Bait (item)

Bait (item)

Type	Tackle
Location	Fish Shop; Crafting; Fishing Treasure Chests; Worm Bin
Recipe	Fishing (Level 2)
Sell Price	1g

Plain Bait is the workhorse of the bait slot and the first fishing upgrade that costs almost nothing. A single piece of Bug Meat, scraped off a grub in the mines, presses into a handful of it. Loaded onto a rod it halves the wait before a fish nibbles, and it quietly trims the number of soggy newspapers and Broken Glasses that come up instead of fish. It is also the standard filling for a Crab Pot, where a few pieces each morning keep a line of traps earning. Later baits do cleverer things, but plain Bait stays useful for years because the supply is endless and a Worm Bin makes it while the farmer sleeps.

Recipe

These are the ingredients one batch needs.

Name	Image	Amount
Bug Meat		1

Use

Halving the wait before a nibble sounds modest, and on a single cast it is. Across a whole rainy afternoon it is the difference between a dozen fish and twenty. The effect matters most at low Fishing levels, when the bar is small and every cast already takes several attempts to land. It also lowers the chance of hooking rubbish, which saves the slow business of hauling up a broken CD and then throwing it away.

A Crab Pot takes one piece and works through the night. Plain Bait is the sensible choice for pots: the fancier kinds raise the odds a little, and they are far better spent on the rod, where their effects actually show. A farm with ten pots along the beach gets through bait quickly, which is reason enough to keep a Worm Bin running beside them.

Only a rod with a bait slot can hold it, so the Bamboo Pole and the Training Rod are left out. The Fiberglass Rod is the first rod that can take a piece, and bait keeps working all the way up to the Advanced Iridium Rod.

Upgrades

The recipe arrives with Fishing level two, and it is unusually generous: one piece of Bug Meat yields five pieces of Bait. Willy stocks it at the Fish Shop for a handful of gold a piece from the same level, which is worth it only in a hurry, since the ingredient is free in practice. A Worm Bin produces several pieces each morning without any input, and fishing treasure chests often hold a stack. The Traveling Cart sometimes offers it at an absurd mark-up that no one should pay.

Bug Meat is the limiting factor, and the deeper mine floors in the twenties are the best place to gather it, where grubs and flies crowd the corridors. The Mutant Bug Lair under the sewers is better still for anyone with the Dark Talisman, since it is wall-to-wall bugs and can be cleared repeatedly.

Plain Bait is also the base for something better. Five pieces and two pieces of Moss craft into Deluxe Bait once Fishing level four is reached, so a Worm Bin and a few mossy trees together turn an endless trickle of cheap bait into the fastest bait in the game.

Notes

A rod enchanted with Preserving at the Volcano Forge gives every nibble a half chance of leaving the piece on the rod, which stretches a stack a long way and makes a morning's fishing almost free.

The dye pots at 2 Willow Lane, in Emily and Haley's house, accept Bait as a red dye, which is a cheap way to colour a shirt red without spending a flower or a fruit.

Nobody in the valley wants Bait as a present, and the sell price is so low that shipping a full stack barely registers. It belongs in a chest by the water, not in the shipping bin.

All Tackle and Bait

Every entry in this group, with its key details.

Name	Image	Price
Bait		-
Bait (item)		1g
Barbed Hook		500g
Challenge Bait		1g
Cork Bobber		250g
Curiosity Lure		500g
Deluxe Bait		1g
Dressed Spinner		500g
Lead Bobber		150g
Magic Bait		1g
Magnet		15g
Quality Bobber		300g
Sonar Bobber		250g
Spinner		250g
Tackle	-	-
Targeted Bait		0.1 × Fish Price
Trap Bobber		200g
Treasure Hunter		250g
Wild Bait		15g