How to Efficiently Auto Fish in Black Desert Online

Black Desert Online Auto Fishing Guide

Auto fishing in Black Desert Online is one of the more lucrative activities to do while AFK. To be able to auto fish you only need a fishing rod and access to water with fish. However, to maximize earnings while auto fishing requires some thought and character skills. If you haven’t done any fishing in BDO before I would recommend that you start by reading my general fishing guide and then return here. Otherwise, please read on through this auto fishing guide.

To start fishing you only need to find a body of water, equip the fishing rod you have in your inventory and press space. Congrats you are now fishing. To auto fish, you now only need to leave the controls alone and the game will take care of the rest. What happens is that after a fish bites, a three-minute timer starts, after which you automatically reel in the fish and throw again.

Auto Discarding Fish

You do have a couple of choices to make while auto-fishing one of which is the grade of fish you want to keep. The fish grades are white, green, blue, yellow and orange, where the later grades are more valuable. To select which grade to keep you need to use the small box near the top of the screen labeled “Discard”. Click that box and select the grade of fish you wish to discard. For example, if you select green, your character will automatically discard all white and green fish it catches, only keeping blue, gold, and orange.

When you start fishing you can only select to discard white fish, but as your fishing skill increases, you can begin to select higher grades of fish to discard. This ability is dependant on your fishing level as follows:

• At professional 1 – you can discard white and green grade fish
• At artisan 1 – you can discard white, green and blue grade fish
• At master 1 – you can discard white, green, blue and yellow grade fish

Now you might wonder why it would be a good idea to discard fish. Well, once you gain access to good fishing rods with durability that allows you to reliably fish for 8 to 10 hours straight while AFK, you might want to start keeping only blue and yellow fish. This makes sure that you won’t fill your inventory with green fish, thus increasing the profits of each auto-fishing session.

You should also always check the “Do not board other adventures’ ships” box if you are auto-fishing and your character is located in water. This will make sure your character won’t be hi-jacked from his fishing spot and dropped in the middle of the ocean (or just killed).

The Fishing Rod

For auto fishing, the most important thing is your fishing rod. In Black Desert Online there are a few different tiers of fishing rods. The first rod you will likely get is the Old Fishing Rod. That rod is surpassed by the Fishing Rod, followed by the Thick Fishing Rod, Steel Fishing Rod, Golden Fishing Rod, and finally the Artisan Fishing Rods which are generally considered best. Each fishing rod tier has a certain level requirement, varying durability, and different special effects.

The old fishing rod you start with is no good when it comes to AFK fishing. What you want is a fishing rod with enough durability that you can fill your inventory with valuable fish and is repairable. The only fishing rods that fit that category are the artisan fishing rods. So, you should only use the basic fishing rods until you get enough silver for your first artisan rod.

Artisan Fishing Rods

The artisan fishing rods, named after ports in Black Desert Online, can usually be bought from the marketplace. What is most important about those rods is that they can be enhanced and repaired while the others are ruined once their durability runs out. Looking at the Epheria Fishing rod, you will see that its durability is increased by ten for each level of enhancement. There is also no skill required to use this rod, so this is the fishing rod you should strive to get as soon as possible, enhance to +3 or +4 and restore to full durability.

Alternatively, we have the Balenos Fishing Rod. Its special effect is to reduce auto fishing times which is the time that passes from the point where the fish is hooked until your character reels it automatically in. This reduction starts at 10% and reaches 25% reduction at +10 enhancement, with each level of enhancement also giving an extra 5 to durability. If you have the means to enhance the Balenos rod to +6 or +7, restore it to full durability and have gotten decent fishing skills then it will eventually become a better rod for auto fishing, at the very least if you intend to auto-fish for a shorter duration or check on your character regularly.

Your Fishing Skill and Rods

The importance of the fishing skill when comparing the Balenos fishing rod to the Epheria rod lies in the fact that at higher fishing levels you have an increased chance of conserving the durability of your fishing rod. Meaning that at fishing level beginner 1 you would get at most 90 throws out of a +4 Epheria rod, while at master 1 you could get 130-140 throws.

Now because of the fishing skill level effect, the usefulness of the Balenos rod increases exponentially as your fishing level increases, reaching a point where a decently enhanced rod could fill a sizable inventory in a reasonably short time. While at the same skill level, a +7 Epheria rod might fill your inventory long before losing its durability, making it less useful in comparison.

The bottom line is that if you are just starting to fish and purchased an Epherian fishing rod you should enhance it to a level where you are somewhat confident that your inventory will fill up before its durability runs out. If you go for the Balenos rod you should enhance it as much as you can to get the best time reduction and increased durability. Getting the Balenos to +10 is, however, no easy task and you should study enhancing guides before you start.

As your fishing skill increases you will start getting better grade fish and at fishing level Artisan 1 you will gain access to the Mediah Fishing Rod. The unique ability of this rod is to increase the chance of catching rare fish. At that point, you need to consider if you wish to keep your previous rod or change it to a Mediah one.

Now, remember that you can choose to discard low-grade fish. If you decide to do so the Mediah rod might on some occasions be the best auto-fishing rod as its increased ability to catch rare fish is a counterpoint to the “lost” durability when you catch low-rank fish with the Epheria or Balenos rod. However, you do not get any extra durability from enhancing the Mediah rod (or the Calpheon one) so this is something to consider. Personally, I only use the Epheria and Balenos rods for auto-fishing, even after getting to master fishing levels.

Finally, there is a special item that reduces the durability loss of items by 50% called a brand spell stone. The brand spell stone can be acquired through events so that’s something to keep an eye out for or purchased in the Pearl store. It’s not expensive and if you do a lot of AFK fishing then it is certainly worth it. Just remember that you cannot remove a brand stone from a rod without destroying the stone, so just use it on rods you intend to keep.

Ash and Maple Floats

There are two types of floats that you can equip on your offhand while fishing. The ash float increases your chance of getting bigger fish (blue fish) and the maple float increases your chance of getting rare fish (yellow fish). Both floats can be enhanced by using black stones, increasing their benefits up to +5%. You can use the Ash float as you reach professional 1 fisher skill, but the maple float requires artisan 1 skill.

Note that this bonus adds on top of your regular chance of getting rare fish so it’s actually worth investing in a maple float if you do a lot of fishing. Getting this 5% increase to your yellow grade fish chance means that for every 100 throws, on average five fish which would have been blue or below are instead yellow. I go into detail on how this works in my general fishing guide.

Auto Fishing Bonuses from Pets

There are three types of pets that can reduce your auto-fishing time.  There are two event pets, the penguin and polar bear, and another regular pearl store pet, the Marmot. At tier 1 these pets reduce your auto-fishing time by 10% (+1%/level) up to a max of 20%. Tier 4 pets give a 30% reduction at level 10. To get that bonus you need to have your pet active and fed, but at the moment you can only have a single auto-fishing pet out at any time.

Penguins and polar bears are sometimes given as event rewards so if you are doing auto fishing keep your eyes peeled for the next of these attendance awards. These pets can reach tier 4 like all other pets, however, you can only combine penguins and polar bears together, as they are event pets. The marmot is a premium pet and can be combined with other premium pets as usual.

Having an auto-fishing pet and a Balenos rod makes for a powerful combo. The auto fishing time reductions add together so having a +10 Balenos with a max level tier 4 penguin will give a total reduction of 55%. Meaning that the usual 3-minute timer becomes only 81 seconds or one minute 21 seconds, resulting in way faster fishing.

Inventory Size, Trade Profit and How to Sell your Fish

While the fishing rod is the most crucial piece it is not the only thing you need to consider. Your inventory is also pretty significant. A larger inventory means that you can spend a greater time auto fishing before you need to sell your fish to make space for more. The size of your inventory, therefore, has a bearing on which fishing rod is better for you to use.

Also, you must consider that the value of fish starts to reduce after 2 hours and 40 minutes and will steadily decrease as time goes by until they become ruined after 24 hours. This, however, does not seem to matter if you sell your blue and golden fish to the imperial fishing traders, meaning that blue and golden fish can be 23 hours and 59 minutes old and still retain their full value if sold to an imperial fishing trader. On top of that, the imperial fishing traders give you a 250% price for your fish. However, you do not get the distance bonus even if it’s shown with the trader like in the image below. You can read more about how to sell fish here.

Since the main profit from fishing is from those blue and golden fish as well as the ancient crystal shards, larger inventory size = more money in the long run. To increase your inventory slots you can complete special quests as well as purchasing slot expansions with loyalty points or pearls.

Fishing Location

The location where you auto fish is somewhat less important than active fishing. I would, however, recommend fishing more near the end game locations, so Calpheon docks, Mediah and Valencia would be preferred in my opinion. But for some reason, the most popular place to fish is at the river in Heidel. I should also mention that at Altinova and presumably Valencia you do not get any trash while fishing and if you auto fish at sea you have a higher chance of getting blue and yellow tiered fish at the cost of fewer relics found. There is also a hotspot on the beach near Velia, but I prefer to fish elsewhere as that spot is always crowded.

What is most important about fishing locations is wither they have abundant resources or if they are being overused and the resource level has dropped. As the time between each catch increases when the resource level drops this is important for both regular fishing and auto-fishing.

Fishing Clothes and Fishing Rank

Your fishing rank reduces the time needed to hook a fish so a high fishing rank is very important for fishing in general. A fishing rank of level 5 also gives a 5% reduction in auto-fishing time. You can see your fishing rank in your “My Information” screen under “Basic – Battle Stats” for some reason.

There are fishing clothes and outfits that affect your fishing rank. The silver embroidered fisher’s clothes increase your fishing rank, movement speed, and fishing experience depending on the level of enhancement, so you should try to get hold of the best possible fishing clothes for your auto fishing activities.

How to increase your fishing rank is discussed in detail in my general fishing guide. But the simplest way is to get +2 Silver Embroidered Fisher’s Clothes and join a guild with a +3 bonus to fishing rank.

Foods That Affect Auto-Fishing

Finally, there are a few food items that affect your auto-fishing time. The best one is the Arehaza Meal which gives a 5% reduction to auto-fishing times and lasts for 90 minutes. However, as there is no way to auto-eat food the usefulness of it is limited.

Summary

In my opinion, the best fishing rods are the Epehria and Balenos rods. Try to enhance them as high as you can.

You can get at most a total of 65% reduction to the three-minute auto fishing timer by using a +10 Balenos rod, a max level tier 4 fishing pet, having fishing rank at level 5 and using the Arehaza meal.

The pets that give a reduced auto-fishing time are the penguin, polar bear, and marmot.

Get a +2 Silver Embroidered Fisher’s Clothes and join a guild with a +3 bonus to fishing rank.

An abundant fishing spot is the best place to catch fish, try to find one in a safe zone.

Now if you liked this black desert online auto fishing guide then be sure to share it with your friends and allies and feel free to check out my other Black Desert Online guides.