I forget when (R15/20 with Tuskar) you unlock being able to upgrade your Harpoon.
This “upgrade” seems to never end, and each time I upgrade it, nothing seems to happen.
The first turn is to “collect 3 Irontree Branch.” As soon as I turn it in, I immediately unlock “collect 3 Irontree Branches AND 1 Khaz’gorite Resin.”
EACH of the turns in like this! It’s like it’ll never end.
And I would be fine with that, if I could actually see my Harpoon being upgraded. But… unless I just don’t see the option, it doesn’t tell you that info ANYWHERE. As far as I can tell, I just have the same stupid harpoon I unlocked at like R10.
Anyone else know what’s going on with this “upgrade”? Is it just a joke being pulled on the players?
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As far as I can tell, there are two levels of upgrades each to two aspects of the fishing net and three aspects of the harpoon.
The net can be upgraded for size of catch and speed of completion, twice each. I’ve done size once and speed twice so far. Size wasn’t super obvious, other than that I’m getting different fish and other things. Speed dropped from 23 hours to 10 to 6. The speed upgrade also vanished from the NPC after the second turn-in.
The harpoon can be upgraded for “head, haft, and rope” twice each. I’ve done one of each, and my overall takeaway is that I can reel in lunkers faster and more reliably, I get knocked down/pulled a lot less often, and my range has increased.
Details don’t seem to be readily available that I’ve seen, but my suspicion is that the “head” upgrades deal with effectiveness of the reeling in action, haft upgrades make you less likely to be knocked over/pulled, and rope upgrades increase your throw range.
My opinions and observations only, but hope they help.
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Can someone explain to me the point of harpoon if you can just kill fish much quicker with damage?
Again, details seem to still be a little sketchy at this point. One reason is that more people can usually be involved when everyone is using the harpoons, and there are achievements for that. I’ve had some fun impromptu spearhunting sessions where several people use their Ominous Conches and all co-harpoon the resulting lunkers. Harpoons also prevent the lunker from using its dive-and-despawn ability, which may be a factor for tougher mobs.
There are also some claims that damaging a non-rare lunker with regular attacks knocks some items off its loot table. I haven’t tested that myself, and I enjoy the spearfishing mechanic enough that I likely won’t bother. I haven’t seen any definite agreement as to whether or not it’s a real thing, though.
You get an achievement for upgrading everything. After that, you can turn in the parts for rep.
Great post, great info, thanks for the reply!
But as you said, the main thing with all your info is that we (you/I/everyone) can’t PROVE anything. That’s why I made my post-- the fact I can’t just … “inspect” my harpoon and see where I am in the journey.
It’s all subjective hearsay stories from old-timers. “Mah old har’pin n’er hit the mark. But since I added Draconium Weights and an Irontree Shaft, aye she sails true!” lol That’s literally all we have to go on.
I’d like to add to this and say that once you cap ANY rep, any item you get for that rep after that becomes BoA! So you can send it to your alts. This is especially nice because CURRENTLY (this could change) none of the Paragon boxes have anything in them worth chasing. No pets, toys, mounts… nothing. Just a forgettable amount of gold and some grey items. That’s it.
Better to send those to your alts for patterns, recipes, etc.
Thanks for the info. Guess I’ll keep chasing upgrades, despite them being a HUGE pita and not really being able to tell I’m doing anything. 