The One That Didn't Get Away

I hate fishing in World of Warcraft. I can easily hit streaks of five, six, seven plus attempts of not catching anything. Which explains why none of my WoW toons’ fishing is above 150. I can’t wait till Blizzard adds a feature where a disembodied voice calmly says “No” every time the hook comes back empty.

Lord of the Rings Online recently added the “hobby” of fishing in the recent Book 13 update. On a whim, my hip-swerving minstrel paid a visit to the hobby master in Michael Delving and then made haste to the nearest watering hole.

To be clear, fishing in LoTRO isn’t all that different than in WoW; you equip a pole, hot key the skill, and then watch as your toon casts the line and stares at the bob. Graphically though, LoTRO is the more enjoyable experience. Through the distorted water, you can see a fish approach your bob. When he bites, you hit the hotkey button again to reel in the catch. I laughed aloud when a fish jumped out of the water over my bob before reemerging to strike at my line.

I never went consecutive attempts without catching something. In fact, amid all the cute little goldfish I caught, I managed to reel in one worthy of taking to a taxidermist for wall-mounting. Sure, I caught a lot of seaweed too. I haven’t tried to sell it yet or see if it’s an ingredient for something I can cook up. But catching weeds is better than nothing.

Upon making a successful catch, the game grants a chance to skill-up your fishing. It doesn’t happen every time of course, but often enough that I earned six fishing skill points in about ten minutes. I assume bodies of water have minimum skill level requirements, like WoW. With a maximum 200 points possible, my minstrel will have to travel a good chunk of Middle Earth to become a master angler.