Finding Clams is one of the trickiest first quests or missions you’ll get when you start playing this game. Because of that, many players wonder how to catch a clam in New World.
It’s not tricky because it’s complicated or because you have to level up a lot before getting them — the reason it’s so hard is because no one seems to know where to find Clams in New World.
To make matters worse, you have to find Clams at the same time you have to find Snails and both of them seem to be fairly elusive creatures, especially to beginners.
Fortunately for you, I searched high and low, and I’ve tested various water types, fishing rods, baits, and more, and I’m pretty confident in saying I’ve found the best place to fish for Clams in New World.
Read on to find out exactly where these creatures are and how to catch a clam in New World.
Where to Avoid
The most important thing when trying to catch a New World clam is to avoid all sources of fresh water.
Clams can only be found in saltwater meaning you’ll need to avoid all lakes, rivers, streams, ponds, and similar.
Where to Find Saltwater
Saltwater is a little tricky to spot on the New World map because it doesn’t show in blue; only fresh water shows in blue.
Instead, what you’re looking for is the textured style of land that has a slightly yellow tint to it — this is marshy style land that you can walk through but also fish in. You’ll then also be able to find saltwater between any two settlements that aren’t joined by land.
The location I used for this is west of the Everfall Watchtower and I’d recommend that you also travel here for this.
There are plenty of other places to fish in saltwater — many of them on the coasts of settlements on the edge of Aeternum — but this is the most beginner-friendly by far as the only enemies you’ll come up against are extremely low level and even a brand new player can defeat them with ease.
To find exactly where this is, if you need to travel back here, it’s on the west side of Everfall and is shown in the image below.
Once you’re here, you should recognize it as one of the first things you saw when you started playing.
There is an abundance of saltwater in New World in this location and you can cast your fishing pole into any part of it. I looked for deeper water, but I ended up fishing in very shallow water and successfully completed this mission.
What fishing pole was I using? Well, in the image above I’m actually using a Tier 3 Aged Wood Fishing Pole, but when I first completed the mission I was using a Tier 1 Wooden Fishing Pole — the most basic rod that you get.
On both occasions that I caught Clams I tried without bait for a little while, but was only successful in my quest when opting to use Nightcrawler Bait.
Where to Find Nightcrawler Bait
If you’re in the water in the same location that I recommended above, turn around and search on the shore and the beach for Flint. Pick up as much of it as you can — it should respawn quickly, allowing you to pick it up again from the same spot after quickly checking elsewhere.
Most of the time all you’ll pick up from Flint is, well, Flint. But every once in a while you’ll also manage to pick up Nightcrawler Bait as well.
It’s worth finding some of this bait because even if it doesn’t make you more likely to succeed in catching a Clam (which I’ve yet to determine for a fact either way), using bait makes New World clam fishing much more efficient — especially in very shallow waters that you’ll find here.
You’ll save around 10 seconds of time on average when using bait, and if you end up casting your line 20-30 times to eventually hook a Clam — or maybe even more if you’re unlucky with RNG — you’ll have saved at least a few minutes of time by picking up a bit of bait.
