How to Fish Troubleshooting & Fixes
How To Fish Uncook Weapon
Quick answer: since Patch 1.0.10 (August 27, 2026), a cooked weapon or tool in How to Fish is fixed by dipping it in water — walk into shallow water with the item and the cooking state clears. Before that patch the cooking state was permanent, which is why older guides say the gun is gone forever. They are outdated.
How the accident happens
The Grill on Island 3 cooks whatever is on it to a 1.5x value point, and "whatever" includes your equipment. In a physics game where items fly, bounce and get dropped mid-fight, gear ends up on the grill in ways no player intends: a weapon tossed aside during inventory shuffling, a rod dropped while swapping bait, loot thrown toward the island that lands on the wrong surface. Game8 maintains an entire guide on cooking a gun deliberately, because so many players were doing it accidentally that the on-purpose version became content.
The state itself is cosmetic-plus: a cooked weapon keeps working (the community reports it remains usable) but is now "cooked" — a novelty item in appearance and, more annoyingly, in value. The real cost before 1.0.10 was permanence: nothing you did un-cooked it.
The 1.0.10 fix, step by step
The official patch note is one line — "weapons and tools now get cleaned from cooking when dipped in water" — and the practice matches it. Equip or hold the cooked item, walk into water — the shore's shallow water works, no swimming required — and give it a moment. The cooking state clears, and the item returns to normal.
Three practical notes from players using the fix. First, it is the item that needs to touch the water, not just you: a cooked rifle on your back while you swim is not the same as the rifle in the water. Second, it is repeatable and free — there is no cooldown, cost or NPC involved. Third, it works on tools as well as weapons; the patch note says "weapons and tools", and players have confirmed rods and miscellaneous gear.
If the dip does not work
Work through the boring checks before reporting it. Make sure the game is actually on 1.0.10 or later — the version prints in player.log since 1.0.10, and Steam updates automatically unless you have updates paused. Make sure the item you are dipping is the one that is cooked (in a full inventory it is easy to dip the right gun's neighbor). And restart the game once: a cooking state is saved state, and a fresh session re-reads it cleanly. If a genuinely cooked item refuses to clear on a verified 1.0.10 install, that is reportable — the Discord's bug channels are where the developer actually reads, and the changelog shows they ship fixes fast.
One edge the patch note does not settle: whether a cooked item that was dipped, then grilled again, then dipped again behaves identically — nothing in the sources documents a limit to the cycle, and nothing documents that the cycle is infinite. Treat one clean dip as reliable and test further cycles yourself before relying on them.
Cooked value versus cooked food
It helps to separate the two things the word cooking covers. Cooked food is the economy: a catch taken off the Grill at the right moment sells at the 1.5x point, and that multiplier stacks with your killscore, which is why cooking is half of every money route. A cooked weapon is the accident version of the same system — equipment that passed through the Grill picks up the cooked state with no value benefit, which is why the patch note words the fix as cleaning rather than restoring. The distinction also explains the fix's design: since cooked state on food is profitable and cooked state on gear is not, the developers made the gear version something you wash off rather than something you craft toward. Keep food on the grill and gear in the water, and the system works exactly as intended.
Cooking on purpose: when you would want this
The cooking state has exactly one good use, and it is not weapons: food. The Grill's purpose is the 1.5x value point on catches, and the cooked-food economy is the money engine of the mid-game. The weapon-cooking accident became famous because it happened to the item you least wanted cooked; the same mechanic applied to your best kill of the session is pure profit. If you enjoy the chaos, the cooked-gun aesthetic is a badge of having played during launch week — but there is no achievement tied to cooking a weapon, so the badge is purely social.
What not to do
- Do not sell a cooked weapon as junk before dipping it — the fix is free.
- Do not hunt for an NPC or a station that uncooks — it is water, and it has been water since 1.0.10.
- Do not follow launch-week guides that call the state permanent — they predate the patch.
- Do not grill quest items for fun — uncooking works on items, not on broken quest chains.
### Does the dip work in co-op?
Yes — water is water in any session, and there is no solo-only restriction in the patch note or in player reports. The co-op-specific wrinkle is inventory chaos: with multiple players dropping and trading gear, make sure the cooked item is the one that goes in the water, and watch the state clear before sailing on. A misidentified dip is the only failure mode players still report.