Guide to multi-fishing for fun and profit

Guide to multi-fishing for fun and profit


Fishing. meh.
I remember the old fishing days back when EQ was shiny and new and thus before all MMOs went easy-mode. In a game full of horrific grinding fishing was the grind of all grinds. I have been an avid real-life fisherman (even some commercial) since I was a kid and this only made the pain worse.
I was horrified at how terrifyingly boring it was. Yes that's right, horror at the amount of terror .

WHY??!!
This is a guide in remembrance of those days to try and take as much of the pain out of fishing as possible. The rest of the pain can be removed by only fishing in warm weather, while listening to your favourite music/podcast and consuming a 6 pack.
I am a rift newbie but have played a stupid number of MMOs in the past. I will evolve this guide as I learn more but wanted to begin it while the information was fresh in my mind. I apologise if any information is incorrect and suggestions are welcome.

Setting up your tackle:

1. Drag your fishing icon to an unused action bar slot and bind it to an easy to hit key. (I use HOME)
2. Make sure you are configured to be able to global broadcast your fishing key to all clients. (Either using the global repeater or by adding a hotkey in Isboxer)
3. *optional* In Isboxer create a mapped key that has a single action that clicks the first mouse button in all clients. Bind it to something easy to press and near the fishing key. (I use INSERT) You don't need this but it is much easier and means you never use the mouse after initial setup.
4. *optional* Setup your "whack-a-mole" fishing keys if using the advanced fishing method. Bind a seperate set of 5 keys (ideally in a row) that will click the fishing button for each of your 5 characters in the same order as your party.
   (NB: there is certainly to be some advanced Isboxer config to toggle these keys into and out of fishing mode so the keys are not "wasted". I am going to look into this for the future.)

HOW TO FISH
Below are two methods for catching multiple fish at a time. If you set up the advanced method you can use both methods as you please.
The advanced method has the opportunity to hook all five fish every time with practice but requires additional setup and more keys. The new and improved simple method will allow you to land 4-5 fish each cast (with 5 being more common) and so the advanced method is probably not necessary for most.

Method 1: Simple Fishing Process:
I tried several methods of "simple" fishing before finding the best one. Using this method successfully you will be able to hook 4-5 fish (mostly 5) a cast most of the time but it takes some practice.
The trick is to not click the global mouse button too soon after seeing the rod bob up and down. Wait for 0.5 seconds or so. It appears that while hitting the mouse button at the completely wrong time will not lose you a fish (you can spam this button with no fish hooked with no effect) if you hit it just as (or just before) the fish is caught you DO risk losing it. It took some experimentation to find this out.
But if you click methodically at the right time you can land all 5 character's fish most of the time - even when they need to be played twice to land. Practice makes perfect.

Fishing:

1. Setup any lures you are using
2. Hit the fishing button and position your mouse in every window so that all characters have a yellow fishing circle NEAR YOUR CHARACTER and thus can fish successfully. (you don't need to move the mouse again after this)
3. Test to make sure that while fishing spamming the global mouse button does not disengage any of your fisherpersons. If it does, adjust that fishing circle as close to the character as you can without it going red.
4. Hit your global "fake" mouse click key to make all characters start fishing.
5. Once you have hooked a fish, wait a brief moment and hit the global mouse click button.
6. Keep hitting it in the same way (i.e. with a brief delay) every time a rod bobs. Sometimes you will get unlucky and lose one but it will work most of the time.
7. Once all fish are landed hit the fishing button at least TWICE to reset everyone back to fishing mode. (once only resets some chars)
8. Goto step 4)

Method 2: Whack-a-mole fishing process:
This is a little bit harder to setup and uses extra keys but turns fishing into a whack-a-mole mini-game. Fun for the whole family!
(NB: using kids to fish for you 18 hours a day for no pay while you go RL fishing is totally NOT cool...apparently)

Fishing:

1. Hit the GLOBAL fishing button and use your mouse in each window separately to line up and space out your fishing lines in the same order as your party so you can tell your lines apart and which button to click. (you don't need to move the mouse again)
2. Hit your global "fake" mouse click key to make all characters start fishing.
3. As each fishing line requires action, click the appropriate fishing key for that character.
4. Once all fish are landed hit the global fishing button at least TWICE to reset everyone back to fishing mode. (once only resets some chars)
5. Goto step 2)

Hope this helps someone. In retrospect it is pretty obvious stuff but sometimes the obvious is only obvious AFTER you have read it!


And always, ALWAYS remember "The worst day fishing is better than the best day working."

If anyone knows the best way to toggle in a set of keys for a given purpose (e.g. 1-5) and back again when not fishing in ISboxer please let me know.

Ok, have perfected a better method of fishing now and have updated it to reflect that.

Yes I realise I am a fishing geek.

And yes I realise I could just get that autohotkey bot and go real fishing while my bot fished but I am not risking that.

[MiRai]

Ok, have perfected a better method of fishing now and have updated it to reflect that.

Yes I realise I am a fishing geek.

And yes I realise I could just get that autohotkey bot and go real fishing while my bot fished but I am not risking that.

I doubt anyone would have recommended that route on these forums because ISBoxer is all about playing by the rules.

Or at least not admit on these forums.

No I don't agree with cheating either. But when I was googling to see if there were any fishing-specific macros to help out all I found were autohotkey links so somebody sure is.

Such is life on the wild west that is the internet.

[hephaestus]

People here actually take playing by the rules seriously (probably more so than any MMO forums I have ever seen), otherwise, that is the type of thing that confirms people's worst suspicions/assumptions (mostly false) about multi-boxing and ruins it for the large majority who are just having fun and playing by the book. Great fishing guide though, thanks for posting, I hadn't even tried fishing since I started toying around with coming back to Rift, I might actually give it a shot here (thought I have never been much of a fisherman in game, I wasn't even sure what the "reward" was for Rift in terms of time spent).

Thanks. I know its nothing you cannot work out for yourself but it makes it a lot easier when someone else tests and adjusts and comes up with a recipe. Lord knows there is enough to test and adjust
I have been using it for a while now and the simpler method works so well the other method is completely vestigial.
As long as you set up the cameras right in the first place you get a 90% 5/5 fish rate and 4/5 for the rest.

You have to understand that I take almost nothing seriously that I don't have to and try to find humour everywhere and especially in those things which we are "scared" of.

But if we are being serious. (adjusts tie and removes comedy glasses with fake nose)

I think the whole automation comment I made has been blown completely out of proportion and taken out of context.

Honestly. My original automation comment was because it popped up continuously while I was searching for it. Lots of people apparently do it. I don't. Some (Many?) of those people will be using isboxer. It is a fact.
I made a tongue and cheek comment about how there are people out there doing it. I made fun of it. It was not a serious comment. I even used a smiley. Now I am being told off like a little boy. Lol. It is all very amusing.
Would not have mentioned it further if it was not raised again. Still don't really care about the topic even now as I write this - despite its length.

To keep repeating it though it as if my IQ was below 160 is pointless - I get it. More than most I can assure you. I have a degree in psychology among other things...lol.

To try and speak for the whole community is folly. You cannot. You have no idea what people are doing. Most people rarely comment on these forums. You can only comment on the tone people choose to use on this board - policed so ferociously as it appears to be for any talk, even tangentially or comically, of automation. Sometimes you don't even need that I have discovered. I have not really posted lately and will not in the future for this and other reasons. I don't see much of a community outside of a few gems here and there.
I am sure everyone will be happy about that - I am probably mostly a nuisance....I certainly will be classed that way after this post in any regard.

I am also happy to respect the "don't describe how to cheat" rule - have not done it yet and never intended to.
Just to be clear on my own personal opinion of cheaters: I don't care what other people do. I am not cheating myself and I don't care if you do. Its your life.

To others my philosophy has always been: You roll the dice, you pay the price.
I personally don't want to risk 100's of hours of building up a character just to lose it to a ban hammer.

Having said all of that I do note an irksome touch of hypocrisy in all this. I am sure this next bit of truth will be inflammatory but I never shy from the truth.

In neverwinter multiboxing is banned. We know this for a fact. I mentioned this myself and how I did not want to play and get banned. I was encouraged to do it anyway. Fun game as it turns out! Glad I broke the rules.
So "playing by the rules" as was so quickly pointed out is apparently not as important as it seems.

I also noted when I logged into IRC lavishsoft apparently hosts the IRC for several fully-fledged bot for eve online (combot/evebot/stealthbot/openbot) which are most certainly against the rules to the point one could easily make the argument they are damaging the game and its economy directly. (No one from isboxer has anything to do with it I hope!!)
I only noticed because the word bot stuck out like a sore thumb.
If you are truly concerned about boxing and its PR campaign to be considered other than a botting community then I would recommend petitioning lavishsoft to take down those IRC channels.

Again. None of this really bothers me. The internet is the wild west after all.

But still...

[Biggcarl]

We have some very simple rules, and you should not have a problem being able to follow them:

1. Absolutely no discussion of any "private" servers, for any game. Legal precedent shows that emulating a game server is unlawful (e.g. circumvention of copyright protection) and therefore it is NOT a topic to be discussed in any area of our web site. This also helps us maintain our good relationship with game publishers.
2. Absolutely no warez, cracks, hacks, cheats, bots, etc. If it's against the Terms of Service for the games we're multiboxing, it's not up for discussion here!
3. No advertising.

There are no exceptions to these rules.

shouldnt even be talked about even if joking its not to be discussed lax wants to keep firmly both feets on this side of the automation line.

It appears that while hitting the mouse button at the completely wrong time will not lose you a fish

This doesn't appear to work for me. Either click of the mouse before the bob stops the cast. Am I doing something wrong or did something change?

[Kaische]

Am I doing something wrong or did something change?

At the time i played RIFT i tried both methods. The first method mrmagoo described was not working for me at all, even if i payed attention for every 0.1th second.

I used the Whack-A-Mole method with a combination of VideoFX viewers for some time but i have to say that fishing was never my thing. Waiting for this bumping rode and then hit "that" button ... nah.


Did you only tried the first method jebarber?