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Strategy

GPS Fishtrap - Strategy

GPS Fishtrap gains its complexity as a strategy game from the number of variables that the player has to consider when developing a strategy. This discussion addresses each of the decisions that you have to make when playing the game, in the order that you are likely to make them.

Deploying and pulling traps

Selling your inventory

Using bait

Buying traps

Hiring a hand

Upgrading your traps

Buying treasure maps

Upgrading your boat

Moving the game

 

Deploying and pulling traps

The most important question about deploying your traps is - where to place them?  The answer depends on when you're likely to pull them.  

  • If you deploy and pull traps once a day or less, Emerald Triggers (green fish) are your best bet: it will take 27 hours for a trap to fill, but the fish it collects will be worth a lot of money.
  • If you fish two or three times a day, you'd be better off trapping Sapphire Tangs (blue fish), which take 9 hours to fill a trap.
  • And if you're willing to fish four or more times a day, Ruby Clowns (red fish) will pay off even though they're the least valuable fish. A trap will fill with ruby clowns in just three hours.

NOTE: The previous paragraph is based on two assumptions:

  1. You are using bait. (See more below.)
  2. You have not reduced school populations through repeated fishing. Repeated trapping causes a school's population to decrease, which slows its trapping rate. You can judge a school's population - high, medium, or low - by the number of blips displayed in GPS Sonar.

ALSO: Traps sometimes "drift" a bit after you deploy them. Avoid placing your traps adjacent to physical obstacles (e.g., buildings, lakes, fences) that might prevent you from retrieving them later.

Selling your inventory

Pretty simple advice here: sell fish from your inventory when they're near the top of their price range. Prices suck right now?  Wait a day or two, they'll get better. Prices are updated every 6 hours.

Using bait

Whether or not to use bait also depends on how frequently you expect to fish. Bait costs money - $20 per deployment for small traps - but it cuts trapping times in half. If you expect to leave your traps in the water long enough for them to fill even without bait, then skip the bait and save yourself the expense.

Buying traps

Buy as many traps as you can deploy, as they'll pay for themselves in a day or two of regular fishing. (BTW, with practice, you'll be able to deploy two or even three traps in a single school.)  Once you've reached Boss level, you might want to keep one trap always stowed on your boat - that way, you'll be able to pull up any gold coins you come across.

Hiring a hand

When it comes to traps, hiring a hand is really about convenience rather than advantage. If for some reason you can't go pull your own traps (schedule, weather, a new romance, a really comfy couch, etc.), it's better to make use of a hired hand than to just leave your traps sitting there.

A hired hand can also help you retrieve a trap that you deployed in location where you can't retrieve it. Because the hired hand keeps half of the fish he collects, you can minimize his cost by first pulling all the traps that you can reach before sending out the hired hand.

Finally, a hired hand can retrieve treasures for you.  Again, he keeps half of the treasure he collects.  (See more under "Buying treasure maps" below.)

Upgrading your traps

Upgrading your traps allows them to hold more fish. Upgrading traps is expensive, and it's a good idea only if you tend to leave your traps in the water for a long time after they've filled.  

Buying treasure maps

Treasure maps are not for the timid or the hurried. They will lead you off your regular paths and into the great unknown. And sometimes you just can't get to them - they're in some building where there's no GPS, or in a neighbor's backyard, or just someplace you don't want to go. The best thing to do in such cases is to hire a hand to retrieve the treasure - you'll get half the booty, and in the long run you'll recoup the cost of the maps. Just remember to hire the hand before your treasure map expires.

Before you go looking for treasure, remember to pull one trap and stow it on your boat - without a trap to deploy and pull, you can't retrieve a treasure.

Upgrading your boat

Upgrading your boat to hold more traps allows you to expand your operations - whether this is a good thing depends on how long your walking routes are. If you find yourself regularly running out of traps before you run out of walk, then a boat upgrade would probably pay off.  

Moving the Game

If you fish the same schools repeatedly, you'll eventually deplete them.  To fish in different schools without changing your real-world path, try moving the game to a new location along your preferred path.

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