How to Fish Money Guide: Killscore, Cooking, and the Fastest Way to Get Rich

The How to Fish money loop is not about catching fish. Catching only opens the transaction, and how you kill the creature and what you do with the body before you sell it can multiply what it finally pays. Both multipliers are running by the time you reach Island 3.

How the How to Fish Money Loop Works

The loop runs in six steps. Catch a creature, kill it, raise its value, sell it, buy better equipment, then beat a boss to open the next island. Fishing is step one of six.

Two systems sit between the catch and the sale. Killscore rewards the way you finish a creature, and cooking rewards what you do with the body afterwards. They multiply against each other, so the same fish can be worth several times more depending on how you handle it.

Your rod decides what you can pull out of the water. Your gun decides how fast you turn that catch into cash. Both matter.

Money is tight through the first two islands, so the order you buy things in matters more than the total you spend.

Killscore: Every Multiplier and How They Stack

Killscore is a multiplier applied to a creature’s sale value based on how you killed it. It costs nothing but practice.

Modifier	Multiplier	How to trigger it
360	1.5x	Complete a full spin before firing, hipfire only
Headshot	1.25x	Land the killing shot on the head
Last Bullet	1.25x	Kill with the final round in the magazine
No Scope	1.2x	Fire from the hip without aiming down sights
Point Blank	1.1x	Kill from right against the creature
Fly Fishing	Stacking bonus	Kill a creature while it is airborne
Overkill	Stacking bonus	Deal damage well past the kill threshold
Killsteal	Stacking bonus	Land the kill on a creature someone else engaged

The modifiers multiply rather than add. A 360 at 1.5x, a headshot at 1.25x and a last bullet at 1.25x on a $1,000 fish comes to $2,343.

Stack Overkill or Killsteal on top and the score climbs past 5x, which is the threshold for the Impressive achievement. There is no published cap.

How to Practise Without Wasting Bait

Damage a cheap creature until it is nearly dead, back away to create distance, then attempt the fancy finish. You are not trying to land a 360 while emptying three magazines into an angry fish.

Do not practise on a boss you just summoned with expensive bait. A failed trick shot on a Standard Boss Lure creature costs you $280 and the fight. The sea is full of disposable targets.

Cooking: The 1.5x Window

Cooking is the second multiplier, and it arrives later than the first. You get grill access on Island 3 by bringing the Grillmaster a Blue Shark, which you catch with the Standard Boss Lure at $280. That unlock also awards the Grillmaster achievement.

Hold an item over the grill and press F to inspect it. The panel shows Value, Cooking multiplier, Weight and Killscore, and it updates live while the item cooks. The multiplier climbs from 1x toward 1.5x.

⚡ Pull at 1.5x: leave an item on the heat past the peak and it turns solid black. A burnt item is worth $0. You converted a good fish into charcoal.

Cook Your Guns Too

The multiplier is not limited to seafood. Weapons and other sellable objects take the same boost. When a gun becomes obsolete, put it on the grill before you take it to the shop.

Once you have the grill, a raw sale pays two thirds of what the same creature is worth cooked. Cook first, every time, with one exception. The Yummy in my tummy achievement asks you to eat a burnt creature, so burn a cheap one for that and nothing else.

What to Buy First and What to Skip

The shop sells plenty of things you do not need yet. Buy in this order.

1. Radar, $10 at the Lighthouse. NPCs start handing out coordinates for other islands and the numbers mean nothing without it.
2. Hot dog bait, $1. Pulls bigger crustaceans than the starting bait on Island 1.
3. Melee upgrade, $24. The knife or brass knuckles.
4. Shotgun, around $150. The first weapon that reliably kills what you catch. It carries a large chunk of the game.
5. Dynamite, around $25 once you reach the Forest island. Kills several creatures at once and leaves the bodies floating.
6. Assault Rifle and attachments. Matters most for the final encounters. There are four attachment categories: extended magazine, laser sight, optic and muzzle.

Put every attachment on one weapon rather than spreading purchases across the shop. A fully kitted rifle beats four bare ones.

Skip the Middle Boat Engine

The first real engine upgrade shows up on the Forest island at around $230. Island 4 sells Dual Motors at $860, the fastest setup available. There is a third engine between them.

Skip it. Players pushing for progress do better putting that cash into firepower.

If travel is the thing slowing you down, buy boat. If a boss is shrugging off your bullets, buy guns.

What the Big Creatures Sell For

These are community-reported base values, with the cooked column showing the same figure at the 1.5x peak. Killscore applies on top of both.

Creature	Raw	Cooked at 1.5x
Mutated Bowhead Whale	$15,000	$22,500
Endangered Albatross	$13,000	$19,500
Pufferfish	$12,000	$18,000
Giant Piranha	$11,000	$16,500
Spider Crab	$10,000	$15,000
Bowhead Whale	$8,000	$12,000
Goblin Shark	$6,200	$9,300
Tuna	$2,000	$3,000
Superdwarf Fish	$1,700	$2,550
Stonefish	$1,500	$2,250
Anglerfish	$1,500	$2,250
Oarfish	$1,450	$2,175
Blobfish	$1,360	$2,040

⚡ Treat these as a guide, not a spreadsheet: patch 1.0.4 on August 21 nerfed the Pufferfish and the Whale. Dazed Games did not publish what changed, so the two whale entries and the Pufferfish may read differently in your game.

A Scientific lure runs about $500 and repays itself in one or two catches at this end of the table. The Scientific Boss Lure costs $5,800 and exists for the optional mini-boss collection run, not for income.

The Items You Must Never Sell

Selling a boss trophy does not cost you money. It costs you an island.

Bosses drop distinctive pieces: shells, skeletons, fins, heads and other clearly named items. These are quest objects, not vendor trash.

A new island opens when you kill the boss and carry its trophy back to the NPC who sent you. Killing the boss alone is not enough.

If you have beaten a boss and no new destination appeared, open your inventory before you decide the game is broken, because you are probably carrying the thing an NPC is waiting for. Sell ordinary fish freely. Hold anything that looks unique until every quest on that island has moved forward.

Roulette: The 35x Gamble

The roulette table sits on Island 5 and pays 35 times the value of a wagered item on green. The payout arrives as a sellable object, which is how it feeds the Rich! Millionaire achievement: sell one item worth at least $100,000.

The maths works out at a minimum wager of $2,858, so aim for about $3,200 after cooking to leave margin. Green is one pocket in 37. It can land in five spins or ninety, so treat this as an achievement route and bet only the fish you can afford to lose.

Mistakes That Cost You Money

• Selling raw after Island 3. You are giving up a third of every sale.
• Leaning on dynamite late. Explosives are a fine harvesting tool for food and early cash, but a blast skips the stylish kill, and Killscore plus cooking beats a pile of cheap bodies.
• Buying every engine. Two of the three are enough.
• Spreading attachments across weapons. Four categories on one gun, not one category on four.
• Trick-shotting a summoned boss. You paid for the bait. Take the kill.
• Selling a shell or a skeleton. That is an island you no longer have access to.

Settle the Killsteal bonus with your group early. It pays whoever lands the finishing shot, not whoever fought the creature down. Big Walk arrived on August 4 with the same lesson about agreeing how a group uses a system before setting out.

Frequently Asked Questions

Gear for Four-Player Sessions

Every Killscore bonus runs through your aim, and eight-player lobbies run on voice chat. Prices are from the deals database as of August 2026.

Summary

How to Fish money comes from two multipliers, not from fishing. Learn three Killscore triggers you can land reliably, unlock the grill on Island 3, and cook every item to 1.5x before it crosses the counter. Buy the radar at $10, fund one shotgun, skip the middle boat engine, and never sell a boss trophy.

Dazed Games announced a million players in two days, and SteamDB recorded a 341,691 concurrent peak on August 24. Our most played games on Steam tracker refreshes monthly with the current top 15, and our prop hunt and hide-and-seek picks cover the rest of the group-night options.