If you’re one of many people playing Core Keeper you may be wondering how to fish for another source of food. Chances are you’re like me and noticed all those sparkling spots in the water where fish are. But, unless you get a lucky drop or craft the right item, you won’t be able to interact with them quite yet.
Read our guide below for how to get a Fishing Rod and how the fishing minigame works. It follows a similar system to other games like New World even though they’re very different games.
How to Fish in Core Keeper
First You’ll Need a Fishing Rod
While the Wood Fishing Rod is good to start with, it won’t work for everything.
Before you can start you’ll need to get a Fishing Rod either from a lucky drop or by crafting it yourself. I got the Wood Fishing Rod drop from early enemies, but it’s not as great as higher tier Rods by any means.
While it may not sound important to get a higher-tier Rod, it is since certain fish are more difficult to catch. And in many cases, you won’t be able to catch one due to the Rod you currently have. This has to do with how the minigame works explained in the next section.
You’ll need to reach the Tin tier of tools before you can craft your own rod.
If you don’t feel like waiting for a Wood Fishing Rod to drop, I recommend crafting the Tin Fishing Rod. This takes 5 Wood and 4 Tin Bars to make at a Tin Workbench. if you’re having trouble finding Tin, keep an eye out for the Clay Caves filled with grubs. Tin ore tends to be in walls around this zone.
The Tin Fishing Rod has almost double the fishing power of the wooden one. This makes it easier to get tougher fish like the Blue Cave Guppy instead of just the Orange Cave Guppy. Plus, it has higher durability so it will last longer if you’re exploring far away.
How the Fishing Minigame Works
You’ll need to search for a spot with fish before you can even start the minigame.
Once you have a fishing rod, make sure you put it on your hotbar so you can easily use it. Then, find those sparkling spots in the water I previously mentioned. This visual effect looks similar to ore hidden in the dark. But, it will get harder to notice when it’s not in the dark. So you may need to look closer to see the fish swimming or ripples in the water.
After finding a fishing spot, right-click with your fishing rod to start charging the cast distance. If it’s the tile directly in front of you, you don’t need to charge it up. However, you can experiment with the charge distance since it won’t use any durability. It only seems to drop when catching a fish or item.
It gets difficult to see the fish and water ripples when nearby since your reflection will blur the water. However, you can see what the sparkle/bubbles look like in the dark.
While you can cast your line into any tile of water even without a fishing spot, you’ll need visible fish to catch them. Otherwise, you’ll get junk valuables like Kelp. But, if you’re lucky, you can get the useful Cave Guppy Necklace. This is a nice find when you haven’t gotten a necklace yet and it gives you 8% dodge chance.
Regardless of whether you’re using a fishing spot or not, you’ll eventually hear a blip sound of the bobber going underwater. This implies a fish bit or at least something got snagged. Make sure you right-click after hearing the sound to start the minigame. If you left-click, you’ll cancel the fishing process.
Try to only reel the fish in with right-click while the fish looks like this.
Also, the minigame will only start if you’re catching a fish. In my experience, I haven’t had it trigger for catching random junk like Kelp. Regardless, a bar will now appear above your hotkey bar for the minigame. Your goal is to pull the fish to the left side where your fishing rod is to catch it. Meanwhile, it will keep trying to swim to the right side to escape.
However, you can’t pull too hard because the line will snap and it will escape. The trick is to only reel (right-click) while the fish isn’t red and splashing. If you reel while it’s red, you’ll barely make any progress and the second bar below the fish will fill up. If this bar completely fills, the line snaps and the fish escapes.
Don’t reel the fish in when it turns red and your fishing line is also red.
Fortunately, the bar quickly depletes even if you’ve managed to fill it up a bit by mistake. Or even if you’re doing it intentionally to prevent the fish from making progress to the right. I don’t recommend reeling when it’s red unless you’re confident. One last tip is that if you’re struggling too much to reel the fish in, you may need a stronger rod.
That’s pretty much all there is to know about how to fish in Core Keeper. Try not to wait too long with your rod in the water since it should only take a few seconds for something to catch. Be sure to let us know in the comments if you catch something cool!
Jeff is a journalist with over 10 years of experience writing, streaming, and making content about video games. With an associate degree in journalism, he’s a sucker for RPGs, survival games, roguelikes, and more.