Troubleshooting

The game crashes on startup

Almost always a missing or wrong GeckoLib. It's required, and 1.21.11 needs GeckoLib 5.4 or newer (built against 5.4.4). GeckoLib 4.x doesn't work. Also check that Fabric API is installed and that the jar was built for 1.21.11.

No ripples are spawning

Get an exact count before changing anything. Stand where you fish and run:

/kill @e[type=ddv_fishing:fishing_ripple,distance=..64]

It reports how many ripples it removed: exactly how many were around you.

8 or more means they're spawning and you're not seeing them. The rings lie flat on the water, so from standing height they're seen almost edge-on and get hard to spot past about 15 blocks. Look for the bubbles and splashes instead, or look down from a little higher up.

0 or 1 means they're not spawning. Work through:

  1. enabled is true in the config.
  2. ripple_spawn_chance isn't near 0.
  3. The water qualifies: still water, air above, water on all four sides, land within 6 blocks. A small enclosed pond fails the open-water check almost everywhere. Try a lake edge or a coastline.
  4. You're fishing flowing water: set spawn_in_flowing_water to true.
  5. You're more than 10 blocks above or below the water. The spawner only looks that far up and down from you.

The config is only read at startup, so restart after editing it.

One colour never shows up

Orange is 10% of ripples and green 20% by default, so orange can stay hidden for a long session. Gold only appears once your journal is complete. Set the tier's chance to 1.0, restart, check, then put it back. See Main Configuration.

Gold ripples stopped appearing

Gold needs a complete journal, checked every time a ripple spawns. If the server added a species with counts_toward_completion: true, catch it and they come back. Open the journal with J to see what's missing.

The minigame never starts

  • Cast into a ripple. Plain water gives vanilla fishing.
  • Wait 2–5 seconds with the bobber inside the ripple. If it drifts out, the wait restarts.
  • Hold a fishing rod. See Modded Fishing Rods for what counts.
  • On a server, the mod must be installed on the client too.

The fish escapes when I click

A click outside the hit window loses the fish. Wait for CLICK NOW! in green before clicking. In a thunderstorm the window is narrower.

Reeling feels impossible

Reeling is hold to reel, not click to reel. Hold Use to gain progress and let go before the tension bar fills to bleed tension off. Holding the whole time always snaps the line. Epic and Legendary are tight but winnable. See The Minigame.

The rod casts nothing / the bobber disappears

Fixed for every rod the mod recognises. If it still happens with another mod's rod, that mod may replace the bobber itself. Try a vanilla rod in the same spot before reporting it.

I can't find the config file

Search the log for DreamlightFishing. Every startup prints:

[DreamlightFishing] Config: /path/to/instance/config/dreamlight_fishing.json

Launchers with separate instances keep a config folder per instance, which may not be where you expect. Options added in a new version only appear after one restart on it.

The journal is empty after joining

The server sends your journal when you join and again after every catch. If it's still empty, you haven't caught a fish species from a ripple in this world or on this server yet: journals are per world and per server.

My data pack species didn't load

Check the log for a species parse error: an unknown item, min_size of 0 or less, or max_size below min_size. The file has to be at data/<namespace>/ddv_fishing/species/<name>.json. See Custom Fish Species.