How to Use Angler's Apprentice

If using Angler's Apprentice solely as a reference for your fishing ventures, most things should be pretty self explanatory. Simply click the name of the fish you're looking for in the left-hand column. If the species of fish has been caught in the current Egypt month (currently Shemu IV), the fish will show up under the "In Season" menu. Otherwise, the species will show up under the "Out of Season" menu, or, if it's a common fish (can be found year round), it'll appear under the "Common Fish" menu instead.

Each page has four charts for your reference. The first is "Lures" which should give you an idea of how successful each type of insect has been at catching the selected type of fish. Hovering over each section of the donut chart will give you the number of successful catches for the fish/insect combination. Insects accounting for less than 1% of total catches for a type of fish are simply combined into an "Other" category at the moment. The "Time of Day" shows a bar graph showing the time of day broken down by hour and how many of the selected fish were found at each time of day. As with the Lures chart, hovering over each bar in the graph will show a count of how many fish were caught at that hour based on the data uploaded to the application. The "Regions" chart shows the name of the region breaks down the number of the selected fish caught in each given region. As with Lures, regions accounting for less than 1% of total catches are combined into an "Other" category for now. And lastly, the "Months" chart shows an overview of how many of the selected fish were caught each month.

Note: For some logistical and technical reasons, only data for fish weighing over 1 deben is used for analysis.

Where Does All the Data Come From?

The macro tool, Automato, includes a macro that is very helpful for fishing. One interesting feature of this macro is that it saves a log file containing tons of useful data about each and every fish caught while the macro is running. All of the site's data comes from users of this macro who upload this special file to this site where all the data is combined and analyzed to make the charts and information you see.

How Can I Contribute?

If you're interested in contributing your own fishing data, you'll need to fish using the Automato fishing macro (fishing.lua). You're welcome to configure the macro settings in whatever way that you prefer. When you've done some fishing and have some data you want to contribute, you'll just need to do a few simple things:

  1. If you don't already have Automato installed, you can download the installer file here: http://www.dashingstrike.com/Automato/
  2. Otherwise, your first step will be logging in to Angler's Apprentice using the "Log In" button in the top right corner of the page. The Username and Password are simply the same Username and Password you already use to log in to A Tale in the Desert. There is no need to create a new, separate account at all.
  3. Once logged in, click the new "Submit Logs" button in the top right of the page, then click the "Choose File" button.
  4. You'll need to find the log file that Automato generates for you. This file should be appear to be named FishLogT9.txt or simply FishLogT9. If you installed Automato with the default settings, this file should be located under the directory C:\Games\Automato\games\ATITD9\. From within the "Choose File" prompt, this is the file you should select.
  5. Once you've got your log file selected, click Submit and that's it!

You should see a green notification near the top of the page saying your file was submitted successfully. The application will analyze your file for a few seconds to a few minutes, depending on how much data you had, and, once finished, your data will be combined into the other data on the site.

What If I Want To Submit an Updated Log File?

Angler's Apprentice is able to handle this just fine. It is able to tell which data it has seen before and which data is new so there's no need to clear log files or do any complicated file management to avoid submitting duplicate information. Just upload whatever file you've got, even if it's the same one, and we'll take care of the rest!