research table sorting/searching?

[thelittlegear]

Great game, but... am i missing something or is the research table design and UI extremely simplistic?
Its an endless list of items, no categorization, no structure, and you have to scroll forever to get to an item you want?
No, i m sure i am missing something. Can someone enlighten me?

cheers
littlegear

[seven]

It is rather simple, but it doesn't really need more. Once you learn something you don't have to look at that item again. It also does some sorting. Items that require certain components are grouped together. Items that you can learn (because you've researched all the components) are grouped at the top and once learned they move to the bottom. Once I've learned the majority of items I just put the table in a chest to get it out of the way. I can easily pull it out for those late game items when I need it.

[thelittlegear]

yeah ok, but for example, im to gather clay and sand to make wet brick, so i can dry it on deck, and then use it to make a smelter in order to have ingots to make a shovel
at least, from other survival games i would have surmised that i need a shovel to pick up sand and clay?

[thelittlegear]

how do i get a shovel? -> would be the short version of the above

[seven]

Sand and clay you get from the ocean bottom using your hook, so you don't need a shovel yet. Yeah, it doesn't make a lot of sense but we're talking about a game where the world is flooded. You'll need a shovel later to dig up dirt and you can learn how to make it after making some ingots.

[thelittlegear]

oh my... just went to the shoreline of an island, with the shark bait in effect. I would NEVER have guest that you use the hook!
Alas though... where do i find sand and clay on the ocean bottom. Doth it bear a different color than the usual yellow, pray tell

[seven]

Your hook is your life. Just swim around and approach things. If you get a prompt you can harvest it. Later if you see something with a shovel icon you would use that.

I'll link a picture from the raft wiki. The nearest is clay, it's a rounded lump on the bottom. Behind and to the right is sand, also a lump on the bottom, more angled and lighter colored.

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/raft_gamepedia_en/images/a/a5/Clay_underwater.png/revision/latest?cb=20200131155949

[thelittlegear]

oh ok, i get it!
Thats like, entirely unintuitive, but so is the whole game - being used to tutorials in survival games nowadays, i guess my discovery-on-my-own instincts are a little rustier than i thought.

Basically you then feed any new material you find into the research table and by researching everything you slowly empty the list... That goes fully against my instinct of only researching what i need at that moment :D

Thank you seven, you saved me from refunding an otherwise very intriguing game!

[seven]

You're welcome. Research is a bit different than other games I've played, where there is a sometimes large cost to research new items, tech, etc. so I too had some reluctance at first to open up everything. But in Raft the only cost is providing a single sample of the different resources you find, so it's fine to research everything.

[❄️The Last Frontier 😊]

it's only used to unlock the items you can get added to your crafting menu. Thats the only purpose of the table is to unlock new items

[Ryvaken Tadrya]

Originally posted by thelittlegear:

I would NEVER have guest that you use the hook!

It makes a little bit more sense when you see the metal hook: it's a crowbar. You're prying metal and rocks out of their places. It doesn't make a lot of sense with clay or sand though, that is true.

The bigger issue is that clay and sand were added before the shovel. To make a shovel, you need metal. To make metal, you need a smelter. To build a smelter, you need bricks. To get bricks, you need sand and clay. So when they added a shovel but not a plastic shovel they shot themselves in the foot and decided to ignore it.

Short version: Your hook is a tool for harvesting things off the seabed. A metal hook does it in half the time as a plastic hook, which is the main reason to even both with a metal hook since its throwing range isn't that great relative to its cost in materials.

The shovel, by the way, is mostly used for collecting dirt from large islands.

[❃ Galiäna Krüger ❃]

You don't really need a "sorting" for research table. All you need to do is insert raw material (some processed) to see and unlock blueprint (aside from the one from NPC or drifting barrels or quest if any).

Everything is sorted inside crafting menu.

[❄️The Last Frontier 😊]

Originally posted by ❃ Galiäna Krüger ❃:

You don't really need a "sorting" for research table. All you need to do is insert raw material (some processed) to see and unlock blueprint (aside from the one from NPC or drifting barrels or quest if any).

Everything is sorted inside crafting menu.

Especially where all the locked items get pushed to the top of the list and the unlocked ones to the bottom that's all the sorting that is needed