A player from Old School RuneScape invests over 4,300 hours to max out his fishing skill in the most inefficient way possible. The internet and the developers celebrate.
What kind of record is this? The player Bosby set out to raise his fishing skill to the maximum level of 99 with his account OnlyShrimp99 from Old School RuneScape, using the perhaps most inefficient method the MMORPG has to offer.
On May 11, 2024, he chose the lowest-level and least profitable fishing spots in the game and got started. On Reddit he explains:
This account was just a joke idea among my friends for years before I finally realized it. At first, I thought it would just be a funny thing, but in the end, I had the endurance to see the project through to the end.
The player reached the finish line on August 7, 2026, after catching 275,196 shrimps and collecting 257,064 anchovies. How arduous this journey was is shown by another statistic: 4,304 in-game hours were reportedly spent on this unconventional fishing project. That this is a record was later confirmed by the developers, but more on that below.
Small net, but he can handle it
How do the community and developers react? Under several Reddit discussions about the project, there are already more than 12,000 thumbs up and over 750 comments. It’s raining memes and GIFs and the question: “But why?” Others immediately set new goals, like mining to 99 with only tin and copper.
The developers of Old School RuneScape have also become aware of the project in the meantime. On X they write: “Congratulations on being the only level 99 in fishing using just the small net, Bosby. Our data team has verified your achievement.” They also celebrated the success with a cute artwork:
Bosby himself now finds all the fuss rather uncomfortable. On X he explained: “This is definitely getting too much attention, lol. It’s exhausting.” Nevertheless, he draws a positive conclusion. He met many cool people at the fishing spot in Al Kharid, and in parallel, he also had enough time to get married and start a new job.
What do you think of self-imposed challenges like this? Do you perhaps also make games harder than they are sometimes? Feel free to let us know in the comments! By the way, it’s not the first time someone has invested a lot of time in Old School RuneScape to achieve a rather peculiar goal. Sometimes the grind gets a bit out of control – like in this case: Player reaches milestone in the popular MMORPG, farms a pet with a drop chance of 0.00143 percent 200 times
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