How to Fish Beginner Guide: First Hour, Controls & Upgrades

How to Fish is not a real-world fishing tutorial. It is Dazed Games’ physics-based fishing, combat and boating game. The opening loop is catch → defeat or process → sell ordinary loot → buy one useful upgrade → complete the current NPC hand-in.

First ten minutes

1. Learn movement, interaction, pickup, casting and reeling around the Lighthouse.
2. Catch several ordinary creatures. Keep quest bait, named trophies and whole bodies that an NPC mentions.
3. Buy food before a boss and a ranged weapon before expensive cosmetics.
4. Open Tab to check the encyclopedia and active gaps rather than grinding blind.

What not to sell

Do not sell or grill an Empty Beer Can, Modified Leech, Carrot, Fish Bucket, boss skeleton, fin, head, Tuna body or Bowhead body until its related hand-in or trigger is complete. A boss death is not enough to unlock the next destination.

First island unlock

Finish the Lighthouse Keeper’s Spider Crab chain. After the hand-in, take the boat key, then buy the $10 Radar as a separate handheld item. Equip it and sail toward the green marker to the northwest. See the island progression decision table if the route does not appear.

Co-op basics

The launch description calls How to Fish a 1–4 player game. Official Patch 1.0.4 later added lobby support for up to 8 players. Those statements describe different layers, not a contradiction. For a stable first run, start with a small private lobby, assign one trophy carrier and let the host confirm every quest update before changing islands.

Best first purchases

Prioritize healing, one reliable gun, the Radar, and only then the engine or attachment that removes the current bottleneck. Slot-machine skins and luxury upgrades can wait until the story route is stable.

Sources: How to Fish on Steam, official release announcement and Patch 1.0.4–1.0.9 notes, plus current progression guides, checked 2026-08-27.