What's New in Soltokemons: Fishing, NFT Creatures and the Lands of Etheria

The new fishing system lives at Degen Beach, east of Solana City. It starts with a quest from Salty Satoshi, a salty old degen fisherman who runs a shack on the sand. He lost his Lucky Lure to a monster that snapped his rod and dragged the lure into the deep, so the quest sends you out across the Liquidity Sea to recover it. You will need the swim ability (the LP Token from the Goddess after the Spire) to reach the spot, beat a guardian creature in a forced battle, and bring the lure back. Satoshi then fits it to a spare rod and gifts you the Fishing Rod.

Once you own the rod, a one-tap fishing button appears in the overworld HUD whenever you are standing at or facing fishable water. Casting consumes one bait and starts a reaction-bar minigame: a marker sweeps across a bar and you tap to land it in the target zone. The catch is fully server-authoritative - the target zone is a server secret baked into the image, so the game verifies your tap landed in the right place and within the time window before it grants anything.

Bait determines what you reel in. Each tier of bait pulls a different size of fish: basic chum lands a small fish, shrimp lands a medium fish, and the rarer glow bait lands a large fish. Bait is cheap on purpose, so fishing never turns into a grind.

The rod does not catch creatures - it reels in fish items. Bring a fish back to Salty Satoshi and he opens it for you, yielding a tier-scaled number of oysters plus a dead fish. Bigger fish open into more oysters, so a better bait pays off twice: a rarer fish AND a fatter oyster haul.

Oysters are openable, and opening one always grants something - usually worthless shell grit, occasionally a pearl. Pearls come in white, blue and red, and they feed into the equipment upgrade system, giving gear-focused players a fresh source of upgrade materials. It is a self-contained loop that rewards repeat fishing without handing out power for free.

Fishing is for items. If you want to add aquatic creatures to your collection, you swim. While you are in deep water, the wild encounter table swaps to a dedicated pool of swim-only water creatures, and you catch them the normal way - weaken them, then use a Capture Net.

This update adds a large roster of these swim-only species, from the pale deep-water Abyssminn to the luminous Axolume and the coral-armoured Coralclaw. They roll only while you are swimming and never appear on land grass, so the only way to fill out the aquatic side of your Codex is to get the LP Token and explore the open water around Degen Beach and the Liquidity Sea.

Soltokemons already has a public-sale Genesis NFT collection on Solana - the four base mascots Sparkmon, Aquamon, Floramon and Pyromon. This update layers a new idea on top: certain wild creatures roll a mintable tag when they spawn, server-side and signed into the battle so it cannot be faked. You will see an NFT badge on the wild during battle to teach you that this one can become a real collectible.

There are three tiers, each tied to a spawn-rolled rarity. A common NFT-tagged wild rolls at roughly 1 in 500, a rare Holo variant at roughly 1 in 1000, and the prized Shining variant at roughly 1 in 100,000. A Shining is a cosmetic gilded recolor with sparkle effects, persisted on the creature once you catch it. The four Genesis mascots are special: only their Shining form is ever mintable, never a plain NFT or Holo tag.

Crucially, the NFT is EARNED, not just bought. On top of a small SOL mint fee, minting a creature consumes gathered upgrade materials that drop from wild wins - one tier-appropriate material per rarity. That keeps the collectibles tied to actual play rather than a pure cash grab.

Yes - the tiered creature mint is live now. Catch a Shining, Holo or NFT-tagged wild variant, gather the upgrade materials by playing, then mint it into a real on-chain 1/1 NFT for about 0.10 SOL with a connected Solana wallet. The mint reads the creature's spawn-rolled tag server-side and assigns a provenance tier - common, rare or ultra - so you can only mint what the creature actually earned.

The Genesis collection (the four sale mascots) is a separate, fixed $STKM sale piece. Both are entirely optional: the core game stays free, you never need a wallet to play, and you can catch and hold tagged variants without ever minting one.

Etheria is the new endgame, a luminescent fae glade north of Solana City, left of the Ethereum Spire, reachable by following a glowing path. It is themed around Etherial, the eighth element - a mystic type that exists nowhere else in the game. Etherial creatures like Faewisp, Crystalynx and Aetherfin roll only here, at high levels (the zone band runs Lv. 50-100).

Entry to the glade is open to everyone - you can walk in and see the merchants and the central altar. Farming, though, is gated by NFT ownership. You tap the altar, load one of your claimed creature NFTs, and it teleports you into the much larger Lands beyond, where the real grinding happens. The clever part is the anti-cheat: all farming state is keyed to the NFT mint itself, not your account. Each NFT has a daily Energy bar that resets at 00:00 UTC, so moving the NFT between wallets or spinning up extra accounts gets you nowhere. Sybil farming is dead by construction.

Wins in the Lands cost Energy and grant Ether Shards, a soulbound account currency. You spend Shards at the in-zone Shard Trader on rare items (revives, EXP candy), and they also fund high-band gear upgrades. A seasonal Etherial Relic Forge is planned on top - a deliberate gamble where each attempt burns Shards for a chance at a one-off Relic NFT, with pity protection on failures - but that forge is not switched on yet; it opens once the Etheria collection art ships.

These three systems reward different kinds of player. Fishing gives casual explorers a relaxing loop and a path to gear upgrades. The mintable variants give collectors a long-term goal that respects the free game - you catch the rare tags by playing, and minting one into an on-chain NFT stays entirely optional. The Lands of Etheria give the dedicated endgame crowd a high-level zone with a non-custodial, sybil-proof economy that only NFT holders can fully tap.

If you are new, start with the basics: pick a starter, catch your first wild creature, and free Solana City. The fishing, minting and Etheria systems are all things to grow into. Our dedicated guides on fishing, NFT minting and Etheria break each one down step by step.