Expedition 15: Aquarius is here and it’s helping bring new and returning players back by catching us hook, line, and sinker. Now I know you’re in a hurry so there’s no long-winded intro here. Let’s drop a line in and get fishing!
Firstly, don’t forget you can reduce some difficulty options if you’re looking to speed through this expedition, including the ability to auto-catch fish. I really enjoy the fishing aspect of the game but I understand some people may want to blitz through for the rewards so its there if you want of need it.
This guide also assumes you are starting fresh, so I’m not taking anything into this Expedition. Let’s dive in.
Casting Off – Simply use your visor and find your ship. You will receive a pre-packaged portable refiner. Be sure to install it as you’ll need it to repair your ship!
Blue Yonder – Repair your ship, thankfully it’s an easy one. You need Dihydrogen Jelly which you should have in your starships inventory. Craft a hermetic seal, metal plating, and 50 pure ferrite. You can refine the Ferrite Dust in your personal refiner which is a reward from the Casting off Objective. You will receive a pre-packaged hyperdrive, install it, and prepare to warp! You will have one unit of warp fuel to send you on your way.
Gone Fishing 1 – Warp to the first waypoint, after your first warp, you will need to land on a planet with Copper to craft more warp fuel. Craft a few units by refining copper into chromatic metal. Head to the pod and retrieve the fishing rig blueprints. This will tick over the objective.
Install the fishing rig into your multitool and head to the nearest body of water. Cast it and prepare to fish. Let’s do a quick crash course in fishing. Cast out by moving your reticle to a body of water. You will see a bunch of fish in the water that will swim around. Eventually one will strike at your line. If the line is yellow, let it mellow, the fish may make a few false strikes before taking the bait. Once the line goes green it’s time to reel it in, press and hold the same button you used to cast (on Switch it’s ZR) and land your first catch. This will also tick off the Toe in the Water objective.
You can fish for as long as you like here. I recommend completing Wading In, by catching 5 fish, which will award you a nutrient processor. “The One That…” which is losing a catch, you may also trigger “Hook, Line & Sinker” if you’re lucky enough to land an uncommon fish. I recommend releasing a few fish to tick off the “Freedom of the Sea” objective which awards a fishing skiff plan, and then deploying your nutrient processor to tick off the final objective in phase one which is “Catch of the Day” Phase 1 is complete!
Head back into space, gear up with anything you may need at the space station, and move to rendezvous 2 for the Gone Fishing 2 objective. Once completed, its time to try out the Fishing skid but first, we have to install it. You should already have enough salt in your inventory for one part of the blueprint. Harvest crystal sulphates from in the Water to get 2 in total, refine pure ferrite to make magnetised ferrite. You should be good to install the fishing skiff module in your exosuit now! You deploy the skiff the same way as you summon your trade rocket or starship. Put it on the water anywhere you like to tick off the Pond Skipper Objective! I recommend storing as much fish in your skiff for later. Inventory carries across to new systems and the storage space is huge! You will need it for a later objective so hang on to as many fish as you can
Let’s tick a few more objectives off here. Apply some bait by selecting your fishing rig in your multitool interface. Select the option to apply bait and give it a cast. You should have dangling bulbs so I recommend installing them, this will complete Taking the Bait. If fishing during the day. This may tick off the Sun on the Water objective. Then at night time, you can do the opposite and fish for nocturnal fish to tick off the Night Fishing objective, and with a little luck, as Rendezvous planet 2 is a superheated planet, you should tick off In Hot Water for catching uncommon high temperature fish. Using bait will speed up a lot of these objectives During this time, I also managed to tick off The Lunker objective for catching 3 large fish.
During this time you will also fish up a message in a bottle, it’s faster if you have the objective selected. Open it up in your inventory to tick off the Message in a Bottle objective. Also if you’re in water that’s over 60u deep, you can tick off The Inky Depths objective, then put your rod away and dive to the bottom to tick off the Freediving objective for two easy wins!
Lets start moving towards Rendezvous 3, don’t worry about the radioactive fish, we will get that on the way. There’s a radioactive planet in the 3rd Rendezvous system, but let’s head to the secret fishing spot first, there’s a lot we are going to do on the 3rd planet.
At the 3rd Rendezvous spot, you should complete Gone Fishing 3 we need to fish 5 uncommon cold fish for Ice Cold, and retrieve a message in a bottle for the Tale of the Waves objective. Once you read the message in the bottle, you will get an Automatic fish trap plan.
During this time depending on what time of day you’re in, you should tick over the Night Fishing objective and the Wade in objective which is landing 100 fish. I also managed to land a legendary fish on Rendezvous 3 for the Myths of the Deep milestone, this seems to come down to chance but you can use bait to speed that process up. Also on Rendezvous 3, if you jump into the water and scan the sailfish-type creature it will tick off the Abyssal Wonder objective.
Deploy 3 automated traps and a base computer somewhere near deep water, we need them to catch a total of 13 fish for The Lazy Angler milestone. Let’s also build an underwater base here. We need to get some living pearls by stealing them from armoured clams, and get 15 in total for Pearls of Wisdom objective. Head down to 30 units depth, and construct the parts listed to complete Child of the Sea
Surface and empty your traps. if you need to kill more time, head up to space and summon the anomaly to learn the trade rocket recipe. Head down to the surface again and start selling fish from your skiff. You will need 500k for the Fresh Sell Fish objective which accumulates so doesn’t have to be all sold at once. If you’re short, don’t worry, there’s plenty of fish in the sea.
Head to the radioactive planet in the same system and start fishing for radioactive fish, bait will speed this process up and unlock the Feed Water milestone. You can deploy the automatic fish traps if you haven’t completed that objective. Once you tick those objectives off, let’s head to rendezvous 4.
Head into Rendezvous 4, tick off Gone Fishing 4, select the 4th phase message in a bottle quest, and start fishing for it. Once you land it, you will complete Call of the Water if you’ve been following this guide, the 4th phase is already complete and we can head straight to rendezvous 5. We are almost there!
At Rendezvous 5 you want to dive under the water to the ruins. Allow the Gone Fishing 5 objective to tick over and head to the surface. Select The Angler Rests objectives and fish up a bottle. Now you have to catch the Scales of Fire. There’s a lot of theories on this one but it seems to be RNG. I caught mine on the Anglers legendary rod, no bait, in 60 units of depth. Some people say they have had better luck using auto traps while fishing as well. It took me about 30 casts and I got it.
We only have 1 objective which is Fins of Thunder, and unfortunately, it’s a doozy. We only have to catch 3 fish that are exclusive to storms which is easier said than done. This objective can take a long time, but there are easy ways to do it. Firstly, look for a planet with activated copper. You can do this by selecting your logbook, finding minerals, selecting activated copper, and it will tell you if a planet in your system has it. These planets usually have longer-lasting storms to make life a bit easier. Craft magnetized bait and start fishing! Keep the fish bio in mind too. The fish I caught was said to be in shallow water. After I randomly caught one, I moved to shallow water and the next 2 were landed fairly quickly, finally completing this expedition.
There you have it! I hope you enjoyed some downtime fishing, and now you can head back to the anomaly to earn some nice rewards on your main save. Don’t forget to redeem those rewards with the Expeditions merchant so you can carry them across, and have fun angling.
Until the next expedition, I’ll see you amongst the stars travellers.
