How CAST works

Everything in the game, in one place: the world, fishing, progression, the shops, $CAST and the real reward layer. Last updated 16 September 2026.

1. The world

CAST is one shared, low-poly ocean planet, and one shared community. There is a single economy behind everything: one account, one purse of shells, one journal, one set of leaderboards, one reward ledger.

Because a lot of people fish at the same time, the ocean runs as four parallel waters. Up to 1,200 explorers can be out at once, around 300 to a water, and you are placed in whichever water has the most room. Everything that counts is shared across all four: your progress, your shells, your catches, your rewards, and every board. What is local to your water is simply who is standing next to you: the explorers you can see, wave at and talk to. The badge at the top of the game shows both numbers, the people in your water and the people out across all waters. If every water happens to be full, you wait in a short line with a countdown and join automatically the moment a place opens.

There are eight islands across both hemispheres: Daydream (where everyone starts), Sunleaf, Crescent, Moonshoal, Emberfall, Frostveil, Pearl Haven, and Tanglewild.

• Getting around: walk anywhere on land, or take a boat. You can steer freely across the whole ocean, or pick a guided voyage between piers. The first time you set foot on a new island it pays 40 shells.
• Day and night: the world runs a shared 24 minute day cycle (one real minute is one game hour), the same for every player. Nights stay readable by design, and a personal "brighter nights" lantern setting can lift the darkness on your screen only.
• World radio: one chat channel, deliberately subtle until you open it, carrying the voices of the explorers sharing your water. Messages are short-lived: the server keeps at most 60 messages for 30 minutes and clears them on restart. You can mute locally.
• Ocean life: sharks, manta rays, and octopuses visit the waters. They are there to be seen, never caught.

2. Controls

On phones: a touch stick (left or right side, your choice), tap to walk, one finger drag to look, pinch to zoom. The whole cast console is the tap target during a bite. A short intro tour covers all of this on your first visit, and you can replay it any time from the help panel.

3. Fishing: the bite and the hook

Fishing is an active moment, not a countdown. The rhythm is: cast, wait, react.

• Cast anywhere land meets water (any shoreline or pier), with F or the cast button. Different coasts hold different fish.
• The bite comes at a random moment between 4 and 8.5 seconds in, and never at the same moment twice. The timing is decided (and locked) the instant you cast, but nobody, including your own game client, can see it before it happens. Owners of the Tidecutter speed rod (section 11) wait a quarter less.
• The hook: when the "!" appears you have 1.6 seconds to press Space or tap. Hook it and the catch lands; the faster your reaction, the more bonus shells (up to 6). Pressing too early is simply ignored.
• The escape: miss the window and the fish slips away. You get one shell for trying, no fish, and no reward eligibility from that cast.
• Changing your mind: walking away reels the line in, and there is a "Reel in" button too. A cancelled cast pays nothing.
• Relaxed or hands-on: the toggle beside the cast button switches between the two. Hands-on adds a cast-strength slider, which changes how far your line lands and nothing else: same fish, same odds, same rewards.

Auto-cast exists purely as a convenience: it re-casts for you after a result, but the hook always needs a human. Leaving the game running unattended earns one shell per escaped cast and nothing else.

How big your fish is

Every catch rolls its own weight, and the roll leans small. Most fish of a species come in near the light end of its range, a fish close to the usual maximum feels earned, and a handful of species carry a rare trophy tail that reaches far past it: a deepwater tuna can go to 60 kg, a starlight ray to 30 kg, a moonlit koi to 9 kg, a coral trout to 6 kg. Anything over 25 kg is a genuine story, turning up roughly once in several hundred hooked casts, and only in the waters where tuna and rays actually live. Your journal keeps your personal best for every species, and the heaviest-catch board keeps the island's.

4. Progression and shells

Where to check your tier: the chip at the top right of the game shows your current tier and rod name at all times, on phones too. Tap it to open the rods panel, which opens with a "Your rod right now" card carrying the two numbers people ask about: your current stock chance, and the top value a single catch can reach at your stock license level.

There are 12 catchable fish species and 16 rod tiers. Rods are the fishing progression: each tier can add regional species to your catch pool, and better rods raise the chance that a cast hooks a stock catch instead of a fish. Which stock symbols you can catch is decided separately, by your stock license (next section).

Every upgrade needs lifetime fish plus shells that are spent, and every tier past the first also asks you to hold $CAST in your linked wallet: checked once at the moment you upgrade, never spent, exactly like the stock license hold in the next section. In the current phase rods are obtainable up to tier 3.

Anyone already above tier 3 from an earlier economy keeps every tier they own: the cap blocks new upgrades only, and a tier you have bought is never re-checked or re-charged. Prices change only for the next step, never retroactively.

• Shells are the in-game currency, earned from catches, reaction bonuses, discoveries, journal activities, daily requests and the community goal.
• Catch payouts are rolled, not fixed. Every landed fish rolls a fresh reward inside the band for its rarity: 15 to 30 shells for a common fish, 23 to 45 uncommon, 38 to 75 rare, and 75 to 150 legendary. The quick-hook bonus of up to 6 shells is added on top. The roll comes from the same committed seed as the bite, so a settled cast can be recomputed from the revealed seed like everything else about it.
• Fish copies: some cosmetics trade spare copies of fish you have caught. Trades never touch your collection, journal, or aquarium; only surplus copies are spent.
• Explorer level grows with lifetime fish, from level 2 at 5 fish up to level 10 at 600, and unlocks some cosmetics for free.

5. The stock license and $CAST

The stock license is a second, separate ladder of ten levels. Your rod decides how often the market bites; your license decides which symbols can be on the line and how valuable a single catch can be. Level 1 is free for everyone with a linked wallet.

Levels 4 and above are still being tuned, which is why their holds do not yet climb in a straight line. The upgrade panel in the game always shows the live price of your next level, and that is the number you are actually charged.

What a stock catch is worth

The top of each range is a ceiling, not a price tag, and the roll behind it is deliberately bottom-heavy. Most catches land small; the top of your range is a rare prize that turns up now and then and makes the day. A level 3 license does not mean $2 a catch, it means your catches mostly sit near the bottom of the $0.05 to $2 band with a real chance of something much better. Climbing a level widens the top of the band; it does not lift the floor.

What $CAST does

$CAST is the CAST world's own token on Robinhood Chain. Think of it as the fishing licence: the ocean is free, and the licence is what lets you take real rewards home from it. It has four jobs, and no others.

• It opens real rewards. To earn real stock rewards from stock catches you keep at least 250,000 $CAST in your linked wallet. This applies at every tier, including the free one. Unlike the ladder holds below, this one is read as you fish rather than once: it is a licence you keep, not a fee you pay. The tokens are never taken, never moved, never locked, and your balance is re-read as you cast, so a top-up takes effect within a minute or so. Without the hold your line simply fishes: stocks are left out of the draw altogether, so you never hook a stock catch that quietly pays you nothing.
• It unlocks the two ladders. Rod tiers past the first and license levels 2 to 10 each ask you to hold the amount in the tables above, checked once at the moment you upgrade and never again.
• Claiming burns it. Each batch of stock rewards you claim to your wallet burns 7,500 $CAST to the dead address, forever, taking it out of the supply for good. A batch is one symbol at a time, up to 100 catches of it, so letting a week of AAPL pile up and claiming it in one go costs the same 250 as claiming a single catch, while claiming three different symbols is three burns. Those tokens leave your wallet for real, so keep enough that a burn does not drop you back under the 10,000 you need to carry on earning.
• It buys looks. $CAST is how the boutique's crypto shelves are paid for (section 11), and those payments burn too.

Here is the honest line between the two halves of the game. Playing is free. Fishing, every one of the 12 species, shells, the journal, the notebooks, sightings, daily requests, the community goal, boats, chat, leaderboards, your aquarium and every free cosmetic route need no token and never will. Taking real money out is not free. That side asks you to hold the licence, and every claim burns a little of the supply on the way through. Anything you already own stays yours either way: a rod tier, a license level, a cosmetic, a reward already sitting in your chest. If you sell your $CAST tomorrow you simply stop earning new rewards from that point; nothing already earned is ever confiscated, and you can still claim every bit of it. The hold decides what your next cast can earn, never what your last one did.

6. Journal, requests, community goal

• Field journal: eight island notebooks worth 25 shells each, completed by exploring.
• Sightings: spotting an ambient species (a shark, a manta, an octopus) up close pays 35 shells, once per species.
• Daily community goal: the whole world works together toward 75 fish per UTC day. Contribute at least 3 yourself and collect 75 shells when the world gets there, once per day.
• Daily requests from Mara at the Daydream market: three every UTC day, worth 55, 70 and 90 shells. Catch a few fish, fish a particular spot, or bring in three different species.
• Collections: four species sets, from the shoreline trio (100 shells) up to the four island rarities (400 shells), each paid once when you complete it.
• Starter goals ease you in: your first catch, three species, 25 lifetime fish, a first boat trip, the four starter islands and finally all eight, paying 40 to 500 shells.

7. Shops: upgrades vs. cosmetics

One distinction matters everywhere and is labeled on every card:

Cosmetics arrive four ways: free level and discovery unlocks, fish-copy trades, shell purchases, and the crypto shelves described in section 11. Buying with shells or fish requires actually standing at Mara's market on Daydream.

8. Accounts and safety

• Guest first: you can play the entire game without an account or a wallet. A random ocean name is suggested on your first visit; keep it, shuffle it, or write your own.
• Optional account: a username and password lets you sign in from another device. Passwords are stored properly hashed; recovery uses one-time codes shown exactly once. There is no email involved.
• Server authority: your position, catches, and rewards are all decided server-side. The client sends movement intent only, so teleporting or fabricating catches is not possible.

9. The reward layer

The loop itself is live end to end:

• Link a wallet (browser extension or WalletConnect QR) by signing one message. No gas needed. The linked address permanently becomes your reward address, and linking happens on Robinhood mainnet.
• Pass the gate: earning real rewards asks for a free explorer account, 50 lifetime fish of your own, a linked wallet, and at least 250,000 $CAST held in it. That fish count is its own threshold, twice what the first rod upgrade asks, so reaching rod tier 2 does not by itself open earning. The catch card tells you exactly which of those steps you are missing, with a button that opens the right panel. Fishing itself never waits for any of it.
• Earn: once you are through, eligible casts can land stock catches. Eligibility, the symbol pool and the price your reward is measured against are all locked the moment you cast, and only a successful hook turns it into an earned reward. Escapes and cancels release it. Which symbols can appear is set by your stock license.
• Rod badge: an optional non-transferable NFT that records your earned progression tier. Bragging rights only.

A symbol pays out only while it has a live price feed and a funded reward pool, so the list you can actually earn is sometimes smaller than your license list. When nothing is earnable the fish keep biting exactly as normal, and the cast console says so rather than quietly paying nothing.

10. Claiming: catch to wallet, step by step

Say you hook an NVDA catch. Here is exactly what you see, from splash to wallet:

• 1. The catch card. Instead of a fish, the result card shows a stock catch with the NVDA mark, the exact token amount and roughly what it is worth. It lands in your history like any catch, and the reward is instantly recorded in the game ledger. Nothing to do yet, and nothing can be lost; keep fishing and rewards simply pile up.
• 2. The reward chest. The chest icon in the toolbar opens your balances: per symbol you see earned, claimable, pending, and claimed. Under NVDA there is now a Claim button.
• 3. Press Claim. If no wallet is linked yet, the chest walks you through connecting first (extension or phone QR, one free signature). If your wallet is on another network, one tap switches it.
• 4. Burn the claim fee. Your wallet confirms a transfer of 7,500 $CAST to the dead address. That is the fee for this batch, which is one symbol's rewards, up to 100 catches of it, and those tokens leave the supply permanently. Keep the 250 in your wallet on top of the 10,000 you hold to keep earning, because the burn really does spend it: a wallet sitting at exactly 10,000 lands on 9,750 and stops earning until you top it back up. Each burn can only ever pay for its own batch, and once it is proven it stays attached to that batch through any retry, so a hiccup later never costs you a second one. If the burn itself fails, nothing is taken and the chest asks again.
• 5. Confirm the claim. Your wallet pops up with the prepared claim: a voucher signed by CAST's separate authorization service (the public game server holds no signing keys at all). You confirm it, along with the network fee, which is on the order of a cent.
• 6. Watch it land. The chest card flips to "Pending, confirming" with a link to the transaction on the block explorer. After confirmations it becomes "Claimed" and the tokens sit in your wallet.

The safety net behind those steps: the on-chain contract checks the signature, pays each claim exactly once (replay-proof, forever), and enforces its own caps on top of the game's. Claims survive everything: refreshes, restarts, dropped connections, and chain reorganizations are reconciled automatically, and a claim is tracked until final. Pressing the button twice returns the same transaction rather than paying twice. If you close the tab mid-claim, the chest picks it back up when you return.

Claiming in fewer, larger batches costs less, in burned $CAST and in network fees alike. There is no hurry: an earned reward waits in the chest as long as you like. And claiming never looks at your 250,000 $CAST hold. That hold decides what a new cast can earn; anything already in the chest is yours to collect whatever your balance does afterwards.

11. The boutique: looks and the speed rod

Mara's boutique on Daydream has free shelves, shell shelves, fish-trade shelves, and crypto shelves. On the crypto shelves payment is a plain token transfer to a burn address; the server verifies the transaction on-chain and grants the item exactly once. Purchases survive restarts and cannot be replayed or double-spent, and every token spent there is gone from the supply for good.

• The premium collections: 25 pieces priced in $CAST plus shells together, from 1,000 $CAST and 5,000 shells up to 250,000 $CAST and 50,000 shells. The royal collection holds two crowns, two jackets and a gilded rod finish; the royal shipwright's row holds five boats with genuinely different silhouettes (a gilded throne hull, a lantern-lit night skiff, a sleek racing hull, a weathered pale wreck with a tattered sail, and a serpent-prowed longboat). Beside them: five full outfits that dress your whole explorer at once (worn over your hat and jacket, which come back when you take the outfit off), three pieces of back gear including a purely decorative bubble jetpack that replaces the everyday knapsack, and seven little companions that follow you around the islands, sit beside you while you fish and perch on the stern of your boat. Your shells are set aside the moment you start a purchase and come back automatically if it lapses.
• The Tide Catalog: nine exclusive looks that rotate with the tide. Every 14 days a new tide brings three of them into the shop; the rest return with a later tide. Anything you buy is yours forever, even after its tide goes out.
• Boutique classics: the Aurora crown, the Starlight rod finish and the Nebula boat, the three originals.

The Tide Catalog and the three classics are waiting on their $CAST prices and show as "price coming soon" until those are set. The premium collections are live now.

The Tidecutter speed rod

One shelf is not cosmetic, and it says so on the card. The Tidecutter costs 0.005 ETH on Robinhood Chain, paid once, and from then on fish bite 25% sooner on every cast you make. It works at every rod tier, keeps working through upgrades, and never expires. What it does not do: it never changes what bites, your stock chance, or what a catch is worth. The same fish and the same rewards arrive, just with less waiting. Its pearl-and-teal finish can be swapped for any other rod look without losing the speed.

Everything else on every shelf is style only, clearly labeled, and never required.

12. Fairness and limits

• Provable draws: before each cast resolves, the server commits to a random seed by publishing its fingerprint. The catch, the species, the weight, the shell roll, the reward size and even the bite moment are all derived from that seed, and the seed is revealed afterward. Anyone can recompute any cast from the proof view in the reward chest, including the exact dollar value of a real reward and the price snapshot it was measured against.
• Caps, layered: every real reward passes a ceiling per catch (your license level), a ceiling per claim and a ceiling per wallet per day, plus a daily ceiling of 25 dollars per player across all symbols that resets at 00:00 UTC (we will raise it as $CAST trading volume grows). The per-token caps are enforced independently by both the game and the on-chain contract, so no single point of failure can overpay. The exact per-symbol figures are tuned as pools and prices move; the reward chest always shows what is available to you right now.
• Bots kept out: earning real rewards needs an account, 50 lifetime fish of actual play history, a linked wallet and a $CAST hold. One explorer holds one world connection and one cast at a time, and the per-wallet caps bound anything that gets through.
• Active play required: because every catch needs a hook within 1.6 seconds of a hidden random moment, unattended farming earns nothing.

13. Fishing tournaments

Every two hours the ocean holds a 30 minute fishing tournament, announced on the world radio when it opens and when it ends. The format rotates between most catches, heaviest total weight, and rarest haul, which scores each fish by the same rarity bands as shell rewards. Only fish you actually hook count. Escapes, cancelled casts and idle auto casting score nothing, and stock catches are not part of tournament scoring in any way. Hook at least 3 fish during the window to be ranked. The top three win 500, 250 and 100 shells, credited automatically at the end, and ties go to whoever reached the score first. A small card beside the minimap shows the live top five, your own rank and the previous podium. Tournaments are shared across all waters: anglers in every world compete on one board.

14. Leaderboards

Four boards, ten names each, on the homepage and in the game. Press L in the game or use the trophy button in the world toolbar. Every board has a weekly view and an all-time view, and every board covers all four waters: one ocean, one ranking.

• Most fish caught. All time counts every fish you have ever landed. The weekly view counts fish landed since the reset. Stock catches are not fish and never count here.
• Heaviest catch. The single biggest fish, by weight, with the species beside it. All time is your personal best ever; the weekly view is the biggest fish you have landed since the reset.
• Shells. All time shows shells in the purse right now, so spending on rods and looks brings it back down. The weekly view shows shells earned from catches since the reset, quick-hook bonus included. A one shell escape does not count: missing the hook is not an earning.
• Real stock earned. The value of real tokenized stock earned from catches, priced at the moment each catch settled. This is what was earned, not what has been claimed to a wallet yet.

The week resets Monday at 00:00 UTC, the same clock the daily community goal and the daily requests already run on. Everyone races over the same seven days whatever timezone they fish from.

What a board shows about a player: an explorer display name and a number. That is all. No account names, no wallet addresses, no email, no identifiers of any kind. An explorer who has no display name appears as "Explorer". Names are the same playful nicknames you already see on the island and in chat, and you can change yours any time from your explorer card.

Boards are rebuilt about once a minute from the game's own ledger, so a catch you just landed may take a moment to appear. A board nobody has scored on yet is simply not shown rather than published as a column of dashes.

15. What is coming, what is not

Live now: real tokenized-stock rewards, the ten-level stock license, rod tiers up to 3, the premium collections, the Tidecutter, and all four leaderboards. Coming: rod tiers 4 and up, $CAST prices for the Tide Catalog and the boutique classics, and more symbols becoming earnable as their pools and price feeds come online. The only official $CAST contract address is the one shown on this website. Trust no address from anywhere else: copycat tokens with familiar names exist on every chain.

• No hidden boosts. Cosmetics never change your odds, and $CAST is never spent to land a catch. The rod and license ladders are the whole progression: species, stock odds, symbols and value ceilings. The bite, the hook window and the fairness proof are identical for everyone. The Tidecutter is the single exception anywhere in the shop, it only shortens the wait, and its card says so plainly.
• No trading between players, and no marketplace.
• Nothing on this page is financial advice. Playing never requires buying anything. Holding $CAST is what opens real rewards and what climbs the two ladders past their first step, and each claim burns a little of it.

Seen something you would change? That is what this page is for. Bring it to the crew.