Guides · The world

Cooking and fishing

From the Hearth and Harbour update: a Hearth Pot that turns several ingredients into one dish, and a Fishing Rod for the lakes. The best dishes need the rarest catches, so the two go together.

A Hearth Pot: an iron pot sunk into a brick hearth, the fire showing below.

The Hearth Pot

The Hearth Pot is an iron pot sunk into a brick hearth. Its screen is laid out like the Forge's: four ingredient slots, a bowl slot, a fuel slot and the result. Put a dish's ingredients in, in any order, add fuel, and in 10 seconds two servings come out (the Lakeside Feast makes four). Soups and stews need a bowl for each serving and give the bowl back when eaten. The Forge's fuels work, at half the burn: one coal cooks 8 pots. The fire shows in the hearth while it burns.

Hearth PotFour iron ingots down the sides of the top two rows, three bricks below

4 BowlsA V of three boards

Under the pot, the dishes you know are listed: tap one and its ingredients move from your bag into the pot. Four dishes are known from the start. Learn the other seven by putting a dish's exact ingredients in the pot (it cooks even if you didn't know it), or by reading a Recipe Scrap: right click one to learn a dish you don't know yet. Scraps turn up in Cutter wrecks, Reliquaries, cabins and dungeons, and on a fishing line. The Journal's Hearth tab lists every dish.

Dishes are everyday meals: you eat them only when hungry (on Easy, when hurt). Bowl dishes stack to 1; the others to 16.

The dishes

Hearty StewRaw Beef, Potato, Carrot, Brown Mushroom, a bowl a serving

Fills 5 · Sated 2 minutes, Hearthwarm 1 minute · known from the start

Harvest PorridgeWheat, Apple, Melon Slice, a bowl a serving

Fills 3 · Mending 4 seconds · known from the start

Pumpkin SoupPumpkin, Carrot, Potato, a bowl a serving

Fills 3.5 · Hearthwarm 1 minute · known from the start

Fisher's ChowderRiverfish, Potato, Brown Mushroom, a bowl a serving

Fills 4 · Mending 6 seconds, Hearthwarm 90 seconds · known from the start

Perch and GreensSilver Perch, Carrot, Potato

Fills 4.5 · Sated 90 seconds

Berry TartWheat, 2 Hedgeberries, Apple

Fills 3 · Swiftstep 15 seconds

Glowfin SoupGlowfin, Carrot, Brown Mushroom, a bowl a serving

Fills 3 · Nightsight 2 minutes

Frostberry Tea2 Snowberries, Icefin, a bowl a serving

Fills 2 · Hearthwarm 3 minutes

Mossback BrothMossback, Red Mushroom, Brown Mushroom, Hedgeberries, a bowl a serving

Fills 3.5 · Mending 8 seconds

Lakeside FeastRoast Pork, Roast Beef, Baked Potato, Bread

Fills 4 · Sated 2 minutes

Elder Pike RoastElder Pike, Baked Potato, Hedgeberries

Fills 6 · Sated 3 minutes, Mending 6 seconds

What each effect does is in effects and food. Fills is in drumsticks of the hunger bar.

Fishing

A Fishing Rod is three hafts on a diagonal with two string hanging down the side; it lasts 64 casts. Three Lakeweed (a fishing catch) twist into a string. Everything is one button: the right mouse button, or on a touch screen the rod's own button (it reads Cast, then Strike, then Reel).

Fishing RodThree hafts on a diagonal, two string down the side

StringThree Lakeweed in a row

Reeling in a fish: the gold band on the bar over the hotbar, the line running out to the water. — Reeling: keep the gold band on the fish until the bar fills.

Cast: aim at water up to 12 blocks away and press. The bobber lands where you aimed.
Wait: 5 to 20 seconds, a quarter shorter in rain. The bobber may twitch once or twice: those are nibbles, not bites.
Strike: the bobber dives, there is a splash and a gold !. Press within 0.9 seconds (1.2 on Easy). Too early or too late and the fish swims off.
Reel: a bar appears. Hold the button to push the gold band right, let go to let it drift left, and keep it on the fish until the bar fills: about 1.5 seconds for a common fish, 3 seconds for a rare one, which darts about.

Pressing again while you wait reels the line in. Walking far from the bobber or putting the rod away ends the cast.

The catch table

Chances per catch on an open lake on Medium. Ponds smaller than 3×3, and water under a roof, give junk only.

Catch	Chance	Use
Fish	72%	Food, the Forge and the dishes
Riverfish	40%	Food; smelts; Fisher's Chowder
Silver Perch	20%	Food; smelts; Perch and Greens
Mudcat	8%	Food; smelts. Twice as often at night or in rain (taken from Riverfish)
Glowfin	4% at night	Glowfin Soup only. By day its share goes to Riverfish
Junk	22%	Still useful
Driftwood	9%	Fuel; splits into two hafts
Lakeweed	7%	Three make a string
Bone	3%	White dye
Rusted Vael Gear	3%	Smelts into an iron ingot
Treasure	6%	The prizes
Recipe Scrap	2.5%	Teaches a dish you don't know
Gold Ingot	1.8%	Gold
Dawnstone	0.6%	Rare
Moonstone	0.5%	Rare
Elder Pike	0.4%	Rare. Elder Pike Roast; earns the Pikefin Cap
Moonscale Koi	0.1% at night	Rare. Kept, not eaten; earns the Koi Lantern. By day its share goes to gold
Live Heart	0.1%	Rare. At most one a day from the water (a second that day is a Gold Ingot); earns the Tidewarden Helm

In the Frosted Lands, Icefin take the Silver Perch's place; in the Overgrown Jungle's pools, Mossback take the Mudcat's. Raw fish smelt in the Forge into cooked fish (not Glowfin, Icefin or Mossback, which go into dishes). A rare catch rises in a short gold beam.

The trophy hats

Three hats are earned looks, never sold: the Pikefin Cap, the Koi Lantern (its lantern glows) and the Tidewarden Helm. Each arrives the first time you land its catch, and waits in Looks under Hat.

Where the lakes lead

Deep lakes hide Fishing Cutters, sunk with a chest in the hold: fish, string, iron, often a Recipe Scrap, and in one Cutter in three a Live Heart. Where to look is in Biomes and lands.

Next: Biomes and lands. All sections: the guides.