i've played for about 50 hours and have archer lvl 23, carpenter lvl 21 or so, and fisher lvl 34. but my main story quest is just at lvl 15, only done with what i gather is essentially the prologue portion of the base game's story. it just opened up travel to the other two starting cities for me, so i've been exploring them and doing whatever side quests i see (that's where i also picked up and worked on fishing). as soon as i'm done exploring the third city i'll get back on track and make progress. it takes me ages to explore new areas (both cities and field) because i have this compulsion to compare what i see with the map and fully understand the layout and be systematic about talking to everybody and checking out all the vendors. i have yet to do any activities with other players, but that's just fine. i'm basically playing like it's a solo jrpg for now. i like it! the world building and writing are very good--some of the best i've seen, really, with playful and sophisticated word play coming from certain characters.

and the jobs are fun. archer combat so far is just fine; nothing special but no complaints. i enjoy the crafting on carpenter, but fisher is where i really have started to see how they can use the interaction between abilities to create a fantasy pseudosim of a job. even though you're just choosing which ability to use when and building and spending stacks, the thought process and cycle sort of paints a picture. you can spend skill points on "patience," which lasts 60 seconds and improves fish size chance but reduces reel power, making losing the fish more of a possibility, but you can counter that by using one of two specific reel-in abilities instead of the generic one, which requires you to pay attention to the type of exclamation you get when a fish is hooked. so you're choosing to be more actively engaged in order to get a better yield. and large fish, while not worth more on the market or as crafting materials (the item is the same), give you dramatically more xp than regular ones. bringing in larger fish also builds stacks of "angler's art," and when you have 3 stacks you can spend them to regain skill points, which allows you to re-up patience. depending on the type of fish you catch, another thing that bringing in a large fish does is open up the opportunity to use the "mooch" ability, where you cast your line again with the fish you caught still hooked so you can bring in an even larger fish type that you can't catch any other way. i really like how these abilities interact with each other, and i'm sure there's more complexity to come. the thing is, it wasn't all immediately obvious to me; it took a bit of a eureka moment to see the point of angler's art stacks, in particular. and when i've done carpentry i've neglected a whole bunch of abilities so far, so i'll bet i'm missing a trick there, too. gonna take another look at it soon.

almost forgot to mention: i noticed that, when fishing with a lure, your character slowly and continuously reels the line in to keep it moving and make it look more appealing, which they don't do with live bait that just bobs on the water's surface. great attention to detail.