How to Go Fishing in Tibia

This is a guide to how to level up your fishing skills in Tibia. These test were conducted based on the current game and are accurate to a T. Fishing in a wonderful skill that can serve a Druid or Sorcerer well while they are making runes, and mana training. It gives them something to do, and the reward is fish. Fish is one of the most impressive meats on Tibia, and can do wonders for replenishing your hit points and mana guage.

My first thoughts were that the fishing skill advance could be functioning similar to training combat skills. Just like any other skill a fishing try would only count when you catch a fish every 30 tries. From my knowledge about distance training I found it also possible that a caught fish counts more than an unsuccessful try just like a successful arrow or spear hit.. Keeping that in mind I started my tests using a freshly created level one character who was handed a well used fishing rod. The results of the first test however weren't that good, but I still didn't know why they were not conclusive.

To preclude possible error sources I made another new character making only one try on each water field, which I thought, was not being "touched" before. Using that method I got much better results. Those were good enough for a first formula to use and check with higher fishing skills. I continued with various characters to test and soon found out that the formula was correct and how the system works.

My first two assumptions proved to be not valid for fishing. Since some time you can see on nearby water fields an information: either "shallow water" or "silvery movement of fish". The second means that in that field of water you can get a fish by using your rod on it. Every try on such a field will make your fishing skill count advance in the background +1, until it hits the needed amount to advance a skill - then you have a skill up. ;) Unluckily you can only check water which is very close to the shore (even only facing to a certain direction), thus you cant be sure if a certain square is filled with a fish. Each fishing try on a field which is "shallow water" doesn't count towards your fishing skill nor will you get a fish out of it. Each field contains exactly one fish (if it wasn't yet brutally murdered by a unscrupulous fisherman), which needs a certain time to "re-spawn".

So, where are good fishing places? Towns are usually very bad for professional fishermen. Due to two reasons: first of CIP removed all fishes in water fields in viewing range of houses and other protection zones. This was due to excessive abusing of those for macro fishing while a player was away from their keyboard. The second reason is, that towns are crowded and it is very likely that many water tiles are already "empty".

To fish effective and fast, look for an area out of towns and fish on every water tile until you catch a fish, then move on to the next field - repeat until all water fields in viewing range are emptied.
Formula: needed tries to advance from fishing skill x-1 to x with x >= 11

x = 1.1^(x-11)*20

That means basically that the first advance from skill 10 to skill 11 needs 20 fishing tries and each following advance needs 10% more, with some applied rounding.

The chart below displays the needed amount of fishing tries on a water field which holds a fish. The amount needed from skill 10 to skill x is visualized. It illustrates the huge difference of low and medium skills compared to very high skills.

So there it is, a formula for leveling up your fishing skill, and some ideas about where to go fishing at. This particular skill my seem like a nothing or blah skill, but can be quite useful. Also it's fun to brag about how good a fishermen you are. Just like in real life, you can toss around some great fishing stories. "I swear it was like THIS big!"