Dynamite unlocks on Island 2 (the Forest) for $25 a stick — light it, aim at the water, and hold the throw key to lob it into a school so the fish float up dead for you to collect.
Dynamite is the laziest way to fill your inventory in How to Fish: one lit stick in the middle of a school kills everything in the blast and leaves the bodies floating for you to grab. The catch is that it kills you just as happily if you hold it too long, so the real skill is getting it out of your hands fast. Here’s where to buy it, the safe throw sequence, and the tricks worth knowing once you’ve got the basics down.
- Where to buy Dynamite and what it costs
- How to throw Dynamite without blowing yourself up in How to Fish
- Throw Dynamite farther with the charge
- Detonate a stick early by shooting it
- Two Dynamite achievements: Everyone’s Dream and I’m the Bird Now
- When Dynamite is actually worth using
- Frequently Asked Questions
Where to buy Dynamite and what it costs
Dynamite isn’t a world pickup — it’s shop stock. You can start buying it once you reach Island 2 (the Forest), which you get to after taking down the Spider Crab on the starter island. A single stick runs $25 at the beachside counter, and you purchase it exactly the way you buy any other item: walk up, interact, pay.
Grab one to learn the timing before you commit to a pile of them. There’s no discount for going big, so buy to the size of the school you’re planning to blow up.
How to throw Dynamite without blowing yourself up in How to Fish
The whole trick is getting a lit stick out of your hands before the fuse runs down, and it comes down to one clean sequence you can repeat every time.
STEP 1/6
Check your Drop keybind
Open Options and note the key bound to Drop — it’s A by default, but it can be rebound, so confirm yours.
STEP 2/6
Buy Dynamite on the Forest island
Head to the Island 2 shop stand and pick up a stick for $25.
STEP 3/6
Take it off your hotbar
Pull the Dynamite off your hotkey so it’s held in hand rather than staged for a normal throw.
STEP 4/6
Light it with a left-click
Press the left mouse button to light the fuse while you’re holding the stick.
STEP 5/6
Press your Drop key
Immediately hit Drop to send the lit stick away from you.
STEP 6/6
Back away fast
Move off before it goes — hold a lit stick a beat too long and it kills you, and you will die plenty of times until this becomes muscle memory.
Never stand still with a burning stick — light it, press Drop, and step back in one motion so the fuse never catches up to you.
Video help
Throw Dynamite farther with the charge
| Throw | Input | Where it lands |
|---|---|---|
| Short drop | Tap A | At your feet or on the sand |
| Charged throw | Hold A, then release | Farther along the shore |
| Jump throw | Hold A, jump, then release | Deep water past the surf |
A quick tap of your throw key barely tosses the stick — it more or less drops at your feet. Hold the key instead and the throw charges: the longer you hold, the farther it flies, up to a fixed maximum. For real distance, hold to build the charge, jump, and release at the top — that arcs the stick clean over the surf into deep water where the bigger schools sit. A charged jump-throw can park a single $25 stick right on top of a cluster that would otherwise take a dozen ordinary catches.
Detonate a stick early by shooting it
You don’t have to wait out the fuse. Once a stick is in the water, you can fire at the Dynamite itself — not at the fish — to blow it the instant your shot connects. That lets you time the blast for a school that’s drifting, or set up a stick from a safer distance and set it off remotely. The explosion kills or stuns everything inside the radius (unofficial figures put the hit near 200 damage), which is more than enough for a cluster of ordinary fish.
If you throw a stick and nothing dies, one of two things went wrong: it never reached the school, or it never actually exploded. Charge the throw longer, add the jump on release, and shoot the stick to force the blast on your timing.
Two Dynamite achievements: Everyone’s Dream and I’m the Bird Now
Everyone’s Dream asks you to kill a seagull with Dynamite, which is fiddlier than it sounds. The reliable setup is to leave a caught fish out as bait — a bigger one is easier to spit into the open — then wait for a gull to swoop. When it commits to the fish, throw or shoot a lit stick to catch the bird in the blast. Timing is everything, so an open stretch like the third island gives you more room to line it up. There’s also a blunt version: pick the seagull up while holding a live stick and let it detonate — the bird dies, but so do you. Players also report a fuse-pause trick where you light the stick, briefly stow it back in your inventory, and pull it out again once the gull is in position.
I’m the Bird Now is pure slapstick: get your boat airborne. Set off an explosive blast right next to the boat and let the force fling it into the air until the achievement pops. A faster engine helps you get into position and adds to the launch, but the trigger is simply the boat leaving the water.
When Dynamite is actually worth using
Key Treat Dynamite as a speed-and-volume tool, not a money press. One stick clears a whole cluster in seconds, which makes it perfect when you need a fast pile of fish for early cash, general chaos, or a stockpile of food to eat through a boss fight — and the recent Easy mode, which cuts creature damage, makes leaning on it in combat that much safer. What it isn’t is your long-term earner: bombed fish sell for less than ones you land cleanly with a lure, so for max profit you still want the rod later on.
The mistakes that get people killed are all avoidable. Holding a stick past its fuse is the classic one, but so is treating Dynamite like a melee weapon, and — especially in co-op — lobbing it too close and taking out your own team along with the fish. Give it distance and it’s the funniest, fastest way to fish in the game.
Related How to Fish guides
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does the Dynamite keep killing me?
Two things cause almost every self-kill. Either you’re holding the lit stick too long and the fuse burns down in your hand, or you’re only tapping the throw key, so the stick drops at your feet and the blast catches you standing right there. The fix is the same for both: light it and immediately press your throw key with at least a little charge held, then back away — the goal is to have empty hands and space between you and the stick before it goes off.
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