Electronerd guide to 40 Fish

[SirClarence]

Engineers are dangerous when you give them enough data...

Sir Clarence Electronerds data driven fishing guide:

A fishing strategy to get to 40 species; driven by data from
the detailed statistical pool at TUFS:

http://live.sparkyb.net/toontown/fishing/

Please support TUFS by recording your data into it while
you fish...

Fishing Strategy Table:
Based on "Exclude Pre-Update" information on TUFS as of 6/6/2004

                                               % by Buckets caught:
Fish             Rod     Place          Pctg    4   8  16  32  64
Scurvy CT        Bamboo  Barnacle Blvd  1.99   55  79  95  99  --
Clara Nurse      HardWd  Alto Ave       2.27   59  83  97  99  --
Upright PT       HardWd  Baritone Blvd  2.74   66  88  98  99  --
Player PT        HardWd  Baritone Blvd  2.74   66  88  98  99  --
Alaskan KC       HardWd  Sleet St       2.94   69  90  99  --  --
Olympic PS       Steel   Elm St         2.63   65  87  98  99  --
Clydesdale SH    Steel   Estate         3.00   70  91  99  --  --
Shining SF       Steel   Estate         3.68   77  94  99  --  --
New Moon Fish    Steel   Donalds DL     2.84   68  89  98  99  --
Kodiak BA        Steel   the Brrgh      1.32   41  65  87  98  99
Polar BA         Steel   the Brrgh      1.32   41  65  87  98  99
Polar BA         Steel   Walrus Way     1.82   51  76  94  99  --
Panda BA         Gold    Sleet Street   1.39   42  67  88  98  99
Arabian SH       Gold    Daisy Gdn      1.32   41  65  87  98  99
Holey Mackerel   Gold    Estate         0.57   20  36  59  83  97
----------       -----   -----          ----
Alternate Paths:
New Moon Fish    Twig    Donalds DL     5.89   90  99  --  --  --
Florence Nurse   Twig    Baritone Blvd  1.72?  49  74  93  99  --
Florence Nurse   Gold    Baritone Blvd  0.41?  15  27  48  73  92

How to follow the strategy:

1. Fish for the rare fish in the order given in the table.
2. Don't accept a bigger rod (you can buy it, but leave it in your
   mailbox...) until you get all the listed fish for your current rod.
3. Fish for the rare fish at the location given in the table.
4. You should find all the more common fish while looking for
   the rare fish listed in the table.
5. We do not plan to catch the following 10 species: All Star, Devil
   Ray, Florence Nurse, Old King Crab, Full Moon, Crescent Moon, ??? Moon,
   Grizzly Bear, Baby Grand PT, Grand PT
6. If you luck out and catch one of the really rare fish, you can use it
   instead of the Holey Mackerel as your 40th species.
7. With average luck you will need to fill about 90 buckets of fish
   to get your 40 species. With unluck you may never get there...

How to read the table (using first row as example):

• Fish - Which fish we are trying to catch
• Rod - The rod we should use
• Place - The playground or street where we should fish
• Pctg - The percentage of a catch predicted by the clean and recent
  TUFS data.
• % of catch by buckets caught - How many buckets you have to fill
  to have the given chance to get the fish.
  Example: there is a 55% chance that you will pull a Scurvy Cutthroat
  out of Barnacle Blvd using a Bamboo Rod within the first 4 buckets.
  95% of the toons who fish 16 buckets out of Barnacle Blvd using a
  Bamboo Rod will find a Scurvy Cutthroat. (That does mean that 1
  unlucky toon out of 100 will fail to get a Scurvy CT in their first 32
  buckets...)

Commentary on Key Fish:

• Scurvy CT - The first big error you can make is giving up your
  Bamboo rod before finding your first Scurvy. You can find this guy
  in the DD playground also, but it takes a lot longer.
• Player PT - With a little luck you can get a Florence Nurse while
  you are getting your Clara Nurse, Upright PT and Player PT.
• New Moon - If you run out to DL early with your Twig you can score
  the three MoonFish early. If not, you might as well wait for your Steel
  to get your New Moon.
• Kodiak / Polar BA - It takes a while to find these guys, but it is
  like owning a JB factory while you hunt for them. Pools in the Brrgh
  have a big payoff with any Rod above Bamboo. For your Polar BA you can stick with the playground for convenience, or run out to Walrus Way to speed things along. With a little luck you will get your Polar BA while hunting for your Kodiak.
• Holey Mackerel - With a little luck you can catch a
  Florence, All Star or Devil Ray before you have to focus on this guy...

Commentary on Alternate Path:
You can start off by keeping you twig until you catch a Florence Nurse,
this will save you looking for the Holey Mackerel later; but it means
a lot of fishing early with just a twig. Also, the data for the
Florence Nurse is very thin, and your real chance to catch
one may be much lower than the 1.72% per cast shown in the table.

Explanation of Method:
I used only clean data from TUFS collected since the fishing change.
The tough call is which very rare fish to include in the strategy. I
ended up using Holey Mackerel instead of All Star or Florence since
there were 5 clean confirmed catches in TUFS to base the number on.
The data for All Star and Florence Nurse was so thin, the possible
variance was frightful.

In computing the % of catch vs. buckets caught; I have assumed that
the TUFS hit rate is over optimistic by a factor of 2. This
conservative approach helps to compensate for the high sample
variance.

Final Notes:
I hope my fellow toons find this guide helpful. Thanks to the
folks at TUFS for building a cool tool; and thanks to everyone
who has contributed data.

We would need a LOT more data to give useful guidance
on how to get to 50 species...

---

[Batleth]

Does this include data from the start of fishing or just since the major update that made several species much easier to catch?

[SirClarence]

Whatever TUFS means when it says:
"Exclude Pre-Update records"

I was assuming that this would exclude all information
from before the latest change to fishing. There is a
lot less data, but still enough data points to give some
good guidance on getting to 40.

Of course now there is a new change coming

As soon as you get it figured out they change the rules..

[Batleth]

LOL...Disney has been slightly changing fishing ever since it was released. Every now and then they do a major update and everyone takes note of it. I guess since I watch over fishing so closely, that I notice even the smaller changes. Most of the new species are fairly easy to catch and it wont take us long to figure them out either.

Ok, I was just checking. I've been doing something very similar to help me figure out rarity values for species. Lil' has assured me that pre-update info wouldn't be a problem in the overall scheme of things, but I really don't like to include that. I did a great deal of rarity changes after that update that I just don't trust the data. Heck, I even changed some, location catchable for some species, greater weight variety, and greater JB variety after that update.

[astro]

Originally Posted by SirClarence

Scurvy CT - The first big error you can make is giving up your
Bamboo rod before finding your first Scurvy. You can find this guy
in the DD playground also, but it takes a lot longer.
---

I have had excellent success finding my initial Scurvy Cutthroat Trout on Lighthouse Lane in Donald's Dock. I've done it with three different toons, and it only took (at most) a couple of buckets to catch one.

[SirClarence]

I went with what the TUFS data said; but I have gotten all
my Scurvys in the playground when I was not looking for
them (just fishing for beans while healing up...)

You can get an awful lot of species by fishing for
beans in the various playgrounds; I think you really
only need to do "intentional fishing" for a small number
of rare types.

[cheesymuffin]

unfortunatly, there are only a few of us entering fish into TUFS right now

But we're trying like crazy to get tons of data in there!