Tides: A Fishing Game Beginner’s Guide: 10 Tips, Cheats & Strategies to Maximize Your Earnings and Unlock Everything

Tides: A Fishing Game is a simple, relaxing fishing title from Shallot Games, currently available only for iOS. There are plenty of fishing titles currently swarming the mobile gaming market and deviating from the more common competitive type of fishing games, Tides: A Fishing Game offers plenty of easy to pick up, yet engaging mechanics that can appeal not just to fans of fishing games, but to a wide variety of audiences as well.

Tides: A Fishing Game sets you off to create your own adventure in a fishing island all to yourself and the time you actually spend away from the surrounding sea to fish is spend on developing your island. The basic premise is for you to explore out on your own time and catch some fish to trade for gold. Gold is then invested in a variety of means that can help you fish more efficiently as well as earn more gold over time.

The bright and soothing visuals and music of Tides: A Fishing Game perfectly jives with its newbie-friendly controls and mechanics. It is actually a game that can be enjoyed using only 1 finger and even casting and reeling in your fishing line is a swipe and tap away. There are no complex mechanics relative to catching fish or any of the side activities you will engage in. There is likewise no time limit or energy systems in place that bars you from making progress as much as you want.

Again, Tides: A Fishing Game is designed to give players a relaxing experience but if you are raring to amass wealth more than the usual and eager to unlock everything in a jiffy, then read our beginner’s guide below!

1. Follow The Goals

Tides: A Fishing Game can be played any way you choose and you will always make progress. Although the basic premise is that you will cycle between fishing and purchasing upgrades to improve your island, a more efficient way towards splitting you time across both sets of tasks is by adhering to the goals at hand.

The goals in Tides: A Fishing Game naturally relate directly to the usual activities you do but the order they appear in are very systematic and almost always lead prior goals to the completion of subsequent ones. You can access the goals by tapping on the tiki mask icon at the upper left side of the screen. Once you have read the goals at hand, you can tap on the icon again to hide the list of goals and give you more space to view your surroundings.

It is best to revisit the tiki icon immediately after completing any of the listed goals as new ones will appear after you have claimed the respective rewards. Note that every goal you accomplish earns you pearls, which is a premium currency, so the faster you are to accomplish each task, the faster you can save and purchase premium items.

2. Bring Home The Best Catch

The only other delimiting aspect of Tides: A Fishing Game, on top of currencies, is the inventory space you have on your boat while you are fishing. Casting the fishing line is as easy as doing a pulling back swipe on your screen and releasing it once the marker reaches the spot you want to lure fishes on and reeling in your catch only takes a tap of the screen. It is made easier as you can hold the line in place indefinitely and make any amount of adjustments you need to drop the fishing line at the preferred spot. With no need for lures and each fish finding your fishing line absolutely irresistible, you are bound to catch a lot of fishes in no time.

Despite the simplistic water drop-shaped silhouette that each fish exhibits, it becomes fairly easy to tell as well which end is front end. If you cast your fishing line while the fish is facing towards it, they will be bound to get attracted to it much sooner in contrast with fishes turning away from the line. Just the same, though, all fishes within the area will naturally come swimming towards your line and the first one to bite can be pulled and caught without fail.

Most especially at the start of your fishing adventure, inventory space is going to be a concern. You will initially be able to only hold 4 fishes at a time, suggesting that you click on the map button at the bottom of the screen to return home. There are, however, additional benefits for catching more fish as there is a ready option for you to still choose to keep a newly caught fish at the cost of letting go of an earlier catch.

For starters, the starting area, Earthshore, has 5 different types of fish in it while the rest of the unlockable regions hold 10 varieties of fish to collect. Staying a bit longer at the sea to catch more fish will help you complete your collection at a much faster rate. Secondly, each fish has their own value in gold coins that can be readily seen after you catch them. If you catch more fish, you can head home with a higher total value of fish inventory if you keep replacing the smaller ones with latter catches.

Additionally, bonus gold coins can be earned as well for reaching certain milestones when it comes to reeling in similar types of fish. For example, a Stingray may have an average value of 120 gold coins. If you catch 5 of them, you earn an extra 1,200 gold coins as a bonus. Milestone rewards are provided for every 5 fishes of the same type that you catch.

This added perk cuts across all types of fish, does not require you to actually take the fish home with you, and ultimately has no limit as well. If you still see some fish close by on your sea adventures, therefore, feel free to pursue them before heading home.

3. Take Note Of And Accomplish Jobs

In addition to the list of goals that serves as your ultimate guide towards progression and source of pearls, Tides: A Fishing Game provides an vast number of jobs that you can take on for an extra source of income. It will not be available at the start of your journey but a few upgrades here and there will soon make it available for you. Once you have put up the jobs board, you can access it through the list icon at the bottom of your screen.

Note that while most jobs reward you with gold coins, some jobs do provide pearls as rewards for their completion. As numerous jobs will require specific types of fish, and the variety of fishes in Tides: A Fishing Game can be difficult to remember, you can always check the fish compendium through the book icon at the bottom of the screen to double check the zone or area where it can be caught.

In some cases, some of the jobs at hand may also coincide with the objectives you have as far as goals are concerned. Be sure to be on the lookout for these chances as you can easily hit 2 birds with 1 stone in some instances. After accomplishing a job and claiming your rewards, a new one becomes available after 5 minutes. Jobs not completed within 24 hours will be replaced by new ones as well.

4. Always Upgrade Your Boats

While the raft itself that you start your sea adventures with is not at all that bad, Tides: A Fishing Game provides various fishing vessels for you to collect, use, and upgrade. You can obtain boat cards to unlock and different fishing boats by purchasing boat cards from the gray-haired girl at the right end of the island and you can upgrade as well as switch boats to use on a mission from the guy with a green shirt just beside her.

You may have some hesitations early on to invest heavily in lower tier boats especially since the higher grade ones start off with much better stats. Keep in mind, though that extra boat cards are needed to upgrade each fishing boat on top of the gold coins you spend for each upgrade level. Unlocking or building each boat once you secure the initial cards are free, though.

As the lower grade ones are easier to get as well, you can expect them to reach much higher levels faster than rarer fishing boats unless their max levels have been reached. In a lot of cases, you will have more common shipping boats that have higher stats as a result of upgrades. As the upgrade level of each fishing boat goes higher, the number of boat cards required exponentially increase as well.

Each upgrade increases the boat’s speed, turning speed, and most importantly, the inventory capacity. With every bit of stat boost it gets, it will certainly help you catch fish more efficiently. As such, you should not hesitate at all to make upgrades to each ship with every new set of boat cards that you acquire.

5. Feel Free To Revisit Previously Conquered Areas

Once you have caught enough fishes and saved up sufficient amounts of gold coins, you can unlock the next area. It does not matter whether or not you have fully explored the current area by catching all available varieties of aquatic life from it. You can move on to the next level, so to speak, as long as you have the money to open it up.

To unlock new areas, go to the tiki statue at the left side of the island. A ray of light will shine on the next unlockable area and once you unlock it, a new tiki statue will stand in its place. You won’t be able to access the new area through the tiki statues, though, and you will instead check on the updated map via the compass icon at the bottom of your screen.

As we mentioned earlier, catching all varieties of fishes does not signify the end of your adventure. Every new set of similar fishes you catch will earn you extra gold coins. In this sense, you can freely hop back to all the areas you have already conquered and farm previously captured species of fishes to rack up on extra gold coins.

6. Tips For Faster Compendium Completion

As soon as you start your adventure on an area, the camera will be on top view so that you can see the complete layout of the fishing zone. Beyond that, you can also see where all the fishes are, making it viable for you to plan your route a bit ahead to save some time. Fishes will appear like blots of ink that comes in 2 sizes and while the sizes themselves will not be sufficient to tell you the types of fish the silhouettes are, they are indicative of the possibilities.

Beyond the first area, the 6 new areas you will unlock holds 10 species of fishes that you can collect. In some cases, nabbing the last one or two of the can be a challenge especially if they all look the same as far as the ink blot silhouettes are concerned. The silhouettes will remain the same even as you go near them in the water.

Once you get too close to them, you will notice that some of these silhouettes will have a colored outline. These outlines indicate that you have already caught a fish of the same type before. While the outline colors may be different for each type of fish, the important detail for the most part is that you can prioritize the ones without outlines to complete your compendium faster.

7. Max Out The Fishing Assistants’ Upgrades Before Signing Off

Tides: A Fishing Game does provide you plenty of means to earn gold coins and unlock more features as well as upgrade fishing assistants. The fishing assistants themselves, however, earn you idle rewards that can tremendously build up your stock of gold coins. You will start having 1 assistant early on but as soon as you can afford more, you can hire 2 additional fishing assistants each assigned to the docks at the south end of the island.

Each assistant earns gold coins per minute and each upgrade level will increase the income they generate. Although each higher level costs more and more gold, it is worth investing in especially if you are about to leave the game.

The fishing assistants will continue to generate income for you even if you are offline and away from Tides: A Fishing Game. As such, it is never a bad decision to constantly spend more gold coins on them.

8. Spend Your Pearls Wisely

While gold coins in Tides: A Fishing Game can be earned in a variety of ways, pearls are a premium currency, which does not come as easily. Accomplishing goals is a solid means of securing pearls but the objectives become more and more challenging to accomplish as you make further progress in your adventure.

Some jobs do reward you with pearls as well and there are always free ones to grab at the shop but considering that ship cards can only be purchased using pearls other than the free ones you get, it is best to think it through before spending them.

For starters, the 5-minute cool down period between waiting for new jobs to unlock can be fully skipped by paying a pearl. The best way to spend pearls is on boat cards, but while you are at it, you should be selective as crates containing boat cards come at different prices with each one holding different rarities of cards.

The basic boat card crate costs only 20 pearls but have the most common set of cards. As you can also receive the crates once every 8 hours if you play a short video ad, you might as well skip the idea of purchasing more of them. The rare boat card crate holds the mid-range of boat cards when it comes to rarity at the cost of 100 pearls. The epic boat card chest holds epic and legendary boat cards and provides the largest quantity of cards as well. With a cost of 500 pearls, though, it will take a lot of grinding to purchase one.

With all the above considerations, it is best to purchase rare boat card chests first. Once you are satisfied with the level of the fishing boat you are using, then it is time to save up for the epic boat card chest.

9. Explore To Discover Treasures

Making it past or essentially completing areas should not inhibit you from revisiting them again as extra catches of the same species of aquatic life comes with a handsome reward of extra gold coins.

Likewise, spending a bit of extra time emptying out the ocean for more fishes to catch despite having a full inventory and a complete compendium for the area also provides opportunities to earn extra coins and raise up the counter for each duplicate fish caught.

Beyond all that, you can also explore the seas for some random treasure chests that contain rewards. Although we have yet to obtain anything other than gold coins from the floating chests, we are fairly confident that you can obtain ship cards or pearls from them.

While the whole catching, recording, and selling fishes provides a ton of fun, additional fun and excitement can also be experienced from hunting those treasure chests.

10. Take Advantage Of Ad Boosts

As a casual game that offers very few items for sale through the use of real money, Tides: A Fishing Game also makes it fairly easy enough for players do well without spending real money to make good progress in the game.

As an effect, the existence of video ads within the game is more of a necessity to ensure that it stays absolutely free for everyone to play and enjoy. There are absolutely no video ads that pop up to interrupt your experience but instead, optional ones appear and comes with a reward each instance.

To start off, every time you return home and cash in your catch, you will have an option to play a short video ad to double the amount of gold coins your receive. In a similar manner, you can also choose to watch a short video ad whenever you return to the game after a break. The idle gold coin earnings that your fishing assistants make can be doubled as well.

We already mentioned earlier that you can grab a free ship card chest from the shop by playing a video ad. You can do this once every 8 hours. Under the pearl tab of the shop as well, you can grab 5 free pearls for watching another video ad. This can be done once every 2 hours. Each of these opportunities can tremendously help you make progress in your adventure so, as much as possible, take full advantage of each offer.

Tides: A Fishing Game is a small game with very simple mechanics and features. Despite that, there are plenty of activities to enjoy and carries with it a lot of potential for various expansions through future updates.

With that we conclude our Tides: A Fishing Game beginner’s guide. We are confident that the tips and strategies we shared in this guide can elevate your efficiency in making good progress with your fishing adventure although, again, the game is designed to provide you a relaxing experience, which means that taking as much time as you need to move forward and exploring adventures entirely on your own are equally viable paths to pursue.

If you happen to stumble upon a unique tip, trick or strategy we have yet to discover ourselves, we would be very much interested to know about it so don’t hesitate to tell us your experiences in Tides: A Fishing Game through the comment section!