their time.

Embergrain is a requirement for settlement progression because of straw and I just see it pile up and up while bulbs go as soon as they're farmed.

It's a chore that no one wants to do and as fishers and farmers are usually seperated, there is an unnecessary ask of fishers to waste their time with oceanfish while farmers are left with nothing to use their embergrain on.

[tacit wolf]

When I'm on a T4+ fishing trip, I usually fill the Skiff's cargo up with ocean fish I know is there. It's good Heimlich money/EXP and mostly good Svim money/EXP. So this is just an added bonus that improves the resources to time traveled ratio.

I agree that it's a terrible grain sink, why would you ever cook it?

In the limit infinitely many people can fish from a pool for 15 minutes, which is kind of unique and I assume hard to balance.

[tall rune]

Yea maybe just hold on to the grain forever until they introduce another sink and use ocean fish only for task give ins. Then its probably not that bad. I think because there is lake fish to compare it to in regards to deluxe food it leaves a sour taste. I see a few solutions:

• Buff ocean fishing to be similar to lake fishing effort wise
• Change deluxe ocean fish food to have a different buff than deluxe lake fish food
• Introduce another grain sink and just straight up remove the ocean fish deluxe food

I like the gameplay loop of oceanfishing but it's impossible to overlook the comparison

[fringe wedge]

I feel like the ideal is just making ocean fishing not suck. It takes more build up so I feel like it should give higher rewards than lake rather than lower. So just decrease the effort needed and potentially buff the returns per fish. OR if there truly is some speed buff for group fishing, make that clear in game and tell us how many people are needed to make ocean fishing have better hourly returns than lake