Deluxe Bait

Deluxe Bait

Type	Tackle
Location	Fish Shop; Crafting; Fishing Treasure Chests; Deluxe Worm Bin; Bookseller; Trout Derby; SquidFest
Recipe	Fishing (Level 4)
Sell Price	1g

Deluxe Bait is the fastest bait in the valley and the easiest of the advanced kinds to keep in stock. It takes two thirds off the time a fish spends thinking about the hook, and it widens the fishing bar by a small but genuine amount, so the minigame itself gets kinder as well. The ingredients are plain Bait and Moss, both of which pile up on their own, and a Deluxe Worm Bin turns out a fresh batch every morning. Dropped into a Crab Pot it lifts the catch to silver quality and cuts the junk, which is the only bait that improves what a trap is worth. For most farms it is the bait that stays on the rod from the day the recipe unlocks.

Recipe

These are the ingredients one batch needs.

Name	Image	Amount
Bait		5
Moss		2

Use

The bite speed is the headline. Fish commit to the hook noticeably sooner than with plain Bait, and over a full day of casting that adds up to a sizeable pile of extra fish. The gain is largest in slow water, where the base wait is long, and on days spent grinding out a quest count or filling the collection.

The wider bar is the quieter half of the effect. Twelve extra pixels is not much on its own, but the fishing bar starts small and grows with the Fishing skill, so the bonus matters proportionally more early on. It also makes a perfect catch easier to hold, which matters when the goal is quality rather than quantity.

In a Crab Pot the bait does something no other kind manages: it raises every catch to silver. Shellfish sell for a quarter more at silver, so a beach lined with pots earns more for the same walk. It also trims the rubbish a pot brings up, though the Mariner profession already does that job and makes the quality boost the only reason to use it.

Upgrades

Fishing level four teaches the recipe, which is early enough that most farmers unlock it in the first summer. Five pieces of plain Bait and two pieces of Moss make a batch of five. Moss grows on tree trunks and comes off with any tool, so the real cost is the Bug Meat behind the plain Bait.

Willy stocks it at the Fish Shop from the same level, at a price that makes buying in bulk a poor idea once the recipe is known. The Deluxe Worm Bin is the better answer: once it is built, it hands over a few pieces each morning for nothing, and several bins side by side cover even heavy use.

It also turns up as a reward. Completing the River Fish Bundle in the Fish Tank pays out a large stack, the Bookseller trades a pile of it for a Bait And Bobber, and both the Trout Derby and SquidFest hand out bundles of it in their lower prize tiers. Fishing treasure chests start holding it once Fishing level six is reached.

Notes

Nothing beats Deluxe Bait for pure bite speed, so the choice between baits comes down to whether a special effect is worth losing that speed. Magic Bait is worth it when a fish is out of season, and Challenge Bait is worth it when the goal is volume. On an ordinary day at the river or the pier, Deluxe Bait is the default.

A rod enchanted with Preserving stretches a stack to roughly double its length, which turns the Deluxe Worm Bin's morning output into more than a day's worth of fishing.

The pieces are worth almost nothing at the shipping bin, so a surplus is better left in a chest by the water than sold.

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