How to Fish Co-op Guide: Lobbies, Money and Friendly Fire

Updated 2026-09-02 · Steam How to Fish

How to Fish co op is online-only, hosted through Steam, and the store sells it as a 1-4 player physics-based fishing simulator. The real cap is higher: patch 1.0.4 on 21 August 2026 added support for up to 8 player lobbies, and 1.0.5 added invite-only private lobbies. Money is one shared pot, friendly fire is a toggle, and since 1.0.11 your own explosives kill you whether that toggle is on or off.

Player counts: what the game actually supports

Setting	Players	Source
Store page description	1-4	How to Fish Steam store listing
Patch 1.0.4 (21 Aug 2026)	Up to 8	Patch notes: "Added support for up to 8 player lobbies"
BiggerLobbies mod	8, configurable	Thunderstore, ADHDCory/BiggerLobbies v1.0.3
MorePlayers mod	32	Thunderstore, Kalamies/MorePlayers v0.1.0

The store lists Single-player, Multi-player, Co-op, Online Co-op and Family Sharing. There is no split-screen or local category, so co-op is online through Steam only, on Windows.

Hosting and joining a lobby

Co-op runs on Steam's networking. Patch 1.0.9 added a short Steam connection debug to the main menu that shows if the connection fails while initialising. The patch notes say that if the Steam relay text turns red you should check the developers' community bug channel for fix guides; what a red relay means for an individual lobby is not spelled out. From the patch notes:

Private lobbies. Added in 1.0.5: the lobby is joinable by invite only.
Session type. Also 1.0.5: changeable in server settings while in-game, but it requires a restart to take effect.
Server names. Since 1.0.4 special characters are blocked, because they broke the save file.
Connection timeouts. Patch 1.0.10 increased the time allowed to connect, lowering the risk of an instant disconnect.
Restart Steam after a patch. Dazed Games close their patch announcements by telling players to restart Steam to pull the update.

Friendly fire and your own explosives

Friendly fire is a lobby setting you can turn off, and crews lean on it because dynamite drives most boss strategies. Patch 1.0.11 on 1 September 2026 changed half of that: you will now die from your own explosives even with friendly fire disabled. The toggle protects your crew from you, not you from yourself.

That invalidates older advice. The player-written "Under One Hour Tips 1.0.10" guide tells you to switch friendly fire off so dynamite cannot kill you, and builds its route on standing beside lit stacks. On 1.0.11 you have to get clear of your own blast. The same guide reports you may have to toggle friendly fire off and on again after a restart, which the patch notes do not confirm.

Patch 1.0.11 also recoloured item dots (dropped weapons orange, dead players turquoise), making a downed teammate easier to find, and added a nametag toggle.

Shared money, and how to split it

The whole crew spends from one bank balance, and no patch changes that. For per-player wallets you need a mod. NoSharedMoney (hiccup, v1.4.0, updated 30 August 2026, around 12,800 downloads) gives every player a balance keyed to their Steam ID. Per its Thunderstore README:

Behaviour	What the mod does
Selling	Credits whoever put the item in the sell box or fed a quest NPC, so you can pay a friend by handing over a fish
Buying	Charges whoever used the shop, including shared boat upgrades like the motor and radar
Server checks	Purchases are still validated against the buyer's real balance
Existing saves	A shared balance is split evenly between the players recorded in the save
Boss money	Split evenly by default; config keys change or duplicate it
Storage	A separate JSON file per save, beside the game's own saves

The README is blunt about the catch: all players must have NoSharedMoney installed, including the host. Anyone who joins without it gets a stale money display and cannot buy anything, and the host is warned in chat. The author recommends pairing it with the same developer's SaveBackups mod, since the wallet file lives outside the game save.

Install steps are on the mods hub; lobby-size mods have their own page at multiplayer mods.

What survives between sessions

Patch 1.0.10 on 27 August 2026 added what co-op groups asked for most: items dropped on the ground are saved between sessions, up to 64 total, prioritising weapons, tools, quest items and creatures. Before that, anything a crew left lying around was gone at the next load.

Save integrity got three more passes: 1.0.6 stopped saving on a crash (it now saves on the Save, Main Menu and Quit buttons, plus a minute autosave), 1.0.9 addressed corrupted save files, and 1.0.11 added a corruption check on load plus backups. How saves are shared between host and joining players is not confirmed yet in the patch notes. Full list on patch notes.

Co-op bugs the patches fixed

Patch	Date	Co-op fix
1.0.4	21 Aug 2026	Black screen when trying to join a lobby
1.0.5	22 Aug 2026	Griefers could instantly end the game when joining
1.0.10	27 Aug 2026	Rich text removed from chat after griefer abuse; a player and a seagull grabbing the same item; items falling through the level on join
1.0.11	1 Sep 2026	Inventory bug on join that made players invisible; items must be held once before selling

If you still see invisible players, get everyone onto 1.0.11 or later; the developers call that fix "hopefully fixed" rather than confirmed.

Playing bosses as a group

This section is player-reported. The author of the "All 28 Achievements and Post-Game Route" guide recommends co-op wherever possible: extra guns shorten boss fights, and a downed teammate can be picked back up instead of the run ending there. That author also reports weapon upgrades seeming to cost less solo, with lures and guns costing the same either way. Treat those as impressions, not published numbers.

Other player-tested observations:

Bosses appear to scale with player count: the duo speedrun guide reports 17 dynamite for the co-op tuna and 25 for the Albatross.
RubenS' boss guide puts one player on dynamite or shotgun for swarms while the rest run SMG or assault rifle for sustained damage.
Players report that for the bare-hands final boss achievement, whoever lands the killing punch unlocks it for the whole lobby, so the group can hold the boss while one person swaps to fists.
Co-op makes the one-hour Bean run harder; guide authors say the coordination cost is not worth it under a timer.

Strategies are on bosses; what pops lobby-wide is on achievements.

Steam Deck, GeForce NOW and controllers

Patch 1.0.11 made How to Fish fully Steam Deck Verified and playable through GeForce NOW, so a friend without a gaming PC can join. It also added toggle options for aiming and sprinting and a hold-to-attack option, all of which matter on a controller. The store confirms full controller support including DualShock and DualSense; 1.0.8 fixed PlayStation glyphs.

Patch 1.0.9 added easy and hard difficulty alongside the default: easy gives creatures 25 percent less health and 50 percent less damage, hard gives 25 percent more health and 25 percent more damage. Change it from the main menu or in-game. Mixed groups should start on easy and read the beginner guide.

Sources and last check

Checked 2 September 2026. Player counts, private lobbies, friendly fire, save handling, griefing fixes, difficulty modes, Steam Deck Verified status and GeForce NOW support come from Dazed Games' Steam announcements for patches 1.0.4 (21 August 2026) through 1.0.11 (1 September 2026). The 1-4 player figure, the Co-op and Online Co-op categories, Family Sharing and controller support come from the How to Fish Steam store page. NoSharedMoney, MorePlayers and BiggerLobbies details come from those packages' Thunderstore listings.

Player-reported, not developer-confirmed: boss scaling with player count, the dynamite counts for the co-op tuna and Albatross, upgrades costing less solo, the friendly fire toggle needing a second flip after a restart, and the shared boss-kill achievement unlock. Those come from the Steam Community guides "All 28 Achievements and Post-Game Route", "Under One Hour Tips 1.0.10", the updated Bean speedrun guide and RubenS' boss and weapon strategy guide, all read on 2 September 2026.