Fishing has been considered a great leisure activity for people throughout the ages, and a means of survival for those living in rivers, the coastline, and islands.

Many artists have praised fishing and left poetry and pictures which celebrated fishing. Such taste can be enjoyed within the world of Black Desert as well.

Fishing is not just a way to catch sea food, but it is also an activity of recreation and relaxation.

You will need a fishing rod in order to enjoy fishing.
You can buy your first fishing rods from wharf managers and fishers, or get them as part of doing beginner fishing quests.

Down the line you can purchase more advanced fishing rods, or craft them on your own.

While you can equip the fishing rod on the main weapon slot of your character, in the sub-weapon slot you can equip fishing floats. By using floats on fishing rods you improve the chance to get more of a specific type of fish, be it considered  a bigger or rarer fish.Like with fishing rods, these fishing tools can be obtained as quest rewards, crafted in town workshops, or purchased in the Central Market.

You can fish anywhere there’s water: swamps, small creeks, lakes, rivers, the coastline, or the open seas. You can also get on rowboats, fishing boats, and bigger boats to fish while at sea.
However, you won’t be able to fish in water that is too shallow.

Equip a fishing rod and certain UI elements will show up in the upper part of the screen. These let you know the state of fishing resources in the area, and give you a couple options: to not be carried away by other Adventurers’ ships, and to select which grade of fish you do not want to obtain.

We recommend all Adventurers to have the first option toggled on.

Regarding the grade of fish to discard, it becomes available as you level up the fishing life skill. From professional 1 onward you will be able to discard green grade items. From artisan 1, blue grade items. From master 1, yellow grade items.

In a location where a lot of Adventurers are fishing, the fishing resources available get reduced. As this happens, the time it takes to fish will become longer.
You can check the fishing resource status right away when you equip a fishing rod, you can also open the World Map screen (hotkey: M) and look through the Territory Resource Information tab.

After waiting for a bit, the fish will bite. Once this happens, press the Space key again and a minigame will begin.
A moving gauge will show up, and you will have three chances to hit the Space key again to stop the gauge in the right position and succeed.
After this, you will need to press the WASD key commands in the given order presented, in a limited time, to get the fish. The difficulty of the commands will depend on the category of the fish to possibly obtain, but does not guarantee its acquisition.

If you fish often, you will obtain fishing EXP, and with time your character’s fishing level will go up. As your fishing level goes up, the chances for fishing better graded fish will also go up.

The kind of fish you can get is different for each territory.

Fish obtained is regularly used as a cooking or alchemy material, but it can also be considered an expensive trade item depending on the rarity of the fish.

Most fish have a price guarantee timer on them. The more time passes, the less valuable the fish will be, and after the timer runs out, the fish will be considered expired and won’t be usable for any purpose. An expired fish can only be thrown away, or sold for no silver. If you want to preserve your obtained fish for use as a cooking ingredient, you can dry them via processing (hotkey: L). Via this method you can keep the dried product regardless of price guarantee, but it loses its status as a trade item.

If you still want to use the dried fish as a trade item, you can later turn it back into a trade item by packaging it into boxes at a town workshop.

If you’re worried about filling your character’s inventory with low grade fish during auto-fishing, you can select the grade of fish you wish to keep, as detailed above.

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The fish guide contains information about the fish you can get through fishing.

Only the fish you have gotten yourself is shown in the guide, and you can look at the knowledge entry, how many times you’ve caught that fish, the maximum size of the fish you’ve caught, and the leaderboard for the biggest fish of each type you’ve caught.

The guide will be updated whenever you catch a fish bigger than your previous record. However, if you log off as soon as you catch the fish, there’s a chance that your data might not be saved.
The leaderboard will show the Adventurers’ name of those that caught the bigger fish, and for those that caught same sized fish, the Adventurer who caught that size first will be ranked higher.

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You can access the fish guide by going into the main menu (hotkey: Esc) → Life → Fish Guide.

With the information given in this page you are now ready to experience the essence of fishing in Black Desert’s world on your own. However, if you want to know more about this life skill in detail, we recommend you check the [Advanced Fishing Guide] page.

*The content of the game guide may differ from the actual game content, depending on the update and content changes.