Bait And Bobber
| Bait And Bobber | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Type | Book |
| Location | Bookseller; Traveling Cart; Fishing Treasure Chests; Mayor's Manor; Mystery Boxes; Golden Mystery Boxes; Monsters; Crates and Barrels; Trees; Artifact Spots |
| Sell Price | 500g |
Bait And Bobber is the fishing skill book, and it is the one most players meet first, because the places it turns up are the places a new angler already spends their time. Reading it drops a lump of fishing experience straight into the skill, which is worth more in fishing than in any other trade: the green bar on the minigame widens with every level, so each level makes the next fish genuinely easier to land. Copies keep coming from treasure chests on the line, from boxes and barrels underground and from the Bookseller's table, and unlike a power book this one can be read again and again. Once every skill has been taken to its ceiling, the same reading turns into Mastery points instead. The Bookseller will also swap a copy for a generous pile of Deluxe Bait, which is sometimes the better deal for an angler who is already at level ten.
The in-game description reads: Read this to gain some fishing experience.
Overview
Fishing is the skill where early levels hurt the most. A low-level farmer fights a tiny catch bar against a fish that darts about, and the fix is simply experience. Each level widens the bar a little, and the milestones along the way open up the gear that makes the rest easy: Bait can be crafted at level two, Crab Pots at level three, a Recycling Machine at level four. Level five forces the choice between Fisher, which lifts the value of every fish, and Trapper, which makes crab pots cheap to build, and level ten branches again into Angler, Pirate, Mariner or Luremaster. A book read at the right moment can carry a farmer over one of those thresholds a season early.
Fishing itself supplies the book. Treasure chests hooked while reeling in are the likeliest route, and the golden chests found later are far more generous than the plain ones. Beyond the water, the book sits in the same rare drop pool as the other skill books: boxes and barrels smashed in the Mines, Skull Cavern and the Volcano Dungeon, artifact spots dug up with a hoe, trees shaken for seeds or felled outright, Mystery Boxes cracked open by Clint, and monsters killed anywhere, with Iridium Golems being the most likely of them by a wide margin. The Prize Machine in the Mayor's Manor hands one out as a possible late prize, and the Traveling Cart stocks it occasionally at a mark-up.
The Bookseller is the reliable route rather than the cheap one. He sets up for a single day twice a season on the field above JojaMart, his prices for the skill books vary from one visit to the next, and his stock is rolled fresh each time. He also trades in the other direction: handing him a copy of this book brings back a large stack of Deluxe Bait, which is the strongest ordinary bait in the game and keeps a row of crab pots or a long fishing session supplied for weeks.
Reading the book consumes it, as reading always does. Every read pours experience into fishing alone, so a stack of copies saved up can be spent in one evening to haul the skill several levels forward. Once all five skills have been maxed and the Mastery Cave in Cindersap Forest has opened, those same readings pay out in Mastery points, and the cheap skill books suddenly become one of the better ways to buy progress with gold.
Notes
Willy, who runs the Fish Shop on the beach and taught the farmer to cast in the first place, likes being given this one. Penny loves it as she loves every book. Elliott, writing in his cabin further along the sand, is pleased with it too, and Alex is not.
The book takes dye as a blue, both in the pots at Emily and Haley's house on 2 Willow Lane and through the spool of the Sewing Machine with a dyeable garment in the feed.
All Books
Every entry in this group, with its key details.
| Name | Image | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Animal Catalogue | 
|
2000g |
| Bait And Bobber | 
|
500g |
| Book Of Stars | 
|
2500g |
| Book of Mysteries | 
|
3000g |
| Combat Quarterly | 
|
500g |
| Dwarvish Safety Manual | 
|
1000g |
| Friendship 101 | 
|
3000g |
| Horse: The Book | 
|
1000g |
| Jack Be Nimble, Jack Be Thick | 
|
500g |
| Jewels Of The Sea | 
|
800g |
| Mapping Cave Systems | 
|
4000g |
| Mining Monthly | 
|
500g |
| Monster Compendium | 
|
2000g |
| Ol' Slitherlegs | 
|
1000g |
| Price Catalogue | 
|
1000g |
| Queen Of Sauce Cookbook | 
|
10000g |
| Raccoon Journal | 
|
1000g |
| Stardew Valley Almanac | 
|
500g |
| The Alleyway Buffet | 
|
3000g |
| The Art O' Crabbing | 
|
1000g |
| The Diamond Hunter | 
|
1000g |
| Treasure Appraisal Guide | 
|
500g |
| Way Of The Wind pt. 1 | 
|
5000g |
| Way Of The Wind pt. 2 | 
|
10000g |
| Woodcutter's Weekly | 
|
500g |
| Woody's Secret | 
|
500g |