How To Use The Bait Maker In Stardew Valley 1.6 – Now With MATH!

How To Use The Bait Maker In Stardew Valley 1.6 – Now With MATH!

Hey everybody, let’s do some math today!  Just a little bit though. The Bait Maker is   a brand-new item added in Stardew Valley’s 1.6  patch. Unlike the Fish Smoker and Dehydrator,   which we covered over the past couple videos, the  Bait Maker doesn’t create an end product to sell,  

It just helps the player catch specific fish.  Today, I want to look at a few use cases for the   Bait Maker because it’s not as simple as just “use  it for any high value fish you want”. If you’re  

Just here for the TL;DR though, the Bait Maker is  best used for valuable fish that already have a   decent catch rate. Things like catfish are great!  For most fish, the catch rate is multiplied by   1.66, which means super rare fish don’t actually  increase in catch rate too much. There are some  

Exceptions, especially in regard to mines fish  which appear to get a flat modifier instead of a   percentage. If you’re confident with your fishing  skill, using the Bait Maker with a Curiosity Lure   and Quality Bobber during the Extended Family  Quest can get pretty ridiculous. Try it with  

The Legend II for example and laugh maniacally  as you pull in fish worth a 42,000 gold each   when smoked. If that’s all you needed, thanks  for stopping in and it would be really cool of  

You to like the video on the way out. If you’re  not subbed yet, you could even consider that.   The Bait Maker recipe is available through level  up, so you’ll get it for free just for hitting   fishing level 6. That’s pretty fantastic since  the Dehydrator and Fish Smoker both cost 10,000  

Gold just to get the recipe. You’ll need  3 Iron Bars, 3 Coral and 1 Sea Urchin of   any quality. This means that fixing the bridge  in the first week is probably worth it at this   point if you’re pushing fishing levels, since  you could possibly get the forage you need if  

You can make it there by Saturday the 6th before  the forage resets. Sea Urchins account for about   one fifth of the forage spawns in the tide pool  area, so giving yourself even one extra week   could help. Either way, once you’ve got those  items, you’re good to go. Placing a fish of any  

Kind into the Bait Maker will produce between  5 and 10 bait targeted for the fish you used,   and thankfully it only takes 10 minutes. The  bait itself is worth 10% of the base fish price,   but attaching it to the rod increases your chance  to catch that fish by 66%. This is really strong,  

Right? You take your base chance to catch any  particular fish and multiply it by 1.66. I don’t   have a spreadsheet for this, because the chance  to catch a fish at any given moment is a little  

Nebulous, but I can give you some guidelines and  show you some footage with a couple of calcs.   Let’s consider probably the first fish that  comes to mind when we talk about the Bait Maker,   at least for me, catfish. Catfish appear only on  rainy days, and you can find them in the river  

In spring and fall. They actually also show up in  the secret woods and the witches swamp during any   rainy weather, but that’s a little more niche.  I installed a predictor mod here to show you a   couple figures. Our base chance to catch a  catfish right now is 40%, and the fact that  

These percentages don’t add up to 100 by the way  is correct. Stardew calculates fish catch chances   not as a range, but as a weight. The short  version is that this is working as intended   though. When we make and attach catfish bait to  our rod, the weight goes up from 40% to 66.4%.  

If you’ve used catfish bait in the rain in spring  year 1, you might feel like it’s much higher than   that to be honest, but that’s because of the  weighting system. Regardless, that’s a really   nice boost. Even if it was a flat percentage  chance, 66% would be pretty stellar. I think  

This is where the bait machine shines. It turns  catches that were already decently common into   practically guaranteed. I’ve had really good luck  with catfish, largemouth bass, super cucumbers,   etc. None of these are exceedingly rare,  they’re all worth a decent amount of money,  

Especially smoked with Artisan, and they’re  not too challenging to find. I’ve also seen   the sturgeon brought up in conversation, though I  haven’t tried that out personally. Your confidence   with fishing will obviously affect what kind of  fish you chase, but there are lots of options.  

Unfortunately the predictor mod that I’m using  seems a little borked for the legendaries and   the cave fish, but I want to touch on those real  quick along with an interesting lure interaction.   I’ve had a few people reach out regarding the  stonefish in particular since it’s relatively  

Easy to get to level 20 in the mines quickly, and  the price of stonefish is really competitive.   So, the other night during stream I spent a few  in-game hours just doing some anecdotal testing.   And it wasn’t too impressive. One stonefish  without targeted bait took us most of our time  

There, and even after we got the max possible  targeted bait, we never saw another. Again,   this is just anecdotal, especially since the wiki  references the game code and says we should have   had a 17.5% chance to catch our stonefish once  we had bait attached. If I were willing to spend  

More time there I’d likely have better results.  Still, I think I’d prefer a little less time   catching trash in my day. If we’re hooking a  stonefish roughly one sixth of the time and   we’re getting between 5 to 10 stonefish bait  each time we process one we’re barely scraping  

Ahead as far as the numbers go. And since most of  our bycatch here is trash, you can’t even rely on   the rest of the fish you’re catching to prop up  the income, like you can with super cucumbers,   where you also find halibut pretty often,  or lionfish. Adding a curiosity lure to this  

Combo would bring your catch rate up to 22.5%,  which is getting quite a bit better. And again,   I say this for the third time, my experience here  is anecdotal. It’s possible that you’ll have a   fantastic and profitable time hunting stonefish. Let’s talk about legendary fish though,  

Specifically the extended family quest, and even  more specifically, the Legend II. The extended   family quest for Mr. Qi sets a 3 day timer for  you to catch a second version of the original   legendary fish in the same places where you found  them. The fun thing about this is that unlike the  

Original legendaries, these ones can be caught  more than once as long as the quest is active.   That means you could, in theory, park yourself up  in the mountain lake for 3 days in a row hunting   Legend IIs and ignoring the rest of the quest. And  let’s chat about that curiosity lure because that  

Actually makes a pretty significant difference  here. Again, my mod isn’t reflecting this,   which is kind of sad, but you go from 10% without  the lure to 20% with it, and then you add your   targeted bait, meaning that you should be seeing  the Legend II about a third of the time you’re  

Casting. If you add a quality bobber, assuming you  have the advanced iridium rod from mastery, you’ll   make each of those fish in iridium Legend II,  and that is a lot of money. In my footage here,   I don’t even have angler because I was hunting for  artifacts, but I’m making 35,000 for this legend  

2, and that would increase to 42,000 assuming you  do have both artisan and angler. I’m not claiming   to be the world’s greatest fisher, but I was able  to pull in a couple of these in a few hours at the  

Lake. Extrapolate that out over 3 days, and I’d  be looking at hundreds of thousands of gold.   If the legend sounds intimidating but you still  want to take advantage of high price fish like   this, the son of crimsonfish and radioactive  carp are both going to give you an easier time,  

And both will work with the curiosity lure quality  bobber, bait maker, angler, and artisan, build for   12,600 a pop for son of crimsonfish and 8,400  for the radioactive carp. For whatever reason,   the glacierfish and the glacierfish jr.  don’t interact with the curiosity lure,  

Plus they’re my least favorite fish to catch  anyway. This angler is quite a bit easier than   the rest in my opinion, and earns 7,560 each if  smoked so that’s not terrible either. Finally,   I wanted to point out the caldera on ginger  island and lava eels. The lava eels here  

Don’t interact with the curiosity lure, so you  won’t get an additional bite chance from that   like you would in the mines. Additionally  in 1.5, the catch rate at full cast was   supposed to be 50%. With targeted bait, I would  assume that would bring your catch rate to 83%,  

But I think there’s something wrong here.  I’m actually still only getting about 50%,   even with targeted bait. I’m not sure if that’s  luck, a different interaction than I expected,   or a nerf in 1.6. I don’t think these are as  good as I originally mentioned in streams and  

Previous videos, so I wanted to apologize if  you had pursued that route with my bad info.   That’s not to say it’s worthless, just not  as good as I probably made it out to be.   Anyway, we had a TLDR at the beginning of the  video, and here’s the more medium length version  

Of that same information. The bait maker consumes  1 fish to produce between 5 and 10 bait targeted   to that specific fish. Targeted bait increases  your bite chance for that fish by 1.66 or 66%,   though there are apparently some exceptions to  the rule as some mines fish appear to get a flat  

Bonus to their bite rate instead. Because the  targeted bait is calculated multiplicatively,   it performs best when it’s used on fish that  already have a decent hook rate like catfish   or super cucumbers. Combining the targeted  bait with a quality bobber can help you pull  

In vast quantities of iridium quality fish that  otherwise might be challenging to catch perfectly,   and the curiosity lure pairs exceptionally well  with both targeted bait and the quality bobber to   go hunting for some very profitable legendary  fish during the extended family quest. If you  

Have thoughts about what we should examine  next, or if I missed anything, let me know   in the comments. I’m leaning towards mushroom logs  personally, but either way, thanks for watching.

The Bait Maker combined with the Fish Smoker finally makes fishing relevant into the late game! It already rocks in the first season or so, but it only gets stronger now. Seriously, you can make hundreds of thousands of gold in the right situations, just for spending a few days fishing in the mountains. Pretty neat!

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