silly A tiny guide on AFK fishing

[jodgi]

 

Disclaimer

The mix of PvE and PvP in a game is such a weird thing for me, it is a matter of taste, for sure, but it causes me quite a bit of irritation, frustration and I constantly get in people’s face about terrible PvE and wonderful PvP around here. I’m writing this as a guide but I will follow my modus operandi of prodding and poking PvE, agitating and polarizing. Consider yourself warned.

Introduction

This game has always revolved around fighting ships. We have several modifications more of less available that changes or enhances the way our ships fight. The very best of these modifications are behind a PvE grindwall. A few rather good modifications are behind a PvP exclusive grindwall. A competitive PvP player will want to have all the best stuff eventually, but he is forced, directly or indirectly, to deal with the PvE aspect to get everything. Some argue that mods aren’t that important, but I don’t believe that even for a second. You can get normal stuff from bullying bots in the OW, second tier stuff from fishing bottles in OW and top tier stuff from epic missions. I simply can’t bear the thought of spending time fighting stupidly overpowered bots to get stuff so I had to come up with a plan to avoid that completely.

AFK fishing

I may wish away absolutely everything PvE but it won’t happen. I decided to make my computer deal with PvE while I sleep, work, eat, go on vacation or what have you. With the stuff you get from bottles you can trade to get rich, make the best mods, trade for PvP marks or, as was my focus in the beginning, trade for the rarest PvE books. It worked for me; I afk fished for months, traded with people and ended up with all the books.

This may be the easiest way to do it:

 

Some set up super-effective alt-fueled and sandboxie powered fishing:

 I decided to use a dedicated physical computer with an alt so my main computer’s resources were always free to play proper (PvP) or do whatever else I do on it. You may not have access to a dedicated afk fishing box or inclined to buy a second NA copy (You should, because if you close your eyes to the PvE stuff; NA is one of the best games ever and the guys more than deserves your patronage), but you can just use your main computer while you sleep and work or use whatever combination that suits you.

I sail a basic cutter far away to a corner of some teleport zone to minimize being found by random players so I can sit there as long as I need or want. Since we still have F11 coords and teleport to port we’re able to save a bit of time, but even when those two features are taken away we can just point our ship in some direction, afk sail for some given amount of time and simply spend the time sailing the ship back when convenient. Don’t sail your ship outside the map as there is no fish nor bottles there.

When you’re at the fishing spot you need some sort of keyboard/mouse automation to keep the client logged into the game. I’ve fallen back on basic cutters and a simple click routine that converts fish and then throws everything but bottles overboard. There are many tools available to automate clicking: SeeShell for some fancy image based clicking, clickermann for some advanced features or the super simple idiot friendly TinyTask just to start the list. Being an idiot I went for tinytask. You have to be careful that the click routine doesn’t make the split dialog pop up; It has to work whatever happens, and this is what I landed on:

Right click the third slot to convert all fish - confirm - throw the second slot overboard - confirm - wait to avoid the “you can’t…” dialog - throw the top slot overboard - confirm - wait for the timeout for the next run. Notice I’ve selected “resources” to hide the bottles, it would be rather embarrassing to sit there throwing them overboard. I also sort the content with salt and meat on top. In some cases the routine might click “send to chat”, just make sure “global” isn’t selected and hide the chat window. This is how I record the routine in TinyTask:

 

That’s basically it. I use the remote desktop thingy built into Chrome to access the fishing box after daily maintenance or updates to get it back up fishing. It works fine with little fuzz and I’ve even used my phone while on vacation to whip the box back into fishing. You have to spend 20 seconds every day to keep it going and that’s perfectly tolerable for me.

I’ve lost three ships and a total of 5 bottles since I started. I don’t mind it as I’m not really losing anything. AFK fishing even provides content to guys who are willing to trawl around unused ports and remote spots at sea, that must be so boring I think they deserve the bottles that may or may not sit inside my carefree afk cutter.

I’ve guesstimated the bottle drop rate at averaging super roughly one bottle each 160 days at sea or one bottle each 24 real hours.

Is it ok to do this?

I think it’s supercalifragalistically silly, but I get the best stuff for doing almost nothing. Also, nothing is more silly than doing PvE when PvP is available so afk fishing saves me from a greater evil, ergo it must be good. The best part is it gives me a feeling I’m using PvE against PvE, I’m sticking it to PvE man, if you will. It gives me great satisfaction.

[qw569😳]

It was very interesting to read how other players earn bottles.

[z4ys]

I feel so dumb now. Why I even actively play the solution is right there. Robots...

[Guest]

Scripts should be banned.

[jodgi]

47 minutes ago, qw569 said:

It was very interesting to read how other players earn bottles.

I have this sneaking suspicion that a ninja like you have an even easier and safer way of going about this.

18 minutes ago, z4ys said:

I feel so dumb now. Why I even actively play the solution is right there. Robots...

Dude, don't feel bad. When you add PvE you open the barn doors wide and all and every kind of shit is coming your way. I've tried to fight it for years. I failed. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

2 minutes ago, Flinch said:

Scripts should be banned.

Oh, my sweet summer child...

[Corona Lisa]

What can u find in bottles?

[jodgi]

1 minute ago, Jon Snow lets go said:

What can u find in bottles?

Books and materials used in all (?) the elite mods with some expensive trading goods thrown on top.

[HachiRoku]

A Rakers member doing pve and fishing... Strange times 

[jpjchris]

[jodgi]

24 minutes ago, Flinch said:

Scripts should be banned.

Within minutes after maintenance the "player" count is up to 80-150 every day. Chew on that...

5 minutes ago, Banished Privateer said:

3rd party software like autoclickers is not forbidden? 

If that is so this guide will go poof and I will cease and desist. I'm lawful evil, not chaotic.

edit:

Oh, and I should add: When I play PvP I'm a frikkin' Paladin, I won't get dirty even if it gives me an advantage.

[Hethwill, the Red Duke]

16 minutes ago, jodgi said:

I'm a frikkin' Paladin, I won't get dirty even if it gives me an advantage.

Don't laugh but playing "Paladin" in Diablo I didn't break the barrels because such gratuitous violence was not proper.

 

🤣

[jodgi]

35 minutes ago, Hethwill the Harmless said:

Don't laugh but playing "Paladin" in Diablo I didn't break the barrels because such gratuitous violence was not proper.

 

🤣

I'm not laughing, I get it. If I cheat, or even scumbag too hard, in PvP I'm eroding the very basis of what's fun for me. On the flipside; I'm completely psychopathic towards PvE.

[jodgi]

1 hour ago, Banished Privateer said:

3rd party software like autoclickers is not forbidden? 

What keyboard do you use on your gaming rig?

[Liq]

3 hours ago, jodgi said:

Some set up super-effective alt-fueled and sandboxie powered fishing:

Heh

I upgraded a little since then..

[jodgi]

Oh, hello kitty me, Liq!

[Havelock]

Forget Mr.Dorans duel guide, jodgis fishing guide is the new meta!

[Magpie Jack]

I just use a little powershell script to press a key once every 15 minutes or so. I put the rudder hard over so my ship goes in circles around the spot I've chosen, which is well off the regular shipping lanes

$myshell = New-Object -com "Wscript.Shell"
for ($i = 1; $i -lt 10000; $i++)

{
Start-Sleep -seconds 900
$myshell.sendkeys("w")
write-host We have been going around in circles for the last ($i*15) minutes, Captain!
}

 

[qw569😳]

10 hours ago, Magpie Jack said:

I just use a little powershell script to press a key once every 15 minutes or so. I put the rudder hard over so my ship goes in circles around the spot I've chosen, which is well off the regular shipping lanes

$myshell = New-Object -com "Wscript.Shell"
for ($i = 1; $i -lt 10000; $i++)

{
Start-Sleep -seconds 900
$myshell.sendkeys("w")
write-host We have been going around in circles for the last ($i*15) minutes, Captain!
}

 

WScript.Shell is object of Windows Script Host (WSH). So for your code is enough WSH

Dim objShell
Set objShell = wscript.createobject("WScript.Shell")
Dim i
for i=1 to 10000 step 1
  wscript.sleep(900000)
  objShell.AppActivate("Naval Action")
  objShell.SendKeys "w"
  wscript.echo("We have been going around in circles for the last (" & i & "*15) minutes, Captain!")
next

save as 1.vbs and launch cscript 1.vbs

Before sending the key W, you need to activate the focus on the Naval Action window (objShell.AppActivate). Otherwise, the key will be sent to another application when the focus is changed.

Edited September 22, 2018 by qw569

[Ruthless4u]

The fact that the PVE content in this game drives a player to do this shows what an utter waste of developers time and resources it is to placate the PVE  only players.

Play the game while not playing

Edited September 22, 2018 by Ruthless4u

[Archaos]

4 hours ago, Ruthless4u said:

The fact that the PVE content in this game drives a player to do this shows what an utter waste of developers time and resources it is to placate the PVE  only players.

Play the game while not playing

I guess by that logic, the fact that PvP players kill their alts to get PvP marks shows what an utter waste of developers time and resources it is to placate the PvP only players.

Cheat instead of playing the game.

[Jean Ribault]

Personally I would like to see this thread placed in a tribunal.  Not in any way to punish any of the posters here, for there are no current rules against this behavior, but instead to get a ruling by developers on whether any of this constitutes cheating in the game.

My personal feeling is this is a cheat.  But credit where credit is due, it's very creative stuff.  If you really need to win that bad instead of just playing, more power to you.

[Lovec1990]

4 minutes ago, Jean Ribault said:

Personally I would like to see this thread placed in a tribunal.  Not in any way to punish any of the posters here, for there are no current rules against this behavior, but instead to get a ruling by developers on whether any of this constitutes cheating in the game.

My personal feeling is this is a cheat.  But credit where credit is due, it's very creative stuff.  If you really need to win that bad instead of just playing, more power to you.

forget that from now on im only fishing why do broken PvP or PvE at all?

[Jean Ribault]

21 minutes ago, Lovec1990 said:

forget that from now on im only fishing why do broken PvP or PvE at all?

We are testing.  Competing too, but the purpose now is testing.  This kind of stuff highlights the weaknesses of the gameplay, even if that wasn't the purpose of doing this.  I wouldn't play this way but it's good that someone shows it can be done IMO.

And just to clarify, I didn't accuse these players of cheating, I said I consider this to be a cheat.  It's not disallowed currently ingame so it can't technically be called cheating.  Hope that helps with what I posted.

Edited September 22, 2018 by Jean Ribault

[vazco]

On 9/21/2018 at 8:39 PM, jodgi said:

Some set up super-effective alt-fueled and sandboxie powered fishing:

Why so many ships, when one gives same resuts? Or do you move caught fish to other ships?

[Nelsons Barrel]

Why even playing a game with a player count of 200 most of the time when 150 of them are afk fishers?

Edited September 23, 2018 by Nelsons Barrel