Last week, KingsIsle unveiled Wizard101's newest member benefit: zero energy fishing. Member benefits tend to be hit or miss depending on a particular player's in-game habits, but here are how mine break down.
Current Member Benefits
- Double Pet XP: Extremely useful, especially when I'm training new derby pets.
- Double Gardening Rewards: Also very useful, but sometimes it's a bit overwhelming. I already have full stacks of plants so I have nowhere to put all the extra seeds. I usually just trash them.
- Free Training Point Buyback: I've only used it once, and that was because I spent some points on useless spells for a specific event. I bought them back as soon as I could.
- Improved Rewards on Daily Assignments (including PvP): You know, I should really do these more often ...
- Double Monstrology: Another thing I should do more often ...
- Free Second Chance Chest Roll: Definitely not bad, but would only be super useful when I'm looking for something in particular. Even then, it's only one roll. While anything extra is nice, I'd have to be really lucky to make it count.
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Fishing is an in-game hobby that I mostly dabbled into in order to help contribute to guides and AOS's fishing database. As a result, I caught A LOT of fish when the feature first came out. I even caught the largest fish in KingsIsle's official fishing tournament that took place in 2015. Since then, I've made sure to stay up to date on holiday fish and slowly build my collection. However, it was never something on the top of my to-do list. Why? Well, it's time consuming and takes up a lot of energy.
Fishing, pet training, and gardening all use the same energy source. Crazy, right?! If you participate in all 3 activities, you'd have to purchase and use energy elixirs on the daily. That's where priority comes in. Gardening is necessary to provide pet snacks for pet training (and you know I love derby), so that left fishing as the odd one out. KingsIsle has since made fishing more attractive by using certain catches as crafting requirements, but outside of that, fishing is a pretty isolated activity. Collecting all the fish and their respective badges is neat, but there are simply no perks that PvPers or questers would find enticing.
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As a result, I don't see this new zero energy fishing member benefit causing a massive spike in fishing participation (some people love it and some people hate it). However, I do think that it will encourage at least some people to pick it up again or give it a try. After all, they have nothing to lose. And maybe, just maybe, we'll get some more consistent fishermen and fisherwomen out there.
What did you think of Wizard101's newest member benefit? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
