Designing your raft

[Bummenphist]

Having watched numerous game play videos, I think it would be best if I could design my raft on paper beforehand, which should save me time and materials later. Some tips I've picked up: Running up slopes made from roofs seems faster than stairs or ladders. Don't make walls for the lower level (one day you'll die trying to get back on board). Keep similar use items together. Keep the sail near the anchor and the radar unit (even if they're on a different floor - keep a hole ready to drop down into). Another ideas for streamlining the raft and its efficiency?

[City Builder]

I eventually place walls on the first floor just not around the edges, no ropes or picket fences. This allows you to place two (maybe 3, not tried) chests mounted to each wall section to maximize storage area.

Depending on the size of my raft, I might have 4 or more permanent anchors (usually at least one at each corner of the raft on medium to large builds) so that I can always reach one really fast when an island or deserted raft comes along side.

When destroying sections (like a ramp of roofs or multiple platforms stacked) start at the top and destroy it so that you can collect all items back, if you have 10 platforms stacked and destroy the bottom you only get back the resources for that one platform.

If you're going to create farming pots, build an advanced water distiller nearby to it and if necessary have a missing foundation to easily collect sea water to fill it. I've found it's best to create as many water distillers as it takes to water all my crops, I think it's something like 1 distiller per 5 planter boxes. That way you're not waiting for it to distill sea into fresh water.

If you don't want to waste a lot of time, create multiple cooking stations and kilns. Drives me nuts to make one metal bar at a time, I generally have 5 of the smelting kilns and 3 of the cooking pots.

As far as sails go I use a mod so that the more sails that I have the faster my raft goes, and I can hold Shift+R on any of them and it will turn them all, or Shift+E to open or close all of them at once, and then I keep a row of them on the back of my raft and a row on the front so they're always fast to get to. As a side note, if you use this mod, do NOT fall off your raft with the sails open, you will NOT catch up to the raft.

Create many seagull nests (I think I'm fitting 4 of them on each foundation) so that you'll always have plenty of eggs should you not want to fish or hunt shark for a while.

When you're raft gets larger and you have it surrounded by collection nets and want to add more, don't add them to the outside, start replacing foundations with the collection nets since you can walk on them so that helps to reduce continual growth of the raft outwards and thus helping with the lag a little.

Speaking of which, surround your raft on at least 2 sides with collection nets. In this way if you get bumped around or the wind shifts (did this to me last night, not sure if it is the sail mod or if it's part of the game) you'll have some collection nets catching stuff still. I prefer 4 sides covered and sometimes multiple rows on each side starting from the outside and working inwards.


I also maximize my debris collection by building booms on each side but only as wide as the debris field so that nothing gets by the side of my raft as I can't actually build an entire raft as large as the debris field is as it will heavily lag the game.

[Bummenphist]

Some good stuff there, especially about the anchors. About the mod for the sails, was that something you made, or is available to everyone to add?

[City Builder]

Everybody. Its name is more sails more speed. Think it's listed in the mod forum

[Bummenphist]

Sorry, I was referring to the Shift R to move them all together, and the Shift E to open/close them all. If that is available to everyone, that would be perfect..

[City Builder]

No just tried it without loading that mod and Shift+ does not operate all sails so it must be part of the mod.

Other than aesthetics there is no point to multiple sails (without a mod) since having multiples don't seem to make you go any faster which one would think would be the case having more canvas in the wind.

[Bummenphist]

Thank you for clearing that up for me.