Harbor Fishing: How to Play, Tips & Upgrades

Harbor Fishing is a free idle tycoon game you play right in your browser. You start on a sunny harbor with a fishing rod and a few wooden piers. Catch fish from the pier, cut them into fillets, smoke them, can them and sell everything at your own fish market. Every dollar goes back into the harbor: new buildings, fishers, porters, trawlers that sail out on their own, and upgrades, until the whole waterfront hums with activity.

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Controls

• Phone and tablet: put your thumb anywhere on the screen and drag in the direction you want to walk. A small joystick appears under your finger.
• Computer: click and drag with the mouse, or use the WASD or arrow keys.
• There are no action buttons. Stand next to a fish school to fish, walk over a building's input to drop off your catch, and stop on a money pad to pay for it.

How to play: your first five minutes

1. Catch your first fish. Walk onto one of the two main piers at the top of the harbor. Next to the pier you will see rippling circles with little fins in them. Those are fish schools. Stand close to one and your fisher casts, reels and lands the catch onto the basket on your back.
2. Build the Cleaning Table. Walk to the glowing money pad marked Cleaning Table and stop on it. Your cash flows into the pad, and when it is full the table builds itself.
3. Cut fillets. Bring your fish to the white square at the Cleaning Table's input. The spinning blade turns every fish into a fillet, and the fillets pile up on the other side, ready to pick up.
4. Stock the fish market. Carry fillets (or fresh fish, if you are in a hurry) to the market stall. Customers walk up from the road, take what they want and wait at the till.
5. Get paid. Customers only pay when someone is at the till. Stand in the clerk zone to serve them, then pick up the cash they leave and spend it on the next pad.

From then on the harbor loop speeds up on its own: catch, process, sell, upgrade. Each new building or crew member makes the loop faster. After a while the catch flows from the piers to the market without you lifting a finger.

The production chain

Every product starts as a fresh fish. The more you process it, the more it is worth:

Smoked and canned fish need several fillets each, but they sell for far more than the fillets that go into them. That is why the Smokehouse and the Cannery are the biggest income jumps of the game. Every building has limited input and output space. When the output pile is full, the building pauses until someone picks the products up, so keep things moving.

Selling and the till rule

Customers arrive at the fish market, take products from the stall and line up at the till. A sale only happens while someone is standing at the till. At first that is you. Hiring a Market Clerk is one of the best early buys, because the market keeps selling while you are out on the pier. The Market Posters, Fast Checkout, Hungry Crowds and Tip Jar upgrades all raise how much the market earns. Leveling up the market itself lets more customers queue at once.

Your harbor crew

• Fishers walk out to the piers, fish the schools and carry the catch to the Cleaning Table.
• Porters carry finished products from the buildings to the market stall. They always take the most valuable products first.
• Feeders bring fillets from the Cleaning Table to the Smokehouse and the Cannery.
• The Market Clerk stays at the till, so sales never stop.
• Exporters carry products to the Export Dock, where a cargo ship buys them at a premium.
• Trawlers are fishing boats. Each one sails out of the harbor, fills its hold at sea, comes back to its mooring and throws the whole catch straight onto the Cleaning Table.

The Crew Buckets and Crew Boots upgrades make every crew member carry more and move faster, and they also make trawlers bring bigger loads and sail quicker.

New piers and the export dock

At the start only the two main piers are open. The West Pier and the Deep Sea Pier are closed with a red and white gate. You can walk right up to them, but you can't fish there until you pay on the money pad in front of the gate. The West Pier adds a whole row of new fish schools. The Deep Sea Pier reaches far out into deep water, and every catch there lands more fish than on the other piers. Later you can build the Export Dock in the harbor basin behind the plaza. A cargo ship moors there regularly, loads everything waiting on the pallet and pays more than market customers do. The Export Contracts upgrade makes each shipment bigger and more valuable.

Level up every building

Every building has its own level pad right next to it. Each level makes the building 40% faster and gives it 20% more storage, and there is no level cap. The fish market levels up the same way: every level lets one more customer queue at the till and makes customers arrive 25% faster. Level pads start cheap, so there is always something worth buying while you save up for the next big building. The level shows on the building's sign, for example "CLEANING 4".

Moving to a new harbor (prestige)

Once the Export Dock is built, a New Harbor pad appears near the harbor office. Moving to a new harbor starts your business again from scratch, but every harbor gives you a permanent +50% income bonus and some starting cash. Your next run goes much faster than the last. The star badge next to your money shows how many harbors you have founded and your total bonus. Each new harbor costs more than the one before, so there is always a bigger goal ahead.

Every unlock

Money pads appear on the plaza as soon as their requirements are met. Here is everything you can build, roughly in the order it becomes available:

Every upgrade

Upgrades are bought at the Harbor Office. Walk into the zone in front of it and the upgrade list opens. Each level costs more than the last.

Quests, boosts and offline earnings

• Quests: the bar under your money always shows the next goal, like catching fish schools, smoking fish or reaching a cash target. Completing it pays a cash reward, and new quests keep coming forever.
• 2x Cash: the boost button doubles everything you earn for a few minutes. It is unlocked by an optional short ad. The Longer Boost upgrade makes it last longer.
• Offline earnings: your fishers and trawlers keep working while you are away. When you return, collect what they earned, or double it.

Tips and strategy

1. Fish from the middle of the pier. You can reach the schools on both sides from there, so when one school is empty you just turn around to the next one.
2. Hire the Market Clerk early. A market that only sells while you stand at the till loses most of its customers while you are fishing.
3. Get a trawler as soon as you can. Trawlers bring a full load of fish straight to the Cleaning Table every trip, with no walking at all. Three trawlers keep the table busy almost all the time.
4. Move up the value chain. A can of fish is worth more than 15 fresh fish. Build the Smokehouse and the Cannery as soon as they appear.
5. Fix the slowest step first. If fish pile up at the Cleaning Table, level it up or buy Sharp Knives. If fillets pile up, hire Porters or Feeders. If the stall is full, buy Market Posters or level up the market.
6. Save the 2x boost for a busy harbor. It doubles income, so it is worth the most when every building, fisher and trawler is working.

Frequently asked questions

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