Anime Expeditions AFK Fishing: How to Farm Sand Dollars With the Auto Rod

Fishing arrived in Anime Expeditions with the Summer Siege update, and it quietly became the fastest way to bank event currency without touching your keyboard. The reason is the Auto Rod, a reward that skips the fishing minigame entirely and reels in whatever bites. Stack that with the Grandmaster rank bonus and a full day of idle casting turns into a pile of Sand Dollars, hundreds of Summer Capsules, and a stack of Mythic units.

Quick answer: Clear Wave 150 in Tidal Siege Infinite to unlock the Auto Rod, equip it, stand next to any large body of water, and hold the cast input with an auto-clicker. A 24-hour session at Grandmaster rank returns roughly 90,000 to 100,000 Sand Dollars, which is about 900 to 1,000 Summer Capsules.

Auto Rod unlock requirement in Anime Expeditions

The Auto Rod is not purchasable and it does not drop randomly. It is handed out for reaching Wave 150 in the Tidal Siege Infinite mode, which is the event gamemode added alongside the fishing system. Until you clear that wave, every catch requires you to play the minigame by hand, which makes any kind of idle farming impossible.

Its trade-off is written into the stat line. The Auto Rod has a Control Zone of 0, meaning it cannot aim at anything, but it doubles Lure Speed compared to the default rod and never asks you to track a moving fish icon.

Rod	How to get it	Lure Speed	Passive
Normal Rod	Owned by default	6–12	None
Advanced Rod	750 Sand Dollars in the Summer Shop	5–10	None
Recycling Rod	Fish 100 times	6–12	Every 10 items sold, one is recycled into a random Legendary or better item
Lucky Rod	1% chance after any catch	6–12	Every 8th fish is a guaranteed Mythic drop
Auto Rod	Wave 150 in Tidal Siege Infinite	12–24	Skips the fishing minigame in exchange for the faster lure

How to set up an AFK fishing session

Equip the rod using the Toggle Fishing Rod icon in the bottom-left corner of the screen. Pick the Auto Rod from the rod list, since the others will stall the moment a minigame appears and nobody is at the mouse.

Position your character beside a large, still body of water. Fast-flowing water does not accept a cast, but the pools scattered around the lobby all work, including the ones flanking the Story mode hub and the areas near the Summon, Upgrades, and Tournaments hubs.

Anime Expeditions lobby with an E Interact prompt showing over the Sovereign [Djinn] statue — The lobby hub, where interact prompts like Sovereign [Djinn] sit close to the water pools used for idle casting.

Cast with the left mouse button and confirm the Auto Rod reels the first fish in on its own. This is your check that the setup works before you walk away from it.

Run an auto-clicker so the cast input keeps firing after every catch. Without it the line sits idle once a fish is landed, and an eight-hour overnight session turns into a single fish.

For longer stretches, start an Infinite run and fish inside the map instead of the lobby. Fishing on gamemode maps only becomes possible once the waves begin, so you have to press Start before the rod will do anything.

Note: the Auto Rod pulls whatever the map offers at random. It cannot be pointed at a specific fish, so it is a currency tool, not an index-completion tool.

Fishing event ranks and the currency multiplier

Every catch feeds two separate bars. Fishing XP pushes you up the six event ranks, and Milestone XP unlocks the 25 milestone rewards. The ranks are the part that matters for farming, because the top one doubles all currency gain and adds a daily bonus for clearing normal gamemodes.

Event rank	Currency gain	Bonus from winning non-event modes
Beginner	—	None
Novice	+20%	None
Experienced	+40%	None
Veteran	+60%	+250 per win, up to 5,000 per day
Master	+80%	+250 per win, up to 7,500 per day
Grandmaster	+100%	+250 per win, up to 10,000 per day

Grandmaster is reachable inside a single long overnight AFK block with the Auto Rod equipped. Once it locks in, the rest of the day of fishing pays out at double rate, which is where the bulk of the currency total comes from.

What 24 hours of Auto Rod fishing pays out

A full day split across two large AFK blocks, one roughly eight hours in the lobby and one roughly six hours inside Infinite mode, lands somewhere between 90,000 and 100,000 Sand Dollars. That figure assumes Grandmaster is hit early, since the +100% bonus applies to everything caught afterwards.

The catch spread from that kind of session is heavily weighted toward the low-rarity lobby fish, which is expected from a rod that ignores targeting.

Fish	Caught in 24 hours
Blue Tang	1,906
Prize Fish	517
Derp Fish	410
Shellphone Snail	234
Fusion Fish	193
Owl Fish	118
Mirror Fish	57
Booster Fish	48
Coopfin	28

Converted into Summer Capsules at 100 Sand Dollars each, a day of fishing funded roughly 780 openings in two batches. The result was 14 Mythic units — five Rainman, five Water Mage, two Sand, and two Head Captain — plus several hundred trait rerolls from the duplicate returns.

Where to spend Sand Dollars

Sand Dollars are the Summer Fish Fest currency, and they only work inside the Summer Shop. Summer Capsules sit at 100 each and hold the limited event units and skins, which is why bulk buying is the usual endpoint for a long farming session. The Advanced Rod costs 750 and is worth grabbing if you plan to fill the index manually, since it works on most lobby and story-map fish.

Anime Expeditions home screen with the Store button highlighted before opening the shop menu — The Store button on the home screen, the entry point for spending event currency on capsules and rods.

The shop also stocks Trait Crystals, Stat Locks, and Desert Fruit alongside the rerolls. Milestone progression runs in parallel and is free, handing out Gems, Trait Crystals, Equipment Rerolls, Equipment Locks, and Stat Rerolls across its 25 levels, with a Tidal Siege Banner at level 15 and a Flamingo emote at level 25.

Events menu open on Summer Calendar showing the Calendar Rewards login grid — The Events menu with Summer Calendar selected, showing the Calendar Rewards grid that runs alongside fishing milestones.

Why an AFK session stops producing

There are only a handful of reasons a long session comes back with nothing. The most common is a rod other than the Auto Rod being equipped, which parks the session on the first minigame prompt. The second is the cast input not repeating, since the rod does not re-cast on its own after a catch.

The third is location. Fast-moving water rejects casts outright, and on gamemode maps the rod stays inert until the run has actually started and waves are rolling. Check that the fish counter in the Fishing Event menu has moved before committing to a multi-hour block.

Fishing is the least demanding currency source in the game right now, and the Auto Rod is the whole reason why. Getting to Wave 150 once is the only real cost, and everything after that is a matter of leaving the game running next to a pool and cashing the result into capsules when you come back.