7Seas: Fishing in Second Life

This is a little introduction to the 7Seas Fishing System. It was originally presented as a live class at Conejo Public Library by me, Fox, and I've edited my notes from that into an easy-to-follow guide. I'm hoping that, by the end of this, you will understand what 7Seas is, the various components that make it up, and hopefully you'll catch a few fish of your own :3

First off... What is 7Seas? 7Seas is a fishing game within SL. A game within a game, if you will. It has been around since 2008, and was created by Seven Shikami.

To give a little background, many of SL's games from this era (2006-2012) were markedly time or money sinks; The very first thing I did when I started playing SL was try one of the other fishing games promising linden, but you would need to devote an impossibly long time of fishing to even make $L1 in that system. Furthermore, breedables were becoming popular at that time, which require the upkeep of food, medicine, and land to rez them on.

This is what makes 7Seas still popular to this day: the fishing rods are a one time purchase, and any other additional items are completely optional to participate in the game itself. The cheapest rod is $L100, or less than 50 cents USD, and the pro rod is $L250, or approximately one dollar USD. Once you buy a rod, you can use it forever and never need to sink another linden into the system, you just get to have fun!



If you do not already own a 7Seas fishing rod, you should start with the cheapest rod, the Casual Rod. You can buy it here, as well as all the other official 7Seas items.

(What is the difference between the Casual and Pro Rods? Besides that the Pro Rod comes with different sizes and some bait, the main difference is that the Pro Rod can catch rarer, more elusive fish than the Casual Rod. The Casual Rod can catch fish from common to rare difficulty. The rest of this assumes you have a Casual Rod.)

When you have purchased your fishing rod, you will need to unbox it. All you really need is your unboxed fishing rod to begin ^^ By default, the folder will be called "(7S) Casual Fishing Rod Pack" and the item is called "(7S) Casual Fishing Rod". Right click and add it to your avatar.



And there we go :D let's go over what else is in the folder, as well as how to customize and use your fishing rod. The FAQ is available in multiple languages (EN, FR, DE, IT, JA, PT, and ES), and the fishing rod's manual is also included.



Getting started with fishing is very easy. Face the water and type in "/1 cast" while holding your rod. This will cast your fishing rod out and hopefully snag a fish after a few seconds. You can also cast your rod using the included gesture, "Press F2 to Fish!" if you right click and activate it. You can also change the keybind from F2 to something else if you prefer!



Please note, you can only catch 7Seas fish in an area that has been stocked with 7Seas fish. It will not work with any other system. Conejo has multiple fishing spots that uses this system (namely the northwest beach and the waterfall/river in the southeast), and other sims will likely have a sign indicating a 7Seas compatible zone.

Sometimes, you will cast your rod and not catch a fish. That's ok, that is a normal expected part of the game. Just cast again :3

Once you catch a fish that sounds cool, go to your objects folder and locate it. Right click and add it, and it will now swim happily around your head :D left clicking this will also give you a few customization options. Feel free to add fishies to wherever on your avatar!




While your rod is attached, left click any part of it. This brings up your configuration menu, which has a few features of note!



First off, Autocasting On or Off. If it's on, it will autocast indefinitely next time you start casting. This is convenient if you're fishing as a background task, but is not allowed in fishing tourneys.

Quiet Catch will turn off all announcements of what fish you caught to others. Helpful if you have to pay attention to local chat and minimize spam.

Under advanced features, there's Autodecline, which allows you to choose to auto decline any fish you catch under a certain rarity. Great for if you are looking for only very rare fish!

And last but not least of the configuration, there is the Recolor option. You can recolor both the rod and the line of your fishing rod independently! The colors you can choose from are located at the end of your fishing manual. However, this list is more commonly known as the named HTML colors. You can see a list of them color-wise here to choose from.

When you know what colors you want, select to Recolor your rod or line and type in the name of the color when prompted in local chat. Your fishing rod will instantly change colors!



Lastly, I would like to touch on a few extra things that are accessory to the basic fishing gameplay.

First off... Fishing tourneys! Conejo has held a few. The last one was at the last summer celebration, but they were hosted all the way back when we lived in Lendrum. They work with a big board being put up that keeps track of how many fish are caught by each participant in a given timeframe, and the winners are who catches the most in that timeframe. Autocasting is not allowed if you participate in a tourney. They are a fun way to have friendly competition while fishing :D

Next, if you own land and want to show off your catches, consider getting one of the aquariums 7Seas provides. These are prim objects that let you put a 2d version of your fish in them, and different sizes allow different amounts of fish. They dont require food or anything, and can just be a decoration :3



This tutorial hasn't covered much of what the Pro Rods do, so I'll briefly mention bait. Bait is for Pro Rods only, and gives you better chances of catching rarer fish, as well as granting XP/levels so you can catch even rarer fish. Pro Rods come with 50 bait by default, and you can get more here.

Finally, there are countless objects that are 7Seas compatible on the Marketplace, such as mesh rod replacers and other aquarium builds. I have never used them, but they might be cute and useful for you, especially in customizing your fisherman :D

I'll conclude with a few key resources:

7Seas Marketplace Store
7Seas In-World Headquarters
7Seas Official Website
7Seas Fish List

With all of this information on hand, go forth and fish to your heart's content!