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Fishing

Every land has water somewhere: ponds and tarns on the open surface, puddles and lakes in the Mirelands, basins in the caves, pools on some of the sky isles, the ponds and rivers and harbours inside the towns, and the pond in Aldhearth's park. Every one of them has fish in it, and what bites depends on where the water is, how deep, what the sky is doing, what rod you hold, what bait you carry, and a little luck.

How to fish

1. Make a Willow rod at a Workbench: 3 sticks, a plank and 2 wheat (the straw is the line). Put it on your hotbar and hold it.
2. Stand by the water, on your feet or in the shallows, and right click the water within reach (on a phone, ACTION reads CAST, or tap the water). A bobber floats where you pointed, on a line from your rod.
3. Stand still and wait. The bite comes when it comes: six to eighteen seconds, sooner with bait on the hook, a better rod, or rain on the water. Moving more than a tile, getting hit (poison ticking away does not count), putting the rod away, climbing into a saddle, losing the bait from your bag or casting elsewhere brings the line back empty.
4. When the bobber dips and REEL! shows over your head, click anywhere (either button, on the bobber and the water too), tap ACTION or tap the screen before the bar runs out: a second and a half or so, longer with a better rod. Too soon and it gets away; too slow and it gets away.
5. The fish lands in your bag with its weight, and you get a little experience: more for the rare ones, more for the big ones.

Inside a town, cast from the bank the same way (a click on the water); a port's harbour has fish of its own, and Aldhearth's park pond keeps a legend.

Rods and bait

Bait goes on the hook by itself, the best you carry, and a catch uses one up (a miss does not). Bait that leaves your bag while the line is out (dropped, traded, put away) takes the line with it: Your bait is gone: the line comes in empty. Grub bait turns up now and then when you dig grass or dirt, and two wheat make three at the crafting grid; fish bite it sooner. Glowbait (a crystal and two essences make four, at a Workbench) is quicker still, and the rare fish come up for it.

What bites

Each fish keeps to its own water: the land above it (the Meadows, the Mirelands, the Rimefields...), the layer (the surface, the caves, or the deep, seventy tiles down and more), and for some the weather (Stormfin rises only in rain or storm) or the rod (some snap willow). Rain and storm bring bites sooner, and a storm brings the rare ones up. Junk bites too, now and then: a waterlogged boot, less often with bait on the hook.

Two legends are worth the walk: The Old King of the Mirelands, thirty kilos and more, bites only in the rain and never on a willow rod; Aurel's Koi lives in the park pond inside Aldhearth and nowhere else. The whole world hears when one is landed.

Lava fishing

Lava has fish too, and only the Emberglass rod reaches them: a cast of any other rod at lava gives "The line burns away." and nothing happens. Stand on solid ground (nobody stands in lava) and right click the lava within reach; the bite and the reel are as in water.

Junk in lava is a Slag lump. About one bite in forty is a Fire-sealed coffer: open it for 40 gold and 2 more for each of your levels (at most 600), and half the time a Jewel of Ascent.

Two dishes are cooked from Cinder minnows at a Cauldron: Ember chili (2 minnows and a fire pepper: Well fed, Fierce, +8% damage) and Magma stew (3 minnows and bread: Well fed, Stout, +15 armour). The lava is a land of its own in the Fishing log, with its own prize.

The Fishing log

The Bestiary window (B) has a Fishing log tab: every kind you have caught, how many, the biggest, and where you first landed it, by land; the ones you have not caught yet show only where to look. Catch every kind of a land and the anglers there pay a prize in gold (120 a kind); catch every kind there is and you are the Angler, a title to show with your name. Every land you finish also gives you +1 fishing luck for good (the character window, I, lists it under Collections).

What to do with fish

Eat a raw fish for a little life, sell it at a Trade Post, or cook it: any raw fish grills in a Furnace (put it in the top slot, fuel below), and a Cauldron cooks the dishes on the cooking page, each of which leaves you Well fed.

Rods and bait

A bite takes 6 to 18 seconds with nothing to hurry it; rain brings it 25% sooner and a storm 40% sooner. The best bait you carry goes on the hook by itself, and a catch uses one up.

The fish

The Fishing log

A tab of the Bestiary window (B). Catch every kind of a land and the anglers there pay a prize: the harbours (1 kind, 120 gold), the Meadows (2 kinds, 240 gold), the Stonecrags (1 kind, 120 gold), the Mirelands (3 kinds, 360 gold), the Rimefields (1 kind, 120 gold), the Glass Dunes (1 kind, 120 gold), the Greenwood (1 kind, 120 gold), the Ashlands (1 kind, 120 gold), the Shardwaste (1 kind, 120 gold), the Unlit Reach (1 kind, 120 gold), the deep (2 kinds, 240 gold), the caves (2 kinds, 240 gold), the Skyreach (2 kinds, 240 gold), the rain (1 kind, 120 gold), Aldhearth’s pond (1 kind, 120 gold), the lava (7 kinds, 840 gold). Catch them all and you are the Angler.