Venting About Ultimate Angler's RNG

Earlier today, during a six-hour-long HomePass session, I finally found a duplicate of the 6+ Anglers Gauge Boost skill that I got halfway through the game, a few months ago.  I still need one more to get it to level 3.  Whoever designed this game's RNG is sadistic.  I can farm rods like nobody's business with HomePass, but 90% of them don't have a skill, and the ones that do have useless things like Lake/Pond Strike Boost and 2 Anglers Time Boost.

In the meantime:

• I've caught five UFOs, put them in a Cosmic Tank, and set it as my favorite.
• I've caught five Bloopers and two Cheep Cheeps for a similarly-themed tank. I still need three more Cheep Cheeps, which will be difficult given that I hardly ever have enough bait for them when I get a sighting.  I usually have two bait, and it takes me three at minimum, if the RNG plays nice.
• I've caught all but one of the 160 species in the game.  The sole remaining one is a mysterious fish.  It's the rarest one, it seems, and it's on Mysteria Island at Sellbrook River.  Nobody on HomePass seems to have seen it, and the only way to be able to catch it is to StreetPass someone who's seen it (or someone who doesn't have the game, a specific number of times).  Then you have to hope that you have enough of the correct bait(s) to catch it in that single session, or you lose it and have to start over with the next sighting.  If your sighting isn't "I heard a rumor..." or "I caught a...", then its stamina will have already been worn down somewhat by the previous person.
• I've wasted a lot of money improving my UFO Rod +25 with the level 1 6+ Anglers Gauge Boost skill that I'll eventually upgrade to level 3 and have to re-improve if I don't get the 160th species for the final plaza ticket and give this game the old "12-gauge to the back of the head" mercy kill treatment it deserves.

I've already talked about the difference between tedium and challenge, and at this point in the game, it's nothing but tedium.  You keep farming, and eventually you game the RNG enough that you get what you're looking for, but you don't have fun in the meantime.  I didn't pay for a StreetPass game to get MMO levels of grinding.  StreetPass games are only supposed to be tedious in that they take a lot of StreetPassing to complete.  Everything else about them is supposed to be friendly and accessible.

To draw a comparison, the RNG on weapons from chests in Monster Manor was a lot more player-friendly, and the weapon skills were a lot more common.  You still had to play your cards right, but doing so involved learning the game mechanics.  Getting a good weapon was basically your reward for learning how to make the game spawn gold chests.  In Ultimate Angler, the only mechanic to getting fishing rods is that you have to catch a fish you've already caught before.  There are zero game mechanics you can learn to get fishing rods basically whenever you want, it's entirely down to RNG.  Then, it seems it's an entirely separate RNG (a die roll, for the D&D nerds) for whether or not you get a skill on that rod, and ANOTHER RNG that determines what that skill is.  Everything else in Ultimate Angler is fantastic, but the RNG begs for an update to make it more player-friendly.

StreetPass Games Revisited: Ultimate Angler

Since I did this for the first batch of games, I'm back to do it again with the second batch.  Now that I've played the second batch of games for a while, what's my progress, and what are my thoughts?  Have I figured anything out that I didn't know when I wrote the original post?  Read on to find out.

Actually, before I get into discussing the gameplay and my completion thereof, I just want to say: The game's music is awesome.  It covers a wide variety of musical styles, and there's a unique song for every fishing spot.  Just think about that.  A lot of work went into the music for this game, and it shows.  If you need some examples, try Clifton Cove, Highland Lake, and Feeding Frenzy.

Progress-wise, I've completed the first five islands and gotten the second hat.  The plaza tickets come in very slowly in this one, as you essentially have to do almost everything there is to do in order to get all of them.  I'm missing the ones for clearing six/seven/eight/all islands, landing 120/all species, and A+ catches for 10 species.

In addition to the plaza tickets, there is a whole set of challenges that the game gives you rewards for completing.  All of the plaza tickets count for these challenges, but the ones that don't give plaza tickets instead give you money or fishing rods.  Not all of them are visible by default, the game only lets you know what the next one in each group is.

The game is pretty fun, even if the RNG is incredibly unforgiving.  You always have the chance to pull up random junk, even if you only have one fish left in an area, you need that fish to progress, and you have a bait that it likes.  Sometimes, the RNG just shits on you.  There's no better way to describe it.  Also, the game tells you that mixing baits improves the chances of getting larger fish, which is necessary to complete in-game challenges, but I haven't noticed any correlation between the number of bait I mix and the size of the fish I catch.

Powering up and improving your fishing rods uses a fairly straightforward crafting system, but oh boy does it ever drain your in-game money.  Everything gets more expensive the farther you go.  The best rod in the game reportedly takes 1.2 million to max out, and you can't even hold that much money at once.

You actually benefit from being a completionist early on in this game.  A good number of fish show up in multiple places, so if you catch them early on, you don't have to worry about them later and can blitz your way through islands only having to catch the fish that completes the challenge for a given fishing spot.

Also, you can farm for money, rank, and rods.  On the first island, the fish you have to catch to clear the island coughs up a good amount of money and rank points, and being a three-star fish, gives you a chance at a two-star or three-star rod.  Combining rods and improving their stats is directly related to your success in this game, so you'll probably want to farm at some point.

Adding some spice to the proverbial gumbo are the mysterious fish available in some locations.  You can't see what bait you need to catch them by default.  The only way to find out is through StreetPass.  Every 10 times you StreetPass the same person who doesn't have the game, they'll tell you about one of the mysterious fish.  If you StreetPass someone who has the game and has already spotted one of them, they'll tell you about it.  Special Miis always tell you about one of them.

Regardless of how you find out about it, its location and the necessary baits get revealed for that session and that session only.  In the case of finding out about the fish from someone who already owns the game, you get to continue from where they left off trying to catch it.  If you don't catch it, you'll send it to other owners of the game and they get to try from where you left off.  As you could infer, they take a lot of effort to catch, so hopefully you have more than one of the baits that you need.  So far, I've seen and caught one mysterious fish, due to the requirement that you have to have completed the island where it can be found before people will tell you about it.

Feeding frenzies happen every now and then, and are denoted by the water sparkling.  The sparkling gets more and more noticeable as the frenzy gets closer to happening.  Once it starts, you get to tap icons on the touchscreen in a panic and catch tons of fish without using any bait at all.  These happen fairly often, and are a good source of extra money and rank points.  Occasionally I've gotten a species I haven't caught before from a frenzy, so be on the lookout for that.

Overall, I'm not disappointed with my purchase in the slightest.

StreetPass Mii Plaza: New Games

I've finally got my hands on the two latest StreetPass games, so... here's my initial thoughts on Ultimate Angler and Battleground Z.  The games are $5 each, or $8 if you buy the bundle.  If you've already got any of the games from the first bundle (Mii Force, Flower Town, Warrior's Way, Monster Manor), you get an extra dollar off the price of the bundle, which is neat.

Continuing the tradition, you get a hat for purchasing each game, but with the plaza update, you also get a speech balloon for purchasing each game.  If you haven't updated your plaza, do it now.  Even if you don't plan on getting the new games.  It's okay, I'll wait.

StreetPass Games Done

That certainly took a while.  Having a HomePass setup definitely made it quicker.  Some people call HomePass cheating, but I don't.  It doesn't reduce the challenge of accomplishing everything, nor does it reduce the amount of work you have to do.  It simply lowers the barrier to entry.

So, everything ever:

• Puzzle Swap: 1637/1637 pieces (for North America)
• When I originally posted this, there were 1177 puzzle pieces.
• When I got my New 3DS and system transferred to it, there were 1502 puzzle pieces.
• Find Mii and Find Mii 2: All accomplishments (including "Clear Find Mii in 30 Miis or less") and hats/outfits.
• Mii Force: All plaza tickets (this implies all lost treasures collected, all target scores beaten, and all stages beaten without losing a pod).
• Flower Town: All plaza tickets, gold on all jobs, 80/80 breeds, 305/305 colors, gold watering can.
• Warrior's Way: All plaza tickets, Castle rank 20, 9,999,999 troops (set up so that an army of 50k+ infantry, 50k+ cavalry, and a small group of archers can defeat it by spying twice, field conditions allowing).
• Monster Manor: All plaza tickets, beat floor 50 and the true final boss for the hat.
• Ultimate Angler: All plaza tickets (this implies 160/160 species caught)
• Battleground Z: All plaza tickets, all rare zombies defeated
• StreetPass Birthdays: All plaza tickets (this implies 366/366 birthdays)
• Exchange Booth: All hats/outfits and speech balloons claimed, Exchange Booth closed once again

I'll have more work to do with each Puzzle Swap panel that Nintendo releases, and of course if they add any more games.  With each new panel I'll try and remember to keep the piece count updated, as well.  But until the next new panel or game, feels good man.

Side note: if Puzzle Swap and the Find Mii games can detect when there's nothing left for the player to do and decide to not show their exclamation points with each group of StreetPasses, why can't the DLC StreetPass games do the same?

Edit (2015-09-25): Added Ultimate Angler, Battleground Z, and StreetPass Birthdays, just to mark them off as complete.  Because I now have two 3DSes, this post is only representative of my original efforts, which I system transferred from my Old 3DS to my New 3DS.  Any new puzzles will be marked here until I finish everything on my Old 3DS once again, and then this post will be retired and a new one encompassing both systems will be created.