Fishing is lovely, albeit a bit basic, but should it be nerfed for the early game?

[Broccoli Clock]

I said in the berry bush thread that I've pretty much swapped out my early game sat from berries to being fish. I like that they've added fishing, I think it makes sense, although I would like it to be a little more complex I am sure mods will take the current framework and make it more "realistic".

So, yeah, fishing is great, and yes you don't have the berries to rely on for sat like you could in 1.21, however I am 3 days in and my inventory is pretty much stocked with fish meat. It seems a touch OP, as I don't even have clay yet and can't make meals (bowls/pots) or a cellar (storage pots).

Previously the game has had a pretty tough start, so much so that many found themselves starving in the first few days, that's not the case now (if you have access to a stick and nearby water). This could be by design, we have the Wilderness Survival option should we want a harder start, or is the fishing just needing balance?

I appreciate you can over fish an area, and I have been moving along the coast so I don't fish in the same place every time, but I'm guessing that's more aimed at industrial level over fishing.

 

Thoughts?

 

Edited Friday at 10:48 AM by Broccoli Clock

[DinoHazard]

I expected it to take much longer for fish to bite at least. And the overfishing effect to kick in much sooner, it doesn't seem to have even happened anywhere for me yet, including very small ponds. I didn't think I'd be able to just sit down with a handful of worms for a minute or two and be fed for days. It's so quick and effortless it really makes hunting land animals for protein just feel kind of pointless. I've only been playing for a bit tho, so I don't know how it's gonna feel long-term or with different conditions at spawn. (Also durability seems to not be working on the fishing rod? As well as on the wooden tongs for some reason.)

I guess the flip side is that cooking a whole big fish takes a very long time. But I can just do other things while that's going so it doesn't effectively do much for balance. Is the overfishing effect just a on/off switch? Like, you've caught x amount of fish here so we're turning the fish off? Maybe if it were a more gradual decline in fish abundance and each fish after the first one or two took longer and longer to bite, it'd put a bit of a practical limit on it before the actual hard limit.

Also, this isn't really related, but cooking bait coating the pot with residue feels odd. I get that it's not technically a food item but it is made with food ingredients. Good thing I'd already made a spare pot before when I found that out hah

[Vexxvididu]

39 minutes ago, DinoHazard said:

Also, this isn't really related, but cooking bait coating the pot with residue feels odd. I get that it's not technically a food item but it is made with food ingredients. Good thing I'd already made a spare pot before when I found that out hah

Agreed.  Mixing bait with the pot used for candles feels more wrong than mixing it with regular food.

[Grummsh]

9 hours ago, Vexxvididu said:

Agreed.  Mixing bait with the pot used for candles feels more wrong than mixing it with regular food.

Hey its called stink bait for a reason  So i dont think cooking food in the same pot would taste good. Try cooking meat with some licorice or fennel irl and see for Yourself  

[Greccen]

How did you find all those worms to catch all that? I found the new grunting very unrewarding with only one worm found for 20 minutes and starved more due having to do that having a stick in offhand causing more hunger and investing the time to try having them appear? I didn't try it in a liveless desert.

The game is tuned to a point to be literally harder than real life, if I go in my garden and put my spade in my lawn I get worms to fish for a day non stop in one dig. Guess I'm living on tera preta.

The satiety you get from one portion of cut fish over the fire felt also very underwhelming. The time invested just didnt convince me.

[LadyWYT]

1 hour ago, Greccen said:

How did you find all those worms to catch all that? I found the new grunting very unrewarding with only one worm found for 20 minutes and starved more due having to do that having a stick in offhand causing more hunger and investing the time to try having them appear? I didn't try it in a liveless desert.

You don't necessarily need worms, as regular bushmeat and redmeat, and maybe poultry too, can also serve as bait. And it's pretty easy to get any of those via killing small animals, though the bushmeat in particular is probably more valuable as bait than as a meal.

 

13 hours ago, Broccoli Clock said:

So, yeah, fishing is great, and yes you don't have the berries to rely on for sat like you could in 1.21, however I am 3 days in and my inventory is pretty much stocked with fish meat. It seems a touch OP, as I don't even have clay yet and can't make meals (bowls/pots) or a cellar (storage pots).

Previously the game has had a pretty tough start, so much so that many found themselves starving in the first few days, that's not the case now (if you have access to a stick and nearby water). This could be by design, we have the Wilderness Survival option should we want a harder start, or is the fishing just needing balance?

I actually disagree--overall, berry foraging feels about as strong as before, if not a bit stronger. Fishing does feel strong, however, there also seems to be a good handful of players that struggle to catch enough fish or otherwise forage enough food to feed themselves, which suggests to me that the mechanic is fairly balanced. 

 

12 hours ago, DinoHazard said:

I expected it to take much longer for fish to bite at least. And the overfishing effect to kick in much sooner, it doesn't seem to have even happened anywhere for me yet, including very small ponds. I didn't think I'd be able to just sit down with a handful of worms for a minute or two and be fed for days. It's so quick and effortless it really makes hunting land animals for protein just feel kind of pointless. I've only been playing for a bit tho, so I don't know how it's gonna feel long-term or with different conditions at spawn. (Also durability seems to not be working on the fishing rod? As well as on the wooden tongs for some reason.)

I want to say that in some of the earlier releases, it did take fish a little longer to bite, or areas could be overfished more easily. As for the fishing pole not losing durability...probably a bug that hasn't been fixed yet. Wooden pans are also supposed to have durability but have similar issues.

In any case, based on my experience so far, fishing feels stronger as a supplement to traditional hunting, rather than a full replacement. Redmeat is more filling than fish, and yields hides, fat, and bones that can potentially be used for tools as well. Hunting also feels a little faster, if you know what you're doing.

[RoxieB]

Personally, I feel as if worms should be easier to acquire but fish should take a bit longer to bite and there should be chances to lose your bait or catch aquatic plants or other junk. The system definitely needs a bit more risk. I'm looking forward to future expansion on the system as well, such as sinkers, custom bobbers, craftable lures and the such. Your line should be able to snap and need rope to repair.

It's likely outside the scope of the system for now but I also think there should be some sort of struggle system when catching a fish rather than just instantly plucking the fish from the waters the second it bites.

[Jarulf]

Fish seem to like to swim straight into corners, and stay there,  so I can spear them. Pretty convenient.

[Broccoli Clock]

6 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

I actually disagree--overall, berry foraging feels about as strong as before, if not a bit stronger. Fishing does feel strong, however, there also seems to be a good handful of players that struggle to catch enough fish or otherwise forage enough food to feed themselves, which suggests to me that the mechanic is fairly balanced. 

I've not leant into the berries to be fair, just collecting what I can where I can. Anecdotally there seems to be more bushes but less ripening fruit. That could just be down to the RNG of my world creation (vanilla default settings).

I find it hard to believe that people struggle to catch enough fish though, as the reason I posted this thread was because every time I cast my rod I got a fish, and it was fairly quick. With each fish possibly yielding 4 fillets. Over a fire pit they offer easily enough sat to get by on, if you have a bowl/pot that is only going to increase the sat.

As I said in my OP, I like fishing, if I want a more complex fishing system I'll lean into mods, but for me, specifically in this world, it's been "very generous".

 

That said, there is no hard and fast rule that says the start needs to be difficult. In many ways the VS start has become the antithesis of it's corporate rival. In the latter you can find everything you need effectively within the in game first day. VS has seen people struggle for in games weeks just to survive. Was that always the meta, or was it just that they way the game's systems were knitted together it just made the start difficult. Was it by accident, or design? Who knows, but it certainly led to a narrative that you should struggle and the community certainly adopted with stoicism and a bad of honour.

Maybe, this time round, are the systems balanced a little better resulting in an easier start to the game. Again maybe by accident maybe by design. If that is the case, then I'm cool with it, we have the Wilderness Survival option for us who "enjoy" the pain.

[Broccoli Clock]

1 hour ago, Jarulf said:

Fish seem to like to swim straight into corners, and stay there,  so I can spear them. Pretty convenient.

Yeah, I think the creature AI will need to be tweaked as when in the corner all you can do is chuck a spear at them. Fish are meant to swim away fast now, so there should be less spear/knife/falx fishing like before, instead you are meant to lean on the fishing rod. At least that's what I assume is the meta, as the devs were very clear the fish do not want to be speared in 1.22, whereas in 1.21 they were surprisingly ambivalent to sharp bits of metal being thrust in their direction.

Edited Saturday at 07:31 AM by Broccoli Clock

[dakko]

22 hours ago, Broccoli Clock said:

...and I have been moving along the coast so I don't fish in the same place every time, but I'm guessing that's more aimed at industrial level over fishing.

I suppose those without a coastal start would have a harder time finding enough bodies of water to duplicate your experience? I don't know how fishable small puddles are at this point as I've not installed stable yet.

[Broccoli Clock]

3 minutes ago, dakko said:

I suppose those without a coastal start would have a harder time finding enough bodies of water to duplicate your experience? I don't know how fishable small puddles are at this point as I've not installed stable yet.

That's a fair point, from my limited testing where I have several smallish ponds (say max 10 block diameter) and at most I've managed one fish from the ponds, while the coast near me is pretty open (it's fresh water, so not the sea, but it is large enough for it to be worth making a raft for crossing it) and the fish are effectively jumping onto the hook (heh, if there was a hook).

In fact, just writing that makes me wonder why they didn't include a hook. Lots of mods make flint hooks for fishing, and they could take the DayZ approach where the quality of the fish is based on the equipment you catch it with. So the pole, the hook and the bait would all combine to determine the catch. Just musing here, btw, I doubt the fishing will get changed all that much.

 

[Jarulf]

2 hours ago, Broccoli Clock said:

Yeah, I think the creature AI will need to be tweaked as when in the corner all you can do is chuck a spear at them. Fish are meant to swim away fast now, so there should be less spear/knife/falx fishing like before, instead you are meant to lean on the fishing rod. At least that's what I assume is the meta, as the devs were very clear the fish do not want to be speared in 1.22, whereas in 1.21 they were surprisingly ambivalent to sharp bits of metal being thrust in their direction.

I hadn't got around to testing the new fishing when I commented above, but now that I've cast a few lines I think I like it.  I'm sure there will be a few tweaks here and there, fish getting stuck in corners shouldn't happen, obviously, but overall I think it's a nice addition.  I'll build a little wooden pier thing and catch a few fish as the sun slowly sets.

[MattyK]

So personally, I find you have to be a little cautious with how you fish, as the fish themselves have a spoilage timer on par if not worse than the other categories of meat, you have to use it quickly, and if you depend on fish instead of using it as a supplement, you can quickly find yourself having to go further and further afield for a meal.

The mechanics I agree could use a little bit of work, just a little bit of tension like the whole push-pull you see in a lot of fishing minigames (just please, not Abiotic Factor levels of piano-key), and maybe a little more depth in what bait catches what. So for instance, you could easily deplete a pond of it's young fish by using a particular type of bait, making it impossible to replenish, or you could use a more sustainable bait but a catch isn't always guaranteed.

Similarly, various circumstances would effect the efficacy of fishing, like it being raining, or night time, or during a temporal storm (Increases attraction rate but doubles depletion?)

I'd also like to be able to see the stats of a body of water and also engage in aquaculture, maybe make specific feeds or relocate clutches of eggs in a bowl from one pond to another to make a new colony, but the size of the water body also dictating it's capacity.

[Broccoli Clock]

There is a slight bug with the fishing rod, it's not serious or game breaking in any way, but if the rod "lashes back" you can no longer left click the bait over the rod in your inventory (like you do with a bowl and a filled crock) you have to assemble the baited rod in your crafting grid. 

Edited Saturday at 11:00 AM by Broccoli Clock

[MKMoose]

On 4/24/2026 at 12:34 PM, Broccoli Clock said:

It seems a touch OP, as I don't even have clay yet and can't make meals (bowls/pots) or a cellar (storage pots).

You're gonna be amused when you find, if you haven't already, that fish provide 3.75x the satiety when in meals compared to when cooked. Borderline absurd compared to other foods which tend to provide 1.5x in meals, and while I don't know whether it's intentional, I think it's already been like this for a long time before 1.22.

 

2 hours ago, Broccoli Clock said:

In fact, just writing that makes me wonder why they didn't include a hook. Lots of mods make flint hooks for fishing, and they could take the DayZ approach where the quality of the fish is based on the equipment you catch it with. So the pole, the hook and the bait would all combine to determine the catch. Just musing here, btw, I doubt the fishing will get changed all that much.

It does feel pretty odd to me as well. While there are some fishing methods that don't use hooks, they aren't nearly as universal and they tend to use something instead of a hook rather than just tie a piece of bait at the end of the string. Flint hooks are actually not much of a thing from what I can find, but other options include wood, bone and some plants with thorns. I'm not sure whether that wouldn't be too much upfront complexity for newer player, but I feel like it would be fine enough to just include the hook or some alternative in the fishing pole crafting recipe.

 

1 hour ago, Broccoli Clock said:

There is a slight bug with the fishing rod, it's not serious or game breaking in any way, but if the rod "lashes back" you can no longer right click the bait over the rod in your inventory (like you do with a bowl and a filled crock) you have to assemble the baited rod in your crafting grid. 

If we're talking about the same thing, then you have to right-click first to get the rod back from the cast position (sticking out in front) to the default position (on the side).

I also feel like there should be a way to put the bait on the rod without opening the inventory.

 

On 4/24/2026 at 1:53 PM, DinoHazard said:

[I expected] the overfishing effect to kick in much sooner, it doesn't seem to have even happened anywhere for me yet, including very small ponds.

By default I think you can get almost 1 fish per day per 8x8 area, on average. The effect seems to be binary as far as I can find, i.e. either fish bite normally, or an area is overfished, with no in-between. If that is correct, then you may be able to get potentially upwards of a hundred fish per week from a larger lake.

 

1 hour ago, MattyK said:

The mechanics I agree could use a little bit of work, just a little bit of tension like the whole push-pull you see in a lot of fishing minigames (just please, not Abiotic Factor levels of piano-key), and maybe a little more depth in what bait catches what. So for instance, you could easily deplete a pond of it's young fish by using a particular type of bait, making it impossible to replenish, or you could use a more sustainable bait but a catch isn't always guaranteed.

It does feel to me that they've set a pretty nice foundation in place, but a lot of work is still needed to make it actually good. To avoid overcomplicating things, maybe just require to press RMB multiple times per fish, each time bringing the bobber with the fish a bit closer, where pressing too fast would cause you to lose the fish. Then actually pulling the fish out of water and having it hang on the pole in front, or something of the sort, instead of it just materializing in inventory.

I don't think that making a pond impossible to replenish is a good idea, though, at least as long as there is no clear warning that you're approaching depletion.

[Broccoli Clock]

1 hour ago, MKMoose said:

You're gonna be amused when you find, if you haven't already, that fish provide 3.75x the satiety when in meals compared to when cooked. Borderline absurd compared to other foods which tend to provide 1.5x in meals, and while I don't know whether it's intentional, I think it's already been like this for a long time before 1.22.

If the comparison is to 1.21 speared fish and 1.22 caught fish, then from memory the 1.21 fish meals were much less sat, like a 4 item meal with fish being the first two, tended to fill up half my hunger bar (roughly) whereas in 1.22 it's filling the hunger bar fully from one meal alone.

So, yeah, I'd agree with that, and that it's probably an oversight somewhere, but maybe push back that it's an already existing "bug". That said, the last couple of world in 1.21 I played in I had the Primitive Survival mod installed and tended to grab my fish that way. Not sure if that resulted in less sat from the fish caught that way.

[LadyWYT]

7 hours ago, Broccoli Clock said:

I find it hard to believe that people struggle to catch enough fish though, as the reason I posted this thread was because every time I cast my rod I got a fish, and it was fairly quick. With each fish possibly yielding 4 fillets. Over a fire pit they offer easily enough sat to get by on, if you have a bowl/pot that is only going to increase the sat.

Beats me. I've quit trying to figure it out, for the most part, and just accepted that given some of the posts that float through the forums, a few players still manage to starve to death in the game somehow.

 

7 hours ago, Broccoli Clock said:

That said, there is no hard and fast rule that says the start needs to be difficult. In many ways the VS start has become the antithesis of it's corporate rival. In the latter you can find everything you need effectively within the in game first day. VS has seen people struggle for in games weeks just to survive. Was that always the meta, or was it just that they way the game's systems were knitted together it just made the start difficult. Was it by accident, or design? Who knows, but it certainly led to a narrative that you should struggle and the community certainly adopted with stoicism and a bad of honour.

Maybe, this time round, are the systems balanced a little better resulting in an easier start to the game. Again maybe by accident maybe by design. If that is the case, then I'm cool with it, we have the Wilderness Survival option for us who "enjoy" the pain.

Oh for sure. I would say it's intentional game design in VS's case, though not to the extent that the player is supposed to be completely ground into the dirt with suffering. Rather, I would say the intended balance is that the player is meant to struggle just enough to be a fun challenge and feel like the game has some serious stakes, but not so much that the average player can't complete those challenges with a little reading and thinking. 

It reminds me of many of the older games I played as a kid. Some of them were still easy, to be fair, but I think most games back then didn't have a problem with pushing player abilities and allowing the player to make mistakes and sometimes fail. Looking things up on the internet wasn't really an option(dial-up, and gaming stuff wasn't as widespread as it is now), and sometimes one had to just set the game aside for a while and come back later to try again. I think many modern games have discarded that kind of design in favor of designs that allow players to easily succeed on the first try, or otherwise don't really punish mistakes, possibly because that kind of design tends to keep players playing(because there's no real prompt to take a break) and more easily appeals to a wider audience.

[dakko]

6 hours ago, Broccoli Clock said:

Just musing here, btw, I doubt the fishing will get changed all that much.

Has something been said to make you think that? Gosh, I do hope they will do a bit more with it. I imagined that there might be a bit of resistance from the fish once they are hooked.

It would be nice to have hooks.

[Lanceleoghauni]

I have a more inland start, I've got a large body of water to my south I haven't quite gotten to yet but I've only seen one or two fish so far in my playthrough. It's been very berry centric and foraging heavy as I wait for the cuttings and crops I've found to grow. Mouflon is an important part of my diet too haha. I think it's probably fine, it's really strong if you have a good start for it, but so is "rolling really good on ruin loot". I don't think the game needs to punish you all the time and lucking into really strong solutions to problems is fine. 

[Broccoli Clock]

15 hours ago, dakko said:

Has something been said to make you think that? Gosh, I do hope they will do a bit more with it. I imagined that there might be a bit of resistance from the fish once they are hooked.

It would be nice to have hooks.

Nothing in particular, from reading through some comments when the fishing was being developed it seemed like it took a bit of finagling to get it to work the way they wanted so I'm guessing they had a framework in mind and that framework we see now. One that can be expanded by mods (presumably). Taking that into consideration, and that there's other stuff to complete, I'm guessing (and it is just a guess) that other than slight tweaks or balances, it'll roughly stay the same for a while.

And, yes, hooks do seem an odd exclusion. Perhaps there is a reason for that. Interestingly the fishing rod doesn't have durability whereas just about everything else has, the grunting stick degrades pretty quickly while the pole itself is infinite. Which is either intentional or perhaps we will see hooks, but that's where the durability comes in. 

[Greccen]

On 4/25/2026 at 2:37 AM, LadyWYT said:

You don't necessarily need worms, as regular bushmeat and redmeat, and maybe poultry too, can also serve as bait. And it's pretty easy to get any of those via killing small animals, though the bushmeat in particular is probably more valuable as bait than as a meal.

You're a lifesaver, quite literally, we were getting really hungry in the game.

[Broccoli Clock]

I gave the bushmeat stinkbait a go, it's safe to say it was a success..

I fished in a large(ish) lake, maybe 100 blocks width and 500 long. I have fished in this location before but a few days had passed since then.
I started fishing at about 7 in the morning, and it was raining. Within 3 hours in game, this was my catch. 

It's RNG so I'd need to repeat this several times to confirm, but the fish were bigger (3 at the top left were the largest I had caught, 10x fillets from each) and the catch time slightly reduced.

 

[HalfAxd]

Have not been a fan of the new fishing mechanic...  seems too much like a fish spawner.  

The survival game has been more touch and go with 1.22 in my new world, but fun because of it.

I find myself racing to get a bread oven to stretch my food resources, since harvest is less bountiful.

Have a great time.  Enjoy