Fishing

Fishing starts as a quiet way to pull dinner out of the water and ends with hauling treasure chests off the ocean floor while fighting off sea serpents. High-skill fishers in deep water can catch special fishing nets, big fish, treasure maps and messages in a bottle — the entry point to the shipwreck (SOS) treasure hunt.

Fishing is one of the four gathering skills — see the Gathering Overview for the shared basics (tool wear, town bonuses, skill gain).

Fishing villages sit on the water's edge across Eren — huts, drying nets and a fisher NPC who buys your catch.

Getting Started

1. Get a fishing pole and equip it (it takes both hands) — a pole in your backpack isn't enough.
2. Double-click the pole — "What water do you want to fish in?"
3. Target water within 4 tiles.

Rules to know:

• You cannot fish while mounted.
• Fishing does not reveal you — unlike mining and lumberjacking, you can fish while hidden with no Stealth requirement at all.
• A fishing spot holds a modest number of fish and refills roughly 10–20 minutes after being fished out — "The fish don't seem to be biting here."

The pole has 50 uses; each successful catch spends one, and at zero it breaks.

Colored-Wood Poles Boost Your Skill

A fishing pole crafted from colored boards carries a name prefix and grants bonus Fishing skill while equipped:

The bonus counts toward the special-catch requirements below, so a good pole genuinely catches better things. Poles from better wood (and exceptional quality) also last longer.

Auto-targeting

See Gathering Overview.

What You Can Catch

The everyday catch is a plain fish — cut it with a blade for 2 raw fish steaks. But every cast has a chance to become something else:

Low-Skill Catches (anywhere)

• Footwear — boots, shoes, sandals... the classic junk catch, common for beginners and rare for masters.
• Magic fish — colored fish you eat for a one-minute stat boost:

	Fish	Effect
	Prized fish	+5 Intelligence for 1 minute
	Wondrous fish	+5 Dexterity for 1 minute
	Truly rare fish	+5 Strength for 1 minute
	Peculiar fish	+10 Stamina instantly

Like footwear, magic fish are most common at low skill and fade away as you master the skill.

Deep-Water Catches (high skill)

These require fishing in true deep water — open ocean, well away from any shore (practically, from a boat). Each has a small chance per cast that rises slowly with skill, so 120 Fishing pulls them up noticeably more often than 100:

	Catch	Fishing skill needed
	Special fishing net	80
	Big fish	80
	Treasure map (level 1–3)	90
	Message in a bottle	100

Fished treasure maps on UO Sagas are always level 1–3 — usually level 1, sometimes 2, and only occasionally 3.

Careful: a treasure map, message in a bottle or special fishing net doesn't just land in your pack. Instead — "Uh oh! That doesn't look like a fish!" — a sea serpent or deep sea serpent rises with your prize in its belly. Kill it and loot the item from its corpse.

Big Fish

A trophy catch weighing anywhere from 3 to 200 stones — "Your fishing pole bends as you pull a big fish from the depths!" It drops at your feet (too heavy for a pack), records who caught it and its weight, and can be carved into a pile of fish steaks. Big fish are a classic bragging-rights house decoration.

Special Fishing Nets

Double-click a special fishing net and target deep water. The net churns the sea and spawns 1–3 hostile sea creatures — sea serpents, deep sea serpents, water elementals or krakens — all of which immediately attack you. Bring friends.

• Rare-colored nets, an uncommon find among nets, spawn 1–2 extra creatures.
• A kraken has a fair chance to carry a message in a bottle on its corpse.

Nets are the fastest way to farm sea monsters — and the only path to the Leviathan (see below).

Messages in a Bottle and SOS Chests

The deep-sea treasure loop:

1. Catch a message in a bottle (100+ Fishing, deep water) — or loot one from a kraken.
2. Open it — it becomes an SOS with sextant coordinates to a wreck site. Most are waterstained SOSes (levels 1–3); the rare golden ancient SOS (level 4) marks the richest wrecks. Your Luck when opening nudges the level upward.
3. Sail to the coordinates (see Boating) and fish with the SOS in your pack. Anywhere within about 60 tiles of the marked spot works.
4. Fish up the wreck. Casts pull up shipwreck debris — barnacle-covered paintings, shells, pillows, hats, the odd skeleton part — until eventually: "You pull up a heavy chest from the depths of the ocean!"

The chest is unlocked, untrapped, and scales with the SOS level:

• A special fishing net — or a fabled fishing net from an ancient SOS.
• 1,500 gold and one gem per level.
• 4 magic scrolls and 3 magic items per level — weapons, armor, instruments and grimoires, better with level and your Luck.
• One special item. SOS chests roll on the special item table one tier above their own level, and an ancient SOS rolls at the very top tier — which is what makes them worth hunting.

Make sure your pack can carry ~200 stones before the chest comes up.

The Fabled Net and the Leviathan

The fabled fishing net (golden, from ancient-SOS chests) is a boss summon: cast into deep water it first raises a Leviathan, then a swarm of additional sea creatures on top of the usual spawn. This is group content — do not cast one alone.

Skill Gain

Fishing is the slowest-gaining gathering skill — expect a long grind compared to Skinning or Mining. Skill gain works across the entire 0–120 range from ordinary casts. Town citizenship bonuses can speed it up and double your catches in the right region — see Citizenship.

Related

• Gathering Overview
• Mining · Lumberjacking · Skinning
• Boating · Treasure Maps
• Luck