Fishing in Valheim, unlike most games, requires you to do some extensive searching and money making BEFORE you can fish with ease, not just accidentally kick a fish out of the pond and call it fishing. Here’s how to get your fishing career started in Valheim!
Getting the Fishing Rod & Bait
In Valheim, the fishing rod is BOUGHT rather than Crafted, meaning that you’ll need to find the Merchant on your map before you’re able to go fishing properly. The Merchant spawns randomly in a Black Forest Biome, which means sometimes it’ll take a good while before you find him, but he’s out there!
Once you do find your merchant (or visit your friend’s world merchant) you’ll be able to buy the Fishing rod for 350 Gold, and 50 bait for 10 Gold. If you’re wallet is struggling, simply find some crypts or dungeons, which will always contain chests with gold OR sellable items (such as ruby’s, amber, or pearls, sometimes necklaces if you’re lucky).
That PROPER Fishing Physique
Not to brag or anything, but I’ve pretty much caught, like, 20 fish, so that makes me an absolute expert in this field. SO! The first thing you want to do is find the best possible fishing areas, and then go at a calm weather time. Good fishing areas pretty much means water, so if you literally see a fish swimming, it’s a fishing area. Currently ALL fish are the exact same kind, so you won’t be catching various types of fish in different biomes (yet). Also, the reason I say CALM weather, is because you’ll get swept up by the ocean tides and ruin your fishing experience. Happened way too many times to me because for some reason all my scheduled fishing days are also scheduled tornado days I guess.
So when it comes to the incredibly complicated and extremely advanced fishing mechanics, you have 2 buttons to press: Left Click and then Right Click. When you’re holding the Fishing Rod, just hold Left Click to see the draw distance circle zooming in. The further it zooms in, the further the cast. BUT, the further the cast, the more stamina you’ll be using.
Once you’ve cast your line, if you notice there are NO fish in the area where your bob is, there’s no point to staying there, cause sometimes you’ll get lucky and fish will come, but others you’ll just stand there for all eternity. All up to you in the end. BUT once that fish finally does come, you’ll see an animation play where the bob will dip into the water, a splash will be made, and that’s when you hit RIGHT click.
Once the fish is hooked, it doesn’t just THROW the fish at you like it does in Minecraft, this part takes HEAPS of Stamina, so make sure you’ve eaten a lot of good stamina meals before Fishing. Holding down Right Click will reel in the fish, using up Stamina all the while. I’ve tried giving the fish some line to gain back some Stamina, but it always ends up escaping, so I figured you just gotta reel it all the way in. Remember, the further your cast, the further it is to reel in and the more Stamina you’ll need.
Finally, there are a couple ways to fully catch the fish, and one of them includes literally just being a savage barbarian and running after the dang thing once it gets close enough. Funny enough, this strategy has worked better for me than actually FULLY catching the fish. When the fish is over ground, and you’re stamina is low, put away the fishing rod really quick with R and the fish will drop onto land. You’ve got a couple seconds here to charge it and grab it before it flops back into the water.
Catching the fish itself, though, feels like an accomplishment. All you have to do is simply reel the fish in all the way, and that’s it!
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