Whiteout Survival Fishing Tournament Guide [2026]

The Fishing Tournament is one of the strongest sources of free Gems, persistent cosmetic rewards, and progression resources in Whiteout Survival — but the gap between casual play and optimised play is unusually wide. Total event yield is a function of how well you manage Bait regeneration timing, sequence Fishing Kit upgrades across multiple events, deploy consumables in the correct mode, and structure attempt allocation across the 3-day window. This guide covers the full system: schedule, mechanics, kit progression, special items, collections, the Master Fisher Leaderboard, the underlying resource economics, day-by-day pacing, state-level competitive considerations, and common mistakes that quietly cost a meaningful share of total event yield.

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Overview

The Fishing Tournament is a recurring limited-time event featuring two fishing modes — Ice Fishing and Frosty Prospector. In both, you cast a hook that descends through a vertical fishing area, dodging obstacles on the way down. After enough obstacle contact, the hook reverses and rises; on the ascent, you steer the hook into the heads of fish (and other items) to catch them. Each catch yields Fishing Points and Fishing Tokens. First catches of unique items also award Gems, which is the primary mechanism by which the event delivers permanent value.

The event becomes available every 4 weeks and runs for approximately 3 days per iteration, commonly Tuesday through Thursday on server time.

No specific Furnace level requirement for participating in the base event has been confirmed.

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Core Mechanics

The two modes

The "max-level gear in Frosty Prospector" claim is community consensus and is the load-bearing assumption behind almost every consumable-loading strategy described later. If the claim holds, your effective Line / Hook / Sinker performance inside Frosty Prospector is identical regardless of whether your kit is at Level 1 or Level 10.

Hook descent and ascent

When you cast, the hook drops while you steer it horizontally. After the hook contacts a certain number of obstacles, descent stops and ascent begins.

• Base touch threshold: 2
• With Reel Stabilizer: 4 (base 2 + 2 from the item)

On the ascent, fish are caught by nudging the head of the fish with the hook. Tail contact does not count. You continue catching items until you either reach the surface or fill your Hook's haul capacity. The ascent is therefore the productive phase; the descent is purely a routing exercise to position the hook in productive water before the threshold is reached.

A Retreat function lets you abandon an in-progress attempt without consuming the Bait or Treasure Chart used to start it. This is the basis of the "reroll" technique — see Retreat doctrine below.

Depth and visibility

The fishing area extends downward in metres. Visibility decreases significantly with depth, and at deeper levels the area becomes very dark. Lanterns illuminate a wider area in deep water — typically most useful past around 300m, though the precise activation depth is not formally documented.

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Currencies and Resources

Bait

Entry currency for Ice Fishing.

• Initial amount at event start: 5
• Regeneration rate: 1 every 3 hours
• Storage cap: 10

Regeneration pauses at the cap. The implications of this are analysed in detail in Resource Economics — but the headline is that login frequency directly converts into total attempts available, and a single skipped day costs more Bait than most players realise.

Treasure Charts

Entry currency for Frosty Prospector. Sources include event mission rewards, Ice Fishing Club milestone rewards, Fishing Pro Set bundles, and special purchases. Some daily reward chests also contain Treasure Charts.

Fishing Tokens

Used to upgrade the Fishing Kit and to spin in Sunken Treasure Hunt once unlocked. Earned alongside Fishing Points whenever you catch an item. Tokens do not carry over between events for new earnings, but spent upgrades are permanent.

Fishing Points

Determine your placement on the Master Fisher Leaderboard and your progression through Ice Fishing Club milestones (commonly reported at 500 Points per milestone level). Earned alongside Fishing Tokens on every catch.

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Fishing Kit

The Fishing Kit consists of three components. Each is upgraded with Fishing Tokens, from Level 1 to a maximum of Level 10.

Components and maximum effects

Upgrade costs (per component)

Fully maxing all three components costs 4,950 Fishing Tokens. For most players this is a multi-event project rather than a single-event achievement, so kit progression should be planned as a sequenced path rather than treated as a free-form spend.

Progression path

The progression path below assumes you are starting from base levels and have limited Token income. Adjust based on observed bottlenecks in your own play.

Phase 1 — Sinker to Lv. 5 (650 Tokens). The shallow upper layer is the most obstacle-dense and lowest-yield section of every descent. Raising the Sinker effectively skips past it on every subsequent attempt. This compounds the value of every later upgrade because every other improvement applies to better water.

Phase 2 — Line to Lv. 5 (650 Tokens). Extends the productive depth ceiling into water where higher-rarity spawns concentrate. Stop here temporarily and assess: if your Hook is regularly emptying before you reach the surface, you have a haul-capacity bottleneck and Hook becomes the next priority. If your Hook is rarely full but you're reaching the bottom of accessible water with time to spare, continue to deeper Line.

Phase 3 — Hook to Lv. 5 (650 Tokens). Raises the single-attempt haul ceiling. Hook gains are linear (one extra slot per catch capacity), so this phase is straightforward unless you're consistently filling caps already.

Phase 4 — Sinker to Lv. 8, then Line to Lv. 8 (combined 1,000 Tokens). The mid-tier upgrade costs (150–200 per level) are still affordable per-event. Sinker before Line because skip-depth still compounds across more attempts than reach-depth does.

Phase 5 — Hook to Lv. 8, then all components from 8 to 10 (combined 2,000 Tokens). The 8 → 10 stretch is where Token costs spike (300 + 400 per component = 700 each, 2,100 total). This phase is deliberately last because the marginal yield-per-Token is at its lowest here, and because you can begin participating in Sunken Treasure Hunt once any component reaches Lv. 9.

Decision check at Lv. 9 on any component: the Sunken Treasure Hunt page becomes visible. Active spinning still requires all three at max level, but visibility lets you preview rewards. Do not divert Tokens to other purposes until you reach this milestone.

This ordering is a default, not a rule. If you regularly hit your Hook cap before exhausting a descent, prioritising Hook earlier is reasonable. If you're already comfortably reaching the bottom of accessible depths, additional Line gains diminish.

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Special Items

These items are consumed per attempt unless otherwise noted. Each can be obtained from Fishing Pro Set bundles, Ice Fishing Club milestone rewards, or directly purchased for 300 Gems.

Reel Stabilizer

Adds +2 to the obstacle-touch threshold during descent (raising it from 2 to 4). Substantially extends the descent window, giving you more horizontal distance to cover and more time to navigate to favourable spawn locations before the hook is forced upward.

Lantern

Illuminates a wider area at deep depths where visibility is otherwise drastically reduced. Most impactful on deep-water runs where unlit spawns can be missed entirely. Above ~300m the value is marginal; below it, Lantern can be the difference between routing toward visible rare spawns and ascending blind.

Ocean Scanner

Pinpoints the heading and distance of nearby rare fish. Activates when retracting the line — meaning its information aids ascent routing, not descent navigation.

Horn of Poseidon

Summons and illuminates a designated fish species, and activates an Ocean Scanner effect for that species (showing heading and distance). Most valuable when you're chasing a specific collection gap rather than fishing generally.

Icefish Voucher

Reportedly grants a 1.5x multiplier on Fishing Tokens and Fishing Points earned during the round in which it is used. The exact application scope (per attempt vs. per session) and consumption behaviour are not consistently documented.

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Sunken Treasure Hunt

Sunken Treasure Hunt is a wheel-spin reward feature gated behind Fishing Kit progression.

• Page visibility: unlocks when any Fishing Kit component reaches Level 9
• Active participation: requires all three Fishing Kit components at maximum level (Lv. 10)
• Spin cost: commonly reported at around 1,500 Fishing Tokens per spin

Because spins consume the same currency as upgrades, players who haven't yet fully maxed every component face a direct trade-off. Each spin is approximately equivalent to one Lv. 9 → Lv. 10 upgrade (1,500 vs. 400 Tokens) and is therefore roughly equivalent to a quarter-level on a near-max component. Until all components are at Lv. 10, every Token spent on spins delays kit completion proportionally.

Allocation rule: do not spin until all three components are at Lv. 10. Once they are, spin freely with surplus Tokens.

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Collections

Four collections track unique catches across event iterations. Progress persists between events, so collections are a long-term, multi-event project.

Catching a unique item awards Gems on the first catch (alongside the standard Tokens and Points granted on every catch). Subsequent catches of the same item yield only Tokens and Points.

The Diver and Chest guides at 10 unique items each are typically achievable within one or two events and grant cosmetic rewards (avatar frame, nameplate) on completion. The Fish Guide at 150 entries spans multiple event cycles and is gated by the seasonal rotation. The Memorabilia Guide at 60 entries falls between the two.

Star Rating reward values

These values are widely reported. The Gems column applies on first catch only; later catches award the Tokens and Points columns.

The Gems column is the strongest single argument for collection-pursuit play. A first-catch 5-Star fish pays 150 Gems — half the cost of any 300-Gem consumable, and a meaningful chunk of the Gem economy more broadly. Across an entire collection arc, the cumulative Gem yield from first catches is substantial.

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Ice Fishing Club

The Ice Fishing Club is a milestone-based reward track running through the event. It has three tracks: a free track and two paid tracks (commonly Pro and Master).

Progression is driven by accumulating Fishing Points, with milestone levels unlocking sequentially through the event. Paid tracks are reported to apply a +20% bonus to Fishing Points and Fishing Tokens earned, in addition to providing extra reward chests at each milestone. The exact bonus scope and stacking behaviour with the Icefish Voucher are not formally documented.

If the +20% bonus is real and applies to both currencies, the paid tracks have meaningful long-term economic effects beyond the immediate reward chests — they accelerate every kit upgrade and every collection entry simultaneously. Players evaluating the paid tracks should weigh that compounding effect against the upfront cost rather than treating the tracks as just a chest bundle.

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Master Fisher Leaderboard

Ranking is determined by total Fishing Points accumulated during the event, scoped to your state.

The strongest top-rank rewards typically include:

• A city skin (commonly named Dream of Atlantis)
• An avatar frame (commonly named Song of Ocean)
• A march skin (commonly named Whale Waves)

Top-rank rewards are reported as 30-day temporary cosmetics, not permanent. The exact rank cutoffs for each reward tier vary across reporting and may differ between event iterations or server tiers — confirm the current tier structure in-game during the event.

Because rewards are temporary, the leaderboard is most worth contesting if you specifically value the cosmetics for the next 30 days. For most players, the permanent Gem yield from collections is the higher-value target.

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Daily Missions

Each event day provides milestone rewards based on Fishing Points earned that day. Common reported thresholds are 100, 500, 1,000, 1,500, and 2,000 Fishing Points, resetting at server reset each day. Exact thresholds are not officially documented and may vary.

Daily missions function as a Bait-pacing scaffold: hitting the higher milestones requires sustained activity through the day rather than burst attempts at one log-in window. Used deliberately, they're a useful prompt for the second daily check-in.

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Seasonal Rotation

The event cycles through four themes in order: winter → spring → summer → fall (autumn). Each season features unique fish, divers, chests, and items that can only be caught during that season.

This matters substantially for collection planning. If the event runs every 4 weeks and seasons rotate one per event, then any given season type returns roughly every 16 weeks (~4 months). A fish missed during a winter event won't reappear until the next winter event. The Fish Guide at 150 entries — distributing roughly to ~37–38 unique fish per season on average — therefore takes a minimum of four event cycles to attempt completion, and realistically substantially longer because not every spawn is guaranteed within a single event window.

The strategic implication: treat each season as a one-shot collection window. Whatever you don't catch this event will cost you four months of waiting before you can try again.

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Resource Economics

This section converts the verified numbers into operational planning guidance.

Bait throughput math

Over a 3-day (72-hour) event:

• Total potential regeneration: 24 Bait (72 ÷ 3)
• Plus initial allocation: 5 Bait
• Maximum total Ice Fishing attempts: 29

This 29-attempt ceiling is achievable only if regeneration is never paused by the storage cap. Going from 5 → 10 Bait takes 15 hours; going from 0 → 10 takes 30 hours. Practical login frequency translates directly into attempt count:

A single skipped day costs roughly 8 attempts — a substantial fraction of the entire event.

Token expenditure timeline

The full kit costs 4,950 Tokens. For most players this is a multi-event commitment:

• A casual player earning a few hundred Tokens per event will need 8–15+ events to complete the kit
• A focused player using consumables and the paid Ice Fishing Club track may complete the kit in 3–5 events
• Sunken Treasure Hunt spins (~1,500 Tokens each) should not be attempted before kit completion — see the Sunken Treasure Hunt allocation rule

Consumable purchase calculus (300 Gems each)

Each consumable costs 300 Gems if purchased outright. Whether this is a good trade depends on what the consumable enables in a single attempt and what alternatives the Gems could fund.

Reel Stabilizer (300 Gems) roughly doubles your effective descent window. On a Frosty Prospector attempt, this typically translates into a meaningful increase in catches (the largest yield of any single item). Highest expected return per Gem when stacked with other consumables on premium attempts.

Icefish Voucher (300 Gems) at a reported 1.5x multiplier returns its cost only if a single round produces 600+ Gems-equivalent of bonus Tokens and Points after applying the multiplier. Whether this threshold is regularly met depends on kit level, mode, and other consumables active. Strongest paired with Stabilizer in Frosty Prospector.

Horn of Poseidon (300 Gems) is collection-targeted. Its expected value is conditional on the targeted species being one you actually need — pure leaderboard players get little from it; players completing the Fish Guide get significant value.

Lantern (300 Gems) is depth-conditional. Below the Lv. 10 Line cap (550m), Lantern range can mean the difference between blind ascent and informed routing. Above that depth threshold there's no application; below ~300m it's progressively more useful.

Ocean Scanner (300 Gems) is the lowest-impact standalone purchase because Horn of Poseidon includes a targeted Scanner effect. Buy this only when you specifically want untargeted rare-fish detection and don't have a Horn available.

Default purchase priority (when buying with Gems): Reel Stabilizer > Icefish Voucher > Horn of Poseidon (collection-dependent) > Lantern > Ocean Scanner.

For most players, the better path is earning consumables through the Ice Fishing Club track and Pro Set bundles rather than direct Gem purchase. Direct Gem purchase makes most sense as a top-up for a final leaderboard push or a specific collection gap.

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Strategic Framework

When to use Treasure Charts

Frosty Prospector is materially more rewarding per attempt than Ice Fishing. If the widely-reported "max-level gear" behaviour holds, your effective Line, Hook, and Sinker are all at maximum inside every Frosty Prospector attempt regardless of your actual kit progress. This produces three downstream effects:

1. Consumable value is higher because the underlying spawn quality being multiplied is already higher.
2. Kit progression matters less for Frosty Prospector outcomes, which means early-event Treasure Charts are nearly as productive as late-event ones.
3. Yield variance is lower because gear-induced run failures (catching the bottom too early, hitting cap too soon) are eliminated.

The implication: hold consumables for Treasure Chart attempts, particularly during the back half of the event, and use Ice Fishing for routine Bait clearing without consumables, focused on incremental Fishing Point accumulation and chasing first-catch Gems on whatever appears.

Bait discipline

Outlined quantitatively in Resource Economics. The operational rule:

• Minimum acceptable cadence: every 12 hours
• Recovery rule: if you have skipped a check-in, drain to 0 immediately on next login to maximise remaining-event regen
• End-of-event handling: time your final drain to consume all remaining Bait before event close — Bait does not carry over

Frosty Prospector loadout theory

The strongest single-attempt setup typically pairs:

• Icefish Voucher for the Tokens / Points multiplier
• Reel Stabilizer for additional descent control
• Horn of Poseidon for a targeted species (most useful when filling a specific collection gap)
• Lantern for deep runs

If the Voucher multiplier and the Frosty Prospector "max gear" effect are both real, late-event Treasure Charts with full consumable stacks produce the largest single-attempt point spikes available in the event. This is also when attempt quality is highest because you've had time to identify which collection gaps are still open and which consumables you have spare.

The reverse is also true: early-event Treasure Charts with no consumables are the lowest expected value of any attempt type. If you have only a small Treasure Chart supply and no consumables at event start, holding charts for Day 3 typically produces better total yield than spending immediately.

Retreat doctrine

Retreat is most justified when the initial descent layout is conspicuously bad: heavy obstacle clustering at the surface, no rare spawns visible after Scanner activation, or a deep zone you can't safely route through. It is least justified for marginal layouts.

Retreat costs time, not currency. Time is the binding constraint on total attempts during a 3-day event — particularly for Ice Fishing, where Bait regen is the hard cap. The decision rule:

• Retreat if: initial layout is in the bottom decile of expected yield, especially for Treasure Chart attempts where consumables are committed
• Continue if: layout is average or below-average but workable
• Never retreat: purely to chase a "perfect" layout — repeated retreats consistently cost more time than they save in yield

Corner routing

A widely employed approach is to keep the hook near the screen edges during descent. The densest obstacle clustering tends to populate the centre of the descent zone, so edge routing reduces unforced touch consumption. This is player-described technique rather than a documented mechanic, but it is consistent enough across reports that it's worth trying first.

Collection-first vs. leaderboard-first

The fundamental prioritisation question:

• Collection rewards are permanent, granting Gems on first catches and cosmetic rewards on completion that persist indefinitely
• Leaderboard rewards are 30-day temporary cosmetics, not permanent

For most players, collection-first is the higher-value default. The sole exception is players who specifically value the leaderboard cosmetics for the upcoming 30 days enough to forgo permanent Gem yield.

The blended approach most players actually use:

• Ice Fishing attempts: consumable-free, focused on first-catch Gems and incidental Fishing Point accumulation
• Frosty Prospector attempts: stacked with consumables, simultaneously generating leaderboard score and chasing rare collection entries

Because Frosty Prospector elevates rare-spawn rates, it serves both objectives at once — making the blended approach strictly better than either pure strategy for most players.

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Event Timing

The 3-day window has internal structure. Strategy should adjust across the days rather than treating attempts as interchangeable.

Day 1

Goals: clear the initial 5 Bait quickly, establish daily mission routine, identify which collections are open. Avoid spending consumables at this stage — your information about collection gaps and remaining Treasure Charts is at its lowest.

Action items:

• Burn initial 5 Bait within the first hour of event start to begin regeneration immediately
• Complete the lowest two daily-mission Fishing Point thresholds
• Hold Treasure Charts unless you have confidence in your consumable allocation

Day 2

Goals: maintain Bait throughput, begin allocating Treasure Charts with consumables, identify collection gaps that won't be filled by chance.

Action items:

• Two check-ins minimum to avoid Bait cap leak
• Begin spending Treasure Charts with at least one consumable active
• Identify any specific collection items still missing and plan Horn of Poseidon usage for Day 3

Day 3

Goals: maximise yield from remaining attempts, push leaderboard if competing, drain all remaining resources before event close.

Action items:

• Consume all remaining Treasure Charts, ideally with full consumable stacks (Voucher + Stabilizer minimum)
• Use Horn of Poseidon on any specific collection gaps that remain
• Time final Bait drain to land just before event close

Final hours

In the last 6 hours, leaderboard movement intensifies because competing players are draining their reserves simultaneously. If you are pushing a specific rank tier:

• Save your strongest consumable stack for the final 2–3 hours
• Have at least 2 Treasure Charts in reserve for final attempts
• Confirm your Bait will be empty at event close — undrained Bait at close is pure forfeit

If you are not pushing the leaderboard, the final hours are simply a wind-down — drain remaining Bait and Treasure Charts in your normal pattern and stop when supplies are exhausted.

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State and Coordination

The Master Fisher Leaderboard is state-scoped, which produces several second-order effects worth understanding.

State activity level sets the threshold. A state with many active fishers requires a higher Fishing Point total to reach any given rank than a state with fewer active fishers. The same play can produce a top-10 finish in one state and a top-50 in another.

Migration timing matters. If you are planning a state migration around an event window, the choice of destination state affects leaderboard difficulty. Migrating into a high-activity state immediately before an event reduces your relative ranking; migrating into a low-activity state increases it.

Alliance coordination is limited. Unlike most state events, the Fishing Tournament is fundamentally an individual activity — there is no shared scoring, no alliance ranking, and no mechanism by which an alliance can pool resources or rare spawns. Information sharing has some value (confirming consumable behaviours, comparing Fish Guide gaps to coordinate Horn of Poseidon targeting) but coordination cannot meaningfully increase any individual player's yield.

Pro Set / paid track competitive effects. If the +20% paid-track bonus is real and broadly purchased, the leaderboard effectively has a soft paywall — F2P top-rank finishes become harder in proportion to paid-track adoption in your state. Players competing for top ranks should account for this when setting expectations.

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Common Mistakes

The mistakes below quietly cost the largest share of total event yield among players who otherwise understand the mechanics.

Letting Bait sit at cap. A single 24-hour gap between logins forfeits roughly 3 Bait of regeneration. Across a 3-day event, two such gaps reduce total attempts by ~20%. The fix is purely behavioural — every 12 hours, check in and drain.

Spending Tokens on Sunken Treasure Hunt before kit completion. Each spin (~1,500 Tokens) is roughly equivalent to a Lv. 9 → Lv. 10 upgrade (400 Tokens) plus a Lv. 7 → Lv. 8 upgrade (200 Tokens) plus partial progress elsewhere. Spinning before maxing out delays kit completion measurably. Wait until all three components reach Lv. 10.

Using consumables in Ice Fishing. If the Frosty Prospector "max gear" effect is real, Ice Fishing under-extracts from any consumable stack. Reel Stabilizer in particular has substantially higher expected value in Frosty Prospector. The default rule: consumables go on Treasure Chart attempts, not Bait attempts.

Ignoring season rotation. A fish missed in this event's season won't reappear for ~16 weeks. Players who don't actively pursue the current season's Fish Guide entries are functionally adding months to their collection completion timeline.

Buying consumables at 300 Gems without a use plan. Direct Gem purchase makes sense for a specific upcoming high-value attempt or to fill a known collection gap. Buying speculatively without a deployment plan dilutes Gem economy without proportional return.

Retreating too aggressively. Repeated retreats burn the most valuable resource of the event — time. The decision rule: retreat only on bottom-decile layouts, especially when Treasure Charts and consumables are committed.

Treating leaderboard as the headline reward. For most players, the permanent Gem yield from collection first-catches substantially exceeds the value of 30-day temporary leaderboard cosmetics. Unless you specifically value the cosmetics, the higher-EV play is collection-first via the blended Frosty Prospector approach.

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Quick Reference

• Cycle: every 4 weeks; ~3-day duration
• Modes: Ice Fishing (Bait) / Frosty Prospector (Treasure Chart)
• Bait: 5 start / +1 per 3hr / cap 10 — 29 max attempts at perfect drainage
• Touch limit: 2 base, 4 with Reel Stabilizer
• Kit max (Lv. 10): Line 550m / Hook 20 items / Sinker 165m
• Full kit upgrade cost: 4,950 Fishing Tokens (1,650 per component)
• Special items: 300 Gems each (or earned from Pro Set / Ice Fishing Club)
• Sunken Treasure Hunt: unlocks page at any component Lv. 9; participation at all components Lv. 10; ~1,500 Tokens per spin
• First-catch Gems: 10 / 20 / 40 / 70 / 150 by Star Rating (1★ to 5★)
• Collections: 150 fish / 10 divers / 10 chests / 60 memorabilia (persistent across events)
• Seasonal rotation: winter → spring → summer → fall (each season ~16 weeks apart)
• Default consumable purchase priority: Reel Stabilizer > Icefish Voucher > Horn of Poseidon > Lantern > Ocean Scanner
• Default kit progression: Sinker → Line → Hook, in three rounds (to Lv. 5, then Lv. 8, then Lv. 10)