How to Fish — Radar and Island Markers
It is not a fish finder. It is the $10 map that writes the next rock after a trophy hand-in.
The Radar is the small map gadget you buy from the Lighthouse Keeper after Who stole my beer. It costs $10. Players search “How to Fish map,” “radar not working,” and “X marker” because the UI looks like a fish-finder and then refuses to show Island 5. This page is the actual rule set through FANART & PATCH 1.0.10.
You do not get coordinates by catching a rarer mackerel. You get them when a named NPC accepts a distinctive trophy. The Radar then paints rocks you have unlocked. Patch 1.0.5 made that lock real: the boat will not sail to a volcano you have not earned. A stronger engine does not draw a new dot.
How to buy it without wasting the trip
Finish the Empty Beer Can → Spider Crab → Shell loop. Take the Boat Keys. Buy the Radar before you leave the lighthouse rock. If you sail first, you can still come back, but you will stare at empty water until the $10 is spent. There is no second cartographer on Island 2.
The Keeper is the merchant. Feeding clams is how early cash appears. Do not skip the crab fight to “save money” for a later gun and then wonder why the boat has nowhere to go.
What the screen is allowed to show
- Unlocked story islands: Lighthouse, Forest, Desert, Rocks, Volcano.
- Your boat, once you have keys.
- Quest arrows tied to the current NPC request, when the build shows them.
It does not list every fish in the encyclopedia. Fish Locations is the bait checklist. It does not mark Drip spawns. It does not replace talking to the Tourist or the scientist.
If a boss is dead and the next island is still missing, you handed in the wrong piece — meat instead of Shell, Skeleton, Fin remnant, bird head, or Whale Fin — or you never talked to the NPC after the kill. Read Boss Fights and NPCs.
The X marker is gone on purpose
Patch 1.0.10 removed the X on the Radar. It was the position where you last died, and it confused people. If a screenshot from August 21 still shows an X, that player is not on 1.0.10. Restart Steam. The mark was never a treasure, a Bean skip, or a fish school.
Death still exists. The map just stopped advertising the grave.
When the Radar looks “broken”
No Island 2 after the crab. You have keys but no Radar, or you never spent the $10.
No Island 3. The Giant Piranha Skeleton is still in a seagull, on the sand, or in a shop mouth. Three Leeches must become Modified Leech bait before that fight even starts. They are ground pickups.
No Volcano. Albatross head not turned in, or you are looking at a pre-1.0.5 clip that skipped Rocks.
Dots on the end-game screen. Patch 1.0.10 hid item dots on the end-game screen. That is not a deleted island.
Co-op clients see a smaller map. You are in the host’s unlock state. If the host never left the Lighthouse, your Radar will not invent Forest.
Ground piles from 1.0.10 do not need Radar pins. A cook stash at camp is a physics pile, capped at 64 objects.
Related pages
- Getting Started — crab, keys, first $10
- Walkthrough — which trophy writes which island
- Islands — shops on each rock
- Updates Hub — 1.0.5 lock, 1.0.10 X removal