Fishing gameplay

Fishing is the game’s first gathering profession and the first user of the trained skill system. Every timer, roll and outcome lives on the server; the client renders and responds.

Species and price tables are in Fishing data. This page is about how to actually fish.

The loop

Cast ─► Casting (1 s) ─► Waiting (4–12 s, shortened by skill)
                              │ the bite rolls species, size and trophy
                              ▼
                         Bite (2.5 s + 0.5 s latency grace)
                         │ hook in time     │ too late / never
                         ▼                  ▼
                       Fight              Escaped
            (continuous tension tug-of-war)
                         │ exhaust it, then reel  │ line snaps / hook thrown
                         ▼                        ▼
                       Caught                  Escaped

Getting set up

Buy a Fishing Rod (3s) from Rica and equip it in your main hand.

Rods never come from dungeon chests

They are bought tools, not endgame loot. Chests hold armor and accessories only.

Casting

Click at water. You need:

• A fishing rod in your main hand
• To be on the overworld (no fishing in dungeons)
• A target within 8 metres
• Actual water — the surface has to sit more than 0.1 m above the bed

Both ocean and rivers work. A river’s surface sits above its own bed even high in the hills, so inland rivers cast fine. On land the water surface collapses below the terrain, so clicking dry ground just walks you there.

Waiting and the bite

The wait is 4–12 seconds uniform, shortened 2% per fishing level (never below half the minimum).

On a bite the float dips hard. You have 2.5 seconds to hook, plus 0.5 seconds of latency grace — judged against the server’s own clock, so a laggy-but-in-time click is never punished and a hacked client can’t stretch the window.

Don’t hook early

Hooking before the bite scares the fish off. Wait for the float to go down.

To hook: SPACE, any click, or a wheel flick.

The fight

Hooking is only the start. The fight is a continuous tug-of-war the server simulates on a 250 ms tick (four times a second).

The fish alternates between two states:

State	Duration	What it means
Running	2–3.5 s (longer for rarer fish)	Pulling hard, tension climbing
Resting	0.8–2 s	Catching its breath, less pressure

Most of the fight is spent running, so most of the time you are under pressure.

Three stances

Switch at any time:

Stance	How	Effect on tension
REEL	Hold the button / hold SPACE / wheel down	+14/s
GIVE LINE	Hold the button / hold S / wheel up	−44/s
HOLD	Do nothing	Natural decay only

ESC reels in and gives up.

Tension — the thing that snaps

The gauge on screen. It snaps at 100 and the fish is gone.

Source	Change
Starting tension on the hook-set	30
A running fish pulls	(20 + 2 × rarity) / s
↳ scaled up to ×1.3 by how much line is out
↳ reduced 1% per fishing level, capped at 30%
Reeling	+14 / s
Natural decay while the fish rests	−8 / s
Giving line	−44 / s

5

Species	Rarity	Running pull	Max line out	At level 30
Raw Minnow	★1	22 / s	28.6 / s	15.4 / s
Raw Perch	★2	24 / s	31.2 / s	16.8 / s
Raw Trout	★3	26 / s	33.8 / s	18.2 / s
River Salmon	★4	28 / s	36.4 / s	19.6 / s
Golden Sturgeon	★5	30 / s	39.0 / s	21.0 / s

The starting tension of 30 is deliberately hot — leave an unanswered run alone and you’re out of the safe range in about a second and snapped a few seconds later. You have to react immediately.

Giving line always beats the pull

Giving line sheds 44/s, more than the strongest pull (a Golden Sturgeon with maximum line out manages 39/s). So when the gauge is about to blow, giving line always brings it down — at the cost of more line out, which raises the multiplier on the next run.

Reeling adds 14/s against a resting decay of only 8/s, so you can’t just hold the reel down. That’s deliberate: it forces you to alternate between winding in and bleeding off pressure.

Stamina — what you’re actually depleting

Stamina isn’t on the gauge, but you can read it from the splash — smaller splash means a tired fish.

Stamina pool: 38 + 12 × rarity

Only drag burns it, and two conditions must hold: the fish is running, and tension is at least 20.

drain per second = 2 + 12 × (tension / 100)²

That square is the heart of the system:

9

Tension	Stamina / s	Minnow (50)	Trout (74)	Sturgeon (98)
20	2.48	20 s	30 s	40 s
30	3.08	16 s	24 s	32 s
40	3.92	13 s	19 s	25 s
50	5.00	10 s	15 s	20 s
60	6.32	8 s	12 s	16 s
70	7.88	6 s	9 s	12 s
80	9.68	5 s	8 s	10 s
90	11.72	4 s	6 s	8 s
95	12.83	4 s	6 s	8 s

A Golden Sturgeon takes 32 seconds at tension 30 and 8 seconds at tension 90 — four times the difference.

And that table only counts time actually under pressure (fish running, tension over the threshold), so real fights take longer because the fish rests. More importantly: a slack line lets a resting fish recover stamina — playing timid isn’t just slow, it loses ground.

So the correct way to play

Ride the gauge high without blowing it. Concretely:

1. Tension starts at 30 after the hook-set, and the fish usually runs immediately.
2. Reel to push tension up into the 80–95 band.
3. Watch the gauge; as it approaches 100, give line to bleed off (−44/s brings you back inside in about a second).
4. Around 60–70, stop giving line and start reeling again.
5. When the fish rests, that’s your chance to take distance — the pull is weak and reeling is fast.

The common beginner mistake is giving line the whole fight to stay safe — tension sits at 20–30, stamina barely moves, the fish recovers while resting, and three minutes later you’re nowhere.

Distance and the endgame

Distance isn’t shown as a number — the float is the fish.

Situation	Reel speed
Fish resting	1.6 m/s
Fish running	0.6 m/s
Fish exhausted	2.5 m/s

Runs take 1.1–1.5 m/s of line, but the fish never leaves a 6-metre radius around the cast point.

At 0 stamina the fish goes Exhausted — reel it to within 0.3 m of the line floor and it lands.

Don’t drag a lively fish in

A fish with stamina left, dragged within 1 metre of the floor, panics into a fresh run. Empty the stamina first.

What breaks a session

Aborts it: moving, attacking, disconnecting, dying, stowing the rod (unequipping it or swapping a weapon into the main hand), or stopping deliberately.

Doesn’t: changing a hat, holding an off-hand torch — gear changes that leave the rod in hand don’t break concentration.

Fishing levels

Catches grant fishing XP: 10 × rarity²

9

Catch	Rarity	Fishing XP
Golden Sturgeon	★5	250
River Salmon	★4	160
Raw Trout	★3	90
Raw Perch	★2	40
Raw Minnow	★1	10
Old Boot	Flotsam	0
Clump of Kelp	Flotsam	0
Message in a Bottle	Flotsam	0
Sunken Coin Pouch	Flotsam	0

• A hooked fish that escapes still consoles you with 2 XP. Escapes never reveal what it was — a varying consolation would leak the hidden roll.
• Flotsam is rarity 0, so it grants nothing.
• Fishing grants no character XP — combat balance is untouched.

What levels buy you

Effect	Per level	Cap
Shorter waits	−2%	Half the minimum
Rare species weighting	+3% per point of rarity	None (multiplicative, never inverts the order)
Pull you absorb	−1%	−30%
Reel speed	+1%	—

Level 10 unlocks River Salmon, level 20 the Golden Sturgeon. Below that they don’t appear at all.

Flotsam

Not everything that bites is a fish. Four flotsam rows hold a flat 20% of the draw at every level:

4

Flotsam	Value	Notes
Old Boot	—	Worthless. The classic fishing gag
Clump of Kelp	—	Worthless
Message in a Bottle	15c	Sells for a token amount
Sunken Coin Pouch	—	Double-click it in the bag to open: rolls 3d8 copper straight into your wallet

Flotsam pulls and tires exactly like an ordinary fish during the fight, so the tension at the bite is real — you don’t know whether you’re bringing up a Golden Sturgeon or a boot.

AI agents can fish too

The whole mechanic is deliberately sized for both humans and agents — the 2.5-second window is comfortable for an agent-client’s network round trip, and the fight simulation only advances four times a second, so being fast confers no real advantage.

The desktop client’s automatic mode hooks its own bites and plays each stance beat itself; the LLM only decides whether and where to fish.