How to Fish — Troubleshooting Guide

Technical issues can interrupt your fishing sessions. This guide covers the most frequently reported problems and provides actionable steps to resolve them. Whether you are crashing during co-op sessions, dealing with Steam authentication errors, or struggling with stuttering frame rates, you will find solutions here.

Multiplayer and Connection Issues

How to Fish supports co-op with up to four players, but connection problems are among the most common complaints. If you or your friends cannot join a session, work through these steps in order.

Cannot Create or Join a Lobby

1. Verify that all players are running the same game version. Right-click How to Fish in Steam, select Properties, then Local Files, and click Verify Integrity of Game Files. Outdated versions will reject connections from newer builds.
2. Check your firewall and router settings. How to Fish requires outbound UDP on a range of ports that may not be forwarded by default. Consult your router documentation to open UDP ports 3478, 3479, 3480, and 4380.
3. Disable VPN software. VPNs frequently interfere with Steam matchmaking and peer-to-peer game connections. Disconnect your VPN before launching the game.
4. Restart Steam completely. Close Steam from the system tray, then relaunch it before starting the game again.

Lag and Rubberbanding in Multiplayer

1. Designate one player as the host. The host’s connection quality determines the session smoothness. Switch hosts if the current host has unstable internet.
2. Press Tab to open the in-game menu and check the connection quality indicator. A red or yellow indicator means packet loss or high latency.
3. Reduce the host’s upstream bandwidth usage. Streaming, large downloads, or other devices on the same network can degrade the connection for all players.
4. Try disabling UPnP on your router and manually forwarding the required UDP ports listed above. Some UPnP implementations add latency.

Voice Chat Not Working

1. Ensure your microphone is set as the default recording device in Windows Sound Settings before launching the game.
2. Check the in-game audio settings. Open the settings menu and verify that Voice Chat is enabled and your input device is selected.
3. If using push-to-talk, confirm the key is bound and not conflicting with another action. Rebind the key in Controls settings if needed.
4. Try switching from OpenMIC mode to a headset. OpenMIC can cause echo and feedback that the game’s noise gate filters out, resulting in silence.

Steam Issues

Game Will Not Launch

1. Right-click How to Fish in your Steam library and select Properties. Under General, ensure the Launch Options field is empty. Corrupted launch options from previous installs can prevent the game from starting.
2. Run the game as administrator. Right-click the game in your library, select Properties, then click Manage, and check the Run as administrator box.
3. Disable Steam overlay. The overlay can conflict with the game on some hardware. In Steam Settings, uncheck Enable Steam Overlay while in-game.
4. Verify game files as described above. Corrupted or missing files from an interrupted update can cause launch failures.
5. Check that your graphics drivers are up to date. Visit NVIDIA, AMD, or Intel driver pages and install the the latest driver version for your GPU.

Steam Authentication Errors

1. If you receive a “Failed to authenticate with Steam” error, restart your computer. Steam sessions can desync after sleep, hibernation, or long idle periods.
2. Clear the Steam client cache. In Steam Settings, navigate to Web Browser and click Delete Web Browser Cache. This resolves token corruption that causes authentication failures.
3. Ensure your system clock is accurate. Steam validates timestamps during authentication. Go to Windows Date and Time Settings and enable Set time automatically.
4. If the error persists, uninstall and reinstall Steam. This is a last resort but resolves persistent authentication issues that survive cache clearing.

DLC Not Appearing

1. Right-click How to Fish in your library and select Properties. Go to the DLC tab and verify that purchased DLC is checked. Sometimes the checkbox deselects after updates.
2. Restart Steam completely. DLC loads at startup, and a running instance may not detect newly purchased content without a full restart.

Performance and Frame Rate Issues

Low Frame Rate on Powerful Hardware

1. Limit background processes. Close unused browser tabs, Discord, streaming software, and any unnecessary applications before launching. Background GPU and CPU usage directly impacts game performance.
2. Set the game to fullscreen mode. Windowed or borderless fullscreen modes add rendering overhead. Fullscreen mode gives the game direct GPU access.
3. Lower the water quality setting. Water reflections and physics are GPU-intensive. Reducing water quality to Medium or Low can increase frame rate by 20-40 percent on mid-range hardware.
4. Disable V-Sync in the game settings if you are experiencing input lag alongside low frame rate. V-Sync caps your frame rate to your monitor refresh rate and can cause stuttering on variable-rate connections.
5. Check for thermal throttling. Use a tool like HWMonitor to watch your CPU and GPU temperatures. If either exceeds 90 degrees Celsius, your hardware is throttling to prevent damage. Improve case airflow or repaste thermal compounds.

Stuttering and Micro-Freezes

1. Move the game install directory to an SSD. How to Fish streams assets from disk during gameplay, and HDD seek times cause micro-freezes during asset loads.
2. Disable any recording or overlay software, including NVIDIA GeForce Experience, AMD ReLive, and Discord overlay. These inject code into the game process and can cause timing irregularities.
3. Set Windows power plan to High Performance. Balanced mode can cap CPU frequencies during gameplay, causing inconsistent frame times.
4. Reinstall the game as a last resort. Persistent stuttering that survives all other fixes often indicates file system corruption that only a clean reinstall resolves.

GPU Not Being Used

1. Open NVIDIA Control Panel or AMD Radeon Software and ensure the game is set to use your dedicated GPU instead of integrated graphics.
2. Check the Windows graphics settings. Go to Settings, Display, Graphics, and verify that How to Fish is set to Use high performance.

Audio Issues

No Sound or Audio Cutting Out

1. Verify the game is not muted in the Windows volume mixer. Right-click the speaker icon in the taskbar, select Open Volume Mixer, and check the How to Fish slider.
2. Set your default audio device before launching the game. How to Fish locks to the device active at startup. Change your default playback device in Windows Sound Settings, then restart the game.
3. If using USB headphones, try a different USB port. USB audio devices on ports shared with other high-bandwidth devices can drop audio packets.
4. Update your audio drivers. Outdated Realtek or manufacturer-specific audio drivers frequently cause crackling and dropouts. Visit your motherboard or laptop manufacturer’s support page for the the latest driver.

Audio Desynced from Gameplay

1. Pause and unpause the game. Audio can drift from video after long play sessions due to floating-point accumulation errors.
2. If the desync persists, lower the audio buffer size in your Windows Sound Settings. A smaller buffer reduces latency and resyncs the audio pipeline.

Save Data Issues

Progress Not Saving

1. Check that the user account running the game has write permissions to the save directory. Navigate to your user Documents folder, find the How to Fish save folder, right-click it, and verify the account has Full Control under Security settings.
2. Avoid closing the game via Alt-F4 during active gameplay. Use the in-game menu and select Quit to Game to ensure all buffers are flushed. Forced termination during a save operation can corrupt the save file.
3. If your save file is corrupted, the game may generate a backup. Look in the save directory for a file with .bak extension and rename it to replace the corrupted save.

Cloud Saves Not Syncing

1. Force a Steam cloud sync. Right-click How to Fish in your library, select Properties, then go to Updates and ensure Automatic updates is set to only update when I launch the game. This prevents cloud conflicts during active sessions.
2. If you play on multiple computers, ensure you start the game on the first machine and let it sync completely before starting it on the second computer. Starting simultaneously on both machines creates a conflict that Steam cannot automatically resolve.

General Tips

Game Crashes to Desktop

1. Note the crash frequency and circumstances. Crashes during loading screens typically indicate disk or memory issues. Crashes during gameplay often point to GPU driver or shader compilation problems.
2. Update your GPU drivers to the the latest version. Dazed Games has acknowledged that some crash scenarios on launch week were caused by shader compilation bugs fixed in driver updates.
3. Run a memory test with Windows Memory Diagnostic or MemTest86 if crashes are random and unpredictable. Faulty RAM causes non-deterministic crashes that are difficult to reproduce.
4. Check Windows Event Viewer for application error logs. The error code and faulting module provide clues about whether the issue is software or hardware related.

Controller Not Detected

1. Ensure your controller is set as the default gamepad in Windows before launching. How to Fish supports Xbox and PlayStation controllers via standard HID drivers.
2. If using a PlayStation controller, install DS4Windows or Steam Input to emulate an Xbox controller. Some functionality may be limited without third-party mapping software.
3. Try a different USB port. Low-power USB ports may not supply enough current for some controllers to enumerate properly.
4. Check for firmware updates on the controller itself. Some third-party controllers require firmware updates to function correctly with PC games.

Keyboard Controls Not Responding

1. Press Escape to open the settings menu and verify that Controls shows your keyboard as the active input device. The game may have defaulted to a previously connected controller.
2. Unplug all controllers and USB hubs, then restart the game with only the keyboard connected. Conflicting input devices can cause the game to ignore keyboard events.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does my game crash when I try to join a friend’s lobby? Mismatched game versions are the most common cause. Ask everyone to verify their game files and ensure all players are on the same build. If the problem persists, one player should create a new lobby and have others join that session instead.

My frame rate dropped after the the latest update. What can I do? Updates sometimes reset graphics settings to defaults. Open the game settings and verify that your graphics preferences are still set to your preferred values. If not, lower individual settings until you find the one the update changed.

The game will not start after installing a new GPU. What do I do? Install the the latest drivers for your new GPU before launching. An empty GPU driver slot causes the game to fall back to software rendering or fail entirely. Download drivers from NVIDIA, AMD, or Intel depending on your card.

My save file disappeared. Can I recover it? Steam cloud maintains a version history. Right-click How to Fish in your library, select Properties, then go to Cloud and click View Cloud Files. You can restore previous versions of your save from there.

Voice chat is too quiet for my friends. What should I check? Increase your microphone volume in Windows Sound Settings. Also check the in-game voice chat volume under Audio settings. Some players have found that their default communications device was set to a different device than their actual microphone.

My game stutters every few minutes. Is this a hardware problem? Before assuming hardware failure, check if the stutter is periodic. Stutters that occur at regular intervals are usually caused by background processes running on a timer, such as antivirus scans or cloud sync services. Schedule these for times when you are not playing.