[catabur]

As it stands, there is only a few reasons to actually fish: getting fish meat for food items or the swordfish for the swordfish sword. I've thought up a few things to make fishing a bit more exciting and usable by more that 2% of the SL community. For better or worse, really.

Uncommon and Rare Fish Breeds:
A way to make fishing seem more profitable is to make a series of 'discolored' fish from the usual ones and increase the market value from 5 to 10 (which would give you a gain of 4 instead of 1 not including pole). There could even be golden ones that have a market value of 25 (which would sell for 12, netting you a gain of 11 not including price of fishing pole). This would make being a fisherman a more profitable job that doesn't overshadow spelunking. This would also be the most common thing to get out of my list of obtainable ideas.

Really, as it stands, you're only getting +1 gain from getting fish and selling them, making it quite the useless job position when you could get about 10 murai per battle at level 15 or whatever.

Alternatively, the market value could increase based on size instead of small, medium, and large all being the same.

Rise of the Fish People:
An event that makes you fight one fish-based monster, basically. Scaled to level and only one, so anyone should be able to take them out. There could also be a chance of damaging the fishing pole instead of fighting or perhaps only when losing to the singular fish monster.

Message in a Bottle:
Functions as more of an in-game lore blurb that holds different information. A message from a worried sailor nearing a dark zone, perhaps? An aggressive scholar's opinion on the current state of the Church Knights? Really, could be anything. [strike]Perhaps the journal about a mad captain swearing he saw fish-like people in the ocean and forcing his crew to search for them.[/strike]

Would, along with the "Rise of the Fish People", be less common than the discolored fish and regular fish, so you don't get Captain Gangplank's recipe to the most nutritious orange juice drink in all of Sigrogana three times in a row.

Rods of Ages:
Working off the first idea listed, there would be a 'Well-Maintained Fishing Rod' that gives a greater chance of catching discolored and golden fish, while also being slightly harder to break, and a 'Masterwork Fishing Rod' which would grant an increased chance of catching golden fish and being even more difficult to break. The WM Fishing Rod could be priced at 60 murai, while the MW Fishing Rod could be priced at 120 murai or badges.

Heck, the regular one could work off a "durability" of 4 while the WM rod could work off 6, and the MW rod be 8. And none of them can be repaired due to fish rod-repairing skills being lost ever since Heaven's Contention. [strike]And an unbreakable one for 100 asagoronies.[/strike]

Booty Ahoy!:
A small chance for accessories, and maybe boots, to be obtained from the depths of the ocean! Who would throw away a perfectly good blood jewel? An angry vampire probably. The loot-range could work off the same as a high-leveled dungeon. I thought about possibly adding random crap such as seaweed, oranges, and the likes along with these sort of things, but thought it would be too encumbering to a good, ol' fisher.

Probably the least common, too.

Fish, Fish, Fish!:
More fishing spots would probably help instead of just the Jammer's Cavern and Dormeho, even if it is Sigrogana's dock and kind of a fishing village. Lispool's frozen lake could probably be used for ice fishing. And maybe a fishing pond in houses for privatized fishing and shut-ins.

From the most common to least in terms of fishing: Regular Fish, Discolored Fish, Message, Fish-Attack, Golden Fish, Booty

[Ryu-Kazuki]

I like this, a lot. It makes fishing spots and fishing in general a lot more desirable. On top of that, it'd be great to have different baits, different rods, and certain fish that appear more often in some areas than others. I really want to see this added into the game.