Stardew Valley - Crab Pot Catches

Crab pots left in water overnight bring up shellfish, snails and the odd piece of junk. The Trapper profession makes the pots cheaper to bait.

Overview

This branch is the only fishing in the valley that happens while the farmer is asleep. A Crab Pot floated at the edge of water and loaded with bait is checked the next morning, and whatever walked into it overnight comes out: shellfish, crustaceans, snails, or a piece of rubbish. There is no cast, no bobber and no minigame, which makes the branch the steadiest fishing income in the game and the one that scales with how many pots a farm can be bothered to empty.

Ten creatures live in this branch and the water decides which. Salt water yields the crustaceans and bivalves, with the lobster at the top and the mussel at the bottom. Fresh water yields three smaller animals, a crayfish, a snail and a periwinkle, worth noticeably less each. Both lists count as fish for everything that matters: they fill the collection in the player menu, they earn fishing experience even when the pot came up with rubbish, and they count towards every one of the fishing achievements.

The whole branch hinges on one decision taken at the top of the fishing skill. Trapper makes pots cheaper to build, and its two final choices either stop the pots producing rubbish or stop them needing bait at all. Everything else in this branch is a footnote to that choice.

Groups

The saltwater seven are the money. A lobster is worth four mussels, with the crab close behind it, then the shrimp and the two clams in the middle and the oyster and mussel at the bottom. Four of the seven also wash up as beach forage, which is why a farm often owns a drawer of clams and cockles long before it owns a pot.

The freshwater three are the volume. A crayfish is the pick of them, a snail is close behind, and a periwinkle is the cheapest creature in the branch by a wide margin. Their value is not in the shipping bin but in what they turn into, because a cheap fish is the perfect feedstock for fertiliser.

Order

Pots arrive early. The recipe appears at the third level of fishing, and Willy sells finished pots at the same point for fifteen hundred gold each. In a first Spring the materials are the cheaper route, and the Trapper profession halves what they cost. From the second year onwards raw materials cost more than they did, while the shop price stays where it is, so buying from Willy overtakes crafting even for a trapper.

Three pots also arrive free with the Crab Pot scroll in the Fish Tank at the Community Center, which is the usual way a first-year farm gets started without spending anything, and one more turns up as a prize at the Trout Derby.

The profession choice lands at the tenth level. Mariner removes rubbish from every pot and flattens the odds so each creature is equally likely, which in salt water means the lobster appears as often as the mussel. Luremaster removes the daily baiting instead. Most farms are better served by Mariner, because bait is cheap and a pot that always holds a creature is worth more than a pot that fills itself.

Best

Put the pots in the ocean if the goal is gold. The saltwater list carries the two most valuable creatures in the branch and a higher average, and the Beach is a short walk from the farm. Put them in fresh water if the goal is fertiliser or fishing experience, since the three freshwater creatures are cheap and plentiful and the pots can sit in a Farm Pond where they are emptied on the way to the fields.

Bait is where the real ranking lives. Deluxe Bait lifts every catch to silver quality, which is a flat increase on everything the branch produces. Wild Bait adds a quarter chance of doubling the catch. Any Targeted Bait cuts the rubbish, and Targeted Bait aimed at Crab Pot creatures cuts it further still, down to a small fraction of what a plain pot suffers. A farmer without the Mariner profession should never run plain bait once the better kinds are available.

Locations

Pots work in the ocean at the Beach, in the river and the lake, in farm ponds, and in every underground pool except the ones inside The Mines. A pot dropped in a mine pool disappears for good on leaving the floor, which is an expensive lesson. Town fountains refuse pots outright.

Uses

The Fish Tank's Crab Pot scroll at the Community Center is filled entirely from this branch, which makes a handful of pots the cheapest way to close a room that otherwise needs seasonal fish.

Cooking is the branch's biggest customer. Eight of the ten creatures are ingredients, and the dishes they make are good ones: the crab becomes Crab Cakes, which carry a long speed and defence buff, the lobster becomes Lobster Bisque with its long fishing buff, the snail becomes Escargot, the clam becomes Chowder and the shrimp becomes a cocktail. Any of them becomes Sashimi or a Maki Roll at a pinch.

The cheapest catches help the fields instead. Quality Fertilizer is made from a fish and sap, so a pond full of periwinkles converts directly into better crop quality. Fish ponds take these creatures too and produce roe, which a Preserves Jar ages into something worth several times the original animal.

Prices

The branch pays in small, reliable sums rather than in windfalls. A freshwater pot averages a little under fifty gold a day once recycled rubbish is counted, and an ocean pot a little over it. Converting everything cheap into Sashimi and taking the Mariner profession lifts those figures by roughly half again, and The Art O' Crabbing adds a further quarter on top.

Strategy

Treat the pots as a morning route rather than a project. Ten pots along one stretch of water are emptied and rebaited in under a minute, and the same ten pots left for a week are ten catches, not seventy. Keeping bait selected in hand while emptying them rebaits each one on the spot, which also stops the pot being picked up by accident.

Let the branch feed the fields and the kitchen before the shipping bin. Almost everything here is worth more as fertiliser, as a cooked dish or as Aged Roe than as a raw sale, and the cheap freshwater animals are the ones where that gap is widest.

Notes

Emptying a pot gives fishing experience whether it held a lobster or a broken pair of glasses, which makes a row of pots the least demanding way to push the fishing skill upwards in a farm's first year.

The creatures here arrive in the Fish collection only when they come out of a pot or off a rod. A clam picked up off the sand or a crab taken from a dead Rock Crab is still a clam and a crab, but it is not a catch.