How to Fish Save Location, Backup & Autosave Problems

Patch 1.0.9: attempted fix, not a recovery guarantee

Dazed Games’ newest note says it has “hopefully fixed” save files being corrupted. That wording matters: it is an attempted prevention fix, not a promise that every old save is repaired or that equipment already missing will be reconstructed.

The same announcement tells players who still cannot load a save, or whose game crashes while equipping weapons, to use the Community Discord guidance. It does not publish a universal item-restore button or rollback procedure in the patch note.

What Patch 1.0.6 officially changed

Dazed Games published a specific save change on August 23. The game now checks a save before loading it, no longer writes the local or server state when the application crashes, writes when the player presses Save, Main Menu or Quit, and continues to autosave every minute.

How to Fish save file location on Windows

Current Windows-specific guides place the game’s local data under:

A current save-location guide identifies a Saves subfolder inside that directory. Player discussions also point to the Dazed Games area under AppData. Folder names can differ with build or profile state, so copy the entire How to Fish folder rather than guessing that one file is the whole save.

1. Close the game first. Use Save, then Main Menu or Quit so Patch 1.0.6 can finish its normal write.
2. Open the LocalLow path. Paste the path above into File Explorer. If it does not resolve, open %USERPROFILE%\AppData\LocalLow and browse to Dazed Games.
3. Confirm it is your active profile. Check the folder’s modified time against the last clean in-game save.
4. Copy, do not move. Keep the live folder in place and create a separate backup.
5. Do not download another player’s save. A different version, host or inventory state is not a safe replacement for your own data.

Does How to Fish have Steam Cloud?

The official Steam storefront checked on August 26 lists single-player, online co-op, Steam achievements and family sharing. It does not list Steam Cloud in the Features panel. That means this guide will not promise that uninstalling, changing PCs or reinstalling Windows can retrieve your progress from Valve’s cloud.

• Treat the LocalLow folder as the recoverable state you control.
• Do not delete the local folder because a generic Steam guide says games “usually” sync.
• If the Steam client unexpectedly shows a sync-conflict dialog, photograph both timestamps before choosing and keep a copy of the local folder first.
• A Steam Cloud feature could be added later; check the current storefront and client instead of relying on this dated observation forever.

Make a dated manual backup

1. Reach a known-good state. Confirm the expected weapons, currency, boat items and island progress are visible.
2. Press Save. Then return through Main Menu or Quit and wait for the game to close.
3. Copy the whole folder. Copy How to Fish from LocalLow to a separate location such as Documents or another drive.
4. Name the copy with date and context. For example, HowToFish-backup-2026-08-26-after-island-2.
5. Keep at least two checkpoints. Do not overwrite the only known-good copy with today’s untested state.
6. Test restores only from your own copy. Close the game, preserve the current folder under a different name and follow current developer guidance before replacing live data.

A manual copy protects against later accidental changes; it does not repair equipment already missing inside the copied state. The best backup is made immediately after you confirm the loadout is correct.

Protect weapons and upgrades before leaving

1. Finish the transaction. Confirm the weapon, attachment or boat upgrade appears in the active inventory or equipment view.
2. Use the Save button. Do this after an expensive change instead of relying only on the one-minute interval.
3. Leave through Main Menu or Quit. Avoid closing the process during a freeze unless the game no longer responds.
4. In co-op, note the host. If only one player loses items, include who owned the session and who made the purchase in the report.
5. Check the first load before continuing. If the correct loadout appears, save again before beginning another high-risk boss or shopping run.

There is no need to press Save after every ordinary catch. Use it at state boundaries that would be costly to repeat: buying a weapon, applying attachments, turning in a boss trophy, unlocking an island or recovering a missing tool.

Items in the boat disappeared after reloading

August 25 player reports now use a more specific description than “corrupt save”: an item was left in the boat, the game was reloaded, and the object was gone. The official notes do not document the boat deck as a separate recovery container or guarantee that every loose world object persists like an inventory item.

1. Separate loose objects from inventory. Record whether the item was physically on the boat, in a held slot, equipped or attached to another item.
2. Record who hosted. In co-op, note whether the missing object belonged to the host, a joining player or the shared play space.
3. Check the first loaded state once. Look through the boat, current inventory and equipment without buying or dropping more items.
4. If the item still exists in-session, secure it. Move it into a supported inventory or equipment slot when possible, press Save, then leave through Main Menu.
5. If it is already absent, stop making costly changes. Repeated saves do not function as a search or rollback and can make the last known-good state harder to describe.

All equipment gone after an update

• Stop buying replacements until you confirm which items and currency remain.
• Record the game version, solo or co-op state, host, last successful save action and the first load where the items were absent.
• Capture the current inventory and upgrade screens so the report distinguishes a hidden attachment from a missing purchase.
• If the current session still contains the correct items, press Save and leave through Main Menu before testing another launch.
• If the items are already absent, understand that another save records that state; it does not function as a recovery button.

Do not promise yourself that a reinstall, death, island change or another purchase will restore save data. Those actions solve different problems and can make the before/after state harder to reconstruct.

Game crashes when equipping a weapon

This symptom has a stronger official boundary than the general item-loss reports. Patch 1.0.9 explicitly tells players who still have a save-loading problem or a crash while equipping weapons to use the Community Discord guidance for removing the problematic item.

• Record which weapon or equipment slot triggers the crash and whether the same save opens before that action.
• Do not rapidly cycle every slot; one repeatable item is more useful evidence than a chain of new crashes.
• Run Steam’s file-integrity check once to separate damaged program files from the saved item state.
• Use the developer-linked Discord route from the official announcement for current item-removal help.
• Do not download an edited save or run an unknown removal utility from an unofficial file host.

The public patch note does not publish one universal manual-edit sequence, so this page does not invent one. Preserve a copy of any file you are explicitly told to change and follow current developer guidance for the exact version.

Can you recover a previous save?

No official Patch 1.0.9 rollback, item-reconstruction tool or previous-save browser is documented. The Save button writes the current state; it does not rewind it.

If you already maintain your own dated backups, restore only from a copy you understand and keep the current file separately. This wiki does not claim that a backup from another player, version or host can be transplanted safely.

What to do when autosave freezes the game

Autosave freezes and lost-item reports are separate from the narrow corruption wording in Patch 1.0.9. If the game becomes unresponsive, give it a short chance to complete the write before forcing the process closed. If it recovers, use Main Menu or Quit normally and note the time of the freeze.

If it does not recover, the Patch 1.0.6 rule means the crash itself should not write a new state. On the next launch, inspect the save before playing further. Repeatedly loading and spending currency makes it harder to identify the last good write.

When reporting the freeze, include whether it happens at a regular one-minute interval, during a boss hand-in, during a shop transaction or only in a hosted session. A timestamp and the action happening on-screen are more useful than “autosave broken.”

What a Steam file check can and cannot do

Steam can compare installed program files and redownload damaged ones. That can help a game that fails to launch or crashes because a local file is broken. It does not recreate a missing weapon, attachment, currency total or quest state stored in a save.

Use a file check for program integrity after preserving the save symptoms. Use the Dazed Games bug-report channel for item loss, save contents or reproducible autosave freezes.

Save report checklist

• Game version shown at the time, currently 1.0.9 in the official feed.
• Solo, joined co-op or host.
• Missing item names and the island where they were bought.
• Last button used: Save, Main Menu, Quit or forced close.
• Approximate time between the purchase and the exit or freeze.
• Whether currency also reverted and whether the same problem appears after one clean reload.