How to Fish difficulty modes: which one to pick
Contents
Before 24 August, How to Fish had no difficulty setting at all. Patch 1.0.9 added three modes, and did it in the simplest possible way: every creature is multiplied by two coefficients, and nothing else changes.
The three modes at a glance
| Mode | Creature health | Creature damage |
|---|---|---|
| Easy | −25% | −50% |
| Default | base | base |
| Hard | +25% | +25% |
The default mode is exactly how the game played for the first four days after launch. The patch note says so directly: the default setting is the same as before.
The detail that matters: Easy is asymmetric
Easy cuts health by a quarter but damage by a half. Those are not the same discount. In practice Easy changes less about how fast you kill a boss than about how many mistakes you can afford while it is alive.
Hard is symmetric: +25% and +25%. Moving from default to Hard hurts you half as much as moving from default to Easy helps you.
What this means for the fights
- Endurance fights (the crab, the pufferfish) become noticeably more forgiving on Easy: half damage means a botched approach rarely ends in death.
- Precision fights (the albatross in the air) barely get easier on Easy: the problem there is not how much damage you absorb, it is whether you hit.
- The final boss is the one enemy whose health was already cut separately — patch 1.0.4 nerfed the whale before difficulty modes existed. On Easy you fight an already-nerfed boss multiplied by another 0.75.
Co-op and difficulty
Difficulty is a session setting rather than a per-player one, and the lobby host changes it. Patch 1.0.4 raised the lobby ceiling to 8 players, so eight people on Hard is an officially possible configuration.
A practical note for a mixed group: stay on default. Easy takes the pressure off first-timers, but it also removes the point of the downed-ally revive mechanic that half of the game’s co-op comedy is built on.
How to switch
Patch 1.0.9 put the toggle in two places:
- Main menu — before you create a session.
- In-game — during a session.
That differs from changing the session type (private or public), which patch 1.0.5 also allowed on the fly, but with a mandatory restart.
What we are not claiming
The 1.0.9 note gives exactly four numbers — 25%, 50%, 25%, 25% — and nothing else. We do not know whether difficulty affects loot, money, killscore, drip creature spawn rates or achievements: the developers did not say, and we have not measured it ourselves.
Frequently asked questions
How many difficulty modes does How to Fish have?
Three. Easy, the unnamed default, and Hard. The default matches exactly how the game played before patch 1.0.9.
How much weaker are enemies on Easy?
They have 25% less health and deal 50% less damage. Those are the official figures from the 1.0.9 patch note.
How much stronger are enemies on Hard?
25% more health and 25% more damage. Note that the damage increase is smaller than the Easy discount.
Can difficulty be changed mid-game?
Yes. Patch 1.0.9 added the toggle both to the main menu and to the in-game settings.
Does Easy disable achievements?
The developers never said so. The 1.0.9 note says nothing about difficulty affecting achievements, so we cannot claim it either way.