How to Fish Speedrun Route

What counts as a How to Fish speedrun

A How to Fish speedrun is a run built around the Bean achievement, which unlocks when you finish the whole game within 1 hour. On Steam's global stats it is the single rarest achievement in the game, earned by only 1.6% of players as of 2026-08-28. For comparison, "We are so back" (just finishing the game at any pace) sits at 33.8%, so the hour limit is what makes Bean brutal.

A casual playthrough runs around 5 to 6 hours, so a speedrun means cutting roughly 80% of that time. Both the Steam solo guide by loomy and Destructoid recommend running it alone so nobody slows down your buys or fights, though co-op is allowed. You will skip optional stuff like the grill and the slot machine and buy only what the route below demands.

You can also run it on Easy difficulty, which counts toward the achievement. Easy mode arrived in patch 1.0.9 and drops creature health by 25% and creature damage by 50%, which is a large safety margin for the boss gauntlet. If your aim is shaky, Easy is the sensible default for a first Bean attempt.

The fastest island-by-island route

The run moves through five named locations in order, each ending in a boss. You cannot skip ahead, so the goal on every island is to buy the minimum, clear the boss, and leave. The table below is the spine of the route; the prices come from loomy's 1.0.5 solo guide and are listed as of 2026-08-28.

Location	Boss	Core buys	Key move
Lighthouse	Spider Crab	Knife $45, Crabbing Rod $3, Beer $12 (~$60)	No fishing, only crab clams; dodge the charge, hit its back while dizzy
Forest	Giant Piranha	Pistol, extra inventory slot	Grab leeches for the bait, then circle and shoot the boss
Desert	Pufferfish	SMG, full bullet upgrade, extended mag	Reel fish to the island center, finish kills un-ADS for more cash
Rocks	Tuna + Albatross	Compensator, Boss Lure	Peek in and out of the weapons shack against the Albatross
Volcano	Bowhead Whale + Mutated Whale	Suppressor, at least one Scientific Lure, more SMG damage	Cook the Albatross meat in lava first, then face the final boss

At the Lighthouse you crab rather than fish, feeding clams to the fella until you can afford the starter kit. On the Forest you only need the Pistol and an inventory slot, then hand leeches to the islander and kill the Giant Piranha. The Desert is where you buy the SMG, which loomy calls the only gun you need for the rest of the run.

The Rocks and the Volcano are the dangerous stretch. On the Rocks you farm for the Compensator and Boss Lure, kill the Tuna, then bait and fight the Albatross from the weapons shack. On the Volcano you cook the boss meat for extra money, grab a Scientific Lure, and finish the Bowhead Whale and its Mutated form, which is the game's final boss. Note: loomy lists the Compensator at $600 and the Boss Lure at $1200, while Destructoid lists a $6000 Compensator, so the exact figure is 待确认 across sources.

Weapons and money: the buy order that matters

Your weapon path is fixed: Knife on the Lighthouse, Pistol on the Forest, then the SMG on the Desert for everything after. Once you have the SMG you can drop the Pistol, and once you have healing fish and the SMG on the Volcano you can even drop the rod for more inventory slots. Keeping your bag lean matters, so loomy drops the radar into the boat on every island to free a slot.

Attachment order is extended mag first, then Compensator, then Suppressor, with a Red Dot Sight as an optional extra if your aim needs it. For bullet damage, loomy notes 27 to 28 damage is comfortable and the second-to-last upgrade (60 damage) is enough if you trust your aim. You do not always need the full bullet tree, which saves both time and money.

Money comes from how you kill, not just how much you kill. Finishing a creature un-ADS (a "no-scope") sells for more, and a 360 spin gives a 1.5x multiplier per Destructoid. Dynamite is also a fast, cheap way to gather fish for cash or healing, especially before a boss fight. Speaking of dynamite, it doubles as a boss-killing tool, covered next.

Dynamite boss cheese

Community commenters on loomy's guide describe using dynamite piles to shortcut the hardest fights, which cuts down how "aim-intense" the run feels. These are player-reported tactics rather than official strategy, so treat exact stick counts as approximate and expect them to shift with patches. They can still save real minutes on the back half of the run.

For the Tuna, players fill the gun shack with dynamite, release the caught Tuna inside, run out, and detonate the pile. For the Albatross, they haul dynamite to the grass field, place the Tuna bait near the pile, and blow it as the bird approaches. One commenter reports finishing around 44 minutes with this method even after a death on the SMG island.

The Whale fights have their own reported pile trick. A commenter says a 40-stick pile (about $1000) can one-shot the first Bowhead Whale when it dives at you, and a 50-stick pile (about $1250) knocks the Mutated Whale to roughly 50% health, saving about half the fight. If you die during it you can usually still pick up the whale, so the death is not always a run-ender.

How fast do you actually need to be?

The hard limit is 60 minutes, but you want a buffer for mistakes. loomy notes that reaching the Rocks at around 30 to 32 minutes is a healthy pace, and finished the full run at about 54 minutes. Several commenters report tighter times once the route clicks.

Checkpoint	Reported time	Source
Reaching the Rocks (Island 4)	~30-32 min	loomy solo guide
Full clear, first successful runs	~50-54 min	loomy and commenters
Optimized dynamite run	~44 min	community comment

You are allowed some failure and still make the hour. loomy suggests you can afford a couple of failed attempts on the Pufferfish and one failed Whale phase before the run is likely lost. Deaths from the Pufferfish or stray creatures on the Rocks and Volcano are common, so a clean run is not required. For the full achievement list and rarity context, see the How to Fish achievements guide, and the guides hub collects the rest of the walkthroughs.

Patches that changed the speedrun

Speedrun routes shift with updates, so check your version. The most important change was patch 1.0.5 (Aug 22, 2026), which removed the ability to travel to any island without unlocking it, closing an early island-skip route. That is why the current route is strictly linear.

Balance patches also matter for the boss gauntlet. Patch 1.0.4 (Aug 21, 2026) nerfed both the Pufferfish and the Whale and made the intended path to the final island easier to see. Patch 1.0.10 (Aug 27, 2026), the biggest patch so far, nerfed the anglerfish and now saves dropped items between sessions. If a strategy above stops working, a balance change since 2026-08-28 is the likely cause.