Five contacts.
One clean route.
The game gives you a radar, not a conventional world map. This original schematic keeps the route honest: relative directions, contact colors, boss items, and the NPC who turns each trophy into the next coordinate.
How to read the How to Fish game map
The Lighthouse is your fixed reference. Once the opening Spider Crab quest gives you access to the boat and radar, the route moves northwest to the Forest, west through the Desert and Rocks, then north to the Volcano. Those directions describe the relationship between contacts; they are not invented numerical coordinates.
Every new contact is gated by a concrete progression action. Defeating a boss is sometimes only half the job. The Desert, Rocks, and Volcano contacts appear after you preserve a boss item and bring it to the correct NPC. If a boss is gone but the next dot is missing, the hand-in is the first thing to check.
The five-location sequence
- Lighthouse — Starting position. Available from the beginning. Check the route diagnostically.
- Forest — Northwest of the Lighthouse. Defeat the Spider Crab, collect the keys, and buy the radar. No separate trophy hand-in. Check the route diagnostically.
- Desert — West of the Forest. Defeat the Giant Piranha. Feed the Giant Piranha skeleton to the lady by the lake. Check the route diagnostically.
- Rocks — West of the Desert. Defeat the Pufferfish. Bring the Pufferfish fin to the tourist. Check the route diagnostically.
- Volcano — North of the Rocks. Defeat the Albatross. Bring the Albatross head to the shop NPC. Check the route diagnostically.
Why the map avoids fake precision
Several pages on the web use the word "coordinates," but the practical interface in the game is the radar. Publishing made-up X/Y numbers would look authoritative while making navigation worse. The map instead preserves the information that can be checked across route guides: sequence, relative direction, color, boss requirement, and hand-in.
Patch changes can still affect sequence breaks. Patch 1.0.5 fixed the route skip that allowed travel to locked islands, so older speedrun or achievement videos may not describe the current path. This page is verified against patch 1.0.9 and carries that version in the interface.
For the detailed task order, open the exact unlock guide: Forest, Desert, Rocks, or Volcano.
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