Magic Bait
| Magic Bait | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Type | Tackle |
| Location | Qi's Walnut Room for 5 |
| Recipe | Qi's Walnut Room for 20 |
| Sell Price | 1g |
Magic Bait tears up the fishing calendar. With it on the rod, any fish that belongs to the water being cast into can be hooked, whatever the season, whatever the hour and whatever the weather. A Sunfish in a snowstorm, a Walleye on a dry summer afternoon, a Catfish at noon: all of them become possible. The price is paid in Qi Gems rather than gold, so the bait belongs to a save that has reached Ginger Island and worked through Mr Qi's challenges. For anyone chasing the last few gaps in the fish collection, or a Legendary Fish that only shows up in one season, it is the item that ends the waiting.
Recipe
These are the ingredients one batch needs.
| Name | Image | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Radioactive Ore | 
|
1 |
| Bug Meat | 
|
3 |
Use
The water still decides which fish exist. Magic Bait only lifts the requirements of season, time and weather; it does not move a river fish into the mountain lake. Casting into the ocean at the beach with Magic Bait on the line opens the whole ocean list at once, and casting into the forest pond opens the pond list. The fish that come up are chosen from that full list at random, so a particular target still takes patience.
The reach extends to the strangest corners of the game. The fish that normally appear only during the Night Market can be caught at any time of year from the south-western corner of the beach. Each of the Legendary Fish can be hooked out of season in its own spot, which removes the once-a-year window that otherwise makes them so awkward.
Fish bite at the same pace as they do with plain Bait, so Magic Bait buys access rather than speed. Pairing it with a Curiosity Lure is the usual approach for rare targets, since the lure raises the odds of the unusual fish inside the pool that the bait has just opened. In a Crab Pot it does nothing special, because shellfish ignore the seasons anyway.
Upgrades
Mr Qi's Walnut Room, behind the locked door on Ginger Island, is where Magic Bait begins. The shop there sells a stack of twenty for a small handful of Qi Gems, and it sells the recipe outright for a much larger handful. Buying the recipe is the better long-term deal for anyone who intends to fish seriously, since the bait then costs materials instead of gems.
Each craft takes one piece of Radioactive Ore and three pieces of Bug Meat and returns five pieces of bait. Radioactive Ore is the awkward half, since it belongs to the deepest late-game mining, while Bug Meat is free in any bug-filled corridor. That imbalance is why many farmers buy ready-made stacks early on and only start crafting once the ore piles up.
Reaching the Walnut Room at all means collecting a hundred Golden Walnuts across Ginger Island and opening the door above the shore, so Magic Bait is effectively a reward for finishing the island.
Notes
Magic Bait and the fish collection go together. Anyone who missed a seasonal fish in year one would otherwise wait a full year for another chance; with Magic Bait the gap can be closed in an afternoon. The same goes for the Fish Smoker and the Fish Pond, both of which are far easier to supply once any fish in the water is fair game on any day.
It is an expensive bait, so the usual habit is to keep Deluxe Bait on the rod for ordinary days and switch to Magic Bait only when a specific out-of-season fish is wanted.
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 |