An Idea to improve fish

[Sertyu]

Now that fishing has announced, i think the way fish work shoud be changed, both for "realism", fun and convinience

Instead of having to carve up every single fish, what if we could just pick them up? When fishing, you could catch live fish, wich slowly die over time and can be released back into the water to make fish tanks or if you want to fish for fun, and dead fish can also be picked up.

Then, on addition to carving the fih to get the meat, you can also "prepare" a fish, to remove all the scales and all the gross parts and get a "big" meat item shaped like the fish you caught.

Basically, every fish can be proccesed in one of two ways: carving the fish to get multiple meat items, or clean the fish and get one bigger meat item, with every fish having different sizes, with bigger fish giving more/bigger meat.

I thought this was a good idea and wanted to share it, also a smaller and cheaper boat whould be nice, like the raft but slightly bigger

 

[Slam]

I just hope fishing isn’t like Minecraft, or terraria, because from the video it doesn’t seem too dissimilar from it.

[Maelstrom]

I wouldn't exactly call fishing an announcement.   Devlog stuff from Discord is Tyron and co just showing something off they're working on.  It can be a few update cycles before anything in the dev log Discord shows up in game.

[Bruno Willis]

Different sizes of fish would be fun, but I feel like that's more a concern for gentleman fishers and the nobility, where we are more common, and should use peasant styles of fish gathering. 

I really think fishing should be done with nets off the sides of our small sail boats. I'd be very different to other games, feel more connected with the setting, and be a huge tech improvement over stabbing them with a spear.

You'd spot a school of fish in the ocean (maybe signaled by a flock of birds!?) sail out and throw the net over the side. Then when you pulled it in you would do a harvesting animation like with a single carcass to open up the bulging net and gain access to a tone of fish meat. Delicious. 

[Sertyu]

17 hours ago, Bruno Willis said:

Different sizes of fish would be fun, but I feel like that's more a concern for gentleman fishers and the nobility, where we are more common, and should use peasant styles of fish gathering. 

I really think fishing should be done with nets off the sides of our small sail boats. I'd be very different to other games, feel more connected with the setting, and be a huge tech improvement over stabbing them with a spear.

You'd spot a school of fish in the ocean (maybe signaled by a flock of birds!?) sail out and throw the net over the side. Then when you pulled it in you would do a harvesting animation like with a single carcass to open up the bulging net and gain access to a tone of fish meat. Delicious. 

Also this. This whould be cool

[Loosebearings]

If fishing was added, I'd rather it be a minigame like stardew vally or rdr2 (probably something closer to stardew for this style of game) as opposed to minecraft's idle waiting around and clicking every so often.

[Venusgate]

21 hours ago, Bruno Willis said:

Different sizes of fish would be fun, but I feel like that's more a concern for gentleman fishers and the nobility, where we are more common, and should use peasant styles of fish gathering. 

I really think fishing should be done with nets off the sides of our small sail boats. I'd be very different to other games, feel more connected with the setting, and be a huge tech improvement over stabbing them with a spear.

You'd spot a school of fish in the ocean (maybe signaled by a flock of birds!?) sail out and throw the net over the side. Then when you pulled it in you would do a harvesting animation like with a single carcass to open up the bulging net and gain access to a tone of fish meat. Delicious. 

I've gone back and forth on "mass fishing" implementation, but i think limited school farming is a good approach.

So long as either A: catches are limited in size, or B: schools are rare enough that you would have to spend a bit of time sailing to find one.

 

Also, on the comment of picking up fish, maybe it's just poorly teased in the video, but the fact the boot goes straight to the hotbar, and not flopping on the ground by the player gives me a little hope.

[Loosebearings]

10 minutes ago, Venusgate said:

A: catches are limited in size, or B: schools are rare enough that you would have to spend a bit of time sailing to find one.

I think having smaller schools near the shore and having bigger, rarer schools the further out you go would give another reason to explore the oceans. And something to look out for so you're not just mindlessly watching the horizon for land while you sail.

[Venusgate]

10 minutes ago, Loosebearings said:

I think having smaller schools near the shore and having bigger, rarer schools the further out you go would give another reason to explore the oceans. And something to look out for so you're not just mindlessly watching the horizon for land while you sail.

Maybe you could still trawl with fishing lines while you look for a school big enough to net.

[Loosebearings]

1 minute ago, Venusgate said:

Maybe you could still trawl with fishing lines while you look for a school big enough to net.

Even better!

[Slam]

Maybe ponds and lakes can have a limited amount of fish, where overfishing can rid it of all of the fish, fishing in same spot makes fish bait less in that area or the entire lake or pond. You could even release fish into water for making your own lakes/ponds of fish, and adding new fish to an existing pond could cause the existing fish to be wiped out because of the lack of natural predators.

I see a lot of potential depth, and potential for aquarium, man made lakes with fish, and maybe some roe.

[LadyWYT]

Not that I expect it to be in the game(apart from a mod), but...noodling. 

[Bruno Willis]

1 hour ago, Loosebearings said:

I think having smaller schools near the shore and having bigger, rarer schools the further out you go would give another reason to explore the oceans. And something to look out for so you're not just mindlessly watching the horizon for land while you sail.

That'd add something really satisfying to sailing.

The way I see net fishing working really relies on some sort of sea birds being implemented. I'd use sea-birds more like particles than creatures: they'd signal the presence of schools of fish and how big those schools were. Boats might also generate less impressive seabird animations, and maybe some sort of sea-monster or ghost ship might attract sea-birds, drawing the player in if they think it's just another school of fish.

On 11/27/2025 at 4:14 AM, Sertyu said:

Basically, every fish can be proccesed in one of two ways: carving the fish to get multiple meat items, or clean the fish and get one bigger meat item, with every fish having different sizes, with bigger fish giving more/bigger meat.

I'm not fussed about having different sizes of fish meat, but I think having more varieties of fresh-water fish of different sizes, giving different amounts of fish meat would be good (correct me if they already exist, VS is subtle and vast already). 

I feel like spear fishing is a very vintage story style of fishing, and it's a very legitimate way to fish, especially in shallow, swampy waters. I'd like to see small scale fishing go this route, giving us many pronged spears which are extra accurate but breakable/no good against land creatures, and adding eels and flounder to the game.

Crayfish pots and eel traps and such would also be a very peasant way to get seafood. 

[Loosebearings]

14 hours ago, Bruno Willis said:

Crayfish pots and eel traps and such would also be a very peasant way to get seafood. 

I'd love to see trapping get worked on more in general. Checking your traps every morning seems like something that would fit right in to the game.

[LadyWYT]

18 hours ago, Bruno Willis said:

I'm not fussed about having different sizes of fish meat, but I think having more varieties of fresh-water fish of different sizes, giving different amounts of fish meat would be good (correct me if they already exist, VS is subtle and vast already). 

I second this--would rather have one generic fish fillet, but different species of fish which produce different meat yields depending on the size. A salmon or mahi-mahi should produce a lot more meat than the common pond perch.

 

18 hours ago, Bruno Willis said:

I feel like spear fishing is a very vintage story style of fishing, and it's a very legitimate way to fish, especially in shallow, swampy waters. I'd like to see small scale fishing go this route, giving us many pronged spears which are extra accurate but breakable/no good against land creatures, and adding eels and flounder to the game.

Spear fishing is one of my favorite things to do in Primitive Survival. Very fun, and would definitely be a great fit for the vanilla game.

Also...fish farming. I'm not sure how it would work, but it would be neat if you could stock a large pond and manage the population to have a steady supply of fishy protein. Though really, I'll just settle for having a pretty fish pond or aquarium to look at, since I do love my little fishy friends.

[Heart_Afire]

On 11/27/2025 at 3:02 PM, LadyWYT said:

Not that I expect it to be in the game(apart from a mod), but...noodling. 

AKA "I really want to either drown or lose a finger to an alligator snapping turtle!"

On 11/27/2025 at 3:18 PM, Bruno Willis said:

Crayfish pots and eel traps and such would also be a very peasant way to get seafood. 

Ooh, I love the idea of trapping Crawfish, maybe we could even boil a bunch of them in a cooking pot with some various veggies (Oh, if only the game had potatoes and corn)

 

I also want to throw my two cents in regarding the net idea: I love it, along with the trawling lines while you sail. As someone said, it gives you something to do during long oceanic voyages. Plus Fish is some of the best food out there.

[Broccoli Clock]

While I like the idea of fishing, and would prefer something a little more in depth (ha! pun! I'm a comedy genius!) compared to "the other block game" implementation, it doesn't strike me as a particularly pressing issue. There are fish, you can already catch fish. I doubt the way in which fish spawn in water will change, just the method you remove them by.

I've also seen mods that provide more ways to interact with fish and other water creatures tend to break the balance of the game, making it far too easy at the start (just my opinion).

So, yeah... I mean I'm not against it, I just don't want it to mess with the fairly tight early game balance, and it seems to be targetting something we can already do.