Fish to save for cooking (and you should DEF be making seafood a lot)

[PerniciousDrow]

tl;dr
Seafood makes great gifts, fishing v profitable. Only 3 spots worth a damn:
Oasis (best cash, plus salmon for cooking - Bring a horse, it faaaar),
Harbor (bubblefish and salmon for cooking, not profit), and
Collapsed Wasteland (bladefish and catfish for cooking, wise fish for cash).

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Most people seem to like some form of seafood a lot (+10 to +15). Special Salmon Fried Rice and Seafood Noodles were my go-to's for a while. Bubblefish Stew (NOT soup) is also a great one, and Bladefish Mushroom Soup is popular with a few hard-to-please folks. (It's also one of the best stamina recovery items at 35% max SP, though admittedly dried apple slices are 10% and % are wasted early when a dried apricot's flat 24 is strong.)

Here's my advice for which fish to save. Only a few specific fish are called for in important gifting recipes. The most expensive fish called for in a recipe is a bubble fish (100gols). Very important for stews and you can catch it alongside one of the other important ones (golden salmon) at the harbor. The only other fish I rate highly are blade fish, and they can be caught in the profitable collapsed wasteland spot (I sell all the wise fish and rare ones there).

Okay, technically there are two other fish that have semi-good recipes for gifting: catfish and frogfish. Salty grilled catfish is a cheap and easy to stockpile gift for a number of people you maybe don't want to invest in (+6 qiwa, mars, gust, presley), but they have better options if you're gonna have the fish anyway (and presley's perks I want to hit fast with an easy Seafood Stew Mix: two diff fish, plus 3 diff ingredients - I use salmon, catfish, flour, apricots, cumin). Sweet caviar is a solid +15 with Tody, but so is bubblefish stew which is more widely liked. Plus the 2xfrogfish is steep when there's little reason to fish anywhere you get them.

About King Fish... Besides 1 of each to donate (yes, that means temporarily fishing in a few other spots), the only 2 that matter are the salmon king and bubble fish king. They're used in late game recipes that give permanent stat boosts in attack and defense respectively. The others are just mad cash: 5000gols. That being as it is, save those 2 and breed them. I also breed regular bubble fish and blade fish since I prefer the oasis fishing spot which gives me salmon and the best average gols per catch with both Wise AND Gladiator being the other two.

Oh, and go ahead and save the bannerfish you catch while working on the bannerfish king, blue mackerel king, firefish king, and lanturn fish king. They sell for a paltry 30 gols and make fine fodder for recipes that just want any old fish (eg seafood noodles). They'll help conserve your salmon, though there's little reason to acquire them post king fish hunt as their fishing spots are largely worthless.

Last thought: it's fine to catch seaweed, talismans, shell necklaces, and crystal necklaces. Seaweed is important for cooking, and those others make great gifts (+8 to +10 with the right people) which I craft in bulk anyway. Rusty pipes I guess you can recycle for iron bars, but rackets are TRULY useless. You will get tons and will only ever need 1.