Death Item Rack

Your gear waits for you on a rack instead of scattering across the map.

When the whole squad goes down, How to Fish dumps everybody's inventory in one pile wherever the last player gave up. Half the time that is over water, on a slope, or inside a rock — so the gear rolls away, sinks, or falls through the ground, and what survives is one heap nobody can sort out.

This mod catches it. Every player gets their own rack, stood in a row at the island's spawn point and labelled with their name, holding their inventory and whatever they were carrying in their hand when they died.

Each rack is a shelved cabinet on a plinth with an open flank down each side. Handguns, melee weapons, shotguns and uzis go on the shelves. Snipers, assault rifles and fishing rods are too long to lie down, so they stand upright in the flanks, caught by prongs at two heights and held there — they stay standing until you take them, rather than slowly toppling out. Anything much longer than a shotgun is stood up rather than laid across a shelf — fish excepted, which lie down whatever their length.

Playing solo, your own death is the wipe.

It never eats your stuff

The rack disappears once the last item has been taken off it, or after three minutes, with the game's own puff of smoke — so it does not clutter the island.

If it times out while gear is still on it, only the rack goes. The items drop to the ground where it stood and stay there like any other dropped item. The mod never destroys anything.

Requirements

BepInEx 5 (x64), the mod loader. If you already have a BepInEx folder in your game directory, skip to Installation.

1. Download BepInEx_win_x64_5.4.23.5.zip (or newer 5.x) from https://github.com/BepInEx/BepInEx/releases
2. Right-click How to Fish in Steam > Manage > Browse local files. This opens the game folder (it contains How to Fish.exe).
3. Extract the BepInEx zip directly into that folder. You should end up with a BepInEx folder and winhttp.dll sitting next to How to Fish.exe.
4. Launch the game once and quit, so BepInEx can generate its folders.

Installation

Extract this mod's zip into the game folder, merging with the existing BepInEx folder. You should end up with ...\How to Fish\BepInEx\plugins\HowToFish.DeathItemRack.dll.

To verify it loaded, open BepInEx\LogOutput.log and look for:

[Info   :Death Item Rack] Death Item Rack loaded.

Multiplayer

Install it on every machine — and the host must have it.

• The host is what notices the wipe and arranges everyone's gear. Without it there, nothing happens for anybody.
• Each player draws the racks on their own machine. Without it, that player sees the gear laid out neatly in mid-air with nothing holding it up.

Loot is safe and reachable either way, but the racks are only visible to players who have the mod. Everyone should also be on the same version, since each machine works out the rack layout for itself rather than being told where it goes.

Configuration

After launching the game once, edit BepInEx\config\alexandre.howtofish.deathitemrack.cfg.

Setting	Default	What it does
Enabled	true	Build a rack on squad wipe at all.
SweepLooseItems	true	Also rack the item you were holding in your hand when you died.
SweepRadius	25	How far away that item may be before it is left where it fell.
OffsetForward	3	How many metres in front of the spawn point the rack stands.
OffsetRight	0	Nudge it sideways if it lands somewhere awkward on your island.
PinItems	LongGearOnly	How much of the rack is held still: None, LongGearOnly or Everything.
PinSettleSeconds	1.5	Seconds before held gear is pinned for the other players too.
LingerSeconds	180	How long the rack sticks around. Items on it are never destroyed.
PoofWhenEmptied	true	Vanish as soon as the last item has been collected.
ShelfCount	3	Shelves in the cabinet, for the smaller gear.
CabinetWidth	1.2	Width of the shelved part, in metres. The flanks add to this.
StandingLength	0.7	Gear at least this long stands in a flank instead of lying on a shelf.
RackSpacing	0.5	Gap between neighbouring players' racks, in metres.
WoodPrimaryColor	8A5A2B	Plank colour.
WoodSecondColor	C89B54	Highlight colour.
NameplateHeight	0.35	How high the names float above the rack.
NameplateScale	1	How big the names are drawn.

Notes

• The rack is generated in code and coloured with the game's own material, so there are no art files to install and nothing to look out of place.
• Sailing to another island removes the rack. Collect your gear before you set off.
• Anything that sank before the squad respawned was already destroyed by the game and cannot be brought back.
• Standing gear is held in place rather than balanced, and is let go the instant you pick it up or the rack goes. Nothing is ever locked to the rack permanently.

Uninstall

Delete BepInEx\plugins\HowToFish.DeathItemRack.dll. Your saves are untouched — the mod only moves items that the game had already dropped.