Going for Lu'Shangs... advice?

[MrMan6187]

/cry motion
/panic motion
/em Pout's to his eye's have no more tears to shead.

Alright question at hand refer's to Lu Shang's Fishing Rod.
for all you that don't know this is THE fishing rod, for there are -10 fishes known that can break it..
however you need 10,000 moat carp to get it... /em whistles...

Looking for advice from someone who has gotten it... Questions are...
1. How long did it take you to get it? ex. how many hour's a day did u fish.
2. Where did you fish?
3. Composite + Insect ball the way to go?

btw. lvl 20 fishing, should i try to get 30+, 40+ to get it?

any help greatly apprecitated.

[Icemage]

I don't have mine yet (52% complete and rising)... but there's a lot of ways to get it, all of them expensive in either time and/or money.

(1) Fish for them all. This is the hardest option, and will take the longest.

(2) Buy them all. This is the fastest option, but the most expensive.

...or some combination of the two.

At level 50 fishing, I can manage around 3-4 stacks of moat carp an hour under good conditions in a good location ( Rabao, Eastern Altepa, Western Altepa, Rolanberry Fields, Zeruhn Mines, or West Ronfaure) using insect paste and a carbon fiber rod.

Fishing for all the carp will take roughly 300-500 total hours fishing time, and you'll be +1 million gil by the time you finish.

Buying them all takes far less, perhaps 100 total hours for travel, but will cost you 2.8-3.0 million gil in net loss when you finish. Moat carp sell at AH very briskly and consistently at pretty much 4K per stack regardless of server.

Somewhere between those two extremes is your path to Lu Shang's. Find a happy medium that you can live with, and good luck. ^^


Icemage

[PetriW]

Originally posted by Icemage
Buying them all takes far less, perhaps 100 total hours for travel, but will cost you 2.8-3.0 million gil in net loss when you finish. Moat carp sell at AH very briskly and consistently at pretty much 4K per stack regardless of server.

In addition you should set up a mule at each AH to avoid traveling between them. If you have a lot of moat carp on a character you send the moat carp to that character, then return it (aka return it to the same character) this will free up the delivery box so you can send another 8 stacks. This is best done in Norg where the distance between the moogle and the delivery guys is so short you'll bounce into the delivery reuse delay.
I've started using this a lot latelly due to limited inventory space and there's nothing like having 20-30 items in the delivery box to free up space for PTing.

As for working on lu shang I personally wouldn't start on it til 50+ skill to know you really want to do it, I also would recommend selling all fish you catch so that by the time you have about 75% of the gil needed you can start buying carp but if you give up halfway you didn't lose any gil trying to aim for Lu Shang.
Fishing up 2.3 million is an enormous task, most people give up long before they get anywhere close to 10k carps.

1. How long did it take you to get it? ex. how many hour's a day did u fish.
I fished about 8 hours a day for a couple of weeks. I also did BCNM40 for gil to buy carp.
2. Where did you fish?
Zeruhn mines (50%), Rabao (25%) and Bastok Markets (25%)... I rotated between these locations, they all have different "optimal" times.
3. Composite + Insect ball the way to go?
I did glass rod + ip zeruhn, anything for a little higher catch rate. Bastok and Rabao has more rusty and it gets annoying guarding sweat sizes after a few hours so did comp + ip there.

[wstussyb]

if you are past 20 in fishing skill the catch rate should be decent, around 40 is when it is a lot better, personally I would fish to 50 before I start handing them in, not many ppl fish in port sandy near the guys you hand the carp in but I had some great times there getting more carp then I have in other places, Rabao can be at times over fished, I refuse to fish in places that have lag like around windy
Around 50 in skill you can fish a few hours to catch the fish that sell for nice gil and buy some carp and fish the remaining time on carp
I prefer the mirthan rod inside town and comp rod outside, sure you get the fish was too small, but they never break

[Loial]

@40 fishing here. 1% in carp

If you plan to catch them all yourself, then I hope that you have NEVER sold any carp at all on the AH. You'll get 1200 gil for turning in a stack vs 4000ish gil on the AH. That'll hurt your pockets if you were fishing for profits before.

The catch rate at 20 isn't all that good. But, I'd venture to say that I'd be about 1/2 done by now if I never sold any carp at all.

I remember figuring out a while back the exact number of carp you would need to turn in to then take the 1200 gil rewards, buy AH carp, turn those in... take the dwindling 1200 gil rewards, buy more carp, and turn those in... All I remember is that it was somewhere in the vicinity of 650 stacks. I think the rest would be stacks you could just buy off the AH with your turn in rewards.

650 stacks is still a lot of carp.

However, if you can stick to your guns starting @ 20 to turn in carp, and make your profits be the 1200 gil you get per stack... then cheers to you and good luck!

If you aren't a high level crafter or have some other method of raking in a couple million gil... you can "help" your cause a little here and there and give yourself a jumpstart by doing some BCNM40s and such.

***Edit: Ok, turning in 584 stacks of carp will result in reward money that is big enough to recursively buy the remaining stacks you need to get to 833 stacks + 4. This was assuming stacks go for 4000. If stacks cost less, the initial amount you need to catch will drop.***

[vulcan4d]

All I can say it takes freaking forever!!! hehe

I'm 64% done, I fish 6 hours a day for the last 2 months. I expect to fish for another month before I finally get it. I hope it's worth it, 10,000 moat carp would sell for 4mil at the AH.

[Xephoid]

Originally posted by vulcan4d
All I can say it takes freaking forever!!! hehe

I'm 64% done, I fish 6 hours a day for the last 2 months. I expect to fish for another month before I finally get it. I hope it's worth it, 10,000 moat carp would sell for 4mil at the AH.

...which hammer home the point, if you want to get the rod, just sell all your fish and buy the rod. LOL.

Also remember that you can fish other fishs using the re-usable lures instead of insect paste. While the insect paste for 10,000 moat carps probably cost well over a million gil.

[Biterman]

Originally posted by Xephoid
While the insect paste for 10,000 moat carps probably cost well over a million gil.

Not really. I catch about 5-7 carps per stack of insect paste and it cost a tad less than 100 gil to make if you buy all ingredients from vendors. So 1 out of those 5-7 carps covers the cost of paste, hence out of the 1 million you get from turning carps in, 130-200k was spent on paste.

[Icemage]

Here are some more realistic numbers, by the way.

Assuming you have max fame for vendors, and fished for all your moat carp:

1 stack of earth crystals: 300 gil
1 stack of millioncorn from vendor: 528 gil
1 stack of distilled water: 134 gil
1 stack of little worms: 36 gil

Total material price for 12 stacks of insect paste: 998 gil

12 stacks of paste will produce roughly 6 stacks of carp at level 40+ fishing depending on where you fish, or roughly 2 stacks of paste per 1 stack of carp.

10000 carp / 12 carp per stack = 833.3 stacks of carp

Total projected stacks of insect paste = 833.3 x 2 = 1666.6 stacks of paste

That works out to about 145,000 gil in ingredients, assuming a 5% synthing failure rate.

If you choose instead to buy every single fish, your cost is 833.3 x 4000 standard price per stack of moat carp = 3.3 million gil if you can get them at 4K each (possible on most servers, nearly impossible on others).

Since you gain 1M gil from the quest itself:

Fishing them all: +855K + ~300 hours spent fishing
Buying them all: -2.3M + ~20 hours spent camping AH


Icemage

[Thoronas]

Shouldn't he also raise his woodworking so that he can repair the rod when it eventually breaks? I believe its lvl 80 skill cap. :sweat:

[UnnamedGalka]

...or some combination of the two.

I'm finding that this is really the best way to go. Catch as many as you can, but also don't be cheap and buy a few stacks occasionally. The way I do it is that every time I visit San d'Oria, I always make it a point to buy one or two stacks of Moat Carp and hand it over to them.

[Icemage]

Ok, just got my Lu Shang's last night so here's how it went:

May 21, 2004: Started quest with 402 carp turned in from early fishing levels. Skill level at the time was 42.

July 2, 2004 (42 days later): Obtained Lu Shang's Fishing Rod

First 1500 carp were all fished for, since I was skilling on sandfish in Rabao and Eastern Altepa Desert (to level 50). After that, I switched to fishing for money and bought almost all the rest. I realized that it made no sense to fish for 3 stacks of carp an hour when I could make 25K per hour and buy 6 stacks instead with the same time investment.

Either way you do it, the quest is painful, and expensive. If you haven't already got a way to make more than 12K per hour, this quest will take a very long time to complete, but it CAN be completed.

Best of luck to everyone who is going after the Lu Shang! It CAN be done... stay strong, and don't lose focus.

Icemage

[Thoronas]

The question is the rod really worth the time? Does it increase your fishing success or is it just needed to fish for the higher skill fish? Or is it more for bragging rights?

I've considered starting fishing while waiting for parties or when I can't find components for alchemy.

Any input you could give me icemage (or anyone else who has their lu shang rod) would be helpful.

[PetriW]

You need to be a pretty hardcore fisher for the lu shang to be worth it. If you're just gonna fish a little here and there then just stick with a composite.

[Icemage]

Yep. If you're not going to do any hard-core fishing, don't go for the Lu Shang's. It takes a ton of time and money to get, and you really don't need it to get the first 50 or so levels of Fishing (it helps, but there are reasonable alternatives at every level).

After 50 is where it apparently pays off. The improved catch rate and higher weight tolerance on the Lu Shang makes it less painful to get to the higher levels of skill. I've only had it for just over a day, so can't really say how much better it is yet, but I can definitely see an improvement in my fishing results with the Lu Shang vs. a composite rod.


Icemage