How to Fish WikiFor How to Fish 1.1.3

Bow: Where to Buy It, Its Upgrades and the Hobin Rood Achievement

Find the hooded trader's islet, pay €25 for the Bow, and finish any creature with an arrow for Hobin Rood.

Written for How to Fish 1.1.0+ (two bow skins and reload rebinding added in 1.1.2)All guides

The Bow costs €25 and is sold on one of the random mini islands, the one with archery targets and a hooded trader. Euros come from Crab Carcass catches, bottles and the Manta. Hobin Rood unlocks the moment an arrow kills any creature, and an ordinary fish from the Crab Carcass is enough.

Find the Bow islet

Mini islands appear at random between the main islands as small dots on the Radar, so sail around until one shows up. The Bow islet is rocky, with archery targets on the rocks around it and a small round wall like a castle tower in the middle. Do not confuse it with the bridge-and-barrels islet (the Manta) or the stone-pillar islet (the Wishbone).

Jump up onto the round wall. The hooded man in green lounges on the stones, a barrel of arrows stands in the middle, and a slot machine glows beside him.

The hooded bow trader lounging on the round stone wall, a barrel of arrows in the middle and a glowing slot machine reading Insert drip creature to play

Pay in euros

The trader takes only euros. The fastest first €25:

  • Take the Crab Carcass bait from the islet with three sand hills and sell its catches (€4 to €6 each).
  • Pick up the €15 Money in a bottle on the single-palm islet.
  • Kill the Manta for about €60 to €100.

Any NPC buys euro items, so you do not have to sail back to the trader to sell.

What the islet sells

  • The Bow (€25). Buy it first, then equip it; the upgrade prompts only work while you are holding it.
  • Arrow upgrades (euros). Raise damage. The Bow starts at 250 per arrow in the game data, and players report it maxing out at around 300.
  • Quiver upgrades (euros, from €25). Raise draw speed; the first level goes from 1 to 1.25.
  • Bow skins. The slot machine here takes a Drip creature per spin and rolls the bow skins; two of them were added in patch 1.1.2.
Holding the Bow beside the quiver upgrade, priced at 25 euros, whose tooltip reads Increase draw speed 1 to 1,25

Attachments are not sold here. Buy them with dollars at any gun shop: the Red Dot Sight and the Laser Sight are the combination players settle on, and the scope is not worth it on a weapon you draw and release.

If an older video tells you to press a reload key that does nothing, check your bindings. Patch 1.1.2 added rebinding for reload, so your key may differ.

Hobin Rood: kill a creature with an arrow

Only 6.9% of players have this achievement, mostly because few buy the Bow. The condition is a kill, not a hit. The arrow has to deliver the finishing blow, so neither buying the Bow nor shooting the archery targets counts.

The easy way: fish up any ordinary creature (a Crab Carcass catch is ideal), drop it on the rocks so it cannot swim away, equip the Bow and shoot it. If it does not die in one arrow, keep shooting arrows rather than switching weapons. If you soften it with a gun first, make sure the last hit is an arrow. In co-op, ask your friends to leave that creature to you.

A squid killed with an arrow next to an archery target, with kill bonuses including Archery 1.5x and One Shot One Kill, and the Hobin Rood achievement popup in the corner

Arrow kills also earn their own Archery kill bonus of 1.5x, so a Bow kill with a few other bonuses stacked can sell for a lot more than its base price.

Hobin Rood has nothing to do with Handyman: that one needs a bare-hands kill on the final boss, not an arrow.

Source video

Some numbers in this guide come only from player videos and are not officially verified.