Fishing
| Fishing | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Type | Mechanic |
Fishing is the valley's second economy. A rod costs almost nothing, the water never runs dry, and a decent spot pays from the first week of Spring to the last day of Winter. The work splits in two: a bobber sits in the water until something takes it, and then a small bar at the left of the screen decides whether the catch is landed. Crab pots run the same skill without any of the reflexes, which makes fishing the one trade on the farm that can be levelled overnight. Everything Willy sells makes one of those two halves easier, and the skill itself widens the catching bar until fish that once felt impossible come in cleanly. Treasure chests, museum artifacts, hats and framed prints all come out of the same water, so a long afternoon on a dock pays in more than fish.
Overview
Casting starts with a held button and a meter that shows how far the line will travel. Releasing it throws the bobber. Nudging the movement keys while the line is still in the air shifts the landing point sideways by a tile, which is the only way an awkward patch of bubbles gets reached at all. Skill sets the ceiling on distance and the meter decides how much of that ceiling a cast uses, and a cast that fills the meter is labelled as a maximum without earning anything extra for it. Where the bobber settles is what counts, not how far the line went, so standing on the lip of the water and throwing across the widest part of a river beats a long cast down a narrow channel.
A bite announces itself three ways at once. The bobber jerks, a sound plays, and an exclamation mark appears over the farmer's head. Pressing the button then hooks the fish and opens the catching bar. Waiting too long loses the bite, and the miss costs more than the time: the game shortens the wait for the first nibble of each cast, so a fumbled hook makes everything after it slower.
The catching bar is a green block inside a tall vertical strip, with the fish as a small icon moving up and down it. Holding the button lifts the block, letting go drops it, and the block gathers momentum fast, which is why overshooting is the usual way a fish is lost. Keeping the fish inside the green fills the progress meter on the right, and letting it slip out drains the meter until the fish breaks the line. The block also rebounds off the floor of the strip unless a Lead Bobber is fitted, and that bounce throws away more catches than the fish themselves do.
Block length is the one number worth tracking. The strip is a fixed height, the green starts out covering well under a fifth of it, and every fishing level adds a slice. A Cork Bobber, Deluxe Bait, a dish eaten before the first cast and the Master enchantment from the Forge each add their own slice on top, and the whole stack tops out at roughly half the strip. The Training Rod cheats in the other direction. For anyone still short of the middle of the skill it pretends the farmer has reached level five purely for the purpose of drawing the block, so the earliest minigames are far kinder than they ought to be.
Each fish also carries a movement pattern, and reading it before the block moves is most of the skill. Smooth fish drift steadily and forgive a late reaction, which is what makes Carp and Sunfish the right place to learn. Mixed fish alternate calm stretches with sudden jerks, as Pike and Red Snapper do. Sinkers accelerate downwards and settle low in the strip, so the block wants to be kept low with the Lava Eel and the Ice Pip. Floaters do the opposite and ride near the top, which is how Ghostfish and Flounder behave. Darting fish are the real problem: Catfish and Lingcod swing a long way in both directions and reverse without warning, and the swing grows with the fish's difficulty. The legendary fish combine a brutal difficulty with an erratic pattern, which is why they are left until the block has been stretched as far as it will go.
Difficulty is a separate figure from the pattern, and it decides how hard the fish pulls against the block. Higher difficulty also raises the experience a catch pays, so the awkward fish reward the trouble twice over.
A catch counts as perfect when the fish never once leaves the green. Two things follow. A silver fish steps up to gold and a gold fish steps up to iridium, which is the only route to iridium quality apart from a Quality Bobber. The experience is multiplied as well, and by enough that perfect catches on hard fish level the skill several times faster than scrappy ones on easy fish. A Treasure Hunter buys a little slack, since the fish is allowed to leave the block while the chest is being reeled in and the catch still counts.
A chest icon drops into the strip a second or two into most minigames, carrying a small meter of its own that fills while the block sits over it. The fish still has to be landed, so going after the chest with the progress meter already low throws away both. The safe order is to bank most of the fish's progress first, slide across to the chest, then come back before the meter runs out. A Magnet, a Treasure Hunter or the Pirate profession each raise how often a chest appears at all, and a lucky day nudges it further.
Claiming the fishing Mastery changes what those chests hold. They start appearing in gold, and a golden chest carries more items and a far better table: iridium bars, the power books, Fairy Dust, Stardrop Tea, a Pearl, seasonal seeds and ready-cooked fishing dishes almost all live there and nowhere else in the water. The same Mastery hands over the Advanced Iridium Rod and the recipe for Challenge Bait, which triples a perfect catch and shrinks the haul for every slip.
Bubbles are worth walking for. Fish bite several times faster inside them, and the game treats the bobber as sitting a tile further out than it really is, which cuts the rubbish and lifts the odds on the harder fish. Only one patch sits in an area at a time, and a few of them land where no cast can reach. A frenzy is the rarer version: the bubbles lock onto one species, a message names the fish and the place, and only that fish bites there for at least ninety minutes of valley time. A frenzy is the cheapest way to fill a pond or a bundle slot in a single sitting.
The rods form a straight ladder. The Training Rod only hooks common fish and hands back minimum-size, plain-quality catches. The Bamboo Pole casts and nothing more, and Willy posts one to the farm early on. The Fiberglass Rod accepts bait, which is the biggest single jump in the chain, since bait roughly halves the wait between casts. The Iridium Rod adds a tackle slot, and tackle is where the minigame gets tuned. The Advanced Iridium Rod takes two tackles at once; two different ones always combine, while two of the same kind combine only sometimes.
Bait ranges from cheap to strange. Plain Bait speeds up bites and cuts the rubbish, and a Worm Bin on the farm turns it out for nothing. Wild Bait, learned from Linus, can bring two fish up on one cast. A Magnet leaves bite speed alone and goes hunting for chests instead. Deluxe Bait shortens the wait furthest and lengthens the green block as a bonus. Magic Bait ignores season, weather and hour, which turns one pond into everything that pond can hold. Targeted Bait, made in a Bait Maker from a single fish, pulls that one species out of the water almost to the exclusion of everything else.
Tackle does the fiddly work. A Spinner shortens the wait and a Dressed Spinner shortens it twice as much. A Cork Bobber lengthens the green block. A Trap Bobber slows the rate at which the progress meter drains, which buys back mistakes. A Lead Bobber stops the block bouncing off the bottom. A Barbed Hook makes the block cling towards the fish. A Quality Bobber lifts the grade of whatever comes up. A Sonar Bobber names what is about to bite before the hook is set, which saves a great many wasted minigames when one particular fish is wanted. Every piece wears out with use, and on a two-slot rod the two wear down separately.
Crab pots are fishing with the reflexes taken out. A pot goes in the shallows of any water, takes a piece of bait and has something in it by morning. Each collection pays experience whatever came up, rubbish included, so a long line of pots levels the skill quietly in the background. Salt water gives Clam, Cockle, Mussel, Oyster, Shrimp, Crab and Lobster, while fresh water gives Crayfish, Snail and Periwinkle. A pot ignores the special effects of fancy bait, so the cheapest bait in the chest is the correct one.
The skill pays out in small steps on the way up. Casting distance grows at several points along it. The bait recipe and the Fiberglass Rod come early, crab pots and the Dish O' The Sea next, then Deluxe Bait with the Worm Bin and the Recycling Machine. Partway up the Iridium Rod arrives with its first tackles, then the Cork Bobber and the Treasure Hunter, then the Barbed Hook and the Dressed Spinner, and Seafoam Pudding and the Magnet at the top. Reading a copy of Bait And Bobber or the Book Of Stars adds a lump of experience outright, best kept back until a level bar is almost at its mark.
The profession choice splits fishing into two trades. Fisher raises what every fish fetches and leads on either to Angler, which raises it much further, or to Pirate, which doubles how often a chest turns up. Trapper cuts the cost of building pots and leads on either to Mariner, which stops pots pulling up rubbish, or to Luremaster, which stops them needing bait. A farm selling fish takes the first branch, a farm filling a museum takes Pirate, and a farm running a wall of pots along the beach takes the second.
Energy and the clock both favour the angler. A cast costs a little stamina and the cost falls as the skill climbs, so a late-game farmer can fish most of a day on breakfast. In a save played alone the clock stops while the minigame runs, which means the catching itself is free and only the casting burns daylight. Buffs keep ticking through that frozen minute, though, and anything hostile nearby keeps swinging, so fishing the Secret Woods pond with slimes about is a poor idea. In a shared save the clock never stops at all.
Location
What bites is decided by the body of water, the season, the hour and the weather, and the body of water matters more than the map labels suggest. The mountain lake north of town is the calm option and the usual classroom, holding Carp, Chub and Bullhead, with Sturgeon in the warm seasons. The river through Pelican Town and the river in Cindersap Forest draw on different lists despite being the same river. The ocean at The Beach holds the widest spread and the most awkward swimmers, which is why it punishes an early visit, and the pier there puts deep water within a short cast.
The rest of the valley hides short, rich lists. The pools inside the mines hold Ghostfish and Stonefish, then the Ice Pip further down and the Lava Eel at the bottom. The desert pond holds Sandfish and Scorpion Carp, and the water there is shallow enough that neither can ever be caught at full size. The Sewers hold Mutant Carp among endless Carp. The Witch's Swamp holds Void Salmon and the Mutant Bug Lair holds Slimejack. The Secret Woods pond holds Woodskip in every season. The submarine at the Night Market opens a few nights of deep water for Blobfish, Spook Fish and Midnight Squid. Ginger Island adds Blue Discus to its rivers, Lionfish to its surf and Stingray to the Pirate Cove.
Distance from land is the quiet variable behind all of it. The game counts how many tiles of open water lie between the bobber and the nearest walkable surface, caps the count at five, and uses it to decide how much rubbish comes up, how large and how good the fish is, which species are possible at all and how rich a Treasure Chest turns out. Piers, stone bridges and small islands all count as land, while a wooden footbridge does not. Water colour is a poor guide to any of it, since the dark water beside the pier sits right against it and the pale shallows at the east end of the beach are as far out as the count goes.
A handful of fish ignore the rule that any tile will do. The legendary fish each sit on particular tiles, in particular water, in one season, and each comes up once in a save. Bubbles bend that slightly, because the extra tile they add can bring one within reach of a cast that would otherwise fall short.
Uses
Fish feed the kitchen before they feed the shipping bin, and the kitchen feeds fishing straight back. Willy posts recipes out as his friendship grows, and the dishes that come back raise the skill itself: Chowder and Trout Soup nudge it, Escargot and Fish Taco lift it further, Fish Stew, Lobster Bisque and the Dish O' The Sea further again, and Seafoam Pudding most of all. Cooking one of those before walking to the water is the cheapest upgrade in the game, and a plate prepared with Qi Seasoning pushes the buff higher still. The chef at the Desert Festival will fold a Shrimp into a dish that stacks on top of whatever was eaten at home.
A Fish Pond turns one fish into a standing crop. Sturgeon fill a pond with Roe that ages into Caviar, Lava Eel add ore and the occasional cooked dish, Super Cucumber add iridium and essence, and a Rainbow Trout pond now and then hands over a Prismatic Shard. Collecting from a pond pays fishing experience as well, so a row of ponds behind the farmhouse levels the skill with no casting at all.
The Community Center asks for fish by name, and the Fish Tank is the room that most often holds a farm back, because several of its slots open for one season or one kind of weather only. The Crab Pot Bundle is the exception. Four of its items can be picked off the beach and the crab can come out of the mines, so the room will move before a rod has been upgraded, and finishing that bundle also puts three pots in the farmer's hands whatever the skill level.
The museum takes its share from the water too. Fishing treasure chests turn up artifacts in any weather and any season, which makes a wet day on a dock a fair substitute for a morning of digging, and the same chests hold the Lost Books the library collects, along with geodes, gems and ore.
The rubbish has a use too. Broken glasses, broken CDs, soggy newspapers and driftwood all go through a Recycling Machine and come back out as usable materials, which quietly makes even the worst spot in the valley pay its way.
Certain stretches of water hand over things that are not fish at all. A cast into the fountain beside the Community Center brings up a Decorative Trash Can. The pond outside the Spa gives a framed print in any season but Winter. The back room of Willy's shop gives a Lifesaver, the Secret Woods pond a Wall Basket, and the southern pond in the desert a Pyramid Decal. Ginger Island adds a Frog Hat from Gourmand's cave, a Gourmand Statue from the Pirate Cove, and a Squirrel Figurine and a Foliage Print from its rivers, with a framed diagram waiting in the Volcano Caldera. The southern tip of Cindersap Forest gives an Iridium Krobus to anyone who has pushed the skill well past its natural ceiling.
The collections menu keeps score and the achievements follow it. A modest spread of different species earns the first, a wider spread the second, a hundred catches of any kind the third, and the complete list the last, which is one of the requirements a Perfection run cannot avoid. Green Algae, White Algae, Seaweed and the jellies all count towards those totals, which is a relief on the days when nothing else bites.
Notes
Inventory space is the commonest way a good session goes wrong. A full bag turns a Treasure Chest into a menu that has to be emptied by hand, and closing that menu early throws away whatever is still in it. A spare slot or two also leaves room for the algae and seaweed that come up constantly, either of which can be eaten on the spot for a little energy back.
The evening forecast is part of the preparation. Several of the most valuable fish bite only in rain, so the television decides where the next morning is spent. Selling the day's catch without checking the Community Center first is the other common regret, since a bundle slot that wanted one particular fish may not come round again for a year.
The collections menu records the longest example of each species, and a perfect catch is what sets a record, because a hooked fish shrinks a little for every moment it spends not being reeled in.
Both of the valley's contests behave differently from ordinary fishing. The clock keeps running through the minigame at the Stardew Valley Fair and at the Festival of Ice, and no treasure chests appear in either, so the habit of pausing to think does not carry over.
All Mechanics
Every entry in this group, with its key details.
