Fishing - Official Terraria Wiki

Step 1

↑ % Bait Power also means % Fishing Power, and is combined with all other Fishing Power factors, such as the Fishing Pole's power and the Time factor, etc. Bait Power additionally determines the chances that the Bait item will be consumed from the player's inventory. Items with higher Bait Powers will tend to last through more fishing attempts: Higher Bait Power means lower chance of consumption. ↑ Chum Bucket bonuses are determined by how many are present on the water at once. One bucket used will give +11, two for +17 and three for a max of +20. These bonuses are not affected by previous factors (i.e. armor, accessories, potions, bait, pole, time, or weather), and are only affected by lake size. Also note that reeling in nothing or having the line break counts towards one of the 10 uses. ↑ This stacks with the Rain bonus, which means the Fishing Power bonus is more than +20% during raining due to the cloudiness. ↑ On Desktop, Console, and Mobile, fishing during a Blood Moon has a significant chance of spawning any of several exclusive and difficult enemies. See the Enemies section for more details. ↑ Lake sizes listed here are example numbers to illustrate the lake size effect, and are not thresholds. The penalty is actually determined by the equation (tiles / (n * atmo)) × Fishing Power where n = 300 for water and 200 for honey, and atmo is usually 1 except at very high altitudes. Any increase or decrease in total tiles between 75 and 300 (200) will alter the lake size penalty. To be exact, atmo is either always 1 (on Old-gen console version and Nintendo 3DS version) or else determined by the equation max(0.25, min(1, ((maxY - Y) - (60 + 10 * WF)) / (maxY / 6))) (if above the Surface on Desktop version, Console version, and Mobile version, where Y is the bobber's altitude above the surface measured in tiles, maxY is the maximum altitude in the world measured in tiles, and WF is either 1 for Small and Medium worlds or else 4 for Large worlds).

Step 2

↑ Information taken from the Desktop 1.4.4.9 source code, methods GetFishingConditions() in Terraria.Player.cs and FishingCheck() in Terraria.Projectile.cs. ↑ Information taken from the Desktop 1.4.3.6 source code, method FishingCheck_RollDropLevels() in Terraria.Projectile.cs. There may be inaccuracies, as the current Desktop version is 1.4.4.9. ↑ Information taken from the Desktop 1.4.3.6 source code, method FishingCheck_RollItemDrop() in Terraria.Projectile.cs. There may be inaccuracies, as the current Desktop version is 1.4.4.9. ↑ Obsidian Crates and Hellstone Crates are technically a Plentiful catch, but occur only 1 in 5 successful crate catches. This makes the lava crates technically 5× rarer than other crates, but because there are no lava catches in the Plentiful, Common, or Uncommon quality slots, lava crates are not actually much more rare than (and, depending on the player's Fishing Power, they could be much more common than) other crates in their respective environments.

Step 3

↑ 1.0 1.1 When in both Corruption and Crimson, there is a 50% chance of each (except for crates, where Corruption has higher priority). ↑ No crate is caught solely or especially in the Forest biome, however, there are crates which can be caught in any biome (including Forest). See the Crate Mechanics section below for further details.

Step 4

↑ 1.0 1.1 see Space § Notes

Step 5

↑ 1.0 1.1 Displayed Fishing Power. All examples assume that luck is 0.

Step 6

In Hardmode, the Angler can award the Hotline Fishing Hook, a fishing pole that allows lava fishing with any bait. Even before Hardmode, lava bait can be caught in the Underworld. If the player does not have a Golden Bug Net, they will need to make a Lavaproof Bug Net. Either of the above will allow catching Obsidian Crates (Hellstone Crates in Hardmode) in search of a Lavaproof Fishing Hook. This accessory will allow using any bait and fishing pole to fish in lava. There will also be other useful and/or saleable items caught and found in the crates; if the player has no Shadow Key, they can save the Obsidian Lock Boxes until they get one (from the Dungeon). As noted above, the Lavaproof Fishing Hook can be combined with an Angler Tackle Bag to make a Lavaproof Tackle Bag.Again, having any two of the three (lava bait, Hotline Fishing Hook, or Lavaproof Fishing Hook/Lavaproof Tackle Bag) will produce catches much faster. This will be especially useful when fishing for the rare Lava Charm.

Step 7

↑ 1.0 1.1 Information taken from the Desktop 1.4.4.9 source code, method FishingCheck_RollEnemySpawns() in Terraria.Projectile.cs. ↑ Information taken from the Desktop 1.4.3.6 source code, method FishingCheck() in Terraria.Projectile.cs. There may be inaccuracies, as the current Desktop version is 1.4.4.9. ↑ A tick is a time unit countable by the software. Most of Terraria's updating logic happens every tick. A tick has the length of 1/60th of a second, hence there are 60 ticks in a second and 3600 ticks in a minute.