Fishing happens on expeditions. A ship leaves Thais harbour twice a night for a private island of fishing ponds, you work the ponds until it sails home, and what you pull out are pearls. It is the one profession that takes you somewhere: there is nothing to fish for on the mainland.

Every cast trains your Fishing skill, and Fishing is what opens the deeper ponds. The shallow ones ask nothing of you, so you can start the moment you can afford a rod.

Getting on the boat

• Buy a fishing rod and keep it in your bag. Most general-goods shops stock one — Gorn in Thais does, and Lee'Delle on Rookgaard. You will not be let aboard without a rod, staff included.
• Premium is required to board. It is checked only as you step on — if your premium runs out while you are at sea or on the island, nothing is taken away from you.
• Talk to Salty Bertram on the Thais jetty: hi → sail → yes, and he sets you down on the deck.
• The ship leaves at 00:00 and 02:00 and 04:00 and 06:00 and 08:00 and 10:00 and 12:00 and 14:00 and 16:00 and 18:00 and 20:00 and 22:00, Polish time, every day. The whole trip lasts 45 minutes, and you are warned as the end approaches.
• 5 sails a week, and the count is shared by your whole account — not per character. It resets on Friday at 03:00 — see General Info.
• The whole world is warned 15 minutes before each scheduled sailing, telling you to speak to Salty Bertram in Thais harbour. That warning is your cue to stop what you are doing and walk to the jetty.
• When the ship leaves, everyone is told — the announcement names the island it is heading for and how many fishers are aboard. (If nobody boarded, the ship does not sail and there is nothing to announce.)
• Type !fishing any time. Ashore it tells you when the next ship leaves and how many sails your account has left this week; at sea it adds how long is left, whether your line is ready, and what you have taken so far.

Getting home again: find Ferryman Coll on the island and ask him for passage. He is the only way back. (!leaveship is not it — that command only steps you off the town ship while it is tied up in Thais harbour, and does nothing at sea.)

Working the ponds

• Use your rod on a pond. Look at a pond first and it tells you which tier it is, and what Fishing it wants.
• You get 50 casts a trip. Every cast tells you how many you have left, and the count starts again from 50 each time you land on an island. A cast that is turned away — a spent pond, water too deep for your Fishing, a line still out — costs you none of them.
• You must wait between casts — somewhere around 30 to 45 seconds, and it varies. Casting early costs you nothing; you are simply told to wait.
• Each pond gives up one catch per trip. Fish it once and it is spent until your next expedition, so an island is walked, not camped. A cast at a spent pond is free — you lose no time for trying.
• A cast can wake whatever lives in that pond, and the deep water holds things that will kill you. Know what is down there before you cast (see the table).
• A better rod pays better, and each one asks for more Fishing before you can fish with it at all.

The five depths

Every island lays out the same five tiers. The Fishing column is the skill the pond asks for; a pond pays according to your own skill, but a shallow pond can only reward you so far — to be paid like a master you have to fish where masters fish.

Creatures listed are those of the Fisher's Rest, the island the ship sails to today. A tier's depth and its pearls are the same wherever you fish; what lives in the water belongs to the island.

The rods

The tidal insignia

The sea gives up more than pearls. A tidal insignia is a ring, and no two are the same — each one is fished up already carrying one bonus of its own, rolled when it is found. It is the only item in the game whose powers belong to that single copy of it rather than to the item itself.

• You cannot buy one, and nothing drops one. They are pulled out of the ponds on an expedition, and that is the only way any of them enter the world.
• It always shines, and it always has at least one bonus. There is no dull “empty” version to find, and no way to strip it back to nothing — an insignia with nothing on it does not exist.
• It holds up to five bonuses, and you add them yourself with the orbs below.
• Every bonus is good for you. An insignia has no drawbacks to roll — there is nothing on the list that can hurt you, so a new bonus is never a risk.
• You keep it when you die, wherever you die — it is never dropped with the rest of your things.
• It cannot be sold on the Market and cannot be donated to the Museum. What makes one insignia different from another lives on that one ring, and neither of those could carry it — so it stays yours.
• Take it off before you work on it. An orb will not touch an insignia you are wearing.
• Read the ring itself. Looking at an insignia lists everything it carries, so the ring in your hand is always the final word on what it does.

The orbs

Two more finds come out of the same water, and they are what shape an insignia.

• A tidal orb of creation adds one bonus, rolled at random from the list below. Each one costs more than the last: one for the 2nd, two for the 3rd, four for the 4th, eight for the 5th. Filling an insignia therefore takes 15 orbs in all.
• A tidal orb of destruction takes one bonus away, chosen at random, for one orb however many the ring is carrying. It will never take the last one — you cannot empty an insignia, only make room on it.
• Both are used on the ring: right-click the orb, then click the insignia.
• Of the three, insignias come up the most often and orbs of destruction the least.

What an insignia can carry

29 bonuses can roll, and the ceiling shown is the strongest each one gets. Weak rolls are far commoner than strong ones, and any single insignia holds at most five of them.

If you die out there

Dying on an expedition is gentler than dying anywhere else: you keep everything you are carrying, and your amulet of loss is not spent. You still lose experience, skill and every blessing you were carrying exactly as you normally would, and the sail is still counted against your 5 — so drowning yourself is not a way to start over.

Pearls are worth carrying home and selling — see Items for what each one is worth, or list them yourself on the Market.