How to dredge up salvage and treasure in Dredge

Dredge how to dredge — (Image credit: Team17)

How to dredge in Dredge? Sounds silly to say, but dredging up treasure and salvage from "Shapes in the Deep", is an integral part of the game. The dredge function is attached to a special crane, but you can't buy it from the Shipyard or Dry Dock, nor does it appear in the Research Menu, meaning you can go for the best part of an in-game week or more, unable to do anything but grab fish and deliver packages. We can show you how to change that though, and what you need to do to unlock the Dredge function in Dredge.

How to unlock the Dredge function

To dredge up treasure and salvage in Dredge from Shapes in the Deep hotspots, players need to do the following:

Keep fishing until you get a mutated, or aberrant fish. There are many versions of mutated fish, but any one will do. Fishing spots with a green glow and particle effect will have a much higher chance of granting them.
Take the mutated fish to the Fishmonger at Greater Marrow. He'll pay a greater price for it than normal, and also pull a special handkerchief from its innards. Afterwards, you'll get some dialogue with a character who invited you to Blackstone Isle.
Go to Blackstone Isle and take the Handkerchief. Blackstone Isle isn't far, though at this point in the game it might have been the farthest you've gone. In the water between Greater Marrow and Lesser Marrow, turn South and head towards the little island past the rocks with the mansion on it.
Dock at the Island's North side and speak to the Collector. He's in the mansion, and will explain that he wants you to find five different relics across the game's map. To do this, he'll outfit your boat with a Dredge Crane - an upgrade that allows you to dredge all the Shapes in the Deep spots.

Unlike other upgrades, the Dredge Crane doesn't take up any space in your cargo hold, and can't be broken. To use it, just head to any of the Shapes in the Deep hotspots and trigger it like fishing - at that point you'll get a minigame wherein you make a little indicator jump between two channels to avoid hitting obstacles (hitting one delays how long it takes to dredge up the loot below).

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Get it right, and you'll get your treasure! It might be raw salvage used to make upgrades, similar to the Dredge Refined Metal, Relics you can bring back to the Collector for new abilities, research parts you can use to unlock new purchases, or treasure you can sell to traders for money.

Joel Franey is a writer, journalist, podcaster and Very Tired Man with a BA from Brunel University, a Masters from Sussex University and a decade working in games journalism, often focused on guides coverage but also in reviews, features and news. His love of games is strongest when it comes to groundbreaking narratives like Disco Elysium, UnderTale and Baldur's Gate 3, as well as innovative or refined gameplay experiences like XCOM, Sifu, Arkham Asylum or Slay the Spire. He is a firm believer that the vast majority of games would be improved by adding a grappling hook, and if they already have one, they should probably add another just to be safe. You can find old work of his at Eurogamer, Gfinity, USgamer, SFX Magazine, RPS, Dicebreaker, VG247, and more.