Anime Expeditions: How to Get the Auto Rod Fast

The Auto Rod is the one fishing rod in Anime Expeditions that does the work for you. Cast it into any body of water and it catches fish on its own, no bar alignment, no timing, no minigame. There is exactly one way to get it, and it has nothing to do with fishing.

Quick answer: Reach Wave 150 in the Tidal Siege event’s Infinite & Fishing gamemode. The Auto Rod is awarded automatically the moment that wave is cleared, and it then appears in your fishing rod menu.

What the Auto Rod does

The rod’s passive is listed in-game as a “Bad Passive,” which is the game being honest about the tradeoff. You get a much faster lure in exchange for losing the minigame entirely, which means you also lose the ability to steer what you catch. Fish arrive at random.

Stat	Auto Rod	Normal Rod
Lure Speed	12–24	6–12
Control	0.7	0.5
Control Zone	0	0.3
Passive	Increased Lure Speed in exchange for skipping the Fishing Minigame	None

A Control Zone of 0 is not a bug. There is no zone because there is no bar to align, which is why the rod cannot be used to target a specific fish for your index. Keep the Normal, Advanced, Lucky, or Recycling rods for that work and switch to the Auto Rod when you only care about volume.

Before you queue: what you need

Wave 150 is deep into an infinite mode, so the run is decided mostly by your roster and loadout, not by anything you do in the first ten minutes. Bring your strongest and most upgraded units. Evolved units with equipment and decent traits will hold far longer than a wide bench of unevolved ones.

There is no shortcut, purchase, or code that grants the rod. The unlock text is fixed to a single condition, and the event quest list mirrors it with separate objectives for clearing Wave 100, Wave 150, and Wave 200.

How to start the Tidal Siege run

Open the Events menu from the lobby and select Tidal Siege. The event is tied to the Summer Event and runs on the Coral Kingdom map.

Anime Expeditions Events menu open with an event selected and its reward list on screen — The Events menu is where Tidal Siege is selected. Image: Expeditions Entertainment

Choose the Event Gamemode option, then pick Event Mode. This is the Infinite & Fishing gamemode, which is the only version that counts waves high enough to reach 150.

Set up the lobby and start matchmaking. A full team of strong players makes the late waves considerably more survivable than soloing them.

Concentrate your primary defense on the right-side path. Most enemies spawn and funnel through that lane, so it needs your highest damage units and your upgrade priority.

Units placed along the enemy path on the Coral Kingdom map during a Tidal Siege wave — Unit placement along the main lane on the Coral Kingdom map. Image: Expeditions Entertainment

Keep coverage on the left-side path for storm weather. Bosses appear down that lane when a storm rolls in, and an undefended left side is the usual reason a run ends short of Wave 150.

Note: you can fish inside gamemode maps, but only after the waves have started. The water is inactive until you hit Start at the beginning of a level.

Confirming the unlock and equipping the rod

Clearing Wave 150 grants the rod on the spot, and the matching Survive 150 Waves event quest completes at the same time. Back in the lobby, press the fishing rod icon at the bottom left of the screen to open your rods and select the Auto Rod. If it is not listed there, the wave was not cleared.

To use it, equip the rod and click on the water. From there the rod handles the cast and the catch by itself, with a lure time of roughly 12 to 24 seconds per fish depending on the roll.

Why the run usually fails before Wave 150

Queuing into the wrong mode. Only the Event Mode under Event Gamemode is the Infinite & Fishing version that scales to Wave 150.
Leaving the left path open. Storm-weather bosses use it, and they will walk through an empty lane.
Spreading units evenly across both paths instead of loading the right side, which is where the bulk of enemies arrive.

Tidal Siege is flagged in-game as ending with Update 4, so the Auto Rod is on a clock along with the rest of the Summer Event content. If you want it, the Wave 150 run needs to happen while the event is still live.