FishFry 1.2.4 - Forever Release

FishFry 1.2.4 is the culmination of the work since 1.2.0: a major Forever-focused modernization of FishFry's interface, Journal, Guide, Fishing Sessions, Easy Wiki, HUD, Tackle, Cook Fish, and supporting systems.

The addon has moved from the old shared TBC / Forever presentation into a dedicated World of Warcraft: Forever experience while preserving FishFry's core identity as a manual Fishing + fish-Cooking guide and utility HUD.

This update also includes extensive compatibility and safety work for Forever's modern API restrictions, a new semantic visual language, authored Fishing/Cooking effects, and a large final interface-polish pass.

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🎣 FishFry Is Now Forever-Focused

The active FishFry release line now targets World of Warcraft: Forever directly.

The previous unified TBC Anniversary + Forever package has been retired from active development.

• FishFry now targets Forever Interface 16001.
• Forever owns its runtime and data decisions directly.
• Old compatibility paths no longer dictate how new Forever features are designed.
• FishFryDB remains the only SavedVariables database.
• Existing player settings, Journal progress, Fishing history, Cooking knowledge, Tackle state, and other retained data are preserved through non-destructive migrations where required.
• TBC Anniversary remains available through the older archival FishFry release line.

This gives Forever room to use its newer systems without forcing them through old TBC-era assumptions.

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🎨 Complete Interface Modernization

FishFry's main window has received a substantial visual and structural rebuild.

The new interface uses the current GildedVellum design language:

• dark structured surfaces;
• thin semantic framing;
• clear selected states;
• compact controls;
• stronger information hierarchy;
• reusable cards;
• consistent scrolling;
• contextual tooltips;
• domain and state colors that actually mean something.

The main workflow navigation now has distinct identities:

• Guide - Chart
• Zone Info - Chart
• Tackle - Water
• Cook Fish - Ember
• Fishing Sessions - Water

Utility surfaces such as:

• Easy Wiki
• Journal
• About
• Options

use a separate neutral control family.

The result is a FishFry interface that is much more visually consistent while keeping the Fishing-focused workflow fast.

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🎨 Semantic Color Language

FishFry now uses a consistent semantic color system rather than coloring controls simply to make adjacent sections look different.

Domains

• Water - Fishing, fish, poles, tackle, lures, Fishing Sessions
• Ember - Cooking, recipes, cooked fish, fire
• Chart - Guide, zones, routes, travel, waypoints
• Neutral - history, settings, general structure

Significance

• Trophy / Violet - rare catches, trophies, unusual discoveries
• Brand - FishFry / GildedVellum identity

State

• Ready / Green - complete, known, ready, successful
• Caution / Amber - partial, expiring, recoverable attention
• Danger / Red - blocker, failure, destructive action
• Muted / Grey - inactive, unavailable, unknown, secondary

These meanings are now used throughout the addon instead of allowing state colors to replace the identity of the thing being displayed.

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🧭 Guide Presentation Overhaul

The Forever Guide has received a large presentation pass while keeping its existing route and waypoint behavior intact.

Starter Assist

The Starter Assist card now sits above Current / All, making the current fresh-character path immediately visible.

Starter Assist remains the complete starting journey rather than merely jumping to the player's detected profession step.

Guide Information Cards

Important Guide information is now separated into real cards instead of loose groups of text and icons.

Cards can include:

• Buy / Bring / Watch
• Useful Fish
• Rare Bloated Fish
• Trophy Fish

This presentation is used across:

• the current Guide step;
• Starter Assist;
• Route Entry;
• expanded Guide steps under All.

Trophy Awareness

Guide steps can now surface Trophy Fish from the zones represented by the route.

For Starter Assist, FishFry checks the zones represented by the overall selected journey, allowing trophies elsewhere along that starter path to remain visible even when the player is looking at one specific stage.

Route Entry and normal Guide phases use their relevant route/arrival zones.

This uses FishFry's existing canonical trophy data rather than inventing new trophy locations.

Associated Milestones

Guide and Starter Assist surfaces can now show relevant FishFry milestones.

Milestone links:

• show current progress;
• use milestone tier presentation;
• provide contextual tooltips;
• open the exact milestone in Journal;
• do not overwrite the player's normal saved Journal filter/search state.

Multi-step Guide sections deduplicate associated milestones so the same goal is not repeated unnecessarily throughout one route.

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🗺️ Zone Info Redesign

Zone Info has been brought into the same card-based presentation language as Guide.

The zone selector itself is now a Chart card, and the redundant heading/divider above it has been removed.

Zone information is separated into cards for:

• Known Fish
• Rare Bloated Fish
• Trophy Fish
• Useful Tackle / Recipes / Utility

Trophy information continues to come from FishFry's existing canonical zone data.

Zone Info remains a reference surface, not an ordered route planner.

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🎒 Tackle Redesign

The Tackle page has been reorganized into clearer sections.

Major groups now use independent cards:

• Defaults
• Fishing Goals
• Utility Inventory

Pole, lure, and consumable defaults are grouped together instead of being spread across several equal-weight status areas.

Additional improvements include:

• quieter flat rows for inventory choices;
• reduced visual clutter;
• empty Detected Gear sections no longer appear unnecessarily;
• Campfire and route utility items are grouped together;
• duplicate Campfire material listings are avoided where possible.

Tackle selection, Detect Best Setup, Tackle Swap/restore, item eligibility, and player-triggered equipment actions remain unchanged.

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🍳 Cook Fish Presentation

Cook Fish has been brought into the same modern page structure as the rest of FishFry.

• Cooking uses the dedicated Ember semantic identity.
• Recipe readiness remains visually separate from the Cooking domain itself.
• The page now uses the same full-width layout and spacing as the other primary pages.
• Its scrollbar uses the same filled semantic treatment used throughout the interface.
• The current fish-focused Cooking surface is explicitly marked as a work in progress while broader Cooking expansion continues separately.

FishFry still does not automate Cooking. Crafting remains player-triggered.

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📚 Easy Wiki

FishFry now includes a much more capable Easy Wiki backed by a shared Knowledge/Search system.

Easy Wiki can search FishFry's known information for:

• fish;
• fish-Cooking recipes;
• zones;
• routes;
• Fishing gear;
• milestones;
• Campsite-related information;
• focused FishFry help.

Search supports multiple terms together rather than relying only on exact names.

Record presentation now follows the semantic identity of the information:

• Fishing records use Water;
• Cooking records use Ember;
• zones/routes use Chart;
• rare/trophy significance layers separately.

Related FishFry records can be followed directly from the selected article.

Unknown Forever items remain explicitly unknown instead of FishFry guessing at unsupported information.

Wiki Filtering

The old category cycling control has been replaced with a proper Filter flyout.

The Forever mouse-input path was also corrected so Wiki filter options reliably receive their clicks rather than having the flyout close before the option could be selected.

Cleaner Wiki Layout

The Wiki search/results column and record-detail column are now independent cards instead of being trapped inside an additional enclosing parent box.

The results list also uses the scrollbar's actual viewport instead of another unnecessary nested container.

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🎣 Fishing Sessions

Fishing Sessions has evolved into a full per-character Fishing activity history system.

Sessions track Fishing-correlated information such as:

• casts;
• fish caught;
• non-fish Fishing items;
• Fishing time;
• Fishing/Cooking progression context;
• locations;
• caught item quantities.

Explicit Session Control

Sessions now use a player-owned lifecycle:

• New creates a stopped Session.
• Start begins the selected Session.
• Stop stops it.
• Stopped Sessions can be resumed.
• Starting another Session stops the previously running Session first.
• Reload/logout safely stops the active Session without deleting it.

The old automatic inactivity/location-driven Session creation and stopping behavior has been removed.

Better Fishing-Time Tracking

Fishing time records active Fishing cast/channel time rather than total wall-clock age.

Idle time can exist inside the same Session, but it no longer inflates the Fishing-time metric.

Older Session records whose active Fishing time could not be reconstructed are preserved as legacy elapsed values rather than silently rewritten.

Fish vs Items

Session metrics now distinguish:

• Fish - fish obtained through Fishing-correlated loot;
• Items - non-fish Fishing loot and proven contents of tracked opened Bloated fish.

Generic bag changes are never treated as Fishing catches.

Session Management

Sessions support:

• Rename
• Duplicate
• Delete
• drag-to-reorder
• persistent manual ordering

Right-click Session controls dismiss correctly and no longer remain hidden behind row tooltips.

Cleaner Sessions UI

The Sessions page now uses separate left and right cards without unnecessary enclosing boxes.

The old Session Context card was removed and the recovered space is used for the caught-item history.

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📖 Durable Fishing Record

FishFry now maintains a Journal-owned lifetime Fishing Record independent of retained Fishing Sessions.

This means deleting an old Session no longer removes the player's lifetime catch history.

The Fishing Record preserves:

• character lifetime counts;
• account lifetime counts;
• proven direct Fishing catches;
• contents proven to come from tracked opened Bloated fish.

Direct Fishing catches and Bloated-fish contents remain source-distinct.

Existing valid Fishing milestone history is used to seed the record without resetting progress.

Easy Wiki can show this personal Fishing history alongside FishFry's normal reference information.

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📓 Journal Overhaul

The Journal has received one of the largest interface upgrades in FishFry.

Virtualized Milestone List

The Journal no longer creates the entire milestone catalog as a giant live card stack.

It now uses a small reusable visible-row pool, significantly reducing unnecessary UI rebuilding while preserving:

• milestone progress;
• Account / Character scope;
• Pin / Unpin;
• Share;
• existing earned history.

Milestone Color Meta

Milestones now communicate several things at once:

• domain;
• tier;
• state;
• progress.

Milestone tiers have their own presentation:

• Bronze
• Silver
• Gold
• Rare

Every populated milestone row has a thin tier-colored progress bar directly along its bottom edge.

Earned state remains a separate Ready indicator instead of turning the entire card green.

New Milestones Review

Genuinely newly earned Account milestones can enter a durable unseen inbox.

When unseen milestones exist:

• the Journal button displays a count;
• a Ready cue makes the new entries visible;
• opening Journal creates a temporary New Milestones review.

The review list stays available while the FishFry window remains open even though those entries have already been marked seen.

Closing the whole FishFry window clears only the temporary review state.

Old milestones are never replayed simply because FishFry was updated or reloaded.

Journal Filter

The large row of persistent Journal category buttons has been replaced by a compact role-aware Filter flyout.

All previous milestone views remain available.

The controls area is now divided more clearly between:

• browsing/scope/search;
• sharing and notice utilities.

Milestone rows were also made taller so titles, descriptions, progress, tier/state, points, and Pin/Share controls no longer collide.

The same Forever mouse-input fix used by Easy Wiki also prevents Journal filter menus from closing before a selection is delivered.

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🏆 Milestone Sharing Changes

Milestone sharing has been significantly tightened to reduce noise.

Routine progress now stays local.

Automatic outward celebration is reserved for exceptional achievements such as:

• Trophy-category catches;
• completed fish/gear collections;
• the first tracked Bloated-fish milestone;
• sufficiently large future count milestones.

Automatic milestone celebration:

• does not automatically post to Guild chat;
• does not fire while the character is in a guild;
• remains limited to Character-owned transitions rather than Account-wide bookkeeping changes.

Account milestones remain visible and manually shareable from Journal.

Manual milestone sharing uses a nearby Emote and has a 15-second runtime cooldown between successful manual shares.

The cooldown is not consumed when a message cannot actually be sent.

Bloated Surprise

Added the Bloated Surprise milestone.

It is awarded only from proven Fishing loot involving FishFry's tracked Bloated-fish IDs.

Ordinary bag scans cannot award it.

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✨ Semantic Motion

FishFry now has a centralized motion system rather than individual widgets creating their own animation loops.

The motion language includes:

• Flow - an active process;
• Flash - something just changed;
• Bloom - a threshold was completed;
• Breathe - unresolved attention;
• Error Flash - a hard player-action failure where appropriate.

Examples currently used by FishFry include:

• active Fishing Flow in Fishing Sessions;
• catch-count Flash;
• Trophy catch feedback;
• milestone progress Flash;
• milestone completion Bloom;
• subtle Journal unseen-milestone attention;
• lure-applied Flash;
• restrained lure-expiry attention.

Motion callbacks are presentation-only and do not run bag scans, recipe scans, Journal evaluation, Guide rebuilding, or gameplay actions.

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🌊 Fishing HUD Water Animation

The circular FishFry HUD now has an authored Water pool-swirl while the player is actively Fishing.

The effect:

• begins from the existing Fishing channel state;
• stops when Fishing ends, fails, or is interrupted;
• stops when the HUD is hidden;
• stops when leaving Circle mode;
• remains separate from the cast countdown ring.

The normal cast countdown remains visually authoritative.

No Fishing action is automated by the animation.

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🔥 Cook Fish Craft Feedback

Cook Fish now has a restrained authored Ember flame + smoke effect following Cooking craft updates that occur after a direct FishFry Cook action.

The effect is deliberately short-lived.

FishFry does not pretend it has a reliable continuous "Cooking active" state when the client does not provide one.

The animation reuses FishFry's centralized motion driver and does not create a new permanent animation loop.

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🎯 Mature HUD State Language Restored

The action HUD once again uses strong whole-ring state communication.

Instead of tiny secondary markers, HUD rings themselves communicate states such as:

• Ready
• Warning
• Orange
• Danger
• Grey
• Brand

This restores the mature FishFry HUD behavior for:

• Cast Fishing;
• Tackle Swap;
• Find Fish;
• Guide;
• lures;
• consumables;
• Cook Fish;
• Campfire.

Fishing cast urgency and resource/lure expiry once again use clear whole-ring progression and pulses.

The newer addon-window semantic color system remains intact.

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🪝 Lure and Aura State Hardening

Forever can restrict access to some aura and gameplay values.

FishFry now handles those states explicitly rather than treating unreadable data as zero or absent.

Changes include:

• guarded aura names, duration, expiration, and index data;
• lure timing migrated to the modern temporary-enchantment API when available;
• inaccessible timer state shown as ?;
• stale local countdown evidence cleared when the client says the state is restricted;
• lure-expiry motion suspended while the timer cannot be trusted.

This prevents FishFry from presenting guessed lure information as fact.

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🔒 Forever Restricted-Data Safety

A shared Forever restricted/inaccessible-value boundary has been added to the runtime.

FishFry now guards restricted values before:

• number conversion;
• string comparison;
• spell classification;
• item classification;
• Fishing cast/channel checks;
• Tackle busy-state checks;
• loot parsing.

Tooltip/item requirement handling also fails closed when the client will not expose enough readable information.

Fishing equipment with unreadable requirement evidence remains visible, but FishFry will not automatically choose it as the best item until that evidence becomes readable again.

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💬 Restricted Chat Safety

FishFry now respects Forever's Chat restriction state when the client exposes it.

Milestone Emotes prefer the modern chat path.

If Chat is restricted:

• automatic celebration remains local;
• manual Emote sharing declines locally;
• a failed send does not consume the 15-second manual cooldown.

Fishing loot parsing was also hardened so inaccessible loot text, links, quantities, or structured fields are ignored instead of being converted into fabricated progress.

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👤 Improved Forever Character Identity

Forever persistence now prefers the player's full available character identity rather than assuming the first character name is globally unique.

FishFry includes guarded migration from older character ownership keys for areas including:

• settings;
• Cooking;
• Journal;
• Tackle;
• Sessions;
• Sessions UI state.

The migration remains inside the existing FishFryDB database.

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🗺️ Fishing Snapshot

The minimap hover now provides a lightweight Fishing Snapshot.

It can show maintained FishFry state such as:

• Fishing / effective Fishing;
• equipped pole;
• active lure;
• zone;
• Guide context;
• current Session information;
• HUD state.

Snapshot refreshes only while visible and consumes already-maintained FishFry state rather than performing expensive bag, recipe, Journal, or Guide scans.

Restricted lure timing is displayed as unavailable rather than incorrectly becoming zero.

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⚙️ Options Reorganization

Options now contains five clear tabs:

FishFry | HUD | Keybinds | Sound | Sharing

A new dedicated HUD page now contains HUD-specific settings such as:

• HUD visibility and layout;
• individual HUD button visibility;
• cast timer;
• double-right-click cast;
• Fishing loot floaters;
• HUD tooltips;
• action flyout directions.

Sound now sits between Keybinds and Sharing.

The old horizontal separator directly below the Options tab row has also been removed.

Core FishFry settings, theme controls, Guide startup behavior, and Cook Fish maintenance remain on the FishFry page.

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📝 About Redesign

The About section has been fully rebuilt and kept current with the active release.

It now contains:

• Overview
• Feature Map
• Build & Scope
• Patch Notes

About uses its own independent page host instead of the old enclosing Guide-style parent box.

Additional fixes include:

• cards resize correctly around wrapped text;
• first-open layout performs a presentation-only reflow after WoW resolves font metrics;
• unsupported punctuation that produced square glyphs in WoW was replaced with safe text;
• content edges align with the About header card;
• the scrollbar aligns with the same right boundary;
• Overview metric cards fill the available width evenly.

The About content now identifies 1.2.4 as the current Forever release rather than describing the addon as an unfinished modernization checkpoint.

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🧱 Independent Page Surfaces

The remaining old-style parent boxes have been removed throughout FishFry.

Guide, Zone Info, Tackle, Cook Fish, and Options now use the same independent-surface philosophy already established by:

• Easy Wiki;
• Journal;
• Fishing Sessions;
• About.

Page cards are allowed to stand on their own instead of being visually trapped inside another giant enclosing card.

This makes the major FishFry pages read as one coherent interface.

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📐 Consistent Page Geometry

The main content pages now follow the same overall geometry.

Guide, Zone Info, Tackle, Cook Fish, and Options were widened from the older narrow legacy layout to the same modern footprint used by Sessions, Wiki, and Journal.

The scrollbar now occupies a dedicated right-side rail instead of reducing the usable width of the page content.

The vertical distance between the main navigation row and the first visible page element has also been normalized using Fishing Sessions as the reference.

Cards, rows, labels, and text across these pages now consume the available width consistently.

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📜 Filled Semantic Scrollbars

Guide, Zone Info, Tackle, Cook Fish, and Options now use the modern filled scrollbar treatment.

Both the thumb and its framing follow the page's semantic role:

• Guide / Zone Info - Chart
• Tackle - Water
• Cook Fish - Ember
• Options - Neutral

Scrollbar styling also responds correctly when switching FishFry themes.

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🖥️ Pixel-Stable Borders

FishFry's thin interface framing received a high-resolution rendering fix.

The addon previously used nominal one-unit borders, which could land between physical pixels depending on UI scale and window position.

Borders now resolve to approximately one physical screen pixel at the current effective scale.

Draggable FishFry windows are also snapped to the physical-pixel grid when restored or dropped.

This greatly reduces the disappearing or partially rendered top/bottom border behavior that could occur after moving the FishFry window.

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🧩 Cleaner Layering

FishFry's frame strata and levels were normalized instead of solving overlap problems by putting everything at extreme levels.

The intended stack is now:

• HUD on MEDIUM;
• FishFry windows/popouts on HIGH;
• keybind capture on DIALOG;
• actual tooltips and Snapshot surfaces on TOOLTIP.

Disabled controls still provide explanatory hover information where appropriate.

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🎨 Theme and Accessibility Hardening

FishFry's themes were audited against the new semantic interface.

Supported themes include:

• Ocean
• Arcane Violet
• Gilded Parchment
• Raid Command

Improvements include:

• better neutral framing across themes;
• improved Danger contrast in Gilded Parchment;
• clearer disabled controls;
• consistent selected-state markers;
• themed scrollbar refresh;
• cleaner semantic use of Water / Ember / Chart / Trophy / state colors.

Color is no longer the only way important selected or progress states are communicated.

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🧠 Performance and UI Architecture

A significant amount of the modernization happened under the hood.

FishFry now uses modular systems for areas such as:

• Theme;
• Widgets;
• Visual Language;
• Motion;
• Knowledge/Search;
• About;
• Journal;
• Easy Wiki;
• Fishing Sessions;
• Fishing Snapshot.

Heavy list surfaces use reusable rows where practical instead of constantly rebuilding large numbers of frames.

State-derived tooltips can refresh while visible without triggering full gameplay scans.

The historical core remains in place where changing it would risk stable Fishing, Tackle, Cooking, Guide, or secure-action behavior, while newer Forever surfaces are increasingly isolated into dedicated modules.

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🧹 Quick Start Removed

The separate Forever Quick Start splash/chooser introduced earlier in the beta cycle has been removed.

FishFry no longer opens a dedicated first-run chooser.

The associated branded Quick Start assets and module were also removed.

Old Quick Start SavedVariables are simply left inert rather than forcing a data reset.

Normal Guide and Starter Assist remain available through the regular FishFry interface.

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🗺️ TomTom and HandyNotes Protection Preserved

The optional integration protection introduced around the 1.2.0 line remains intact.

FishFry detects whether TomTom and HandyNotes are actually available.

Unavailable integration actions are disabled with explanation rather than pretending they will work.

Built-in waypoint/coordinate support remains available without either addon.

The existing ordered Guide route behavior, Route Entry handling, waypoint ownership, and TomTom safeguards remain intact throughout the 1.2.4 modernization.

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💾 SavedVariables and Upgrading

FishFry continues to use:

FishFryDB

There is no 1.2.4 database reset.

Where internal storage evolved during the 1.2.x development line, FishFry uses targeted non-destructive migrations rather than wiping existing progress.

This includes updates to areas such as:

• Fishing Sessions;
• character ownership;
• Journal state;
• Wiki state;
• Tackle state.

Existing milestone progress, character-specific Cooking knowledge, settings, and Fishing history are preserved wherever the underlying information remains valid.

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🎮 Manual Play Remains the Rule

None of these changes turn FishFry into a gameplay automation addon.

FishFry still does not:

• auto-fish;
• auto-loot;
• auto-cook;
• auto-buy;
• automate route movement;
• perform hidden gameplay actions.

Fishing, Cooking, tackle changes, item use, waypoints, and other gameplay interactions remain explicit player actions.

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🐟 FishFry 1.2.4

FishFry 1.2.4 represents the finished Forever interface foundation built across the 1.2.1, 1.2.2, and 1.2.3 development lines.

The result is a substantially more mature Forever Fishing companion with:

• a cleaner Guide;
• richer Zone Info;
• better Tackle management;
• a modern Journal;
• Easy Wiki;
• durable Fishing Records;
• explicit Fishing Sessions;
• a stronger HUD;
• authored Fishing and Cooking feedback;
• safer modern-client handling;
• consistent page/card geometry;
• and a unified GildedVellum visual language.

The next stage can build forward from this foundation instead of continuing to retrofit the old interface.