GONE Fishing beginner guide: setup, perks and your first day

The main menu has Create Server, Join Server, Tutorial, a language button and Quit, plus Daily, Weekly and Monthly challenges and a leaderboard. Create Server shows five save slots, one per map, and New Game opens Create Lobby.

Create Lobby sets the lobby name, Max Players (1 to 8), difficulty and a Public Lobby box. On our new profile only the Lake was open: two maps showed Reach Day 7 and two showed Reach Day 14. The Lake's own caption reads "Where Anglers learn their craft".

The Difficulty list on 1.0.1 shows Peaceful, Average Angler and Fishing Veteran. Next to it the game says to unlock Jeremy Wade difficulty by defeating the boss, so the hardest setting is locked on a new profile.

In the lobby, Select Perks opens nine perk cards and two slots, Perk One and Perk Two. Clicking a card did nothing in our test; dragging it onto a slot assigned it. Scroll the row to see all nine.

The lobby bar has Leave, Cosmetics, Select Perks, a Hardcore toggle (Hardcore Disabled by default), Ready Up, Start and Enable Guide?. Turn the guide on: it shows each first-day objective in the top-right corner. Start only works once players are ready.

An Early Access post says Hardcore doesn't save bait and adds 15% to legendary catch chance. We left it off.

The HUD lists Q to drop, G for the Journal and Enter for chat. On day 1 the game also told us that gold is shared between players, that the trader was arriving, and to drop fish into the trader's basket with Q to earn gold.

1. The run opens with a cutscene on a small plane. Hold Space to skip it; a single tap didn't work for us. GONE Studios says the host can skip after about 10 seconds.
2. You start inside the cabin. The guide says Equip Fishing Rod: face one of the rods leaning by the door and press E.
3. Press G to open the Journal and click the mouse icon in the page corner to turn pages.
4. Go to the water. The guide's next step is to hold left mouse while looking at the water to cast.

The Journal's How 2 Fish page calls a catch a tug-of-war. Keep the green tension bar in range: if it drops to the bottom you lose the fish, and if it maxes out the line snaps. Left-click reels in, but forcing the reel while the fish thrashes breaks the line.

If the line snaps before you even touch the reel, the Journal says you're out of your weight class: upgrade your gear before you waste more bait.

Each day the altar wants a set amount of fish. GONE Studios says placed torches turn blue when the quota is met, just like the altar fire, which is your signal that sleeping is safe.

Early Access posts add the rest: on Average Angler, two missed quotas end the run. After 22:30 the host can use Force next day in the Esc menu, but someone still dies if the altar is short. Dead players come back the next day, or right away if a teammate sacrifices the heart.

1.0 changed how quota grows with group size but didn't publish the formula, and we haven't reached the altar yet, so treat these as the developer's rules rather than tested numbers.