Highlights

  • Destiny 2 has a fishing mechanic with exotic loot, but players must collect fish promptly to avoid being kicked for inactivity.
  • Exotic fish can help fill a "Focused Fishing" bar, attracting more fish, but it resets during nearby Public Events.
  • Leaving caught fish to collect after a Public Event may risk losing exotic fish in case of server disconnection errors.

Fishing makes for a relaxing and often somewhat rewarding way to pass the time in Destiny 2, but as one recent and rather unfortunate game clip makes clear, it does still have a problem which can cause players to miss out on their loot if they're not paying attention. Despite the activities introduced with Destiny 2's recent Into the Light update attracting most of the attention at the moment, there remains a healthy variety of fishing enthusiasts in the game who prefer to take a much more peaceful approach to acquiring loot.

Though it typically comes as quite a surprise to many returning Destiny 2 players who haven't loaded up the game in a while, Destiny 2 does feature an entire fishing mechanic now. Guardians can touch down to patrol in various locations throughout the solar system to seek out some fish to catch, with the EDZ, Savathun's Throne World, and even Nessus each offering different varieties of fish. Fish can range from uncommon to exotic in rarity, and while the latter are certainly few and far between, they guarantee an exotic gear piece and quite often provide an ascendant shard as well.

destiny 2 trials of osiris hiatus-1
Related
Destiny 2 Has Bad News for Trials of Osiris Fans

Bungie confirms that Trials of Osiris, a weekend specific Destiny 2 PvP activity, is missing its second consecutive arrival due to a recent update.

Acquiring rarer fish fills up the "Focused Fishing" meter as well, which gradually attracts more and more fish for entire groups of Guardians to catch. While many Destiny 2 players have their own strategies for fishing, one fan known as PyromaniacalBro recently shared a clip that demonstrates why players shouldn't wait too long before collecting their caught fish from the ground. Even while fishing, the game registers a player as inactive if they haven't moved around in a while, and will boot them to orbit if enough time passes without activity. This is unfortunately what happened to the player in question - robbing them not only of all their caught fish, but also the exotic one they hooked just a fraction of a second before being kicked for inactivity.

There's More Than One Reason Why Destiny 2 Players Should Always Be Picking Up Their Fish

Players can safely avoid being kicked if they move to collect their caught fish every few minutes, though it would benefit players and their fellow fishermen to collect legendary or exotic fish immediately after hooking them. This is because picking up fish of these rarities immediately adds to the "Focused Fishing" bar, which is contributed to by all Guardians at the same fishing spot. The more this bar is filled, the more frequently Destiny 2 players will be hooking new fish.

Unfortunately, though, players cannot hold onto a full "Focused Fishing" bar forever, as it's reset whenever a nearby Public Event begins. With that in mind, some players employ the strategy of purposefully leaving caught fish to collect after the Public Event is completed, so that the "Focused Fishing" perk can be reacquired immediately after the fishing spot respawns. Doing so can be risky, however, as a poorly-timed Destiny 2 server disconnection error could cause those exotic fish to be lost forever.