Mod spotlight: Fishing for Trouble
ineth
Member Posts: 759
- Mod author: Yovaneth
- First published: 2011
- Adds content to: BG2 chapter 2+
Fishing for Trouble is a mega-mod which adds four new major locations, and a long quest-line to tie them all together.
It features some of the best custom-made area art seen in an Infinity Engine mod, and for the most part does not suffer from the problems that older mega-mods are notorious for (such as overpowered loot or lack of design focus).
The mod's linear main quest-line isn't anything earth-shattering, and in some places feels like it's been padded with unnecessary steps just to make it longer. But it does the job of giving your party a motivation to visit the new areas, and ties up all its plotlines in a satisfying way.
To start:
- Lief Torman approaches you when you first enter the Gate District of Athkatla.
- Fishing for Trouble: Find Elminster
- Fishing for Trouble: The Demon in the Lighthouse
- Fishing for Trouble: Ceinwen Ravenhair
- Fishing for Trouble: The Black Lotus Caravan
- Fishing for Trouble: Cerendor Hold
- Fishing for Trouble: The Orb of Breaca
- Fishing for Trouble: Eildaren Colver
- Fishing for Trouble: Sour Water
- Fishing for Trouble: The Tiger's Eye
- Fishing for Trouble: Restore Porthpentyrch
This is an additional district in Athkatla. It fits in reasonably well with the existing districts, although it is a bit harder to navigate. (Map markers would have been nice.)
While you can explore all the houses, there's not much of interest other than some side-quests, two of which are independent of the mod's main quest-line:
To get there:
- It appears on your worldmap together with all the other districts of Athkatla.
- The Missing Nameboard:
Talk to Keldral in the Dragon's End Inn (the house at [2100,3200]). - Elizabeth Pavaral's Flamedance Ring:
Talk to Elizabeth Pavaral on the 2nd floor the Silverale Hall (reachable via the north edge of the district). - The Trimthorns:
Gaelie Trimthorn approaches you outside of Ceinwen Ravenhair's home during the mod's main quest-line.
Porthpentyrch is a small harbor town on the Sword Coast – and the central focus of the mod's main quest-line.
When you first get there, the town has been deserted – just a few monsters roaming the outdoors, and nothing of interest inside most of the houses. But don't loose patience: Once you find some clues, the story gains momentum and puts you on your way towards discovering what happened here and what hidden secrets the town holds.
This whole area has a distincly "BG1" feel to it (from the art style to the narrow dungeon corridors).
To get there:
- Elminster marks it on your worldmap once you find him during the mod's main quest-line.
- None.
Cerendor Hold is the fortress that "guards the path into the Cloudpeak Mountains".
Visiting a castle that's still in active use, and filled to the brim with blue-circled humans, is something that's been missing from Shadows of Amn. Which isn't to say that your stay will be a peaceful one...
To get there:
- The lighthouse tanar'ri marks it on your worldmap during the mod's main quest-line.
- The Food Thief:
Talk to Countess Wultheof on the third floor of the hold.
Imradim is an oasis town in the Calim Desert, sustained by trade with caravans and desert wanderers.
While the mod's main quest-line sends you here for a specific task, it's worthwile to explore the whole town for side-quests and to enjoy the beautiful area art.
To get there:
- Garalial Geltarath teleports you there during the mod's main quest-line.
- Kill Akil:
Talk to Levon in the large house in the top-right corner of Imradim. - (bride-price negotiation)
Talk to Karim on the roof of the Water's Edge tavern. - (Irenicus's assassin encounter)
Talk to Firdos in the purple tent using CHARNAME.
- Walkthrough started by me that anyone can edit (English)
- Walkthrough by Kirara (Polish) → machine-translation to English
Don't download & install the version from the mod's official homepage; instead, install the EE port by the InfinityMods team.
Compatible with the BP-BGT Worldmap mod (install that after all quest mods), but this is not required.
Compatible with the BP-BGT Worldmap mod (install that after all quest mods), but this is not required.
Post edited by ineth on
8
Comments
It is, unfortunately, incomplete - the side-quest resolutions and final main quest steps are missing.
Feel free to help out - it's a wiki page, so anyone can edit it!
There is no need to use BP-BGT, EET map has better quality.
Thank you, Ineth. You mod reviews helped me alot.
I agree. Thanks for all your spotlighting…. It is much appreciated
And yes, you're quite right about Fedex...
@ineth The download at SHS is the linked version from the InfinityMod GitHub, so no longer need to direct people away from it.
I wish there was a way to (re)visit Imradim in ToB instead - not only would it be more geographically adjacent, but ToB really lacks for another town hub.
@ineth download link is here: https://github.com/InfinityMods/FishingForTrouble/releases
Updated the link. Is SpellholdStudios down for good?
Ive tried this mod a few times over the years, waiting for patches etc hoping it will fix my problem, but, for some reason the maps all have glitchey lines running through them, which comp,etely takes me out the game experience.
Am i suppose to download a graphic patch on top or something, can't just be me!? i must be missing something.
Playing the enhanced edition, up- to-date. Using the ee edition of the mod.
I havent had this with other mods, ive tried petty much most of them.
Cheers
I have this issue as well and haven't been able to find any info on it...
Some of the old mods are pretty cool; my favourite of the old ones is Region of Terror. It still gets a few patches in every now and then, but largely I have found that the older mods tend to have significantly more issues than more recent mods. The main difference largely seems to be whether there is a motivated main developer active or not. If there is then the mods tend to be fairly well maintained, even larger ones (see Acifer's Call of the lost goddess as example for that). Whereas with older mods such as this one here, there tend to be quite a few problems overall. Most infamous one is still a messenger arriving and leading to a crash of the whole game. It seems to be quite difficult to find new maintainers for old mods. For individual patches it may be possible to get changes for github, but even when you look at Region of Terror, I reported several issues or glitches and there are just not too many maintainers available in the first place, and that is still partially maintained, whereas the mod here appears to be (presently) completely unmaintained. So I think we would ideally need to find someone who may want to maintain the mod for, say, a year or so, if only for fixing existing issues.
The github repository is here:
https://github.com/Spellhold-Studios/FishingForTrouble
I had a look at the issues, and nobody reported the problem mentioned there on the beamdog forum it seems. So I think the first step would be to file an issue report:
https://github.com/Spellhold-Studios/FishingForTrouble/issues
But looking at other bugs, it really seems as if the main problem is that nobody maintains the mod really.
skellytz mostly does translation changes etc...
Activating this solves the problem for me:
Plus, it's not helpful, even if you thought it was.
I am not HMF, but from experience many old mods have various issues, sometimes more severe than others (e. g. the famous messenger crashing the game bug). I think I reported around twenty or thirty bugs to Region of Terror, which is fairly well maintained (mostly by Roberciiik). Some bug reports were open for a year or two (in general, not specific to RoT) and it is often a problem with nobody or almost nobody maintaining old mods. I kind of semi-accepted that some mods are in a very low maintenance mode but this also means that it is more "rewarding" to give feedback to mods that are still maintained. For mods that are actively maintained, this also works pretty well - Dusk NPC mod, Acifers mods, Lava mods, Argent77 mods etc... For many older mods, though, they do not seem to be that well maintained. For instance, many mods maintained at the Spellhold Studios, seem to struggle with activity-related issues. I just checked and I noticed I never reported any issues at https://github.com/Spellhold-Studios/FishingForTrouble, but I am quite certain I played it in the past. But it seems almost as if only skellytz is somewhat active there, and Roberciiik to some extent (I think Region of Terror and Worldmap). Perhaps it may help if for at the least some of the older mods, if there are still people maintaining that, to mention this in the main README directly. Because if a new visitor comes to such a webpage at github.com, it is not immediately clear if the mod is still active or not. One could click on the link for the homepage on the right side, at the github entry, and perhaps find out that way, but from experience most people just look at the main README, and then perhaps have a look if anyone still reads the issue tracker or not. This seems more a problem with Spellhold Studio IMO; gibberlings3 seem to be a bit more active on github in general. The best, IMO, though, is a dedicated lead (e. g. the folks previously mentioned) for mods. These seem more motivated on average. (I understand Spellhold Studio having had problems with a past core maintainer becoming inactive suddenly of course; my point has more to do with what people can expect on a first visit to a website. We here active on the beamdog forums are just a very small fraction of people that may visit or play a mod addon in general.)
Anyway, just meant as an additional comment and observation. I could be wrong but I think Spellhold Studio could need some influx of contributors here.