In Which I Fish and Play with Water in Enshrouded

In my writing I probably make fishing seem more important to me in video games than it actually is.

I think I am more interested in both its ubiquity… tough to be an MMO or open world kind of game without it… even Pokemon has fishing… and the various implementations that are arrived at in an attempt to make fishing both accessible and still interesting.

So, while I am not completely wed to the fishing lifestyle, I do feel compelled to go try it out.  And with the new Wake of the Water update for Enshrouded, it was time once again to bait my hook and see what I could fish up.

Enshrouded – Wake of the Water splash screen… slash, get it?

The first thing was to make sure I ran the update in Steam.  Fortunately, Steam makes that all very easy.  (There has been a tale going around from the Baldur’s Gate 3 dev team that, while they feel locked into Steam, that they have to be there, part of that is because it is a privately held company that isn’t constantly enshittifying things to raise margins for quarterly revenues.)

Then, of course, there was some time spent compiling shaders.  I have compiled so many shaders you would think I would be better, or at least quicker at it by now.

Shaders compiling – stock image from a past post

All Enshrouded players know what I am talking about.  But you are eventually done and get to move on and log into the game.  For me, that meant remembering what our server was even called and what the password is.

Luckily that data was all still in a pinned message on the group’s Discord server.

Then I was able to log in, spending a few minutes reorienting myself as to the control scheme, which is just different enough from Palia, Palworld, and No Man’s Sky to take a few minutes of hitting the wrong key before things settled down.

Once settled, I examined our base.  It had not been flooded or become a new lake in the update to the terrain.  It and its general vicinity remained as water free as before, with only the rain and a couple of wells to provide liquid.

This led me to the first problem; where to find some water.  I wanted to see some actual liquid, but didn’t know where to find it.

I mean, sure, there is a whole new zone/biome called the Veilwater Basin that is supposed to be wetter than Seattle in April, but I wasn’t sure exactly how to get there and my main character in our redone world was only level 30, which likely put me at least ten levels from that being a plan in a world where the level cap had just been boosted to 45 for that very zone.

That meant some exploring.

After a couple of false starts I eventually I found a pond not far from the farm that we took over and made a base in our first run at the game.

A quiet pond with a fishing dock

I marked that on the map and then went back to our base to check out the whole fishing pole situation.

A blue loot bag was my solution for marking water

That done I fast traveled back to camp to speak with the hunter NPC who, according to the update notes, has a quest to get you going with fishing.  That proved to be true, and the first task was to go catch at least five fireflies.

We had plenty of fireflies in our base storage, so I grabbed a stack of 50… and the quest did not update.  Hrmm.  I thought maybe I literally had to catch the fireflies to update the quest, so I waited around until dark and ran around collecting fireflies.

This did not update the quest either.

Then I recalled that maybe quests don’t work like that in Enshrouded… it has been a while since I played… so I went back to the hunter NPC with the fireflies in my inventory.  On speaking to her I got the quest update.  That got me the ability to craft bait.  So I made some bait.

The bait recipe did not require fireflies.  Go figure.

However, I did see that she had a fishing pole recipe available to craft, so I did that.

Then I looked at the next step in the quest, which was to craft a basic fishing pole, something you do from your own inventory.  So I crafted another, basic fishing pole, then spoke to her and got the next update, which was to go catch a fish and bring it back to her.

It was night still at that point, so I went to bed and got up at the crack of dawn to go fishing, just like real life… somewhere in my youth before the internet we used to go fishing.  Hell, I used to leave the house for all sorts of things back then.

Then it was out to the pond where I equipped the better of the two fishing poles, and walked out onto the little dock on the pond to cast my line.  You have to equip bait to cast, but once you do it is pretty simple.  You cast the line and watch the bobber.  Fish will show up and nibble at the bait, then when one is hooked you well get an indicator to left click.

The fish is hooked, now click!

Clicking… and you just need to click once, not click and hold… put you into the contest to land your catch.  You need to wear the fish out to land him before your line gives out.  Your line has a green health bar and the fish a red bar.

The fight is on, the old man and the pond!

You wear the fish out by moving your line back and forth using the A and D keys.  The initial fish, in this first pond I found, were worn out pretty quickly.  Once their bar is done you get the highlight to click again to reel the fish in and, shazam, there you are with a fish in your hand.

Lakehopper fish caught!

Or, sometimes you catch things that are not fish.

Mana potion caught!

Overall, not a bad mechanic.  Easier to manage at first than it is in Palia, and much easier than the fishing mechanic in Palworld… but not as easy as No Man’s Sky, where you just wait for your line to turn green… special futuristic space fishing line, not that cheap 2lb test you’ve been using… and click your mouse and you’re done.

From The Sea task complete back in a past expedition

You only start with a simple bait and an improved fishing pole, but I bet there are upgrades and places more difficult to fish than my little pond.

Then, because I was there, I jumped into the water, armor and all, to see how swimming worked.  You plod around on the surface fine, but I had to go look at the key bindings to figure out that “C” is dive.  And, sure enough, with that you can slip beneath the waves.

Diving in the pond

You get a 30 second supply of air, which wasn’t even enough to thoroughly explore my little patch of water, but I suspect there will be potions and other things to extend your under water time.  When I went back to cook the fish… what else are you going to do with them… they turned out to be plus health and additional under water time.

A cooked fish

Again, this is probably the base fish from my little pond.  Other, more advanced fish will likely yield improved buffs.

Then I went back to base and started looking through a few of the new items, grates and drains and the like, for dealing with water.  But the best thing was the water dispenser, a cheap recipe that can be built at the crafting table.

The water dispenser, just 4 iron bars

I guess you need to have iron, which comes along later in the game, but you just need four bars to make the dispenser.

Then you can take that item and slap it on the side of a building or wall or whatever, and water just starts pouring out.

The water dispenser… dispenses water!

I was wondering how people were going to get water into their builds to do things, and this is it.  There isn’t an on/off valve or anything.  You just slap it onto something and water starts coming out like magic.

Anyway, that is my initial look at water, fishing, and that sort of things.  More to explore there for sure and I will be interested to see how people start incorporating water into the base builds now.