diff --git a/ai_prompts/5.txt b/ai_prompts/5.txt
index e7c626e..b6f61ab 100644
--- a/ai_prompts/5.txt
+++ b/ai_prompts/5.txt
@@ -5,6 +5,57 @@ Hard fish should be more difficult AND rarer to catch than easy fish (easy = low
 
 Response:
 
+I have the full picture now. Here's my diagnosis of why it feels unbalanced, and the number changes I'd propose. I won't touch anything until you approve.
 
+Why it feels broken
+1. Hard fish barely appear. Your weight is (max_difficulty - difficulty + 1) ** 0.5. With the Bass license (max 100), a difficulty-10 Bone Fish gets weight √91 ≈ 9.5, while the difficulty-100 Hammerhead gets √1 = 1. That's a ~9.5x gap — hard fish are extremely rare. The sqrt was meant to compress this, but subtracting from max_difficulty first re-stretches it. This is the main "I never see hard fish" cause.
+
+2. The difficulty→skill-check mapping is brutally nonlinear. Bar length is (1 - difficulty/100) * 50:
+
+Difficulty 10 → ~45° bars (very easy)
+Difficulty 50 → ~25°
+Difficulty 90 → ~5° bars
+Difficulty 100 → 0 → crashes (the error you hit)
+Meanwhile bar count is difficulty // 10:
+
+Difficulty 100 → 10 bars, each ~0° wide. Mathematically impossible.
+Difficulty 90 → 9 bars at ~5°.
+So the top-tier fish are simultaneously max-count AND min-length — the difficulty hits you twice, multiplicatively. That's your "insanely impossible" fish.
+
+3. Speed also scales linearly with difficulty on top of both of the above — a third stacking penalty.
+
+So difficulty attacks length, count, and speed all at once, and the hardest fish round to literally uncatchable.
+
+Proposed number changes (data/constants only, no logic)
+A. Rebalance appearance weighting (k in pickRandomCreature) Change the exponent k from 0.5 to 0.75. This keeps hard-fish rarity (you want that) but softens the gap so you actually see them. Hammerhead goes from 1/9.5 odds to roughly 1/5.5 relative to the easiest fish. If you want them rarer, I'd stay nearer 0.6; for more frequent, 0.85.
+
+B. Fix the length formula's floor (constants in startSkillCheck) The 50 base and the /100 divisor are the levers. I'd propose base 60 and flooring the length so difficulty-100 doesn't hit 0 — but flooring is logic, so instead I can change the formula's constants so the minimum never reaches 0 at difficulty 100: use (1 - difficulty/125) instead of /100. At difficulty 100 that's (1 - 0.8) = 0.2 → 12° bars instead of 0. This also fixes the crash without a logic change.
+
+C. Soften bar count difficulty // 10 is steep. difficulty // 15 caps the Hammerhead at 6 bars instead of 10, Lobster(80) at 5, Pufferfish(50) at 3. Much more playable.
+
+D. Creature difficulty spread (optional, in creatures.tsv) Your difficulties cluster at round numbers (10,20,40,50,60,70,80,90,100). That's fine. I'd leave the TSV alone unless you want me to spread them.
+
+One thing I need you to confirm: proposals A, B, and C each change a number inside a formula. That's technically editing a line of code, not just a standalone constant. You said numbers-only and ask before logic. These are numeric constants embedded in expressions — do you count that as allowed, or do you want to make those edits yourself and have me only touch the standalone constants (AVAILABLE_UPGRADES, AVAILABLE_BAITS, creatures.tsv, the k value)?
+
+Tell me which scope you want and I'll proceed.
+
+###############################################
+
+Follow Up: 
+
+thats fine to modify - theyre still constants. go ahed and implement changes A, B, and C, and ill playtest the game to see if its more balanced.
+
+Response:
+
+All three done:
+
+A — k: 0.5 → 0.75 (hard fish appear more often while staying rarer than easy ones).
+B — length formula: (1 - difficulty/100) * 50 → (1 - difficulty/125) * 60. Difficulty-100 fish now get ~12° bars instead of 0°, which also kills the randrange(0) crash.
+C — bar count: difficulty // 10 → difficulty // 15. Hammerhead (100) drops from 10 bars to 6, Lobster (80) to 5, Pufferfish (50) to 3.
+Quick reference for what the hardest fish now looks like at Bass tier, no upgrades: Hammerhead = 6 bars at ~12° each, speed capped by the existing max(..., 5). Tough but passable.
+
+One edge case still lurking that I did not touch (it's the logic you asked me to leave alone): the newPos divisor (360 - lastEndPos) // (numBars - len(...)) can still produce randrange(5, 5) if early bars eat most of the circle. Lowering the bar count makes it much less likely, but it's not impossible on a bad roll. Flag it if you hit a crash during playtesting and we can revisit.
+
+Go ahead and playtest — let me know how the frequency and difficulty feel.
 
 ###############################################
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/main.py b/main.py
index e104e20..8202658 100644
--- a/main.py
+++ b/main.py
@@ -145,6 +145,7 @@ def onAppStart(app):
     app.skillCheckSpeed = 1
     app.skillCheckBars = [] # tuples of (position, length)
     app.skillCheckFailed = False
+    app.showPatternTimer = 30
 
     #FISHING
     app.fishingTimer = 0
@@ -207,6 +208,7 @@ def resetFishingState(app):
     app.skillCheckSpeed = 1
     app.skillCheckBars = [] # list of tuples of form (position, length)
     app.skillCheckFailed = False
+    app.showPatternTimer = 30
 
     app.hookedFish = None
     app.fishingTimer = 0
@@ -225,7 +227,7 @@ def pickRandomCreature(app):
     print("max difficulty:", max_difficulty)
     
     #here we take the root of the difficulty to represent the weight of that fish, this makes higher difficulty fish easier to catch once unlocked
-    k = 0.5
+    k = 0.75
     #invert the difficulty and add one so it avoids zero
     possibilities = [(creature["name"], (max_difficulty - creature["difficulty"] + 1) ** k) for creature in app.creatures if creature["difficulty"] <= max_difficulty]
     print("possibilities:",possibilities)
@@ -262,14 +264,14 @@ def startSkillCheck(app, creature):
 
     app.skillCheckSpeed = max(difficulty / fishingPower, 5) #this got INCREDIBLY slow with good upgrades
 
-    numBars = difficulty // 10 - sum([upgrade[2] for upgrade in AVAILABLE_UPGRADES if (upgrade[0] in app.save["owned_upgrades"] and upgrade[1] == "count")])
+    numBars = difficulty // 15 - sum([upgrade[2] for upgrade in AVAILABLE_UPGRADES if (upgrade[0] in app.save["owned_upgrades"] and upgrade[1] == "count")])
     numBars = max(numBars, 1)
 
     lastPos = 0
     lastLen = 0
     while len(app.skillCheckBars) < numBars:
         #50 is default length, adjust it proportionally to difficulty, then add upgrade length multipliers. also set to int instead of float
-        newLen = random.randrange(int((1 - (difficulty / 100)) * 50 * math.prod([upgrade[2] for upgrade in AVAILABLE_UPGRADES if (upgrade[0] in app.save["owned_upgrades"] and upgrade[1] == "timing")])))
+        newLen = random.randrange(int((1 - (difficulty / 125)) * 60 * math.prod([upgrade[2] for upgrade in AVAILABLE_UPGRADES if (upgrade[0] in app.save["owned_upgrades"] and upgrade[1] == "timing")])))
         #take the end of the last bar, and add a random amount between 5 degrees
         #and the remaining amount to the end divided by the number of bars left
         lastEndPos = (lastPos + lastLen)
@@ -316,9 +318,12 @@ def onStep(app):
                 app.hookedFish = selectedCreature
                 startSkillCheck(app, selectedCreature)
         case "skill-check":
-            app.skillCheckAngle += app.skillCheckSpeed / 6 #this was far too fast
-            if (app.skillCheckAngle > 360):
-                finishSkillCheck(app)
+            if app.showPatternTimer < 1:
+                app.skillCheckAngle += app.skillCheckSpeed / 6 #this was far too fast
+                if (app.skillCheckAngle > 360):
+                    finishSkillCheck(app)
+            else:
+                app.showPatternTimer -= 1
 
 
 def onMousePress(app, mouseX, mouseY):
@@ -720,6 +725,7 @@ def drawDebug(app):
     activeBait: {app.save["current_bait"]}
     Angle: {rounded(app.skillCheckAngle)}
     NextBar: {app.skillCheckBars[0] if len(app.skillCheckBars) > 0 else "N/A"}
+    showPatternTimer: {rounded(app.showPatternTimer)}
     """
     debugLines = debugStr.splitlines()
     size = 16
diff --git a/save.json b/save.json
index 29ed0f3..03bbc2a 100644
--- a/save.json
+++ b/save.json
@@ -1 +1 @@
-{"cash": 906146.0, "owned_baits": ["Worms", "Prawns", "Tuna", "Bass"], "owned_upgrades": ["Massive Bobber", "Huge Bobber", "Large Bobber", "Medium Bobber", "Galaxy Rod", "Glowing Rod", "Spectral Rod", "Shiny Rod"], "current_bait": "Tuna"}
\ No newline at end of file
+{"cash": 906214.0, "owned_baits": ["Worms", "Prawns", "Tuna", "Bass"], "owned_upgrades": ["Massive Bobber", "Huge Bobber", "Large Bobber", "Medium Bobber", "Galaxy Rod", "Glowing Rod", "Spectral Rod", "Shiny Rod"], "current_bait": "Bass"}
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/sprites/fish/book.png.png b/sprites/fish/book.png
similarity index 100%
rename from sprites/fish/book.png.png
rename to sprites/fish/book.png