Quality Bobber

Quality Bobber

Type	Tackle
Location	Crafting
Recipe	"Juicy Bugs Wanted!" Special Order
Sell Price	300g

The Quality Bobber turns an ordinary catch into a better one. Every fish landed with it fitted comes out one quality step higher than it would otherwise have been, so a plain fish becomes silver, a silver becomes gold and a gold becomes iridium. Aside from landing a perfect catch, it is the only way to pull an iridium fish out of the water at all, which makes it the tackle that fishing money is built on. Willy teaches the recipe as thanks for the "Juicy Bugs Wanted!" special order, and no shop in the valley stocks it. A Copper Bar, a pile of Sap and five Solar Essence make one.

Recipe

These are the ingredients one batch needs.

Name	Image	Amount
Copper Bar		1
Sap		20
Solar Essence		5

Use

Quality decides price, and the gaps are wide. Silver is worth a quarter more than plain, gold half again, and iridium double. Fitting the Quality Bobber therefore raises the value of every fish on the rod without changing anything about how the minigame plays, which is a rare kind of free money.

It also makes the Angler profession worth far more, since that bonus is a percentage of a sale price the bobber has already inflated. Cooking recipes that pay by the quality of their ingredients benefit in the same way.

A perfect catch raises quality on its own, and the two effects combine, which is how iridium fish become routine rather than exceptional. Pairing the bobber with a Trap Bobber or Deluxe Bait, both of which make a clean catch easier to achieve, is the usual way to make that happen reliably.

On an Advanced Iridium Rod a pair of Quality Bobbers lifts the catch two steps instead of one, which takes a plain fish straight to gold and a silver one to iridium. That is one of the strongest stacking results in the game, and many farmers fit two Quality Bobbers as their only tackle.

Upgrades

The route to the recipe is a special order rather than a Fishing level. Willy pins up "Juicy Bugs Wanted!" on the board, asking for a hundred pieces of Bug Meat inside a week, dropped into the bin outside his shop. The meat has to be gathered while the order is live, so a chest full of it saved in advance counts for nothing. The mines are the place for it, and the deeper bug-heavy corridors fill the quota in two or three runs. The order pays out gold as well, and the cutscene with Willy afterwards is what hands over the recipe.

Each bobber then takes one Copper Bar, twenty pieces of Sap and five Solar Essence. Sap comes from chopping anything wooden, and Solar Essence drops from Ghosts and Squid Kids in the mines or comes out of a Slime Egg-Press, so the limiting ingredient is usually the essence.

A single Quality Bobber also arrives for free on Ginger Island, as the reward for solving the puzzle written on the fourth journal scrap. That is often a farmer's first taste of the tackle, well before the special order is finished.

Notes

The Quality Bobber and the Curiosity Lure are the two tackles Willy never sells, which makes them the two worth guarding. Each piece lasts about twenty bites, so a serious money-fishing day wants several in the bag, and the recipe is the only way to top up.

The bobber earns most on a day aimed at the shipping bin. A catch destined for a Fish Pond or a quest count is worth the same whatever its star, so those are the days to fit a Dressed Spinner for speed instead.

A rod with the Preserving enchantment doubles how far a stack of bobbers goes, which matters more here than for most tackle, given how awkward the Solar Essence is to gather in quantity.

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