Fishing

Canon

Fishing is its own branch of the island ladder: dedicated fishing islands across the world tiers, each gated by Fishing level at the portal (D-WORLD-SYSTEM-04) — a Forest Lake isle early, on through frozen, desert-oasis, and magma-themed waters at the high tiers (names and slicing illustrative until the content pass; the V1 zone themes become fishing-island themes).

The island is the gate; the water is the table. Each fishing island carries its own loot table — its fish are island-locked, the biome-lock pattern from farming applied to water: a Magma Pool fish swims nowhere else. There is no per-cast skill check inside an island; reaching the island is the qualification. The vision's "rarest fish swim in the most dangerous waters" maps to the ladder: the highest-tier, hardest-to-reach islands hold the rarest tables.

Fishing islands are peaceful — fishing is the relaxing loop V1 designed, and nothing on a fishing island hunts you. Fishing mini bosses are deferred entirely (owner ruling): a future session may add catch-triggered encounters using the ratified encounter taxonomy and its spawn-trigger vocabulary; nothing is designed now.

What comes off the line is more than fish: each table mixes a fish rarity ladder (Common through Mythic), junk, treasure (chests, keys, materials), and island-exclusive cosmetics — unpredictability is the point. Rare catches broadcast through the records system like any rare drop. Fish feed Cooking, merchants, and the bazaar (fungible goods); fish collections live in the Almanac like every other collection — no separate log.

Rods are gear: their tiers, magic, and mechanics belong to the crafting/enchanting canon; no rod ever gates an island (skill gates only). Quest hooks (catch-N, deliver-to-merchant, repeatables) are the reserved quest-flag vocabulary, wired in the quests session.

Decisions

D-FISHING-01 — a dedicated fishing branch, like mining and farming (ratified 2026-07-16)

Owner ruling: fishing gets its own islands, gated by Fishing level — the branch pattern applied uniformly across the gathering skills. Every gathering skill reads the same way on the world map.

Rejected: waters embedded on host islands (the recommended alternative — loot scaling with host-island danger reads the vision line literally and gives every island a second activity, but breaks the one-branch-per-skill pattern and couples fishing progression to other branches' gates); a hybrid flagship isle + embedded waters (both systems' costs).

D-FISHING-02 — fish are island-locked; no per-cast skill check (ratified 2026-07-16)

Owner ruling: each island's table defines what swims there; access to the island is the whole gate. The farming biome-lock precedent applied to water. Fishing level spends its meaning on portal gates, not bite checks.

Rejected: tier-caps-on-bite (fish above your tier don't bite — the generator precedent, but a second gate on top of the portal is redundant); zone-odds-only with any fish anywhere (kills island exclusivity and the trade value of far waters).

D-FISHING-03 — fishing islands are peaceful (ratified 2026-07-16)

The relaxing loop stays relaxing; with mini bosses deferred there is no combat on a fishing island at all. "Dangerous waters" is carried by the ladder — height of the tier, not hostility of the shore.

Rejected: the farming danger gradient (hostile high-tier fishing isles — nothing hunts a fisher in V1's own philosophy; danger without a combat loop is set dressing).

D-FISHING-04 — fishing mini bosses deferred wholesale (ratified 2026-07-16)

Owner ruling: future consideration. When revisited, they arrive through the ratified encounter taxonomy (mini-boss rank, bait/catch spawn triggers) — the vocabulary is ready; no encounter, spawn rule, or reward table is designed today.

Rejected: designing catch-triggered encounters now (the opt-in-combat-on-peaceful-islands question they drag in isn't worth settling for content that isn't wanted yet).

D-FISHING-05 — the V1 corpus fate table (ratified 2026-07-16)

V1 idea	Fate
Zone unlocks via quests/reputation/exploration	Launch gate is Fishing level; quest flags reserved; reputation dead
Fishing quests (catch-N, deliveries, repeatables)	Deferred → quests session
Fish collections / rare catch milestones	Adopted via the Almanac — no separate log
Rod progression (magical/boss/legendary rods)	Deferred → crafting/enchanting canon; rods never gate islands
Fishing trinkets (rare-catch chance, bait efficiency)	Parked — the trinket vocabulary recurs across V1 (combat, mining, fishing) and needs its own intent check
Bait systems	Parked — arrives with mini bosses or the content pass, whichever first
Seasonal fish, tournaments, event rewards	Deferred → events-world session
Boats, ocean regions, underwater ruins, aquariums	Parked — future expansions, no owning system
Rare catch broadcasts	Adopted — records system, standard rare-drop path

Rejected: designing parked items now against undesigned systems.

Tuning

data/fishing.json — fishing-island list with tier placement and themes, per-island fish tables with the rarity ladder, treasure/junk mix weights, island-exclusive cosmetic pools. Owner-edited; V1 names illustrative.

Implementation

No owning mod for fishing content yet. Catches award Fishing XP through the standard hfskills observation path; fish are plain fungible items (bazaar goods, Cooking inputs); collection writes ride the hfalmanac provider hooks; broadcasts ride hfrecords. Whether home ponds exist on personal islands is an open substrate question — nothing here depends on it.

Open questions

Island count, tier placement, themes, and every fish table — owner content pass (data/fishing.json).
Home fishing (a pond on the personal island, floor-table catches?) — substrate/island session; generator precedent available if wanted.
Fishing mini bosses — deferred (D-FISHING-04); revisit when wanted.
Whether the rarity ladder (Common→Mythic) is fishing-only or becomes corpus-wide item-rarity vocabulary — flag for the crafting/loot sessions.
Trinket system intent check — parked corpus-wide (see fate table).