Money, Cooking, Trick Shots, and Upgrade Priorities

Money, Cooking, Trick Shots, and Upgrade Priorities

You know the scene: the boss lure is gone, the crew is broke, and someone has just fed tomorrow’s quest fish to a slot machine because its colors looked expensive. How to Fish gives you plenty of ways to become rich, but the reliable plan is simple: protect progression items, sell ordinary catches, and buy the upgrade that fixes your current problem. The airborne fish executions and volcano gambling empire can come after the boat fund is safe.

Safe Early-Game Money Route

1. Collect shoreline Clams. Search the rocks below the Lighthouse and fill your starting inventory before walking uphill. Each Clam has a $1 base value in this build.
2. Sell to the Lighthouse Keeper. He is seated on the wooden bench uphill near the Lighthouse. With the default controls, face him and hold Q to throw each item into his mouth. Yes, this is the local banking system.
3. Buy the $3 Crab-Fishing Rod. With no purchased bait selected, it uses reusable Ham. Ham is not consumed and catches Brown Crab or Shrimp, so there is no bait bill eating the profit.
4. Catch, kill, inspect, and sell. Use plain melee finishes at first. Stylish shots are optional; a body safely delivered to the Keeper is worth more than a trick shot that achieves low Earth orbit.
5. Reserve progression money first. Hold back $12 for Beer. Give that Beer to the Lighthouse Keeper and claim the Empty Beer Can for the Spider Crab. After the fight, save the Spider Crab Shell for the Keeper. The $10 handheld Radar is useful once the boat is unlocked.

If a Spider Crab attempt wipes out your supplies, do not buy another setup item the instant you respawn. Return to the Clam route or fish with reusable Ham until you have the full replacement budget plus food. Buy the lure or quest item last, after your weapon and healing are ready. That short reset is much faster than summoning the same angry seafood while broke.

Safe Late-Game Money Route

Lower-risk option: On Island 5, buy the $500 Scientific Lure and fish its normal pool: Stonefish, Blobfish, Anglerfish, Oarfish, and Superdwarf Fish. The lure has a 20% loss roll when a catch is released, so it may survive several catches. Once cooking is unlocked, kill each surplus creature, cook it to 1.5x, and sell it to the Military Merchant. This avoids a boss fight and does not stake the catch on casino luck.

Higher-risk repeatable option: A $5,800 Scientific Boss Lure catches the Goblin Shark. Its v1.0.12 base value is $6,200 raw or $9,300 at the 1.5x cooking peak, before random size and Killscore change the displayed total. The lure is consumed, and the shark is a timed miniboss, so prepare before casting. Solo players should keep a healing slot and use their best upgraded firearm. In co-op, let one player hold its attention while the others keep firing and protect the eventual body.

Island 5’s volcano heat locks an item at the 1.5x cooking value without the normal grill’s burn risk. Use it on ordinary sale catches before visiting the merchant. Keep the Bowhead Whale away from this money pile: its dead body belongs in the volcano encounter trigger for the final boss, not in the cash-out queue.

How to Unlock Cooking

NPC: Grillmaster on Island 3. Required catch: one dead Blue Shark or Goblin Shark. Cheapest route: catch a Blue Shark with the $280 Standard Boss Lure. Hand-in: carry the dead shark back to the Grillmaster beside the unlit grill.

1. Talk to the Grillmaster before spending the lure.
2. Buy the Standard Boss Lure, not the cheaper $15 Standard Lure.
3. Cast the boss lure, defeat the Blue Shark, and pick up its body. Give yourself room when it lunges; coconut trees are excellent at blocking the exact dodge you needed.
4. Carry the dead shark to the Grillmaster and hand it over.
5. Claim the offered lighter, then use it to start the grill. Handing over the shark and taking the lighter are separate actions.

Hold a sellable item over the flame and inspect it while the cooking value rises. Pull it away at 1.5x. In v1.0.12, a fully burnt catch falls to roughly one-tenth of its raw value, although cheap items may display $0 after rounding, and it restores very little health or hunger. Cooked creatures make better food, so keep a few for boss recovery instead of selling the whole barbecue. If a gun or tool gets cooked by accident, keep hold of it and submerge its center in water to clear the cooking state. Water does not restore a burnt fish.

How Killscore Raises Sale Value

Killscore is the group of bonuses attached to a creature by the killing hit. Those bonuses multiply the body’s value; they do not simply add their percentages together. For example, a 1.25x One Shot One Kill plus a 1.25x Headshot produces about 1.56x. Cooking then applies its own value factor. The same species can therefore produce very different payouts.

Lower-risk scoring: Use a strong single-shot weapon on a weak, full-health creature. Aim for One Shot One Kill and Headshot, then cook the body. This needs little physics wrangling and leaves the catch close enough to collect.

High-skill trick-shot option: Toss or launch a weak creature, stay on the ground, spin once, and fire from the hip for 360, No Scope, Fly Fishing, and possibly One Shot One Kill. Try Dogfight on a separate attempt by jumping while the creature is still clear of the ground. Fly Fishing, Aerial, and Dogfight are one exclusive bonus group, so only one can appear on a kill. A co-op partner can handle the throw while the shooter tracks the target. Physics, distance, timing, and the actual hit decide which bonuses appear, so inspect the body instead of expecting the same stack every attempt.

Upgrade Priorities

Solo: Capacity, food, and weapon damage come first because nobody else can carry your spare gear or revive a failed plan. Keep one food slot and use ordinary kills until the next boss setup is fully funded. Co-op: Money is shared by the world. Split jobs instead of buying every player the same kit: one person fishes, one finishes kills, and one cooks and runs bodies to the merchant. Agree before any large purchase, because there are no private wallets hiding under the boat seats.

Never Sell or Gamble These Progression Items

• Beer before the Lighthouse Keeper accepts it, the Empty Beer Can, and the Spider Crab Shell.
• Three Leeches for the Swamp Daughter, the resulting Leech Bait, and the Giant Piranha Skeleton.
• One of the seven dead catches accepted by the Pufferfish Hunter before its hand-in, the Carrot, and the Pufferfish Fin.
• A Blue Shark or Goblin Shark being saved for the Grillmaster unlock.
• The Tuna used to trigger Albatross and the Albatross Head.
• Any of the five eligible dead creatures being saved for the Whale Scientist, the Fish Bucket, the normal Bowhead Whale body, and the Whale Fin dropped by the Mutated Bowhead Whale.
• Your only strong weapon or the food needed for the next boss.

Optional casino detour: Roulette can destroy the wagered item, while slot machines consume eligible Drip creatures for skin rolls. Only bet surplus catches after the next lure, weapon upgrade, food reserve, and boat purchase are covered. A winning green roulette bet applies 35x in v1.0.12, and green occupies one of the wheel’s 37 pockets. The wheel uses a physics-driven result, so the pocket count is not a guaranteed per-spin success rate. That is an achievement gamble, not a pension plan.