Fire Emblem: Three Houses Fishing guide: bait list and fishing tips
As Nier creator Yoko Taro once said, it's not a real Japanese RPG if it doesn't have a fishing mini game. And so, of course, there's fishing in Fire Emblem: Three Houses.
Fishing is a basic mini-game in this latest Fire Emblem entry, and it forms a basis for a couple of quests as well as a great way to earn experience to raise your professor level or nab ingredients for special cooking recipes. Here's everything you need to know about Fire Emblem: Thee Houses Fishing.
How to unlock fishing in Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Fishing is an activity you undertake while enjoying your downtime in the monastery, but it's not one that's unlocked from your very first free time exploring in the game. First, you'll have to unlock it.
Once you've chosen your house and have free access to the monastery, check the bulletin board. The game will actually direct you towards this - it's practially impossible to miss. As part of this bulletin board check you'll discover a side quest that asks you to go fishing.
Follow the quest instructions, heading to the fishing pond to the south of the monastery area. You can chat to the NPC here to initiate fishing.
Once you've been fishing once through this quest, you'll have it unlocked to do any time during free monastery time. Just head to the pond to do it.
Fire Emblem: Three Houses Fishing Tips
The act of fishing in Three Houses is actually remarkably simple - once you've cast your line, you simply press a button to begin reeling in once you get a 'hit'. At that point a rhythm-based mini-game begins where you need to time button presses with the on-screen prompts.
If you're successful, you'll whittle away the 'health bar' of the fish and get closer to catching it. It's as simple as that.
Fishing is particularly great because it's a way of earning professor EXP without spending any time or activity points - it's basically free EXP that you can undertake at least once an in-game month, bait permitting. Professor EXP is vital as it allows you to perform more actions in the monastery - which means more tea time tea parties, more faculty training, and generally more time to get to know your students and increase your support ranks. You should always make the time to catch a few fish, basically.
There are also some times when you might want to do more fishing - such as during Calendar Month 12, when the 'Fistfuls of Fish' event takes place and offers up even more EXP.
Whenever you go fishing, you should pay attention to a few things during this process:
- Keep an eye on the color of the shadow of the fish that appears in the water. Blue is common, Red is uncommon and a Golden glow indicates a rare fish. The rarer the fish, the better.
- There's also an additional fish rarity tier - but it only shows up during quests.
- Secondly, you should pay attention to the bait that you use. About that - read on...
Fishing Bait in Fire Emblem: Three Houses
This one is actually nice and simple - there's a few kinds of fishing bait, each with a star rating. The higher the star rating, the better the bait:
- Insect Larva *
- Pond Snail **
- Earthworm ***
- Blowfly ****
- Herring Bait *****
In addition to the above, there's a few event-specific bait items that will appear as part of fishing quests.
Throughout the game, merchants will have bait for sale. As a rule of thumb, you should buy up all the bait you can each time you see it in a store. The merchant supply of bait replenishes at the start of every in-game month - so you want to have as much as possible, especially since Fishing is a great way to earn professor EXP.