Fishing

Where do you catch each fish? It depends on the planet type: each type has its own fish, and a shared set bites on every type but gas giants. The time of day, a storm, how deep the water is, and your bait decide the rest.

Why fish

A catch is money, food, or bait. Every fish sells, and a legendary one is worth the most. The Nutrient Processor cooks each fish into a dish of its own, and the dish of a common or an uncommon fish is worth more than the fish; those dishes then go into seafood recipes such as Seafood Stew, Marine Pie, Fish and Rice, and Fish Biscuit. Flotsam cooks into nothing, but a Message in a Bottle opens to a message.

A fish also works as bait for a better one, as the bait section below shows. Standing in water, you can release a fish back instead, which players report pays a few Nanites; releasing one of the two special jellies calls up a sea monster. The catalogue keeps your heaviest catch of each fish. The Small Aquarium base part is decor only: nothing puts a fish in it.

What bites where

The game holds 222 fish. A cast draws from the fish of the planet's type and the shared set, which every type but a gas giant adds; a gas giant has its own fish alone. Some types share a list: Toxic with Swamp, Scorched with Lava, and Weird with Red, Green, and Blue.

Then the hour and the weather trim the list. 18 fish bite only by day and 26 only at night. 17 bite only in a storm, and on a gas giant every cast counts as one. A mission fish bites only while its mission runs.

The fish below stand by the colour of their inventory tile, which is their grade.

Collected Flotsam

Grey tiles: 9 pieces of junk, from kelp to an old boot.

Common Fish

Green tiles: 70 fish.

Uncommon Fish

Blue tiles: 60 fish.

Rare Fish

Purple tiles: 40 fish.

Legendary Fish

Gold tiles: 41 fish.

Special catches

2 jellies are legendary catches on the blue tile of an uncommon fish, so they stand apart: Child of Aquarius, a Precious Spawn, and Spawn of Arcadia, a Fragile Medusoid, which bites only during its mission.

Bait

Bait multiplies the weight of the fish it favours. Every bait keeps flotsam off the hook. Without bait a legendary fish does not bite at all, apart from the mission fish, which have a chance of their own. The time baits are the strongest: the Dangling Orb makes day fish 8 times as likely, the Shadow Lure night fish 8 times, and the Magpulse Lure storm fish 5.2 times.

A fish works as bait too. It raises the kind one above its own, each fish by its own fixed factor, and the size one above its own by 1.3 to 3 times. It keeps flotsam away as well, but only a rare or a legendary fish as bait lets a legendary fish bite. Any other food works as bait as well. Each food raises one thing of its own, picked once for that food and the same every cast: a kind above common, a size, or the day, night, or storm boost. How much depends on the food: the game gives each food a cooking value, and the lower it is, the less the food raises that one thing. Every food also makes common fish and flotsam bite less, and with any food on the hook a legendary fish can bite.

Kind and size

Each fish that can bite gets a weight from its kind and its size, times the bait, and the weight of a kind is split evenly between the fish of that kind on the list. Common fish take 54% of the kind weight, flotsam 19%, and legendary fish 0.94%.

Size follows depth: the deeper the water under the float, the more the bigger sizes weigh. Each size grows over its own range of depth, and on most planets the last range ends at 90 m. Shallow water gives mostly small fish.

A Waterworld's sea runs deeper, so its ranges do too, out to 900 m.

A planet with Ancient Bones has a find of its own, dug from the ground rather than the water: fossils, which the Fossil Collector trades. That covers what a planet gives. The first thing you upgrade is the multitool already in your hand, and judging one starts with multitool types.