Suggestion - Weight worth in gold, or golden meals.
An improvement to the current fishing system.
Centered around making golden fish worth their weight in gallons, or adding so called golden meals.
Why gold fish are disappointing
The idea is that golden fish at the moment simply disapoint players, compared to their rarity. Both when it comes to selling them for gallons, and using them for cooking
The Sell Prices of Golden Fish
A golden Sculpin (which is rare in rarity) is worth 93 gallons, divide this by 4 and you get a sell price of 23 gallons.
A Tuna (which is also rare in rarity) is worth a whopping 585 gallons, divide this by 4 and you get a sell price of 146.
So simply put, rare fish can have a difference of over 5 times in sell price, even though they are both considered rare.
The Cooking Properties of Golden Fish
To whoever reads this, i don’t know what you know about the cooking system, but i would confidently see that i know most about the system and it’s functions.
When you cook fish, the amount of hunger, and the duration of its buff is based on the size of the fish. This is both in theory and practice a great idea, and also makes sense from a logical view. The bigger the fish, the larger the meal.
The problem is that golden fish are not large, and gains a much smaller multipler compared to it’s base amount, than it’s Giant counterpart, even though the golden variant is more rare.
Stat comparison for different fish
(yet to be completed, might do later)
Conclusion:
To summarize, the properties of golden fish are lackluster, and the significance of golden fish, when it comes to both selling and cooking could see a major improvement. If golden fish only became specialized in one of these properties (selling or cooking) that would be fine, but at the moment they are lackluster in both departments.
My proposed solutions
Improved Selling for Golden Fish
What if golden fish were more then just valuable fish, when they could be actual golden fish.
Golden fish could have a sell bonus, on top of their normal sell multiplier of 3x value plus 30
The sell bonus could be balanced, but for logical reasons i would suggest making it sell for its worth, just like gems. Golden fish sound valuable, so why not make them an actual valuable when it comes to selling.
Example
A golden Sculpin (which is rare in rarity) is worth 93 gallons, Sell this for 100% worth and you get a sell price of 93gallons.
A Tuna (which is also rare in rarity) is worth a whopping 585 gallons, divide this by 4 and you get a sell price of 146gallons.
As you can see in the example, the rarity of golden fish now correspond better to their counterparts. Giant fish with the same rarity would indeed sell for less, but they are better for cooking in the first place.
Improved Cooking for Golden Fish
Golden fish would have a bonus mechanism when used for cooking, based on chance, but improved upon by the cooking level of the player.
The reasoning behind the chance and not guarantee, which i know the cooking system normally supports guarantee and consistency, but this would allow good cooks that want to take risks, to go above and beyond a normal meal.
The effect would be so called golden meals which would make an even stronger and better meal then otherwise.
I’ve fought about how often, and how powerful the effect of the golden meal should be, and have some variations .
effect of golden meal
- effect 1
The fish that contributes to the making of the golden meal, has its hunger value doubled.
Problem 1:
This would allow a lucky player to have 4 golden squids all contribute to the golden meal, making the meal 2^4 of its original effect, which is not balanced at all.
Problem 2:
If the first problem is solved by only allowing one fish to double its value, then which fish would take priority, the first inserted or the most hunger giving. The logic and therefor the simplicity of this system starts to fall apart, and practically no players would be able to understand the system anymore.
- effect 2
The complete meal has its hunger value doubled at the very end of the calculation and only once. This makes meals more balanced, but still makes it possible to get a even more perfect meal.
Problem 1:
The effect of rare golden fish, and legendary golden fish would stay the same.
Chance of effect
-
Chance of effect 1
The odds of getting a golden meal would be calculated additively compared to the amount of golden fish in the meal.
The odds would also improve based on cooking level.
0% chance at decent improving by 2% each cooking level, for a maximum of 10%
example
2 golden sculpin and 2 pumpkins at great cooking level, would give
0.04+0.04 for a total of 0.08 which equals 8% chance
-
Chance of effect 2
The odds of getting a golden meal would be calculated multiplicatively compared to the amount of golden fish in the meal.
The odds would also improve based on cooking level.
0% chance at decent improving by 2% each cooking level, for a maximum of 10%
example
4 golden sculpin at excellent cooking level, would give
( 1.08*1.08)-1 for a total of 0.166 which equals almost 17% chance which is 1% higher compared to calculating additively.
Conclusion
The improved selling would allow golden fish to be to go to way of earning gallons, but still not sell for much more then other fish in their rarity.
The improved cooking would instead be more comprehensive and make cooking more engaging when using golden fish, but would be far more extensive to implement.
The downsides of both the cooking and the selling functions
The negatives of selling:
Some of the problems transfer over to this suggestions. Players would maybe misleadingly trade golden fish, without knowing their value, and golden fish would still root within a day, so hoarding them would at least not be possible.
Another problem is that vendors would not be able to buy legendary fish, since their worth would be too much, compared to their base amount.
The negatives of cooking:
The downside of the cooking system, would mostly be the time it would take to add the feature, it would hardly ever become irrelevant, even with legendary spices, since it makes the meal comprehensively better.
The explanation of the function could be introduced by a quest, or shown in hints, something like.
“How do cooks make golden meals, maybe they use golden fish.” Or
“The odds of making golden meals is based upon your cooking level, and the amount of golden fish you use.”