How to Fish Save Location, Autosave & Corruption Recovery

Patch 1.0.6 officially changed when the game writes: Save, Main Menu and Quit write to disk; autosave runs every minute; a crash no longer writes a new crash-state save. Patch 1.0.9 says save corruption is “hopefully fixed,” not universally recovered.

Windows save location

Community and third-party reports place saves at:

%USERPROFILE%\AppData\LocalLow\Dazed Games\How to Fish\Saves

The path is a community/third-party cross-check, not a path advertised on the current Steam store page. If your install differs, search the parent Dazed Games\How to Fish folder before moving files.

Backup before repair

1. Close the game and Steam.
2. Copy the entire How to Fish folder to a dated backup location, not only the Saves subfolder.
3. Reopen once and test Load without overwriting the backup.
4. Record build, slot, last successful hand-in and whether the failure followed a crash, co-op session or weapon equip.

Missing items or infinite boat loading

Do not promise a rollback that the game does not provide. First compare the dated backup with the live folder, then test Load versus New Game only after the copy exists. If boat items vanish, separate loose world objects, inventory and host state. For an equip crash, do this complete isolation pass: (1) close the game and Steam; (2) keep the dated folder backup; (3) update the game and verify files; (4) load once without equipping the suspected weapon; (5) compare whether only that weapon crashes, every weapon crashes, or Load itself crashes; (6) never hand-edit unknown JSON, download a replacement save, or delete the only copy. The official notes publish no universal weapon-removal or rollback tool. If the crash remains, contact the official Dazed Games Community Discord with the build, save slot, weapon name, trigger steps and backup status.

What the official notes do not promise

They do not publish Steam Cloud support, a universal recovery tool or guaranteed restoration of a corrupted weapon. The safest claim is preservation and diagnosis, not recovery certainty.

Sources: official Steam announcements for Patch 1.0.6, Patch 1.0.9, and repeated Steam Community save reports, checked 2026-08-28.