NPC quests in How to Fish: five givers, half the players lost
Contents
How to Fish has no quest log and no NPC list on its store page. What it does have is Steam’s global achievement statistics — and from those you can identify at least five characters who hand out jobs, plus how many players finished each one.
Five quest givers and how many players reached them
| # | Who asks | What they want | Completed | Drop from previous |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lighthouse keeper | find the culprit, kill it, bring it back | 91.9% | — |
| 2 | Lady in the forest | catch her dinner | 83.3% | −8.6 |
| 3 | Tourist | help him swim on his vacation | 71.2% | −12.1 |
| 4 | Scared islanders | defend them from the terrorizing bird | 55.3% | −15.9 |
| 5 | The military | help defeat the big creature they located | 41.9% | −13.4 |
Exactly half the players leave between the first job and the last: 91.9% → 41.9%, a drop of 50.0 percentage points. Only 45.6% of the people who finished the first job reach the fifth.
The biggest single drop is not at the end — it is between the tourist and the islanders: −15.9 points. That is the moment the errand stops being a favour and becomes a fight.
Why we think this is the order
We saw no quest numbering in the game. The order in the table is our inference from the percentages: a job completed by more people almost certainly comes earlier. That assumption is arguable — a lower percentage could mean harder rather than later. We are naming it, not proving it.
What the statistics do prove is the ratio: how many players ever saw each scene at all.
The last job is the ending
Helping the military was completed by 41.9%, while the achievement for finishing the game sits at 40.5%. The difference is 1.4 points. In practice: whoever reaches the military finishes the game. There is no long tail after that scene.
For contrast: the first kill in the game is at 98.7%, and the lighthouse keeper’s job at 91.9%. 6.8 points of players disappear before the first NPC conversation.
Not every NPC gives a quest
Besides the five quest givers there are interactions with no story attached: the grill (80.5%), the boat engine upgrade (86.6%), the slot machine (67.8%) and roulette (38.4%). Those are mechanics, not errands.
The bird the islanders want dealt with is one of the game’s bosses; we covered that fight separately, and here it matters only as a drop-off point.
What we are not claiming
Five is a lower bound, not the number of NPCs in the game. A character whose job carries no achievement does not appear in these statistics at all, and we cannot count them. We also did not establish whether the jobs are optional: the percentage shows how many completed them, not how many had to.
The percentages were read from the community stats page on 31 August 2026. The same figures via the API on the same day differed by no more than 0.4 points — which does not change any conclusion, but the number is not a permanent constant.
Frequently asked questions
How many quest-giving characters are in How to Fish?
At least five: the lighthouse keeper, the lady in the forest, the tourist, the islanders and the military. That is a lower bound from achievement stats.
How many players finish all the NPC jobs?
The last job was completed by 41.9% and the first by 91.9%, so 45.6% of those who started the chain reach the end of it.
Where do most players drop the quest chain?
Between the tourist's job (71.2%) and defending the islanders (55.3%) — a 15.9 point loss, the largest in the chain.
Does How to Fish have a quest log?
No such feature is listed on the store page and we did not see one. We derived the quest order from completion percentages.
Can the NPC jobs be skipped?
We did not establish that. The statistics show how many players completed them, not whether they are mandatory.