Hello!
Spent the better part of the last 3 days searching for fish, of all of the rare fish, (which I have sailed all over the map to test) the spawn rate for the "rare" varieties (not including the storm wreckers and other "double specials" that affect the spawn rate besides) is around 2% for the rare species of fish. Trophies are about 5% of all spawns, with that bringing the Rare Trophy spawns down to a .1% of all spawns.
Using this algorithm, if we were to fish an infinite amount of times, 1/1000 fish would be trophy rare fish.
number crunching voodoo and speculation:
When you factor in the time that it takes to dig up worms, grubs, and leeches, the time that it takes to sail, the time that it takes to fulfill the special conditions for the rarer fishes (like storms, wrecks, and battle) this means that the spawn rate would take a normal person around 2-3 months to land a trophy rare fish with a special area of spawning (only if it's a wrecker too, which I will get to later), hardly worth the 14k that you net from it.
Now, the common and uncommon variants of the fish are around 20% and 15% respectively, and I respect that, but why is it only a 2% spawn rate for the rare variety of fish?
Even with catch and release (which takes roughly 30 seconds between casting, observing, identifying, reeling in to SAVE YOUR BAIT, and recasting) you're looking at 1/20 chance of getting a rare fish every time.
I will back this up with the number of fish seen these past 3 days. I only caught rare ones, because it is stupid not to do the re-cast for turning in the fish at the outposts. The outposts are only really viable for the "open ocean" fish and splashtails, where you can fish to your hearts content and turn left and sell the fish for 75 to 1000 gold a pop.
First: the wreckers,
Of these the varieties were out of 200 fish, roughly 3 hours worth of work: 4 snow wreckers (no trophies), 127 rose wreckers (2 trophies (weird***)), 32 sun wreckers (1 trophy), 47 moon wreckers (7 trophies)
Stormfish:
Didn't catch any, didn't see any rares, when I did cast the line in, about 2/5ths of the time I was struck by lightning (after I started counting) I also had to bail out my ship a lot, and it's hard to see whether the fish were trophies or not. I only did this for an hour and a half as a solo sloop, and the perils of the open ocean aren't kind to a solo sloop out for fish.
Of the varieties I saw: 6 twilight, 21 wilds. Also, to note, the storm didn't exit the wilds the entire time that I was trying for these guys. But it is good to note that I didn't see any rare variants at all, not that I would have been able to catch them due to the frequency and interruption animation of getting hit by lightning, or being attacked by a skeleton ship, or mega while fishing.
Brings me to the battlegills:
I sank 6 times while trying to catch a rare variant of these (much to my chagrin) Wasting 4 hours of my time for no profit:
1 rare (sand gill) is all I saw, before getting blasted to davey jones' locker by a cannon-fire from a skele ship. Even if it was only an umber splashtail (which I doubt, it was quite white instead of an off-gray) that's incredibly low. Also it's harder to fish for things and wait while the ship is going down so... take this with a grain of salt. 8 Jade (2 trophies), 3 sky, 5 rum (1 trophy).
Won't be doing these ever again, not even with a galleon, don't want to be locked in the brig looking for the elusive trophy sand-gill while my team gets blown up by a skele-sloop or galleon.
Island hoppers (do these even count?)
Raven Island-hoppers are probably the best rare-trophy variant other than the umber Splashtails, and I still haven't seen a trophy variant of either of these. I haven't tried pondies, because... let's get reel (hah) they're splashtails but of a different name.
Only saw 2 raven island-hoppers, there are a ton of others that I saw of the night variant, and I didn't even bother with the other islands because of the wiki, and it saying that the best way to catch rare fish if you need them is to spam the islands listed there.
I am going to lump all of the regional fish together so hang on to your hats:
Rare regional fish total: 18 (0 trophies noticing a trend?), Uncommon: 78 (Trophies 13), Common: 149 (Trophies 31, weird.) Base: 254 (trophies 60), Night variant (shouldn't count) 219 (Trophies an even 50)
All of this on my sketch pad makes me seem a little bit of a nutter, but hey, I also like to know what I am getting into and after fishing for 4 hours for wreckers (my personal favorite of the location and event specific fish) and not finding but 2 rares (yes, ouch) on my first ever fishing voyage, I thought I would compile a list to share with the community.
Now, Rare, would you please fix the spawn rates for these fish, especially when it comes to the rarer, event-specific fish? or perhaps make the battle-gills and storm-fish worth 10-100 times more than the others since they have a chance to be interrupted by lightning or literal cannon-fire?
TLDR:
The spawn rate of trophies and rares makes it near impossible for you to get a 'rare trophy' fish. RNG is not kind and it isn't worth it nor rewarding to fish in this game with the current RNG numbers. Trophy fish are fun to find, but most of them are base or uncommon, leading to boredom from the fishing community.
Thank you, and if you like this please leave a like so that Rare can see this post!
