Another Crab's Treasure: How To Use Barbed Hooks

While your fork may be a mighty weapon, that's not the only thing you have to defend yourself with in Another Crab's Treasure. Alongside the Adaptations you'll obtain through progress and learning powerful skills, you can also make use of the humble but versatile Barbed Hook to aid you in your quest.

Another Crab's Treasure: 8 Best Skills To Unlock First

You'll want to prioritize these skills in Another Carb's treasure.

These single-use items give you a way to let you fight back against ranged enemies, or to pull those annoying, evasive enemies close, so you can finally get a hit on them. You can't just use them off the bat, though – you'll need to utilize your powers of Umami to learn a special skill first.

How To Obtain The Spearfishing Skill

While you'll begin finding Barbed Hooks soon after you begin the game, you'll have to complete some prerequisite tasks and obtain the Spearfishing skill before you're able to use them.

Barbed Hooks can often be found as pale green shining items on the ground, or can be dropped by most smaller enemies in the game, such as Sardines.

First, you'll need to beat Nephro and visit the Duchessin Fork Slacktide, unlock the Fishing Line, and finally, get access to the Moon Caves via the Duchess' request.

Past the boss at the end of the Moon Caves, you'll find the Moon Snail, who'll unlock the ability to learn a variety of useful skills in return for Umami Crystals.

You can get Umami Crystals by breaking Umami Crystal Clusters in the world or by beating enemies with glowing purple eyes.

Go into the Learn Skills menu, head into the Way of the Predator path and unlock the Skewer skill first for 20 Umami Crystals. After that, you'll get access to the Spearfishing Skill for another 20 Umami Crystals.

How To Use Barbed Hooks

With the Spearfishing Skill, you'll now have the ability to use Barbed Hooks inside and outside of battle, which work as a grapple attack.

You can hold up to two Barbed Hooks at once while the rest are stored in your inventory, giving you two attempts to use them per rest at a Moon Shell unless you pick more up.

It's possible to increase the amount of Barbed Hooks held by purchasing the Tackle Bag from The Prawn Shop in New Carcinia.

Use the L2 while you've got Barbed Hooks to aim at the enemy you want to hit, let the reticule turn orange, then press L2 again to reel them in at the cost of one hook per reel.

For a small or medium-sized enemy, you'll be able to pull them towards you without a fight, and if you break their Balance in the process, they'll be Capsized, allowing you to get some free hits or use Dispatch if it's unlocked for some big damage.

If you're quick enough, you can use a Barbed Hook to break an enemy's guard or stop them from using an attack.

If you're dealing with larger enemies and enemies with glowing purple eyes, you may have a slightly different process and have to fight to reel them in.

When this happens, pull your fishing line when the enemy isn't struggling to gain progress until you reel them in successfully. Avoid attempting to reel them while they're struggling or else the enemy will break the line, waste a Barbed Hook, and leave you open to attack.

Barbed Hooks are great for pulling enemies off platforms to their death or to get them off high ground.

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