How to Fish Multiplayer Mod: Raise the Lobby Cap

How to Fish launched on Steam on Aug 20, 2026 from developer Dazed Games, with online co-op built in from day one. Lobbies run through Steam, and Patch 1.0.4 raised the official lobby cap to 8 players, which is the current vanilla limit. The game is on Patch 1.0.9 as of Aug 25, 2026, so mod compatibility always needs to be checked against the latest build.

Because the built-in co-op already covers most groups, mods enter the picture only when you want to go past eight players or force the networking layer to accept connections it otherwise refuses. If you are happy with a standard lobby, see the multiplayer guide for how normal co-op works before touching any mods.

Three community mods cover this keyword, all hosted on mainstream mod sites and all built on the BepInEx plugin framework. MorePlayers by LogicMods (Nexus Mods) is the flexible one: it makes the lobby cap fully configurable from 1 to 250, defaults to 8, and only the host needs it, so friends with the unmodded game can join normally. It was uploaded on Aug 22, 2026 and last updated on Aug 25, 2026, with version 1.0.1 updating it for the latest game patch and fixing private Steam lobby creation for non-public saves; it sat at roughly 1,826 total downloads at research time.

How to Fish More Players (Nexus Mods) takes a fixed approach: it patches the FishNet and FishySteamworks networking methods and forces the multiplayer connection limit to exactly 8 players, with no configuration at all. Since Patch 1.0.4 already raised the official cap to 8, check the mod page for compatibility with current builds. MorePlayers by Kalamies (Thunderstore) targets a middle ground, raising the room size from the official 8 up to a maximum of 32 players, with 32 as the default in its config.

All three mods require BepInEx 5 (x64), the standard Unity mod loader. If you already have a BepInEx folder inside your game directory, you can skip straight to the mod files.

1. Download BepInEx 5 x64 (version 5.4.23.x or a newer 5.x release) from the official BepInEx releases page.
2. In Steam, right-click How to Fish, then Manage, then Browse local files to open the install folder.
3. Extract the BepInEx zip directly into that folder, so the BepInEx folder and winhttp.dll sit next to How to Fish.exe.
4. Launch the game once and quit, so BepInEx generates its folders, including BepInEx/plugins.
5. Extract the mod zip into the game folder, merging with the existing BepInEx folder, so the plugin DLL ends up inside BepInEx/plugins (for example BepInEx/plugins/MorePlayers.dll).
6. Launch the game normally and host a lobby.

With MorePlayers by LogicMods, the cap stays at the vanilla 8 until you change it. Launch the game once with the mod installed, then open the config file at BepInEx/config/com.logicmods.howtofish.moreplayers.cfg and set MaxPlayers to anything from 1 to 250. The mod also raises the network server's maximum client count to match and grows the radar's player-dot pool, so every player still shows up on the radar in oversized lobbies.

To confirm the mod actually loaded, open BepInEx/LogOutput.log after a launch and look for the line MorePlayers loaded. Lobby size set to 8. For the Thunderstore version by Kalamies, the equivalent file is BepInEx/config/kalamies.MorePlayers.cfg, where MaxPlayers defaults to 32 and counts the host as one of the players. If the BepInEx log reports 0 plugins to load, the DLL was not detected and you should re-check its location.

MorePlayers is host-only: the host raises the cap, and unmodded friends join the bigger lobby with no version mismatch. The fixed 8-player Nexus mod also only requires the host to have it, though its author recommends that all participants run the same game version, the same mod version, and the same BepInEx build for the most consistent results. In practice, matching versions across the whole group is the safest setup for any modded session.

Game updates are the big risk. How to Fish is patched frequently, and updates can modify internal systems like the connection manager, FishNet, FishySteamworks, and Steam lobby handling, which is exactly what these mods patch. Do not stack two mods that both change multiplayer limits, since compatibility between them is not guaranteed. If the game patches and lobbies break, check whether the mod author has released an update for the new build before troubleshooting anything else.

Oversized lobbies are experimental. The game is only tuned for small groups, and even the mod authors warn that very large sessions may lag or get chaotic. Bigger groups naturally increase network traffic, synchronized player objects, physics activity, and host workload, so results depend heavily on the host PC and everyone's connection quality. On the upside, MorePlayers does not touch saves or achievements, so your progress and the game's 28 Steam Achievements are not at risk.

The mistakes that most often break a how to fish multiplayer mod install:

• Putting the DLL in a mods folder instead of BepInEx/plugins.
• Skipping the first launch after installing BepInEx, so the plugins folder and config files never generate.
• Editing the config file before running the game once, since the file does not exist yet.
• Mixing game or mod versions between host and clients.
• Running two lobby-cap mods at the same time.

If players fail to join even with everything installed correctly, the black screen when joining troubleshooting page covers the common connection-side causes, and the mods hub lists other safe modifications for the current patch.