How to Fish Patch Notes: 1.0.4 to 1.0.11 Changes
Updated 2026-09-02 · Steam How to Fish
The latest How to Fish patch notes are for 1.0.11, published 1 September 2026. It made the game Steam Deck Verified, added GeForce NOW support, added toggle options for aiming and sprinting, and started backing up save files so a corrupt save no longer wipes your run. Seven patches shipped between 21 August and 1 September 2026 (1.0.4, 1.0.5, 1.0.6, 1.0.8, 1.0.9, 1.0.10 and 1.0.11); this page condenses every official announcement from Dazed Games in reverse order, with a note under each one about what it changes for modded installs.
Everything below comes from the developers' own Steam announcements, which are published on the How to Fish Steam news feed and are quoted here by title and date. Mod compatibility notes are drawn from Thunderstore package READMEs and update dates, which are written by mod authors, not by the developers.
Patch timeline at a glance
| Version | Date | Headline change | Risk to mods |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1.0.11 | 1 Sep 2026 | Steam Deck Verified, GeForce NOW, save backups, attachment changes | High: newest game build, attachment shop rules changed |
| 1.0.10 | 27 Aug 2026 | Dropped items saved between sessions, cooked gear cleaned in water | Medium: save format and item handling touched |
| 1.0.9 | 24 Aug 2026 | Easy and hard difficulty modes | Medium: creature health and damage values shift |
| 1.0.8 | 24 Aug 2026 | Controller glyphs, fire sizzle volume fix | Low |
| 1.0.7 | Not announced | No announcement in the Steam news feed | Unknown |
| 1.0.6 | 23 Aug 2026 | Save file checks, save on button press instead of on crash | Medium: save write timing changed |
| 1.0.5 | 22 Aug 2026 | Island travel exploit closed, private lobbies | High: broke the old Bean route and some early mods |
| 1.0.4 | 21 Aug 2026 | 8 player lobbies, Pufferfish and Whale nerfs | Medium: raised the vanilla lobby ceiling |
Patch 1.0.11 (1 September 2026)
Announced on the Steam news feed as "Steam Deck Verified, GeForce NOW and Patch 1.0.11" and described by the developers as mainly stability and extra platform support.
New: How to Fish is now playable through GeForce NOW; the game is fully Steam Deck Verified; toggle options were added for aiming and for sprinting; a hold-to-attack option was added; nametags can now be toggled.
Changes: save files are always checked for corruption before loading, and save files now keep backups. The roulette table on island 6 was moved slightly because betting from the old position was awkward. Item dots were recoloured so dropped weapons are easier to find (weapons are orange, dead players are turquoise). You now die from your own explosives even with friendly fire disabled. Iron sights were removed as a purchasable, because players only ever bought them by mistake and lost their expensive attachments. You can no longer downgrade from a suppressor to a compensator.
Fixed: the inventory bug on join that made players invisible (the developers say "hopefully"); items now have to be held once before they can be sold; drip parrotfish not being cooked; hands sometimes teleporting rather than moving smoothly to a picked-up item.
What this means for mods: this is the newest build, and no Thunderstore package in our September 2 snapshot declares 1.0.11 compatibility yet. The most recently maintained mods still carry "game version v1.0.10 (Compatible)" badges. The attachment changes matter most: any mod that reads or draws attachments, such as AmmoCounter (updated 1 September 2026), sits directly on top of the shop rules that just changed. The save corruption check and the new save backups are described only in general terms in the announcement, and whether they cover data that mods write alongside the save is not confirmed yet. If your setup broke on this patch, work through mods not working before reinstalling anything.
Patch 1.0.10 (27 August 2026)
Posted as "Fanart and Patch 1.0.10" and called "Biggest patch yet" by the developers.
New: weapons and tools are cleaned of cooking residue when dipped in water. Items dropped on the ground are saved between sessions, up to 64 total items, prioritising weapons, tools, quest items and creatures.
Changes: anglerfish was nerfed slightly because a lot of health made it too annoying.
Fixed: a long list, including beer bleeding when punched; a bug where dying to tuna, spawning the albatross and then being unable to respawn; "last played" being saved in UTC without converting to local time; rich text removed from chat because griefers were abusing it; explosion velocity capped so items stop flying out of the world; a conflict when a player and a seagull grabbed the same item at once; infinite ticking on the roulette table at high values; the roulette ball clipping through the wheel; the game version now printed in player.log for easier debugging; a longer connection window to reduce instant disconnects; roulette breaking for the next session if you left mid-game; items spawning far away when equipping from the inventory; item dots showing on the end game screen; the X marker removed from the radar; and items falling through the level when loading or joining.
What this means for mods: 1.0.10 is the build most current mods were actually tested against. The SuperCreatures and BaitIndex READMEs both state they are tested against dropped item world saving, cooked meat washing and roulette physics, which are exactly this patch's headline systems. ButterflyKnifeOnShop 0.2.0 is published as "for How to Fish 1.0.10". The version number now written to player.log is the fastest way to confirm which build your mod loader actually launched. The announcement also nerfed anglerfish health; no mod README in our snapshot says what that does to the numbers shown by creature-scaling or health-bar mods, so any effect there is not confirmed yet.
Patch 1.0.9 (24 August 2026)
Posted as "Patch 1.0.9": bug fixes plus new settings.
New: difficulty can be changed in the main menu and in-game. The default is unchanged, with easy and hard added on either side. Easy mode gives all creatures 25% less health and 50% less damage. Hard mode gives all creatures 25% more health and 25% more damage. A short Steam connection debug readout was added to the main menu; if the Steam relay text turns red, the connection failed to initialise.
Fixed: save files being corrupted, again with a "hopefully". Players still unable to load saves, or crashing when equipping weapons, were pointed at the developers' community channels for removal instructions.
What this means for mods: difficulty multipliers move every creature health and damage number, so boss and fish health readouts from mods like BossHP and FishHP will differ between easy, normal and hard on the same creature. Several packages list "Game version: 1.0.9+" as their stated minimum, which means they were built after this patch and are not expected to behave on older builds.
Patch 1.0.8 (24 August 2026)
Posted as "Patch 1.0.8", a "tiny bugfix patch" shipped the same day as 1.0.9.
Fixed: PlayStation controller glyphs now display correctly, and the fire sizzling sound was linked to the FX volume slider so it actually responds to that slider.
What this means for mods: nothing structural. Watch out for a numbering coincidence here: the modpack Enhanced_HowToFish is itself at package version 1.0.8, which is the mod's own number and not a stated game requirement. Read a version string on Thunderstore carefully before assuming it refers to the game build.
What happened to 1.0.7
There is no 1.0.7 announcement in the official Steam news feed between 1.0.6 on 23 August and 1.0.8 on 24 August. Whether a 1.0.7 build shipped without an announcement is not confirmed yet, so treat any mod that claims 1.0.7 compatibility as referring to its own version number rather than the game's.
Patch 1.0.6 (23 August 2026)
Posted as "Patch 1.0.6", a small bugfix patch.
Fixed: the game now checks the save file before trying to load it, so it no longer displays fake servers named "Game Name". Saving on application crash was removed; the game instead saves when you press the Save, Main Menu or Quit buttons, with autosave still running every minute so a crash costs at most about a minute of progress.
What this means for mods: this is when save writes moved off the crash path. Mods that persist their own state alongside the save now have a predictable write moment, and the practical habit for modded runs is to press Save before quitting rather than trusting a crash to flush anything.
Patch 1.0.5 (22 August 2026)
Posted as "Patch 1.0.5": bug fixes plus quality-of-life options.
New: invert axis options for X and Y while looking around; the option to host a private lobby that is only joinable by invite; the option to change session type in the server settings while in-game, which requires a restart to take effect.
Changes: the minimum locked fps setting moved from 50 down to 30.
Fixed: travelling to any island without unlocking it, which the developers flagged with an apology to speedrunners; slot machine skins being invisible while rolling at 4K resolution; the all-drip-creatures achievement not unlocking until the next drip, which forced players to find all plus one instead of all; and griefers instantly ending the game on join.
What this means for mods: the island travel fix was the biggest single break of the patch run. Guide authors report that the old sub-one-hour route stopped working from this patch onwards, because it depended on the island travel bug the developers closed here, which is why the Bean achievement route had to be rewritten. On the mod side, DevIslandUnlocked and ModMenu both shipped explicit "compatibility update for How to Fish 1.0.5" releases, so 1.0.5 is the oldest build most currently listed mods target. Anything on Thunderstore that has not been updated since 22 August should be treated as untested.
Patch 1.0.4 (21 August 2026)
Posted as "Patch 1.0.4", the first patch after launch, built from community bug reports.
Changes: support added for lobbies of up to 8 players; Pufferfish nerfed; Whale nerfed; the intended path up to the final island made easier to see.
Fixed: the black screen when joining a lobby and the grey screen on startup (the latter by no longer forcing fullscreen mode), both marked "hopefully"; a permanent boss timer stuck on screen; underwater effects persisting in the main menu; permanent revive text when a dead player self-revives while being carried; special characters in server names, which broke the save file; and the bare-hands final boss achievement not firing for everyone.
What this means for mods: the store page still advertises 1 to 4 players, but from 1.0.4 the vanilla ceiling is 8. That is the number MorePlayers builds on, since it advertises up to 32 players "instead of 8". The Pufferfish and Whale nerfs reset the health and damage baselines that boss guides quote, so any figure from before 21 August is stale. See multiplayer mods for the lobby side and bosses for current strategy.
Release and the one million milestone
How to Fish launched on 20 August 2026 at a 38% launch discount for one week. Three days later the developers posted that the game had passed one million players in two days, promising more content and more bug fixes. That pace is visible in the patch list above: seven patches in twelve days.
How patches keep breaking mods
Every mod here is loaded through BepInEx, which patches game methods at runtime. When a patch changes a method the mod hooks, the mod either silently does nothing or throws. Mod authors say as much themselves; the ButterflyKnifeOnShop README warns plainly that a future game update may change game methods and require a mod update.
| Signal | Where to check it | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Game build number | player.log, printed since 1.0.10 | Which build your loader actually launched |
| Mod "last updated" date | The package page on thunderstore.io | Whether the author has seen the current patch |
| Stated game version in the README | The package description | The minimum build the author tested |
| Steam relay indicator | Main menu, added in 1.0.9 | Whether a connection failure is the game, not your mods |
The practical rule after any patch: launch vanilla once so the game writes a clean save and config, check the version in player.log, then re-enable mods in small batches. Full install steps are on the mods hub, and the current picks are on best mods.
Sources and last check
Checked 2 September 2026. All patch contents on this page come from the official Dazed Games announcements on the How to Fish Steam news feed, which is linked once in the introduction and lists every post cited here: 1.0.11 (1 September), 1.0.10 (27 August), 1.0.9 and 1.0.8 (24 August), 1.0.6 and the one million players post (23 August), 1.0.5 (22 August), 1.0.4 (21 August) and the release post (20 August). Announcement titles are given at the top of each section so you can find the matching post in that feed. Price, player count and release date come from the How to Fish Steam store page. Where the developers wrote "hopefully" about a fix, that wording is theirs and is kept here.
Mod compatibility notes are player-reported, not official: they come from Thunderstore package READMEs, stated minimum game versions and package update dates as of 2 September 2026, all written by mod authors. The claim that the pre-1.0.5 sub-one-hour route was patched out is player-reported, from the community achievements and post-game route guide on Steam. No mod in that snapshot has been confirmed against 1.0.11 by its author yet.
Cheat-style packages exist in the same Thunderstore listing; this wiki does not cover or link them.