This article will teach you the basics of ocean fishing in Final Fantasy XIV, so you can level up your Fisher, get the Mount, get the title "Master of the Sea," and make FFXIV Gil by selling all fish.
Ocean fishing is pretty easy to get into, even for players who don't fish regularly. This article will cover everything you need, from baits and abilities to outside resources.
This guide is not about every little detail for ocean fishing, but simply a guide to get started and get the reward. If you want to go beyond the basics or have any questions, you can go to Fisherman's Horizon Discord for more information.
At first, all we need is three baits Ragworm, Krill, and Plump Worm, all three can be bought by the ferry docks in Limsa Lominsa Lower Decks for a very cheap price 8 FF14 Gil per bait.
Players can start ocean fishing after completing the first fisher job quest, then go to Limsa Lominsa Lower Decks X:3.0 Y:12.7 to speak to the NPC Dryskthota to see the sailing schedule.
Inside the schedule, you will notice that the ship stops three times until its final destination, and you can also see the time of day for the different stops, which is important for making plans.
When you sign up, you will stay in queue until either 24 players come or 15 minutes past the hour, at which point you will set sail in an undersized ship.
Trigger the Spectral Current
The ship will stop at three locations, each allowing you a few minutes of fishing at each stop. Different kinds of fish are available, each preferring one of the three baits. There is also one spectral fish. Catching the spectral fish has a chance to spawn a spectral current, which is a limited time frame for catching higher-value fish that can occur only once per stop. The spectral current is important for getting high scores during ocean fishing, and as such, our primary goal is always to trigger it. Ideally, everyone on the ship should use the spectral fish preferred bait until the current spawns.
Spectral fish preferred bait for different stops:
Bloodbrine Sea — Krill
The Ciedalaes — Ragworm
Galadion Bay — Plump Worm
Rhotano Sea — Plump Worm
Rothlyt Sound — Plump Worm
Southern Merlthor — Krill
Northern Merlthor — Ragworm
During the Spectral Current
Once the spectral current is triggered, we select the bait that allows us to make the most points off the current, which depends on multiple factors. To help us figure all of this out, we need a website called Lulu's tools, which features a page specifically for ocean fishing. We can see the upcoming voyages on the top, telling us the route and any bonus objectives. Below it, we can find the details for the next voyage.
Here I recommend sorting by all fish. At the top, you can switch between the different stops to see the fish available at each one of them. Below that, you can see all fish available outside the spectral current (above the line) and all fish available inside the spectral current (below the line), and you can also see each fish's preferred bait.
What is Fish Tug
You can see the fish tug next to the bait. It corresponds to the exclamation marks you see above your character whenever a fish bites. One exclamation mark is a weak tug, two is strong, and three is a ferocious tug. Knowing the tug strength of a fish helps us figure out what kind of fish we are getting.
Each fish has a specific type of tug, and it doesn't change whether the fish is average-sized or large.
What is Bite Time
Next to the tug, you can see the bite time, and it tells you during what time frame in seconds this fish bites after using the ability Cast. By looking at the tug strength and the bite time, we can almost always tell what kind of fish we are getting before we reel it in, which allows us to use our abilities to maximize the point gain. Knowing the fish on the hook and using the right abilities to maximize the points you get from that fish is the core of getting high scores in ocean fishing
To know the current bite time, you need to use a Cast macro, in the picture below is what it looks like, and drag the button to replace the Cast on your Hotbar, then whenever you use Cast, a timer will start in your chat, that's only visible to you, which will tell you how much time has passed since you use Cast.
Fishing Abilities and Combos
The Double Hook number on the ocean fishing website indicates how many fish you can get casting Double Hook or Triple hook on that fish. Some fish will yield different amounts whenever you use double or triple on them. Using Double Hook on the right fish is a good start, but you can go a step further to the holy grail combo of ocean fishing, Double Hook, Identical Cast, Price Catch, and Triple Hook.
If you don't have the GP, you can use a different combo: Double Hook, Identical Cast, and Double Hook, so in this case, we are swapping out the Triple Hook at the end for a Double, and we are also not using Price Catch, and instead just hoping that we are going to get large fish for our second Double Hook.
Every time you catch a large-sized fish, you can gain a stack of Angler's Art (the maximum number of stacks is 10). You can use three Angler's Arts to restore 150 GP by using Thaliak's Favor. We need them to make our big combo happen, so what is better to do at the start of the trip is to use Patients or Patients 2 together with the abilities Precision and Strong Hookset to get a few large fish. We need at least a total of 6 stacks.
Using either Patients or Patients 2 will apply a debuff called inefficient hooking for 2 minutes. To get rid of this debuff, we have to use a Precision or Strong Hookset instead of the normal hookset. Use Precision Hookset on weak tugs and Strong Hookset on strong and ferocious tugs.
For practice, you can go to Lulu's tools to look at the available fish and decide on a strategy, but sometimes you can have the right bait, the perfect strategy, but the right fish doesn't bite. In those cases, you need to keep trying.
Some of the trips are more suited to get high scores than others, but when you are just learning ocean fishing, it is a good idea to take any trip you can get instead of waiting for the right one and never getting any practice in.
If you think ocean fishing is too complicated, you can buy safe Power Leveling at MmoGah.
Those are all the ocean fishing tips for now. Thank you for reading, and enjoy fishing in the sea.
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