Best Gun in How to Fish: Every Weapon Ranked, Priced and Timed

How to Fish hides its arsenal behind island progression and never explains which purchases are worth it — so half the community buys a $50 pistol they never need, then can't afford the $650 SMG when the Desert starts chewing through shotgun ammo. This page ranks every gun and tells you what to buy and what to skip. Want the unlock schedule and full upgrade costs instead? See our weapons unlock guide for when each gun appears; here we make the call on which ones earn their price.

The Full Weapon Table

Prices corroborated across TposeGaming's gun guide, Destructoid's best items breakdown (dynamite at $25), and Maingamers' purchase-priority writeup (radar $10, shotgun $150).

Melee Deserves More Respect Than It Gets

Before any gun exists, melee carries Island 1 entirely:

• The knife costs $45, and its anvil sharpening tree runs 16 tiers: the first three upgrades ($14 / $28 / $36) take it from 16 base damage to 22, and a fully invested blade tops out at 120
• Brass knuckles ($24) are the slot-free alternative — they scale from 5 to 60 damage across their own 16-tier tree
• The Spider Crab dies to max-sharpened brass knuckles: dodge its committed charge, punish the self-stun

The knife is also disposable. Sell it before sailing if money is tight — guns replace it completely from Island 2.

Exact Damage Numbers

Community guides agree on prices but never publish damage. The exact values:

Three readings fall out of this table that no in-game UI shows you:

1. The Sniper Rifle is the strongest purchase in the game by raw numbers. Its base shot deals 8× the shotgun's per-pellet damage and out-damages even a maxed assault rifle per trigger pull.
2. The pistol's ceiling (160) is more than double the SMG's (70) once both are fully invested — but the pistol fires far slower and costs more per damage point, which is why it stays a trap on normal runs.
3. Shotgun values are per pellet, so its practical burst against close targets is far higher than the single number suggests — spread does the work the stat sheet hides.

Pistol vs Shotgun: The Only Early Choice That Matters

Island 2 gives you exactly one buying decision, and it is not close. Both guns sit in the same Forest shop, and only one of them carries the next two islands.

The pistol is not weak in the abstract. Its 160-damage ceiling is the second-highest fully upgraded number in the game after the sniper's 500, and finishing both ladders costs almost exactly the same money ($26,855 for the pistol, $26,540 for the shotgun). So the choice is not about upgrade value — it is about hit behaviour and timing. Thirty pistol shots to drop the Spider Crab is a fight nobody wants to have while a 750 HP boss is winding up a charge, and $50 spent on a pistol is $50 missing from the $150 shotgun that turns the Giant Piranha from a war of attrition into an execution.

The shotgun's 3-damage pellet looks catastrophic next to the pistol's 25 until you remember that a shell is a spread rather than a bullet. At the ranges you actually fight, most of that spread connects, and the misses a pistol would punish simply do not happen. The pistol's genuine home is a two-player co-op run: one player pours cash and attachments into it as a hand-off weapon while the partner farms the shotgun fund, and the pair can skip the shotgun entirely.

Patch 1.0.11 added toggle-aim, toggle-sprint and hold-to-attack input options that matter for exactly this comparison. Hold-to-attack suits the shotgun's hip-fire rhythm, while toggle-aim is the setting to run if you are the one player who invested in the pistol.

Official source: How to Fish patch notes on Steam — the 1.0.11 entry documents the toggle-aim, toggle-sprint and hold-to-attack options.

Shotgun ($150): The Actual Best Weapon for Most Players

"Best" depends on the hour, but for most of a run the answer is the shotgun:

• Available immediately on Island 2 for $150
• Turns the Giant Piranha from attrition into execution
• Wide pellet spread catches fast-moving targets without precision aim
• Forgiving on boat-rocking waves where rifles punish you

Its ceiling is real though — upgraded, it still takes multiple face shots on tougher Island 3+ creatures. Treat it as a bridge that happens to be excellent, not a forever gun.

Pistol ($50): The Trap

One third of the shotgun's price for a fraction of the damage. On any normal run this is wasted cash. Its one niche is co-op speedruns: one player pours attachments into it while a partner farms, then hands it off toward the assault-rifle fund.

SMG ($650): Islands 3–4 Workhorse

Sold on Island 3. Bare, the recoil is genuinely bad; with a compensator or suppressor fitted it handles nearly everything the Desert and Rocks throw at you, Pufferfish included. If you buy one automatic before the endgame, this is it.

Sniper Rifle: Precision and Trick Shots

Arrives in the Island 4 tier and dominates there:

• Highest precision damage per shot
• The largest trick-shot multipliers in the game — mid-air kills pay out hard
• Ideal for the bird encounter, where targets move vertically

Assault Rifle ($20,000): Endgame Tax

The most expensive purchase in How to Fish, and non-negotiable for the finale — the lava whale fight expects a fully attached assault rifle. Start saving the moment Island 4 opens; the price does not budge and partial upgrades do not cut it.

Dynamite ($25): The Honest Shortcut

Per Destructoid's guide, dynamite is "one of the laziest and most effective ways to fish." Throw, boom, collect. It will not win style points and it is not ammo-efficient against bosses, but for clearing clustered shallows or unstickying a bad fight, it earns its cost back quickly.

What to Actually Buy, In Order

1. Radar ($10) — before anything flashy
2. Shotgun ($150) + ammo
3. SMG ($650) + compensator
4. Assault Rifle savings fund (start early)
5. Boat upgrades last — firepower pays rent, speed is comfort

Official source: weapons and equipment families are shown on the official Steam store page; specific prices above come from independent guides in agreement rather than an official price list.

Ammo Economy: The Hidden Cost Curve

Weapon prices are only the entry fee — ammo is the subscription:

• Shotgun shells are cheap enough that misses barely register; this is part of why the shotgun is so forgiving
• SMG spray looks free and is not — bare-recoil misses burn through stacks during long Desert fights
• Sniper rounds cost more per shot but land almost every time; precision weapons convert ammo into damage at the best rate in the game
• Assault Rifle ammunition for the final whale should be stockpiled before sailing to the volcano — mid-fight resupply does not exist

The practical rule: budget ammo alongside every gun purchase. A $650 SMG with no compensator and thin ammo reserves performs worse than a $150 shotgun with deep stocks.

Boss Shots-to-Kill: The Exact Math

Pairing the game-file boss HP values with the weapon ladders above produces exact kill counts. Numbers assume base-damage weapons (level 0); a leveled weapon cuts these proportionally.

Reading this table changes buying decisions:

• The Sniper Rifle trivializes the early-mid bosses — 10 shots on the Spider Crab is a single magazine's worth; 36 shots on the Pufferfish beats every other gun by an order of magnitude
• The Assault Rifle's 100 max damage looks weak next to the sniper's 500 — but it fires full-auto, so its real DPS at max level outpaces the bolt-action sniper on the final whale fights
• The knife is the endgame sleeper — 120 max damage with no ammo cost means the money you save on ammo funds the Assault Rifle faster

For per-fight loadout recommendations, see our boss guides and the dedicated weapons unlock page. To check how many shots YOUR weapon level needs on any boss, use the boss kill calculator.

Weapon-to-Boss Matchups

Attachment Priorities

Four attachment categories exist, and they are not equal:

1. Stability first (compensator/suppressor) — missed shots are infinite cost, stability fixes exactly that
2. Extended magazine second — longer damage windows before reloads matter most against boss health pools
3. Damage extras last — by the time you have the first two, raw output is already sufficient

This ordering holds from the SMG through the assault rifle: the final whale fight expects a fully fitted rifle precisely because attachments multiply everything else you have built.

FAQ

What is the best weapon in How to Fish?

For 80% of a run, the Shotgun at $150. For the finale specifically, the fully attached Assault Rifle. For trick-shot money farming, the Sniper Rifle.

Are guns required to beat the game?

Practically yes from Island 2 onward — melee stops scaling against boss health pools around the Giant Piranha.

Where do I buy guns?

Island shops unlock progressively: Island 2 sells the pistol and shotgun, Island 3 adds the SMG, Island 4 tier brings the sniper, and the assault rifle appears late.