There’s that old joke about Old School RuneScape players spending literal days on end chopping down trees. Chop, chop, chop; crash – if a tree did fall in the woods, there’d be an OSRS fan around to hear it. One player, however, has forgone the land for the sea, and has instead spent their time grinding their way up to 99 fishing by only catching shrimp and anchovies – two of the MMO’s most common fish. Is he okay? Not 100% sure. Am I impressed? Absolutely.
Posting both on X and Reddit, Robert ‘Bosby’ confirms that they’ve been at this for two years and three months, taking us back to May 11, 2024. They’ve managed to catch a colossal 275,196 raw shrimp and 257,064 raw anchovies, worth around, by their calculations, 9,523,068 in-game gold. In terms of XP, they estimate that they made “something like 3,000” per hour, with the 99 requirement being 13,034,431. There’s a whole mathematical formula on the OSRS Wiki, and I’m not clever enough to use it, so I’ll take their word on it. “Time played: 4,304 hours. Time wasted: 4,304 hours,” they write. I can’t help but disagree with that last part.
The account – aptly named OnlyShrimp99 – “was a joke idea in my friend group for years before I finally made it. I started out thinking it would just be something funny to do and ended up having the dedication to see it through.” They go on to state that, since making OnlyShrimp99, they’ve “started a new job, got married, and made lots of friends.”
“Time to cook them all for 99 cooking,” reads one Reddit response. “Shrimply insane,” says another. “Might become the meta,” says my OSRS-addicted friend. But perhaps the most vindicating response of all comes from Jagex itself, which quoted a post from Dexerto, writing: “Congrats on the only small net 99 Fishing, Bosby! Our data team has verified your accomplishment.” Attached is a very cute photo of an OSRS shrimp at a computer, to which Bosby responds, “YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME.”
I love when people do silly things: it brings a smile to my face, and makes my job a joy. I’m equally as happy when developers recognize little achievements like this – Larian did it with the duo that’s killing everyone and stuffing them in a box in BG3; thankfully this is a lot less violent (unless you’re a shrimp, I guess).
I do wonder what Bosby will choose to level next – the cooking path seems like an easy one, but why go the easy route? Perhaps farming; there are cute animals there. Or even hunting – basically fishing on land. We’ll have to wait and see, but either way, this is quite the achievement.