How (and why) to fish in Diablo 4: Lord of Hatred

Fishing is here in Diablo 4’s new expansion, Lord of Hatred, and it’s a fun diversion from demon slaughtering. There’s something about fishing in video games that just sparks that little joy center in my brain, calming down the brain weasels and giving them that fresh hit of dopamine that they long for. The fishing system in Diablo 4 is simple, so you can keep the dopamine going with quick casts to collect mountains of fish, practically anywhere in Sanctuary.

Before getting into the depths of it, there’s an important point before I teach you how to fish in Diablo 4: fishing requires the Lord of Hatred expansion, so even though you can fish all over Sanctuary, if you don’t own the expansion you cannot join us on fishing adventures.

With that out of the way, let’s talk about how (and why) you’ll want to fish in Diablo 4: Lord of Hatred.

Where do I learn fishing in Diablo 4?

Early in the Lord of Hatred campaign you’ll get a priority quest simply named “Fishing,” which will direct you to Shi Yugong. Once you’ve reached Skovos and gotten through the early expansion quests, you’ll be pushed out onto the first map of the expansion; head straight down to the south and follow the coast until you find a dock with Shi.

He’ll teach you how to fish, and set you off on the adventure to go and collect fish from around Sanctuary.

How to fish in Diablo 4

Fishing in D4 is quite simple: just get close to a body of water — I never could tell exactly how close I needed to be, because sometimes I was really far away and it worked and sometimes I was right against the water and it failed — then open your emote wheel and click “Fish.” That’s it; your line is cast and you’re officially fishing. All of your action keys now become “reel” to pull your fish in, and the fishing mini game begins. At some point in the next 10-15 seconds a little fish icon will pop up alongside an audio cue, and that’s when you want to hit the reel button. Time it right and you’ll get a Perfect! and get an extra fish.

That’s all there is to it. You don’t need bait or reagents, and there aren’t special fishing rods to collect and upgrade. It’s just a simple one-click mini game, where you get slightly better rewards for good timing.

My biggest suggestion for fishing is to go into the options and keybind that emote hotkey to something easy to trigger (I used “F” for fish!), which makes the act of casting your reel very quick. To do this by going into the Options menu, select the Controls tab, and find the Fishing action’s position on your action wheel, then bind it to the key of your choice.

Where to fish in Diablo 4

You can fish in nearly any pool of water — or at least liquid — in Sanctuary that you can reach to cast a line into. I ran around the map and fished in all sorts of locations: rivers, ponds, lava, a giant pool of blood (with shocking results), a stream that I wasn’t even sure I could cast in to. Different zones in the game provide different types of fish, but I couldn’t quite tell if there was a location that gave me better fish or not.

There’s nothing that indicates this is the place to fish for special things like you see with fishing pools in World of Warcraft, though environmental clues can suggest where to cast your line. But for the most part, you’re just heading to anything that looks like water and trying to cast there. If you can, it’s available for fishing. If you can’t, move on and try another spot.

Why fish in Diablo 4?

There’s one very important question about fishing in Diablo 4: why the heck should we stop murdering the demons of Hell to go fishing?

At first I figured that much like the World of Warcraft version of fishing that I’d just be fishing up a lot of junk — though you will fish up quite a bit of junk, and even the occasional piece of gear — but within my first few casts I pulled up a legendary fish. Then another. Then an ancestral fish. But what am I supposed to do with these fish? You can click on a fish to add it to your collection and remove it from your inventory. There are achievements for collecting 117 fish, but after you’ve collected them, you can keep fishing. And fish just start piling up in your inventory.

That brings us back to the question: why?

You can sell the fish for gold, but gold in this game accumulates so quickly that it’s not really worth fishing to earn it. We haven’t found any way to use fish for crafting, though our own Liz Harper spent some time in game shoving fish into the Horadric Cube without finding any ways to combine them. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a recipe that requires fish, but we haven’t found one yet.

It seems like we’re going to want lots of fish for some reason… we just need to keep searching until we figure it out.

But at some point in our hero’s journey through Sanctuary, we’re going to need a break from fighting through the endless demonic hordes to catch our breath — and what better way to do that then by tossing out a line and catching some fish?