So, uhm… some changes… are, uhm… interesting. I initially really didn’t put much thought into this year’s changes to the fishing mechanic at the Winter Festival. That’s mainly because I haven’t been farming fish the last two years and didn’t plan to do it this year. But I of course checked out the changes, and really, it’s bad.

Now for those that aren’t completely sure what I’m talking about here. The game since module 10 featured two different fishing mechanics. The one in the Sea of Moving Ice and Chult replaces the character’s powers and acts like an independent mini game. The Winter Festival on the contrary always had its own version of “fishing”. It primarily nets Light of Simril, one of the currencies that you can buy rewards for, and was basically just a simple interaction with the ice holes on the event map.

Fishing Got Even More Boring

For this year’s Winter Festival, the devs then decided to bring fishing in line, and replace the “old” one from the event with the “new” one from SoMI. It might not sound like a big deal, except that the process now takes significantly longer. And that’s not great, because fishing in Twilight Tor is nothing else than boring grind that just got even more boring. On top of that, the new fishing requires lure that you have to buy with Gold or Astral Diamonds. In the old variant, the basic interaction was free, but you could buy optional boosts. Oh, and good luck getting five fish of the same type for the intro quest. Spoiler: It can take a while!

The official reasoning for it is botting by the way, as stated by Community Manager Julia on stream on Tuesday. I’d still say the change was completely uncalled-for. It just added a ton of inconvenience to the whole mechanic for players while, guess what, bots will simply adjust. You believe that the same scripts that botted SoMI won’t work in Twilight Tor? C’mon now! At the very least the devs could have adjusted fishing in a way that you get the same amount of currency out of your time. It’s puzzling that you replace a grind that already didn’t have too great rewards attached to it with something even more annoying.

Less Fish Than Before

And that’s not even the only issue. In the module 15 workshop system, fishing now also nets the resources for the vendor that replaced the former Lightcrafting Profession. It means that in the now bigger loot table, you might get less stuff you actually want. Overall it’s a big mess and once again something you feel the devs haven’t entirely thought through unless they actually meant to nerf Winter Festival fishing in the process.

The best news might be that fishing already wasn’t very profitable and now you have an easy reason to completely skip it. In case you want stuff from the Lights of Simril vendor, just run gift parties or consider trading in your Stars of Fortune during the Festival’s Zenith. There are multiple threads complaining about the change on the official forum by the way, but even if they want to I doubt that the devs will be able to revert the change for this year. Although this doesn’t have as much impact on my own gameplay experience, it’s still a major “wtf” change. There have to be smarter ways of getting rid of bots without punishing legit players as much.

What is your take on the new fishing? Are you as bewildered as I am? Share your thoughts on our social channels, in the comments below, or visit our message board!

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