Fishing

Whirlpools

All fishing happens at whirlpools. They turn up on the water a few tiles off the shore, never on the open sea, and one nobody fishes drifts somewhere else after 20 minutes. Plain water, ice holes and the old fishing rod catch nothing any more.

To cast, use the whirlpool (or use your rod on it) from up to 7 tiles away on the same floor. You need a metal fishing rod anywhere in your backpack, and the best one you carry counts. You can cast every 2 seconds.

Look at a whirlpool to see which fish you could pull out of it at your fishing level, and the level at which more of them start to bite.

A whirlpool is shared and short-lived. The first cast into it starts a window of 2 to 2.5 seconds: everyone who casts inside that window gets a bar of their own, one each, and then the whirlpool is gone.

The timing bar

Every cast opens a bar over the whirlpool with a pointer that runs to the right end and back again, one second each way. Click anywhere on the map to stop it. The click only stops the pointer; you don't walk. If the pointer is inside a zone, you always catch what that zone holds. If it is on the black, or it makes it all the way back to the start, the line comes back empty.

Zone	Shows up on	Catches
Food fish	Every bar	One of six food fish, 1–2 of it
Cooking fish	1 bar in 4	A fish from the whirlpool's water, by your fishing level
Chest	2% of bars, plus your rod's bonus	One treasure

Each zone rolls its own chance, so a lucky bar holds all three. The zones land in a random order and at random places, so watch each bar rather than clicking from memory.

Rods

A better rod widens the fish zones on the bar, adds to the chest's chance and gives a chance of one extra fish on every catch. The copper fishing rod is sold for 5,000 gold by general stores such as Gorn, Lubo and Bertha, and by Fisherman Doug. The rest are made at an anvil, under the crafting window's Tools tab, from the same bars as the pickaxe of their metal.

Rod	Food fish zone	Cooking fish zone	Chest chance	Extra fish	Made from
Copper fishing rod	15%	8%	+0%	0%	Shops, or 100 copper bars and 1,000 gold
Iron fishing rod	17%	9.5%	+1%	4%	100 iron bars and 5,000 gold
Golden fishing rod	19%	10.5%	+2%	6%	100 gold bars and 10,000 gold
Mithril fishing rod	21%	11.5%	+3%	8%	100 mithril bars and 50,000 gold
Adamant fishing rod	23%	13%	+4%	10%	100 adamant bars and 100,000 gold
Rune fishing rod	25%	15%	+6%	15%	100 runite bars and 250,000 gold

The zone widths are a share of the whole bar.

What you catch

Food fish bite at any level, one of these six at even odds. They are plain food: eat them raw.

Pond koi Red koi Brook koi Tiger barb Blue mackerel Golden dorado

Cooking fish are the ingredients for cooking. Each needs a fishing level, and gear that raises your fishing counts toward it:

Fishing level	Fish	Per catch
0	Blue cod Bog perch Armored piranha Slate mackerel	1–2
20	Azure koi Redfin bass Crimson squid Olive piranha	1–2
40	Jade koi Frost trout Sandfish Giant shrimp	1–2
60	Ironscale carp Golden koi Mudstripe grouper Sunstripe angelfish Yellowfin tuna	1
80	Grey reef shark Swordfish	1

The water decides which cooking fish live there. Every kind of water has one fish for each level step, the first the most common and every one after it rarer. You only ever roll among the fish your level allows, so at level 0 you catch only the first one.

Water	Where	Fish, from level 0 up
Coast	Around Carlin, the Femor Hills, around Thais and Greenshore, northern Edron and Cormaya	Blue cod Azure koi Jade koi Golden koi Grey reef shark
Murky	Venore's swamps, the Plains of Havoc, the Orc Fortress, the Ghostlands and the Dark Cathedral	Bog perch Crimson squid Giant shrimp Mudstripe grouper
Jungle	Port Hope's jungle and shores, and Banuta	Armored piranha Olive piranha Jade koi Sunstripe angelfish Grey reef shark
Desert	The desert around Ankrahmun	Slate mackerel Redfin bass Sandfish Ironscale carp Swordfish
Cold	Kazordoon's mountains, Mount Sternum, the Dwarven bridge and the deepest Dwarven mines	Slate mackerel Azure koi Frost trout Yellowfin tuna

Murky and cold water have no level 80 fish.

A chest holds one of these, all equally likely: White pearl Small sapphire Small emerald Giant shimmering pearl Leviathan's amulet

The Fishing skill

Every cast trains Fishing, hit or miss, and a catch trains twice as much again. A cast at a whirlpool that holds nothing for your level is refused before it costs you anything.

Selling fish to Fisherman Doug trains it too: one try for every four fish sold.

Fisherman Doug

Fisherman Doug

Buys every fish

Sells the copper fishing rod for 5,000 gold and buys everything you catch. He is also the second stop of Chef Laurent's cooking lessons.

Catching more

• Anglers elixirs from alchemy raise your fishing level by 2 to 10 and give a 1–5% chance of one extra fish.
• Grilled fish platter adds 5% to the chest's chance, and a Garden salad makes Fishing train 5% faster. See Cooking.
• The shop's Bountiful Gathering gives every catch a 10% chance to come up double for an hour, and the Worker Boost makes Fishing train 10% faster for everyone.

Multi-tools

A multi-tool such as the whacking driller of fate holds tools inside it. It fishes only while a fishing rod sits in its own slots, and then it casts from as far away as the rod would. A rod in your backpack beside it lends it nothing.