Lucas Slunt

Fishing in minecraft has missed potential. There are only 4 varieties of fish you can catch, and all of them can be caught anywhere. Fishing is unaffected by time, weather, biome, or dimension. The only exception is bamboo, which can be fished up in the jungle. This outlier gave me the idea to make a mod where the player could catch different fish depending on which biome they're in. After all, since the game already had code to determine fishing loot based on biome, how hard could it be to reuse that code for something interesting?

I created this mod using the Minecraft Forge modding API, which contains a decompiled and deobfuscated version of minecrafts source code. I wrote new code, reused code from areas of the game, in both java and JSON files. I also created all the textures myself, using GIMP, a free open source image manipulation software similar to photoshop. You can find the full project on my github here.

New Items

When adding new fish, I wanted a few basic ones to make each biome interesting. I wanted to to make fishing exciting, and encourage players to seek out every fish variety, or at least to try fishing when they entered a new environment. I did this by creating many fish with unique effects, requirements to catch them, or that could be used to craft unique items. To keep the games progression system balanced, everything you can get from fishing fits in with the early to mid game progression.

Arkus's Fishing adds 23 new fish varieties to catch, and 7 new items that can be made from the items you fish up. Below is a full list of all the new items.

New Items

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Item Name	Description	How to obtain it	Use
Bass	A fish caught in muddy warm biomes	Fishing in desert, jungle, plains, swamp and river biomes	Cooked into large cooked fish
Trout	A fish commonly caught in shallow waters.	Fishing in beach, cold, plains, and river biomes	Cooked into small cooked fish
Toothfish	A fish based on the antarctic toothfish	Fishing in cold biomes	Cooked into large cooked fish
Goldfish	A literal gold fish.	Fishing anywhere	Smelted into a gold ingot
Jellyfish	A slimy fish from the sea	Fishing in beach, tropical, and ocean biomes during rainy weather	Crafted into a slimeball. Affects the player with hunger when eaten
Tigerfish	A fish based on the african tigerfish	Fishing in desert and jungle biomes	Cooked into large cooked fish
Frozen Trout	A trout who was frozen solid	Fishing in cold biomes	Cooked into trout, crafted into an ice block
Tuna	A large fish from the ocean	Fishing in beach and ocean biomes	Cooked into large cooked fish
Coalacanth	From the ancient past, this fish has aged into coal	Fishing in caves and desert biomes	Used as a fuel source. Smelts 6 items
Catfish	A bottomfeeder with a big mouth	Fishing in jungle, river, and swamp biomes	Cooks into small cooked fish
Sturgeon	A large rare fish	Fishing in river biomes	Cooks into large cooked fish
Moray Eel	A large colourful eel	Fishing in tropical and swamp biomes	An ingredient in eel soup
Cave Eel	A pale unsightly eel	Fishing in caves	An ingredient in eel soup. Affects the player with weakness when eaten
Charged Eel	An electric eel, similar to Minecrafts charged creeper	Fishing in beach, tropical, ocean, plains, and river biomes during a thunderstorm	An ingredient in TNT. Causes damage when eaten
Red Fungi Fish	A small fish covered in red mushrooms	Fishing in mushroom islands and swamp biomes	Crafted into red mushrooms, cooked into small fish, an ingredient in mushroom stew. Affects the player with weakness when eaten
Brown Fungi Fish	A small fish covered in brown mushrooms	Fishing in mushroom islands and swamp biomes	Crafted into brown mushrooms, cooked into small fish, an ingredient in mushroom stew. Affects the player with slowness when eaten
sunfish	A huge flat fish	Fishing in tropical and ocean biomes during the day	Cooked into large cooked fish
moonfish	A silvery sunfish with a crescent moon shaped tailfin	Fishing in tropical and ocean biomes during the night	An ingredient in moon clocks. Affects the player with night vision when eaten
Swordfish	A large fish in the style of a Minecraft sword	Fishing anywhere	Effectively the same as an iron sword. Can be already enchanted when fished up. Cooked into large fish
Small Cooked Fish	A small portion of cooked fish	The result of small or barely edible fish in a furnace, smoker, or campfire	Can be eaten to restore 2.5 hunger bars, and 6 saturation
Large Cooked Fish	A large portion of cooked fish	The result of large fish in a furnace, smoker, or campfire	Can be eaten to restore 4 hunger bars, and 11.2 saturation
Eel Soup	A hearty dish made from eels	Crafted using a moray eel, cave eel, and a bowl	Can be eaten to restore 4 hunger bars, and 13 saturation. Becomes an empty bowl when eaten
Moon clock	A silvery clock that displays the phases of the moon	Crafted using a moonfish, starfish, iron ingots, and redstone	Displays the current phase of the moon
Starfish	A starfish. Originally named "fallen starfish"	Fishing in beach and cold biomes	An ingredient in the moon clock, and starfish block
Sea Urchin	A small spiny creature	Fishing in beach, tropical, and ocean biomes	Can be thrown at entities, damaging them
Giant Urchin	A huge spiny creature	Fishing in beach, tropical, and ocean biomes	Can be placed. Causes damage on contact, like a cactus. When placed outside of water, it will quickly die, transforming into a dead urchin block
Starfish Block	A block of coral, covered in glowing starfish	Crafted from coral and starfish	Can be placed. Acts as a light source
Dead Urchin Block	A giant urchin that dried out and lost its spines.	The result of leaving a giant urchin block outside of water	Can be placed. Can be crafted into bonemeal. An ingredient in urchin lanterns
Urchin Lantern	The jack 'o' lantern version of a dead urchin	Crafted from a dead urchin block and a torch	Can be placed. Acts as a light source

The vanilla fishing system

In vanilla minecraft, fishing is calculated through loot tables in JSON files. When a player casts their fishing rod, the game runs the main fishing loot table, randomly selecting the 'fish', 'junk', or 'treasure' loot table. Each element in a loot table has a weight associated with it, the chance that that element gets selected. the 'fish' loot table has an 85% chance of being selected, 'junk' has a 10% chance, and 'treasure' has a 5% chance. If the players fishing rod is enchanted with the Luck of the Sea enchantment, the weight for the 'treasure' loot table is increased, and the weight for the 'junk' loot table is decreased. There are several checks that can be preformed before an element in a loot table is selected, such as the biome the player is in, the weather, dimension, and even how many in-game days have passed.

How I modified the fishing system

Editing the main fishing loot table, I kept the 'junk' and 'treasure' loot tables, but replaced the more general 'fish' loot table with a new table, which I called I called "fishing_biome'. This table condensed the list of nearly 60 biomes in minecraft into 11 biome sub categories. Each of these 11 biome categories has its own loot table, filled with different fish that seem appropriate for that biome type. When selected by the main fishing loot table, the fishing biome table would see which biome the player was in, and return the loot table corresponding to it. Some biomes fit into multiple categories, such as the frozen ocean biome, which I categorized as both 'ocean' and 'cold'. In cases like these, the fishing biome table randomly selected which of the possible loot tables to use.

In addition to biome specifications, some fish require certain weather or time conditions to be caught. This was done by including these conditions inside of the weighting system of each biome loot tables. The weighting system for each biome allowed me to make some fish more rare than others, for example, trout are quite common, and sturgeons are very rare.

I wanted to include something in both the junk and the treasure tables, as fish that could be caught anywhere, with the chance of catching them affected by Luck of the Sea. Goldfish appear in the treasure table, because gold is quite valuable. Swordfish appear in the junk table, because they are most useful for early and midgame players, without access to higher tiers of swords. Endgame players are likely to find swordfish useless, and as swordfish are tools, they are unstackable and could clog up players inventory. By having them in the junk table, endgame players with Luck of the Sea are less likely to fish them up and become frusterated with fishing.

Biome Categorization

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	Biome Category	Biomes in it
	Beach	Beach, Mushroom fields, Stoney shore
	Cave	Deep dark, Dripstone caves, Lush caves
	Cold	Deep frozen ocean, Frozen ocean, Frozen peaks, Frozen river, Ice spikes, Jagged Peaks, Snowy beach, Snowy slopes, Snowy taiga, Stoney peaks, Windswept gravelly hills
	Tropical	Warm ocean
	Desert	Badlands, Desert, Eroded badlands, Savanna, Savanna plateau, Windswept savanna, Wooded badlands
	Jungle	Bamboo jungle, Jungle, Mangrove swamp, Sparse jungle
	Mushroom Island	Mushroom fields
	Ocean	Cold ocean, Deep cold ocean, Deep frozen ocean, Deep lukewarm ocean, Deep ocean, Frozen ocean, Lukewarm ocean, Ocean
	Plains	Birch forest, Cherry grove, Dark forest, Flower forest, Forest, Grove, Meadow, Old growth birch forest, Old growth pine taiga, Old growth spruce taiga, Plains, Sunflower plains, Windswept hills,
	River	River
	Swamp	Swamp, Mangrove swamp
	Nether	All nether dimension biomes
	End	All end dimension biomes

Gallery

Fishing in different biomes offers different fish to catch. The mod dynamically adjusts which loot table to pull fishing rewards from, based on the biome the player is in.

moon clock iterating through its displays

Starfish blocks (left) provide light. It was difficult to draw 5-point stars on a 16x16 canvas, but I like how they turned out. The moon clock (right) is an item that shows to the player which phase the moon is currently in. It was introduced to help players catch rare fish which would only appear on a full moon.

eating a jellyfish makes the player hungry

Some fish affect the player in different ways when eaten. The charged eel (left) instantly damages the player, as if the fish had exploded. This behaviour mimicks the explosive behaviour of an existing minecraft enemy, the charged creeper. On the right, a player who consumes a jellyfish is affected with hunger.

Arkus's Fishing introduces many new crafting recipes. On the left, players can put most new fish in a furnace to create large or small cooked fish. The 'coalacanth' fish can even be used as fuel in a furnace. moray and cave eels are ingredients for eel soup.

A demo of the sea urchins and their uses. Sea urchins can be thrown to inflict damage. Giant urchins deal damage on contact with an entity, and will dry out if placed outside of water. When dried out, giant urchins can be used to craft giant urchin lanterns, which function as a decorative light source. Giant urchins can take up to 5 minutes to dry out, so there is a cut in the video to pass the time quickly.