How on earth does fishing work?

[GameBunny Advance]

Has anyone figured out how Sweet Spots work? The game wasn't exactly clear about it, and pressing X to check for them does absolutely nothing. I am hopelessly confused.

[Jey Kama]

When you first start fishing, you use the stick to point in a direction on the wheel and try to attack. If you miss you adjust around the circle every 2-3 ticks until you get a !! which is the Sweet Spot - then you hammer that fish until ded.

When you get the ping skill everything changes, since you can just use the ping to search for it at the cost of a tiny bit of SP and some fishing timer.

It's the same idea for all 3 gathering jobs, it's just that with mining/woodchopping the "circle" is the ore node/tree itself.

[GameBunny Advance]

Originally posted by Jey Kama:

When you first start fishing, you use the stick to point in a direction on the wheel and try to attack. If you miss you adjust around the circle every 2-3 ticks until you get a !! which is the Sweet Spot - then you hammer that fish until ded.

When you get the ping skill everything changes, since you can just use the ping to search for it at the cost of a tiny bit of SP and some fishing timer.

So do I need to press X every time, or just the once? All I'm getting is nothing, or question marks.

Sorry if this is an incredibly stupid question, I'm just not getting any on-screen prompts or feedback from this and I'm catching things by sheer blind luck. I can't seem to get Excellent results either...

[malorob]

just increase your SP then just reel it in.
waiting for the sweet spot takes so long on this mini game.

it is not like the trees or mining.

[Jey Kama]

Originally posted by GameBunny Advance:

Sorry if this is an incredibly stupid question, I'm just not getting any on-screen prompts or feedback from this and I'm catching things by sheer blind luck. I can't seem to get Excellent results either...

No it's definitely confusing. I did through the castle section without having upgraded any skills and wondered why gathering was so bloody hard. (also, check to see if you can upgrade your skill tree)

Yes you hit X every time you "search." You'll have to blindly attack around the circle early levels, but a 2-3 tick section of it will be a Sweet Spot. Just need to keep attacking with X while adjusting the angle of the arrow around the circle.

An Excellent result requires significant overkill with your damage. You don't really have good tools early level to get Excellents except by using Triangle (heavy attack) when the fish as a sliver of health left. Later you can learn a special skill that dumpsters the fish for more SP so it's easier.

[Nautilus]

Originally posted by GameBunny Advance:

So do I need to press X every time, or just the once? All I'm getting is nothing, or question marks.

Sorry if this is an incredibly stupid question, I'm just not getting any on-screen prompts or feedback from this and I'm catching things by sheer blind luck. I can't seem to get Excellent results either...

Press X on every tick mark around the circle until you get an ellipses (...) or exclamation points. If you get an ellipses, rotate to the opposite side of the circle - that's where the Sweet Spot most likely is - and if you get the exclamation points you've already found it.

Once you have the Sweet Spot locked down, start hammering your heavy attack (Y). If you've unlocked the charging ability, use the light attack (A) to get down to a small bit of fish health left and use the charged attack (hold A) to finish the fish off. Overkill gets you a higher yield.

The charged fishing pull works a bit differently than the mining and woodcutting equivalent in that it does two weak pulls before the finisher, so don't drop the fish health too much or you risk catching it early.

At higher levels and rarer fish, they can apparently become annoyed and you'll have to wait for them to calm down and re-find their Sweet Spot after, but I haven't progressed far enough for that to be an issue yet.

[Caradog]

Fishing is such a huge downgrade. It's worse at conveying visual information and it doesn't feel like a struggle against the fish anymore. 3ds has it right and didnt need fixing.

Honestly all the gathering lives feel worse. You just massing sweet spots with no rhythm and even at next to no health a lucky sweet so rarely seems make for an excellent gather, seems like you just need bloated numbers now, when before 1 point extra damage could easily make a huge difference.

[No' Name]

Your heavy skill (y, or triangle), also makes the tension fill up, where as just spamming the normal skill drains your tension. This of course is only when you find the "Sweet Spot".

It plays a major role in capturing your first "Boss fish". I somehow managed to do it at lvl 12 Angler. Of course this was over like 5 times attempting it lol.