The fishing pool is a gathering resource that goes in the water rather than on the land. With a fishing rod in hand you cast at it, and what comes back is drawn from a loot table — usually fish, occasionally something a good deal better than fish.
Placing it
Rez it out like any other gatherable, then put it in water. Underwater is where it belongs.
The fish inside are animated. They drift and bounce about, and a particle effect shows above the surface, so from a distance a stocked shoreline is obvious without anyone having to swim out to check.
Around the pool is a ball. It is transparent, and the whole of it is clickable, which is what gives you something to aim at in open water.
The rod
You need a fishing rod or a simple fishing stick, both craftable. Either will open a pool; the stick is the cheap way in.
Click the pool with nothing equipped and it checks for the tool, finds none, and says so. Equip the rod, use the tool, and you can fish.
You do not need bait. Every tool in SL Colonies has durability, and for the moment that durability stands in for bait — the rod wears down as you fish. We may revisit that later, but today the rod is the whole of your supply.
What you catch
Each cast rolls a weighted loot table. There is a real chance of coming up with nothing at all, and that is normal.
What is in the table:
- Fish
- Oysters
- Crabs
- Baskets of coins
- Gold
- Special recipes
More will be added. The intention is a long list of things worth pulling out of the water, not a single fish item with a respawn timer.
What it feeds into
Fish are food. Cook them, or eat them raw if you are so inclined, or turn them into sushi. Beyond that it is open — the catch is an ingredient, and the cooking side of the game is where it lands.
Range, and one angler at a time
You can fish from up to 25 metres away, so you do not have to be in the water to work a pool offshore.
Only one person can fish a source at a time. A sim expecting more than one angler needs more than one pool. This is the single planning point for an owner: if you want a fishing village, scatter several along the coast rather than putting one showpiece in the bay.
While a pool is in use it will not let you cast, and it tells you how many seconds remain before it is free again.
The owner menu and spawn points
Hold left click on the pool to open the owner menu. It behaves like every other gatherable in the game, spawn points included: set a point, and that is where the pool turns up the next time it moves.
Use that to keep pools in water that makes sense — a bay, a river mouth, a jetty — rather than letting them land wherever.
Tournaments
Tournament boards are coming, and they are the reason to plan your shoreline now.
An owner will set which fish counts for their tournament and how long it runs. At the end, a player stands on the scales and weighs the total quantity of that fish they have caught. First, second and third prizes are set by the owner.
That turns a row of pools into an event a region can run, which is what fishing is for.
The product page is here: https://slcolonies.com/treasure/fishing-pool