The Cozy Fishing field manual

1. The world

Cozy Fishing is one shared world of cozy islands on a big, flat sea, and one shared community. There is a single economy behind everything: one account, one purse of shells, one journal, one set of leaderboards.

Because a lot of people fish at the same time, the ocean runs as four parallel waters. Up to 1,200 explorers can be out at once, around 300 to a water, and you are placed in whichever water has the most room. Everything that counts is shared across all four: your progress, your shells, your catches and every board. What is local to your water is simply who is standing next to you: the explorers you can see, wave at and talk to. The badge at the top of the game shows both numbers, the people in your water and the people out across all waters. If every water happens to be full, you wait in a short line with a countdown and join automatically the moment a place opens.

The Cozy Archipelago has eight islands, each with its own landscape and its own fish:

• Getting around: walk anywhere on an island. Between islands there is only open sea, so every trip to another island is by boat: board at a harbor dock and steer yourself, or pick a guided voyage between harbors. Boats are progression: everyone starts with a rowboat for the nearby waters, and the far islands need a sturdier hull, a sailboat and then a steamer (section 6). Lakes, rivers, canals and the oasis are fished from their shores, not sailed. The first time you set foot on a new island it pays 40 shells.
• Day and night: the world runs a shared 24 minute day cycle (one real minute is one game hour), the same for every player. Nights stay readable by design, and a personal "brighter nights" lantern setting can lift the darkness on your screen only.
• World radio: one chat channel, deliberately subtle until you open it, carrying the voices of the explorers sharing your water. Messages are short-lived: the server keeps at most 60 messages for 30 minutes and clears them on restart. You can mute locally.
• Shops on every island: Mara's General Store on Daydream Harbor is a walk-in shop, and each island has its own vendor with a specialty: carved rods on Tanglewild, oasis charts on Sunleaf, cave lanterns and warm knits on Frostveil, boats and the fishmonger in Port Lumen, pearl and shell trades on Crescent. The Tide Trader, a merchant ship, sails from harbor to harbor on a shared schedule with lures, lantern oil and a few rotating rare items.
• Weather and wildlife: weather is shared by everyone and moves by region: sun, drizzle, fog, snow on the peaks, heat shimmer in the dunes. Some fish only bite in certain weather or at certain times of day. Animals roam the islands and lamps come on at dusk.
• Grottos: five of the islands hide a cave with a glowing underground lake and fish found nowhere else. You need a lantern to go in; the cave lantern is described in section 6.
• Ocean life: sharks, manta rays, and octopuses visit the waters. They are there to be seen, never caught.

2. Controls

On phones: a touch stick (left or right side, your choice), tap to walk, one finger drag to look, pinch to zoom. The whole cast console is the tap target during a bite. A short intro tour covers all of this on your first visit, and you can replay it any time from the help panel.

3. Fishing: the bite and the hook

Fishing is an active moment, not a countdown. The rhythm is: cast, wait, react.

• Cast anywhere land meets water (any shoreline, pier, lake shore or canal edge), with F or the cast button. Different waters hold different fish, and some fish live in one place only.
• The bite comes at a random moment between 4 and 8.5 seconds in, and never at the same moment twice. The timing is decided (and locked) the instant you cast, but nobody, including your own game client, can see it before it happens.
• The hook: when the "!" appears you have 1.6 seconds to press Space or tap. Hook it and the catch lands; the faster your reaction, the more bonus shells (up to 6). Pressing too early is simply ignored.
• The escape: miss the window and the fish slips away. You get one shell for trying and no fish.
• Changing your mind: walking away reels the line in, and there is a "Reel in" button too. A cancelled cast pays nothing.
• Relaxed or hands-on: the toggle beside the cast button switches between the two. Hands-on adds a cast-strength slider, which changes how far your line lands and nothing else: same fish, same odds, same shells.

Auto-cast exists purely as a convenience: it re-casts for you after a result, but the hook always needs a human. Leaving the game running unattended earns one shell per escaped cast and nothing else.

How big your fish is

Every catch rolls its own weight, and the roll leans small. Most fish of a species come in near the light end of its range, a fish close to the usual maximum feels earned, and a handful of species carry a rare trophy tail that reaches far past it: a deepwater tuna can go to 60 kg, a starlight ray to 30 kg, a moonlit koi to 9 kg, a coral trout to 6 kg. Anything over 25 kg is a genuine story, turning up roughly once in several hundred hooked casts, and only in the waters where tuna and rays actually live. Your journal keeps your personal best for every species, and the heaviest-catch board keeps the island's.

4. Rods and shells

Where to check your tier: the chip at the top right of the game shows your current tier and rod name at all times, on phones too. Tap it to open the rods panel, with your current rod and everything the next tier needs.

There are around 40 catchable fish species and 16 rod tiers. Rods are the fishing progression: a better rod reaches regional species the starter rod never meets.

In the current phase rods are obtainable up to tier 3. A tier you own is never re-checked or re-charged. Prices change only for the next step, never retroactively.

• Shells are the in-game currency, earned from catches, reaction bonuses, discoveries, journal activities, daily requests and the community goal.
• Catch payouts are rolled, not fixed. Every landed fish rolls a fresh payout inside the band for its rarity: 15 to 30 shells for a common fish, 23 to 45 uncommon, 38 to 75 rare, and 75 to 150 legendary. The quick-hook bonus of up to 6 shells is added on top. The roll comes from the same committed seed as the bite, so a settled cast can be recomputed from the revealed seed like everything else about it.
• Fish copies: some cosmetics trade spare copies of fish you have caught. Trades never touch your collection, journal, or aquarium; only surplus copies are spent.
• Explorer level grows with lifetime fish, from level 2 at 5 fish up to level 10 at 600, and unlocks some cosmetics for free.

5. Journal, requests, community goal

• Field journal: eight island notebooks worth 25 shells each, completed by exploring.
• Sightings: spotting an ambient species (a shark, a manta, an octopus) up close pays 35 shells, once per species.
• Daily community goal: the whole world works together toward 75 fish per UTC day. Contribute at least 3 yourself and collect 75 shells when the world gets there, once per day.
• Daily requests from Mara at the Daydream Harbor market: three every UTC day, worth 55, 70 and 90 shells. Catch a few fish, fish a particular spot, or bring in three different species.
• Collections: four species sets, from the shoreline trio (100 shells) up to the four island rarities (400 shells), each paid once when you complete it.
• Starter goals ease you in: your first catch, three species, 25 lifetime fish, a first boat trip, the four starter islands and finally all eight, paying 40 to 500 shells.

6. Shops, vendors and boats

One distinction matters everywhere and is labeled on every card:

Cosmetics arrive three ways: free level and discovery unlocks, fish-copy trades, and shell purchases. Buying with shells or fish means standing at a counter that sells the item.

Who sells what

Classic looks stay on sale at Mara's and also turn up at a themed vendor, so nothing you could buy before has moved out of reach.

Boats: how far you can sail

Hulls come in order, and you order one while docked and not casting. Order the sailboat at Mara's General Store on Daydream Harbor (she sends word to the shipwright and the hull waits at your mooring) or at the shipwright in Port Lumen. The steamer is sold only by the Port Lumen shipwright, which the sailboat already reaches. Boat looks never change how far you can sail; that is the hull tier. They do change how fast you get there:

Speeds are still being tuned; each boat's card shows its current bonus. Fancier boats get you places sooner. Fish odds are never for sale.

The rule behind all of this: anything you need to progress is sold at a counter you can already reach. Island vendors add optional looks, lures and charts on top.

Lures, gear, charts and the fishmonger

• Lures are packs of charges, one spent per cast when you cast. A lure only makes fish that could already bite at that spot, time and weather more likely. The spinner lure (10 casts for 90 shells) favours uncommon fish; each regional lure (15 casts, 240 to 280 shells) favours its island's fish; the moonglow lure (10 casts, 480 shells) favours rare and legendary fish. Lures are for finishing a collection, not for earning shells: buying them never pays back more shells than they cost.
• The cave lantern is free once you have landed 50 fish, from Mara or Pip. It gives you two free grotto visits every UTC day, with more at higher rod tiers. Lantern oil adds one extra visit per bottle: 420 shells aboard the Tide Trader, which docks at Daydream Harbor every 2 hours, or 350 at Pip's hut; at most two bottles bought per UTC day.
• Charts (600 to 1,200 shells, bought once) add almanac hints for fish you have not caught yet: where they live and when they bite.
• The fishmonger buys spare fish copies: 8 shells for a common, 12 uncommon, 20 rare, 40 legendary, up to 50 fish per sale and 800 shells per UTC day. Your lifetime count, collection, journal and aquarium never shrink.

8. Accounts and safety

• Guest first: you can play the entire game without an account. A random ocean name is suggested on your first visit; keep it, shuffle it, or write your own.
• Optional account: a username and password lets you sign in from another device. Passwords are stored properly hashed; recovery uses one-time codes shown exactly once. There is no email involved.
• Server authority: your position, catches and shells are all decided server-side. The client sends movement intent only, so teleporting or fabricating catches is not possible.

8. Fair play

• Provable draws: before each cast resolves, the server commits to a random seed by publishing its fingerprint. The catch, the species, the weight, the shell roll and even the bite moment are all derived from that seed, and the seed is revealed afterward, so any cast can be recomputed from it.
• One line at a time: one explorer holds one world connection and one cast at a time.
• Active play required: because every catch needs a hook within 1.6 seconds of a hidden random moment, unattended farming earns nothing.

9. Fishing tournaments

Every two hours the ocean holds a 30 minute fishing tournament, announced on the world radio when it opens and when it ends. The format rotates between most catches, heaviest total weight, and rarest haul, which scores each fish by the same rarity bands as shell rewards. Only fish you actually hook count. Escapes, cancelled casts and idle auto casting score nothing. Hook at least 3 fish during the window to be ranked. The top three win 500, 250 and 100 shells, credited automatically at the end, and ties go to whoever reached the score first. A small card beside the minimap shows the live top five, your own rank and the previous podium. Tournaments are shared across all waters: anglers in every world compete on one board.

10. Leaderboards

Three boards, ten names each, on the homepage and in the game. Press L in the game or use the trophy button in the world toolbar. Every board has a weekly view and an all-time view, and every board covers all four waters: one ocean, one ranking.

• Most fish caught. All time counts every fish you have ever landed. The weekly view counts fish landed since the reset.
• Heaviest catch. The single biggest fish, by weight, with the species beside it. All time is your personal best ever; the weekly view is the biggest fish you have landed since the reset.
• Shells. All time shows shells in the purse right now, so spending on rods and looks brings it back down. The weekly view shows shells earned from catches since the reset, quick-hook bonus included. A one shell escape does not count: missing the hook is not an earning.

The week resets Monday at 00:00 UTC, the same clock the daily community goal and the daily requests already run on. Everyone races over the same seven days whatever timezone they fish from.

What a board shows about a player: an explorer display name and a number. That is all. No account names, no email, no identifiers of any kind. An explorer who has no display name appears as "Explorer". Names are the same playful nicknames you already see on the island and in chat, and you can change yours any time from your explorer card.

Boards are rebuilt about once a minute from the game's own ledger, so a catch you just landed may take a moment to appear. A board nobody has scored on yet is simply not shown rather than published as a column of dashes.

11. What is coming, what is not

Open now: fishing across all eight islands, rod tiers up to 3, boats, the grottos, tournaments and the leaderboards. Coming: rod tiers 4 and up, and more to find on the water.

• No hidden boosts. Cosmetics never change your odds. The rod ladder is the whole fishing progression. The bite, the hook window and the fairness proof are identical for everyone. One thing in the shop saves time, and its card says so plainly: fancier boats sail faster. Fish odds are never for sale.
• No trading between players, and no marketplace.
• Playing never requires buying anything.

Seen something you would change? That is what this page is for. Bring it to the crew.