What if you fishers were subject to a proficiency penalty when you lose a fish,
comparable to the proficiency loss suffered in a SC death, where all combat proficiencies get whacked

Lose a fish - lose proficiency in all skills

Why is it NOT implemented in Death as a penalty already instead of your idea?
Do Death penalty like you do with other profs... I agree wholeheartedly... then SC would do what HC does... skill off main climbing character class.

It is no loss, they just changed their way of playing their skilled characters, but, it does NOT resolve the issue that has been pointed out in this thread... they DON'T have enough item slot space!!!

What input can you actually have to solve that issue instead of inputting some irrelevant comment? NONE, then don't bother... I am an ass, but, at least I have input to the thread.

I have a few great solutions:

1. Remove fishing + cooking altogether. It's already the most OP skill in the game. Some people might say the nerf balanced it, but that's not good enough. Using fish could allow you to survive certain ep encounters which is absolutely unacceptable. Why would you want to survive after all, don't be so greedy.

2. Reduce the amount of life + mana recovered by 50% on all existing and future fish. I also suggest that you can carry 1 fish per item slot, no stacking. Think about it, bass and salmon for example can easily be up to a few kilos each and you have 16 slots ( - 1 for a rod ). How will you be able to carry 50+ kilos worth of fish with you..? Impossible!

3. Add a new feature to the fish called "rotting". Every fish you catch will have a shelf life of 7 days. If you decide to use expired fish, there will be a 90% chance to get food poisoning, which will result in you dying immediately. If a fish is rotting you'll get "rotten" instead of "cooked", but note that if you have problems with smelling, you won't be able to tell so you'll have to keep track of when you caught it. Ninjas won't be able to smell it at all, because they have a mask. You might say: "Hey, what if I have a fridge?" Good point! A new item will be added to the game called "a totem of refrigeration" which will allow you to store fish for up to 6 months!

4. Fish will only be able to be eaten in town. If you're eating a low quality fish or if it wasn't deboned well, there's a chance you can choke on bone fragments if you're in the catacombs, specially while fighting monsters. You will have to go back in town and put it on a plate so you can eat it properly. Occasionally, you will find lemons in the catacombs, which will allow you to add more flavor to the fish, making it up to 50% more effective! But that will require a separate skill called "lemoncing".

if you change the failure rate to something that is actually reasonable, sure
currently I'm failing over 40% of the fish I'm attempting, meaning I almost have to try 2x as many fishes as I'm catching to get my rank up, and I have no way to influence it because it's all random (like the nonsense glyph failures, even below your rank)

Here is a question, what if when you are cooking the fish, you are actually making Jerky out of it?... Smoked / Salted / Seasoned etc. What is the shelf life of Jerky? Note: I wouldn't know, we can buy jerky here in NZ, but, it is not what I would buy or consume... to me they are just dehydrated sticks of meat with shitloads of preservatives and additives.

sounds like a good idea...

i like the idea of being able to only get fish a couple tiers below the fish you are fighting.

if you want lower tier fish you simply adjust the level of fish.

simple simple