Although fishing isn’t required for Terraria, it can yield many good rewards. In addition, it’s necessary to create items such as the Cell Phone and complete 100% of the achievements.
If you’re looking for a good explanation of everything you need about fishing, this is the guide for you. I’ll cover everything from the basics of fishing to being the best fisherman you possibly can be.
How to Fish
To do any sort of fishing, you need a good pole to fish with. The pole alone won’t help you, though, as you also need bait. You can keep as much bait in your inventory as you want, but the bait that shows up first in your inventory is the one the pole will use.
When you’ve found a lake or body of water big enough to fish in, you simply cast your line into the water or lava and wait (more on lava fishing later). You’ll see the bobber dip under the water, and then you click to reel it in.
You can catch many things depending on what biome you’re fishing in, and most things are worth keeping. On the other hand, junk items are completely useless items that are there to clutter up your inventory and be thrown away. There are ways to stop catching junk, which I will cover later.
You can keep catching fish until all of your bait runs out, but it sometimes takes a while to run out since bait can be found in chests.
Where to Fish
Every biome has its fish, including floating islands. Fishing during Blood Moons has also been revamped in Journey’s End, even adding new bosses that can be fished out of the ocean.
When you fish in the new area, setting up a small fishing hut with the necessities, including a bed and storage items, is wise. If you’re fishing in lava, setting up a lava fishing lake somewhere where you won’t be bombarded with enemies is smart.
Each underground layer has its fish to catch, causing you to move around quite a bit when you need new fish. You’re extremely vulnerable to attacks when your fishing pole is in the water. As long as you’re safe, you won’t have much to worry about, except creatures that can clip through walls.
Angler Quests
Every in-game day, the Angler will give you a brand few fishing quests to complete. The quests always involve heading to a particular biome and catching a quest fish, and the quest is completed by turning the fish into the Angler.
Out of every reason to go fishing in Terraria, the quest rewards are the most beneficial. You can get many unique items by doing these quests, such as the Golden Fishing Pole and fishing accessories necessary for the Cell Phone.
Fishing Poles
You’ll need a pole before you can start fishing. Here’s a list of every pole in the game, their fishing power, and how to get them.
Bait
To do any sort of fishing, you need to have at least 1 piece of bait in your inventory. When a fish is caught on the line, 1 bait will be consumed. You’re also able to decrease the chance of bait consumption using accessories.
The quality of the bait is a major factor in the effectiveness of your fishing. Although you’ll need a ton of bait if you plan on fishing often, bait is quite easy to get by catching insects with a bug net.
When you start doing Angler quests, he frequently rewards you with bait. Every crate can contain bait as well, so there isn’t any shortage of bait.
Lava Fishing
Journey’s End introduced lava fishing to Terraria, but it doesn’t explain how to start doing it. There are 3 ways to fish in lava. The first is catching bait in the underworld using the Lavaproof Bug Net. The second is a Hotline Fishing Rod or Lavaproof Fishing Hook, and the last is the Golden Fishing Rod.
Of course, the easiest way to fish is by using lava bait caught in the underworld. The Lava Proof Bug net is easy to get and lets you collect decent bait from the underworld. You can use this bait to complete any Angler Quests that require lava fish and get lava fish to make potions.
If you’re lucky and can get either the Hotline Fishing Rod or the Lavaproof Fishing Hook, that’s pretty much all you need to continue your lava fishing adventures.
Although fishing in the Underworld can be enjoyable, it’s not practical for Expert and Master Mode worlds. The best way to lava fish is to create a lava lake towards the surface, and then you’ll have the easiest time catching the lava-exclusive fish.
The Demon Conch is one of the best items you can get while lava fishing. It’s an amazing but rare item that will teleport you to the center of the Underworld, essentially negating the need to build a Hellevator.
How to Avoid Junk
Junk items are super annoying to catch since they take up inventory space and waste the life of your bait. There are several ways to avoid catching junk so you never have to worry about it again.
Sonar Potions
While it’s smart to use Sonar Potions, they will show you when there’s junk at the end of your line. The potion will also show you what fish is on the end of your line, so it inevitably will save you bait by letting you pick and choose the fish you want.
The potions are cheap to make and make fishing much easier, so always have some of these on your fishing trips.
Get a bigger lake
If the lake you’re fishing in is over 300 blocks in size, you’ll no longer catch any junk. The same goes for fishing in honey, except you only need a honey pool 200 blocks large.
You won’t have to worry about junk in the ocean, but the junk becomes annoying when fishing in other biomes. If you manage to get the Bottomless Water Bucket or Bottomless Lava Bucket, you’ll easily be able to create lakes large enough to fish in without junk.
Increase fishing power
Fishing power is incredibly beneficial for catching fish the fastest, and having a high enough level (50) will stop you from catching junk altogether.
The Golden Fishing Rod is the best reward for the Angler and automatically has 50 fishing power. In addition to the fishing pole you use, the type of bait also increases fishing power, and several accessories add fishing power as well.
There are many ways to increase your total power, but as long as your total power is over 50 then junk will no longer be a problem for you.
Fishing and Potions
Besides the Cell Phone, collecting potion ingredients is the best reason to go fishing. So many potions require fish that it’ll take forever to collect them all.
Fishing Potion
This potion will increase your fishing power by 15 for 8 minutes. These are great to use if you don’t quite have 50 fishing power and don’t want to catch junk or simply for catching fish faster.
Crate Potion
The Crate Potion increases your chance of catching a crate to 20% instead of the usual 10% chance. The potion lasts only 3 minutes and requires several herbs and a piece of Amber to craft.
Crates are filled with items that are either total garbage or extremely helpful. If you fish for crates Pre-Hardmode, you can get some game-changing items.
While the crates are still good in Hardmode, they won’t provide any amazing items. They do provide many great Hardmode ores and some good baits, but other than that, crates aren’t as beneficial in Hardmode.
Sonar Potion
Possibly the most useful fishing item there is. When you use this potion, it’ll show you anything that gets caught on your line. This allows you to avoid junk and only catch the fish you need. You can also save a massive amount of bait while using this potion.
It’s also insanely cheap, so I recommend making as many of these as possible. It also lasts 8 minutes, making it a must-have for any fishing trip.
Fishing Crates
Crates hold all sorts of good things and can even be used to gain better items early on in the game. Speedrunners use crates to gain a head start in Hardmode by gaining high-tier ore early.
Some incredibly useful weapons, such as the Enchanted Sword, can be obtained even early on. All it takes is a little patience and a few crate potions to save yourself the trouble of farming certain items.
Fishing Power
While fishing power sounds complicated, it’s very simple when you see its effects. Many different formulas are used when calculating fishing power, but all you need to know is that the higher the fishing power you have, the faster you’ll catch fish.
You’ll no longer catch junk if your fishing power is over 50. So obviously, fishermen want to have as much fishing power as possible. Several items in the game increase fishing power, and here is a list of all of them:
- Angler Tackle Bag / Angler Earring – increases fishing power by 10
- Angler Armor – full set increases fishing power by 15
- Fishing Potion – increases fishing power by 15 for 8 minutes
- Chum Bucket – increases fishing power by 11 on first use, 17, on second use, and 20 on the third use
In addition to these accessories, every fishing pole and bait in the game has its fishing power modifiers. The maximum amount of fishing power you can ever have is 303. Some wizards on the Terraria wiki calculated that number, an insane amount of fishing power that can only be rarely obtained.