Guide
Fishing
Rods, waters, fish banks, prize fish, serpents, bottles and sunken wrecks.
Casting
- Walk into water with a rod equipped to cast. Each cast wears the rod by 1.
- Rods: Fishing Pole (tier 0), Willow Rod (1), Ironwood Rod (2).
- Lava can only be fished with a tier 2 rod (Ironwood). Lesser rods "would burn to ash".
- Each water has a minimum skill. Its maximum is the minimum + 40.
- Success is the standard curve (20% at the minimum, up to 95% at the maximum), plus 3% per rod tier, capped at 95%. The rod bonus doesn't apply below the minimum.
- Below the minimum, a failed cast scares the fish off and uses up one catch from the stretch.
Waters
Each zone's water has its own table. Open sea uses "ocean".
| Water | Min skill | Fish (skill needed, weight) | Prize fish | Serpent |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Havenbrook Meadows | 10 | River Trout (0, 10), Silver Perch (15, 4) | Golden Trout | River Serpent |
| Whisperwood | 10 | River Trout (0, 5), Silver Perch (15, 10) | Moon Perch | River Serpent |
| Stonehollow Hills | 25 | Silver Perch (15, 4), Stone Carp (30, 10) | Elder Carp | River Serpent |
| Mirefen Swamp | 35 | Mire Eel (40, 10), Stone Carp (30, 4) | Great Mire Eel | Bog Serpent |
| Ocean | 40 | Sea Bass (45, 10), Silver Perch (15, 3) | Sailfin | Sea Serpent |
| Frostspire Peaks | 55 | Ice Pike (60, 10), Sea Bass (45, 3) | Glacier Pike | Frost Serpent |
| The Emberlands | 60 | Sea Bass (45, 6), Ghost Koi (70, 6) | Sailfin | Sea Serpent |
| Shadowmarch | 65 | Ghost Koi (70, 10), Mire Eel (40, 4) | Phantom Koi | Bog Serpent |
| Lava | 85 (Ironwood Rod) | Magma Carp (85, 10) | Phoenix Carp | Magma Serpent |
Fish banks and refill
- Each 8×8 stretch of water holds a fixed number of catches, between 6 and 12. The number is set per stretch by the world seed.
- Each successful catch, and each cast that scares the fish off, uses one.
- When the stretch is empty, you see "Fished out". It fills up again 5 minutes after its current cycle began, so moving to another stretch of water is the usual answer.
What bites
On a successful cast, the game checks these in order and stops at the first that happens:
- Wreck: if you're within 3 tiles of a wreck you marked, there's a 35% chance to haul up its chest. Otherwise your hook "scrapes something heavy".
- Serpent: a 1.2% chance to wake the water's serpent, if its level is no more than 6 above your character level. You catch nothing that cast.
- Message in a bottle: needs Fishing 30. The chance is 0.5% + 0.01% per skill point. It only happens while your marked wrecks plus the bottles you carry come to fewer than 3.
- Junk: 12% − 0.1% per skill point, never below 2%. The junk is an Old Boot (weight 5), a Pine Log (3), Silkweed (3) or a Bone (2).
- Pearl: a 3% chance of a Glimmer Pearl.
- Prize fish: only when your skill is at least 20 above the water's minimum. The chance is 0.4% + 0.02% per point above the minimum. An innkeeper pays well for prize fish.
- A fish: drawn by weight from the fish your skill allows. You get a second fish with a chance of min(0.6, (skill − minimum)/80) + 0.06 × rod tier, capped at 90%.
Messages in bottles and sunken treasure
- Read a bottle on the surface to mark a wreck. It lands on a water tile with walkable shore, 18–48 tiles away. The note gives the distance and a compass direction, and the wreck appears on your map.
- You can have 3 wrecks marked at most.
- Fish within 3 tiles of the mark to haul the chest up. Each successful cast there has a 35% chance.
- The chest's level is Fishing × 0.55, kept between 6 and 55. It holds:
- gold: a random amount from 8 × level to 20 × level + 20
- two rolls of treasure loot for that level
- 4 Glimmer Pearls
- a 20% chance of a named unique