Achievements
All 28 Achievements & How to Get ThemHow to Fish — Achievements
How to Fish has 28 achievements, and most of them come from simply playing the game through — fighting the story bosses, filling the collection, and messing around with the boat and the casino. This page lists all 28 with how to complete each one and its Steam completion rate, so you can see at a glance what's common, what's rare, and what you're actually missing. The three genuinely hard ones get a worked section at the end.
How to Read the Numbers
Completion rates are Steam's global numbers, live as of this writing. A few things they tell you:
100%
Effectively everyone who owns the game gets it
These are the tutorial and first-kill achievements.
18–30%
The story range
Most players finish the main bosses, fewer reach the very end.
Under 5%
The genuine hardcore tier
Speedruns, full collections, and the bare-hands final boss.
Two achievements worth flagging up front: Bean (finish in under an hour) doesn't show on the standard Steam list screen, and Drip sits at 100% because a Drip kill happens so early that nearly everyone gets one.
The 28 Achievements
Story & Progression
Getting started
100%
Kill your first creature.
Your very first kill, during the tutorial. Unavoidable.
Who stole my beer
91.9%
Find and kill the culprit, and bring it to the lighthouse keeper.
A Lighthouse quest: kill the thief creature and carry its body back to the Keeper.
Dinnertime
75.9%
Catch dinner for the lady in the forest.
On Island 2. Catch her a dinner fish; if she won't accept it raw, grill it first, then hand it over.
Vacation
52.0%
Help the tourist swim on his vacation.
Island 3 (Desert): the tourist under the tree is afraid of a fish. Catch a Needlefish and give it to him — it's the step that unlocks the Pufferfish quest.
Grillmaster
65.2%
Start the grill.
Island 3 (Desert): bring the Grillmaster a Blue Shark and he unlocks the grill.
Terrorizing bird
30.8%
Defend the scared islanders from the terrorizing bird.
Island 4 (Rocks): beat the Terrorizing Bird boss.
Deadliest catch
18.9%
Help the military defeat the big creature they located.
Island 5 (Volcano), tied to the final-boss chain.
We are so back
18.5%
Finish the game.
Defeat the Mutated Bowhead Whale and complete the story.
The quest chain behind these is on the NPCs & Quests page.
Combat & Killscore
Noob
80.9%
Get a kill with no kill score multiplier.
Land a plain kill with none of the multiplier conditions — no headshot, no airborne shot, no 360. A basic early swing usually does it naturally.
Impressive
70.6%
Get a 5x killscore multiplier.
Stack the multiplier conditions up to 5x. The reliable way is a crowded fight with a Shotgun, where the spread stacks several triggers at once, rather than trying to force it on a single boss.
360 no scope
54.1%
Kill a creature with a 360 no scope.
Spin a full 360° and land the kill with the scope unaimed. The Sniper Rifle is the natural tool, on an airborne catch.
Easy
12.0%
Kill a boss within 10 seconds.
Front-load all your damage into a short window — dynamite placed where the boss is about to move, on top of a gun you can empty fast. See the worked section below.
Collection
Drip
100%
Kill a drip creature.
A Drip is a rare shiny recolor of a normal species. It appears early enough that nearly everyone gets one.
Collector
7.0%
Find and kill all the creatures.
The full roster — roughly 49 base creatures across the five islands. The collection book shows what you're missing.
Fishipedia
0.5%
Find and kill all drip creatures.
Every Drip variant. The harder of the two collection achievements; see the worked section.
How Drips spawn and where to hunt them is on the Fish & Creatures page.
Casino & Money
GOLD GOLD GOLD
59.2%
Unlock a legendary skin from the slot machine.
On Island 4, feed the Reel of Fortune the specific rare fish it asks for, spin, and hit the legendary (Red) tier of the rod skins.
All in
18.0%
Bet on green and win at roulette.
Bet on green on the roulette wheel and win — the rare, big-payout bet.
Rich! Millionaire
5.4%
Sell something worth 100,000 or more.
A single item sold for 100k+. The big boss-tier catches are where this comes from.
The casino mechanics are on the Economy & Gambling page.
Boat & Travel
Getting an upgrade
79.3%
Upgrade the engine on the boat.
Buy the first engine tier.
I am speed
41.2%
Buy the best engine for the boat.
The top engine tier.
I'm the bird now
12.4%
Make the boat fly.
Light a Dynamite and throw it at your own boat to launch it into the air — the fastest method. The best engine also helps.
Seagulls & Eating
Let me go
75.9%
Get picked up by a seagull.
Let a seagull grab you — the reliable version is dying and not taking the respawn, after which a seagull carries you off.
Everyone's dream
2.7%
Kill a seagull with dynamite.
Wait for a seagull to come in, then hit it with a dynamite. The seagull achievements are among the rarest purely because they're easy to miss.
Yummy in my tummy
34.5%
Eat a burnt creature.
Overcook something and eat the burnt result.
Competitive eating
13.2%
Eat a mini-boss.
The likely candidates are the repeatable lure-summoned bosses or the elite encounters — see the Bosses page for which ones exist.
Gear & Speedrun
Fully equipped
41.1%
Apply all attachments to a single weapon.
Put rail, mag, sight, and grip on one gun. Easy to do on the weapon you actually use.
Bean
<1%
Finish the game within 1 hour.
The speedrun achievement. See the worked section.
The Three Hardest, Worked
Bean — finish in under an hour
Bean is a pure speedrun achievement, and the route is simple in principle: skip everything optional. Don't touch the side quests (dinner, grill, the casino), don't farm coins, and don't collect. Go story boss to story boss, hand in each drop the moment the boss dies, and buy only the minimum gear to survive (the rod, the knife upgrade, the boss lures, and the assault rifle before the final whale).
- 1Spider Crab
- 2Giant Piranha
- 3Pufferfish
- 4Terrorizing Bird
- 5Mutated Bowhead Whale
The minute-by-minute early section of the Beginner's Guide is a good rehearsal for the first half.
Fishipedia — every Drip variant
Drips are rare recolors of normal species — same island, same rod, same bait, low chance. The method is repetition: pick a species you're missing, fish or kill it on its island with the right bait, and repeat until the recolor shows. The collection book is your checklist — the silhouettes are the Drips you still need. Because the odds are low, expect this to be the last achievement you finish.
Handyman — final boss with bare hands
Fight the Mutated Bowhead Whale normally with your weapon, then stop shooting before it actually dies, unequip your weapon, and land the last hit with your fists. The only danger is accidentally firing one bullet too many and losing the whole fight — leave slightly more health than you think you need before you switch to bare hands.
FAQ
Can every achievement be earned in single-player?
Yes. All 28 are doable alone; co-op just makes the chaotic ones faster.
Which achievements are actually rare?
The under-5% tier: Bean (speedrun), Fishipedia (all Drips), Handyman (bare-hands final boss), and Rich! Millionaire (single 100k+ sale).
Do the completion rates change?
Yes — they're live Steam numbers, so they drift as more players finish the game. The ordering (which are common vs rare) tends to stay roughly the same.
How do I get the two casino achievements?
All in is betting on green at roulette and winning. GOLD GOLD GOLD is hitting a legendary skin on the Reel of Fortune slot machine. Both are covered on the Economy & Gambling page. Economy & Gambling
What am I missing for Collector / Fishipedia?
Open the collection book: silhouettes are creatures you haven't killed yet. If the normal list looks complete, the remaining gaps are almost always Drip variants.