À Deriva

The cycle

Day and night

At night the good fish show up more: rare +20%, epic +40% e legendary +60% at the deepest hour of the night (the effect fades in and out with the transition). The Midnight Rod only works in that window — and the Blood Moon happens only there.

Rarity and bait

Bait is the most important decision in the game: it changes everything at once — the chance of a good fish and the chance of losing it. Better bait misses less.

Every map sells its own bait, with different names but the same five tiers. This is the chance that a fish which bit actually reaches the boat. Your rod and your pets still move it, in both directions.

Good bait pays for itself. Besides landing more, each tier carries a bonus of its own — speed on the uncommon, sale value on the top three. The exception is the legendary: it costs more than it returns. It is not bait for profit — it is the only one that makes the celestial appear, and that is how a collection gets finished.

The price climbs from map to map. The same legendary bait costs 10,000 in the Araguaia and 32,000 in Noronha — roughly triple, first to last. It is what stops endgame money from buying the early game all over again.

Weather events

Every 1 min the game rolls; the chance of an event starting is 5% (the first one only after 30 s of play) — on average, one event every 20 min. It warns you 10 s ahead and lasts 5 to 7 min, rolled on the spot. Every event has one guaranteed bite — somewhere between 20% and 80% of the way through, a fish of that rarity arrives, no roll needed.

Weight is how much the event weighs in the roll, not a percentage: Rain alone accounts for more than half of all rolls. Map events only enter the roll when you are there — and the Pororoca is the tidal wave coming up the river, so it applies to both rivers and nowhere else.

Rods

They all cost 700 as a base, but every rod bought makes the next one 50% more expensive. Only one is equipped at a time.

Boats and boxes

The boat sets how many fish fit before fishing stops. Every boat bought makes the next one 15% dearer. The last two require a trophy, not just money: it is what forces you to finish a collection before upgrading the fleet.

The boxes multiply the boat's capacity and stack — each one requires the previous: Styrofoam ×1.5 (25,000), Cooler ×2 (80,000), Hold ×2.5 (250,000 + 1 trophy), Cold Room ×3 (600,000 + 2 trophies).

The last two ask for a trophy for the same reason the Factory Ship and the Ocean Trawler do: capacity is what shortens play time the most, and the biggest one does not come from just waiting for coins to pile up. A trophy is a map's complete collection, and every collection goes through the celestial fish — which means through the expensive bait.

Pets

Every map has an animal. It shows up on its own, at 0.1% chance per fish caught. You will fish a long while before seeing your first. You can keep 3 active at once, and the bonuses stack.

Maps and trophies

You start on the Araguaia. Each new map opens by paying — or free, if you hold the previous one's trophy. The trophy comes from completing the collection of that place: all 12 fish, at least one of each.

The Celestial column is what changed the whole game: the rarest fish of each map gets progressively harder to land. On the Araguaia it comes at full odds; in Noronha, at a tenth of that. Because the trophy demands the complete collection, and the collection includes the celestial, this is what makes an endgame exist — and it is where the big money gets burned, on expensive bait.

The Collector

A boat that comes by once an hour, empties your hold and pays a share of the value. You only have one at a time, and buying a better one replaces the old. It is what makes the game actually earn on its own — at a toll.

None of them pays as well as selling by hand. You trade money for not having to be there — and sometimes that is worth it.

Where the game lives

It runs two ways, and the switch is in the menu (▲ button) under Settings. Switching mode restarts the game — on purpose: the two use different renderers, and that is chosen only at startup. The choice is remembered for next time.

In wallpaper mode the HUD bar moves to the bottom right (the icons live on the left), and panels open in a little window of their own — close with Esc, by clicking outside, or through the fish icon in the system tray, next to the clock.

Also under Settings: with more than one monitor you can choose which screen the game lives on (switching also restarts), and there is a Start with Windows, which makes the game open by itself when the computer turns on.

The sound

The game has music, effects and weather — and all three turn on and off separately, each with its own volume, under Settings › Sound. They are separate because they bother people for different reasons: the music tires whoever leaves the game on all day, the effects get in the way of a call, and rain is exactly what a lot of people want in the background while they work.

Three things that speed everything up

Hats not yet

None of this section exists in the game you can download today. The hats are finished and tested, but the door to earning a hat is the Steam inventory — so they only start dropping once the game is there. This page is here so you know what is coming, not so you go looking for one in the game and find nothing.

The fisherman has worn a straw hat since forever. The idea is that he starts wearing others — and that the others be real items, in your Steam inventory, tradable and sellable on the Market like any other skin.

How a hat drops

At most 2 a day, with at least 6 hours between one stork and the next. If you are away from the computer when a stork goes by, you lose nothing: the fishing time stays banked and it comes back later.

Why the click. À Deriva fishes on its own — that is the whole point of it. Which makes “somebody playing” and “the game left open and forgotten” look exactly alike to any count the program can make. The click is what tells the two apart, and that is the reason it exists.

What there is, and what each one does

The bonus is small on purpose: the best hat is worth less than the weakest pet. A hat is decoration with a little nudge — buying one on the Market does not put you ahead of somebody who played.

The hats in the first wave. The chance is the weight in Steam's draw; the straw one is out because everybody already has it.

	Hat	Rarity	Effect	Chance
	Straw Hat	Common	+1% chance of a good fish	—
	Rain Hat	Common	hold on to 1% more of what bites	34%
	Sheriff's Hat	Uncommon	+2% value	22%
	Captain's Cap	Uncommon	+2% speed	22%
	Pirate Tricorne	Rare	+3% speed	9%
	Top Hat	Rare	+3% value	9%
	Fish on the Head	Epic	+4% speed	3%
	Imperial Crown	Legendary	+5% value	1%

There are more hats finished than this table shows — they come out in waves.