How to Fish Troubleshooting
Community-reported problems with official patch context. Every fix below starts by protecting your save data, because most losses in How to Fish get worse when players keep saving over them.
Save File Bug & Autosave Problems
Patch 1.0.9 attempted a corruption fix, but old saves are not auto-repaired. How the Patch 1.0.6 save rules work and what to preserve before trying workarounds.
Items or Weapons Disappeared
Weapons, boat, radar, or quest drops gone after a crash, death, or disconnect. The safe recovery order — and why you should stop saving immediately.
Cannot Join Friends / Black Screen
Lobby black screens, version mismatch, and private lobby settings fixed. Patch 1.0.4 and 1.0.5 changed how sessions work.
What Should I Do Next?
Progression troubleshooter by game state: still on Island 1, cannot find Island 2 or 3, or defeated a boss and nothing changed.
The Golden Rule for Every Bug
Stop creating new saves first. Close the game normally if possible, back up the entire save folder, and only then try a workaround. How to Fish writes saves on manual Save, Main Menu, Quit, and via an autosave roughly every minute — a crash does not create a fresh save, but reloading and re-saving repeatedly can overwrite the last good state. On Windows the save lives inAppData/LocalLow/DazedGames/HowToFish.
Patch context: 1.0.6 set the current save rules, 1.0.9 attempted a corruption fix. Player reports of missing equipment still appear after reconnects and deaths, so prevention beats recovery.