How weapons and tools work

How damage works in How to Fish: ladders, headshots, hits to kill and kill score

A weapon's price says nothing about what it does. Its damage ladder, its projectile count and the headshot multiplier decide how many hits a creature takes, and the kill bonuses decide what the kill is worth.

Three ways to deal damage: 25 pellets a shot, one heavy bullet, or a blade with no ammunition at all.

Checked against Patch 1.0.11Updated 2 September 2026Written by Desh Okafor

Every weapon has a ladder, and the ladder is the weapon

Each firearm and melee weapon ships at a base damage and carries a list of paid steps. Buying a step raises the damage of every projectile the weapon fires and nothing else. Rate of fire and reach are fixed at purchase; the only other thing that changes is the magazine, through the Extended Mag attachment.

Every damage-dealing weapon at base and fully upgraded, cheapest first
Weapon	Price	Damage at base	Damage maxed	Damage per second	Cost to max	Cost per point gained
Brass Knuckles	$24	5	60	—	$64,278	$1,169
Knife	$45	16	120	—	$76,732	$738
Pistol	$50	25	160	1,067	$26,855	$199
Shotgun	$150	75	700	3,182	$26,540	$42
SMG	$650	24	70	1,400	$21,469	$467
Sniper Rifle	$3,800	200	500	500	$35,749	$119
Assault Rifle	$20,000	40	100	1,429	$30,550	$509

Shotgun, every upgrade step
Tier	Damage per hit	This step	Spent so far
Base	75	—	$0
1	100	$20	$20
2	125	$30	$50
3	150	$40	$90
4	175	$200	$290
5	200	$250	$540
6	225	$300	$840
7	275	$1,500	$2,340
8	325	$2,500	$4,840
9	375	$3,000	$7,840
10	500	$4,240	$12,080
11	600	$6,120	$18,200
12	700	$8,340	$26,540

Every ladder, step by step, with what each step costs

Headshots

The multiplier is the same for every weapon, so it is worth most on the weapons with the biggest single hit: a Sniper Rifle headshot at the top of its ladder is the largest single number the game can produce.

Hits to kill, and the timer that makes it matter

What the difficulty setting changes
Difficulty	Creature health	Damage you take	Pufferfish health
Easy	75%	50%	13,500
Default	100%	100%	18,000
Hard	125%	125%	22,500

Most regular creatures die in a hit or two on anything, but the big regular catches do not: a Bing Bong or a Blobfish carries as much health as a small boss. Bosses are where the ladder matters most, because a mini-boss leaves after three minutes and a boss after five, and every hit you cannot land in that window is a bait wasted.

Boss · leaves after 300 seconds

Summoned by: Carrot (quest reward, not sold)
Sells for: $12,000
Drops: Pufferfish Fin — wanted by the island 3 island quest, opens island 4

Pufferfish health by difficulty
Easy	Default	Hard
13,500	18,000	22,500

Hits to kill the Pufferfish on Default, body shots
Weapon	Damage, base	Hits, base	Damage, maxed	Hits, maxed
Pistol	25	720	160	113
Shotgun	75	240	700	26
SMG	24	750	70	258
Sniper Rifle	200	90	500	36

Hits to kill for every boss, on every weapon

Kill bonuses: how a kill becomes a price

Every kill checks a list of conditions. Each one that is true adds a multiplier, the multipliers multiply together, and the product scales what the creature sells for.

All 23 kill bonuses, largest first
Bonus	Multiplier	When it lands
Impressive	2.00x	Five or more other bonuses landed on the same kill.
Explosion	1.50x	Killed by an explosion.
Dogfight	1.50x	Both you and the creature were airborne.
360	1.50x	You spun a full turn just before the kill.
Longshot	1.30x	The target is at least 25 metres from your camera.
Killsteal	1.30x	You had not damaged the creature and it was already under 30% health.
Endangered Species	1.25x	The creature is an endangered species.
Headshot	1.25x	The shot lands past the creature's head point.
One Shot One Kill	1.25x	One hit takes the creature from full health to dead.
Overkill	1.25x	Damage overshoots the creature's remaining health by more than 70, bosses excluded.
Last Bullet	1.25x	The shot empties the magazine.
Aerial	1.25x	You were off the ground when it died.
Fly Fishing	1.25x	The creature was airborne when it died.
No Scope	1.20x	Fired a scoped weapon without aiming down sights.
Penta Kill	1.20x	Fifth kill in a chain.
Quadra Kill	1.15x	Fourth kill in a chain.
Point Blank	1.10x	The target is under 2 metres away.
Quick Scope	1.10x	Fired immediately after aiming down sights.
Finally	1.10x	Awarded after a long run without a kill.
Triple Kill	1.10x	Third kill in a chain.
Melee	1.05x	Killed with a melee weapon.
Double Kill	1.05x	Second kill in a chain.
Noob Kill	1.01x	Nothing else applied to the kill.

Two details of the list: multi-kill bonuses keep growing with the chain and cap at 1.5× from the eleventh kill on, and the Noob Kill bonus is what the game awards when nothing else applied, which is why every kill shows at least one bonus.

What this means for buying

Cost per point of damage is the honest comparison between ladders, and it is why the Shotgun wins at every stage where it is sold. The decision itself, by island and by budget, is in Which weapon to buy; the ladders and attachments are priced out in Upgrades.

Every weapon with its ladder, magazine and hits to kill