Avoiding Fishing in Stardew Valley
Apr. 2nd, 2016 09:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alias_sqbrSo I really like Stardew Valley but I hate the fishing, and the various guides I've seen aren't aimed at people who want to avoid it. So here's what I've figured out! To be updated if I figure out anything new.
Non spoilery summary:
1) Fish are useful and necessary for a bunch of non-fishing-related things most players will want to achieve, so while you can mostly ignore it you probably don't want to entirely.
2) There are vendors who sell fish and fish related products
3) Certain fish can be gotten through other non-fishing methods
4) Fishing gets much easier as your fishing level rises, and there are ways to gain fishing exp without having to actually fish.
More spoilery information under the cut, but this game doesn't really have a plot to spoil, it's just things like what rewards completing certain achievements give etc. I found out a lot of this via the official wiki, which is pretty good.
The main thing you want fish for is various community centre bundles, which are incredibly useful. Also I find finishing them very satisfying and the fishing ones ended up being the only ones I'm having trouble with, so now I want to do them on principle. They're also useful for gaming the Stardew Valley Fair (though note the maths in that guide is slightly off), fulfilling some villager requests, and probably other things I'm forgetting. EDIT: FINISHED THE COMMUNITY CENTRE :D :D
The main place to buy fish is the caravan that shows up in the forest to the south west of your farm on Fridays and Sundays. The other place is from Krobus on Wednesdays (I'll leave how Krobus appears to you to find out/look up on the wiki ;)) There are certain fish that seem to show up more often, and after 4 "years" of play there are a few I don't remember ever seeing for sale. Carp and red snapper are the two I needed for the community centre, luckily they are both relatively easy to catch once you get to a high enough fishing level.
You can supposedly get fish sometimes from rubbish bins though I've never gotten anything very useful from them.
If you befriend Linus and Demetrius they send you fish sometimes. If you befriend Willy he sends you recipes that help your fishing ability.
If you complete the crab pot and river fish bundles you get crab pots and 30 bait, which you can use to catch shellfish. These aren't directly needed for any further bundles but can be used for cooking fish related recipes and fulfilling some villagers' requests.
It is possible to complete the Crab Pot bundle without fishing or even buying anything: four of the "fish" are shells you can find on the beach, and you can get crabs by killing hermit crabs in the caves. I had to buy everything in the river fish bundle though.
Ghostfish can be gotten by killing ghosts in the mines.
Catching trash is much easier than catching real fish, and while most of it is useless the seaweed and joja cola are useful. There are no fish in the little pond near your house, so if you fish in that you are guaranteed to get trash. It requires a little timing but not as much as real fishing.
Raising fishing experience: Using crab pots gives 5 points, and catching trash with your rod gives 3 points. At 380 experience you hit level 2 and can make and buy bait, allowing you to keep using the crab pots indefinitely. Once you hit level 3 you can make and buy more. You can put around 12 crab pots in the little pond by your house, it's also worth putting a few in the ocean to catch ocean specific shellfish like lobsters. The lake by the mines is also a convenient place to put pots if you have access to the mining carts. If you get to say a 50% sucesss rate with fishing it's worth doing because it gives much more experience than crab pots.
At level 6 you can use spinners and get an even better rod, for me by this point fishing had gotten easy enough that I actually sort of enjoyed it. I got to level 6 by just doing crabpots and junk fishing, then kept leveling up after that with a mixture of fishing and crabpots. By the time I was at level 9 and the right season had rolled around again I managed to catch the one fish remaining that I needed for the Community Centre. Fishing in the paler bits of the ocean tends to give fish at such a low level you can often literally not move the mouse and just watch them sit there at the bottom of the bar until caught :D
Temporarily raising your fishing level or luck with certain foods and waiting until high luck days (as revealed by the fortune teller on the tv) makes fishing easier too.
Non spoilery summary:
1) Fish are useful and necessary for a bunch of non-fishing-related things most players will want to achieve, so while you can mostly ignore it you probably don't want to entirely.
2) There are vendors who sell fish and fish related products
3) Certain fish can be gotten through other non-fishing methods
4) Fishing gets much easier as your fishing level rises, and there are ways to gain fishing exp without having to actually fish.
More spoilery information under the cut, but this game doesn't really have a plot to spoil, it's just things like what rewards completing certain achievements give etc. I found out a lot of this via the official wiki, which is pretty good.
The main thing you want fish for is various community centre bundles, which are incredibly useful. Also I find finishing them very satisfying and the fishing ones ended up being the only ones I'm having trouble with, so now I want to do them on principle. They're also useful for gaming the Stardew Valley Fair (though note the maths in that guide is slightly off), fulfilling some villager requests, and probably other things I'm forgetting. EDIT: FINISHED THE COMMUNITY CENTRE :D :D
The main place to buy fish is the caravan that shows up in the forest to the south west of your farm on Fridays and Sundays. The other place is from Krobus on Wednesdays (I'll leave how Krobus appears to you to find out/look up on the wiki ;)) There are certain fish that seem to show up more often, and after 4 "years" of play there are a few I don't remember ever seeing for sale. Carp and red snapper are the two I needed for the community centre, luckily they are both relatively easy to catch once you get to a high enough fishing level.
You can supposedly get fish sometimes from rubbish bins though I've never gotten anything very useful from them.
If you befriend Linus and Demetrius they send you fish sometimes. If you befriend Willy he sends you recipes that help your fishing ability.
If you complete the crab pot and river fish bundles you get crab pots and 30 bait, which you can use to catch shellfish. These aren't directly needed for any further bundles but can be used for cooking fish related recipes and fulfilling some villagers' requests.
It is possible to complete the Crab Pot bundle without fishing or even buying anything: four of the "fish" are shells you can find on the beach, and you can get crabs by killing hermit crabs in the caves. I had to buy everything in the river fish bundle though.
Ghostfish can be gotten by killing ghosts in the mines.
Catching trash is much easier than catching real fish, and while most of it is useless the seaweed and joja cola are useful. There are no fish in the little pond near your house, so if you fish in that you are guaranteed to get trash. It requires a little timing but not as much as real fishing.
Raising fishing experience: Using crab pots gives 5 points, and catching trash with your rod gives 3 points. At 380 experience you hit level 2 and can make and buy bait, allowing you to keep using the crab pots indefinitely. Once you hit level 3 you can make and buy more. You can put around 12 crab pots in the little pond by your house, it's also worth putting a few in the ocean to catch ocean specific shellfish like lobsters. The lake by the mines is also a convenient place to put pots if you have access to the mining carts. If you get to say a 50% sucesss rate with fishing it's worth doing because it gives much more experience than crab pots.
At level 6 you can use spinners and get an even better rod, for me by this point fishing had gotten easy enough that I actually sort of enjoyed it. I got to level 6 by just doing crabpots and junk fishing, then kept leveling up after that with a mixture of fishing and crabpots. By the time I was at level 9 and the right season had rolled around again I managed to catch the one fish remaining that I needed for the Community Centre. Fishing in the paler bits of the ocean tends to give fish at such a low level you can often literally not move the mouse and just watch them sit there at the bottom of the bar until caught :D
Temporarily raising your fishing level or luck with certain foods and waiting until high luck days (as revealed by the fortune teller on the tv) makes fishing easier too.
no subject
Date: 2016-04-02 02:07 pm (UTC)Here's hoping the caravan provides! Lol.
The Iridium rod (even the fibreglass) are pretty amazing in how they help though. Idk if it will be good enough for you to ever like or enjoy fishing, but it makes a huge difference.
Also, randomly, the deeper you throw out your line, the higher star fish you get and the harder they are to catch. So if you do shallow throws, you may be getting no star fish, but they're generally easier on the RNG. (Not that that's helpful for anyone who doesn't want to fish at all).
Also, the bins *do* provide! But it's really rare. But I've gotten salmon like three or four times from the bin? And it's not like I bin crawl every day or anything. So that can be helpful. I just generally do a pass through on the way to the beach (at Evelyn's / Saloon / Mayor's house).
no subject
Date: 2016-04-03 01:53 pm (UTC)I'm well into year 3 but I only started doing the bins or caring much about fishing at all recently. I'm glad to hear the iridium rod helps out. Once I reach level 3 I am going to buy LOTS OF CRAB POTS which should speed up my experience gaining :)
no subject
Date: 2016-04-03 02:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-04-07 03:36 pm (UTC)Oh, thanks for the reminder! I used to pay attention to that when mining but stopped once I became more focussed on just trying to get to the bottom.
no subject
Date: 2016-04-03 02:31 am (UTC)Have also found that eating the foods helps a lot for bringing some of the fish into the range I can keep on my rod too.
Most of the fish for the rare bundles I bought from the caravan which was great. Determination for some of the others was necessary but I did get there in the end!
I've gotten fish maybe once or twice from the bins, but like it when I get good food that I can't make myself.
no subject
Date: 2016-04-03 01:50 pm (UTC)I have yet to get fish from a bin but get a bit of a kick out of rattling them anyway, it's such a silly thing to be doing :)
no subject
Date: 2016-04-03 03:16 pm (UTC)