Build and Defend Your Raft drops you onto a tiny wooden pallet in the middle of a green ocean with nothing but a Crafting Table, a captain’s chair and a chest. This guide walks you through the first hour: what the tutorial asks of you, what to build first, and how to avoid becoming someone’s first loot pinata.
The tutorial quests
The game onboards you with a short quest chain (the whole tutorial takes about a minute if you just follow it):
- Collect the materials — grab the floating crates and barrels around your raft. During the tutorial phase every pickup grants 5 wood regardless of what you actually grabbed.
- Upgrade the Crafting Table to Level 2 — feed your wood into the table’s upgrade menu. This unlocks floors, walls, doors, nets and cannons.
- Raid other players — the game explicitly tells you to go take other players’ chests. Raiding is not an optional side activity; it is the economy.
Your first 10 minutes
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Do not decorate. Flags, torches and cosmetics do zero steal protection. Every plank should go into progression first.
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Craft a net early. Nets hang off your raft’s edge and catch floating loot automatically while you sail — the single best passive income in the game. See the nets guide.
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Buy the second floor when you can afford it. Walls and a door give you a place to retreat; see the building guide for the piece catalog and costs.
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Learn the two panic buttons. Lock Raft stops attackers for a short window
and Shield blocks cannon fire — both have cooldowns, so don’t waste them the moment you spawn (you also get a free one-minute shield when you join a server). Details in the lock & shield guide.
What to upgrade first
The Crafting Table’s upgrade tab has four tracks: the table itself, your chest, raft size, and raft weapons. The community-proven order:
- Crafting Table level — every higher tier of gear is locked behind it.
- Nets — more passive loot while you do anything else.
- Raft Size — the first level costs 180 wood and raises your build limit.
- Walls and a door — a closed ring beats a pretty deck.
- Raft Weapons — 150 wood, 110 metal and 70 scrap raises your cannon and turret placement cap (you start at 4 cannons’ worth).
Common beginner mistakes
- Swimming with sharks. The water is hostile: sharks chase and bite swimmers, and you can only hold your breath for a limited time. Use your harpoon to pull loot in instead of diving for it.
- Leaving the chest on the dock. New players park their chest right by the edge. Move it inward — raiders grab the whole chest and walk off with it.
- Fighting everything. An 18-player server means somebody out there has reinforced walls and four upgraded cannons. Read a raft before you attack it: cannons and plating mean come back later.
- Ignoring gold. You’ll collect gold from floats and sharks and wonder what it’s for. Right now: nothing. It is saved for a future update — just bank it.
Where to go next
- Resources guide — what crates and barrels actually drop
- Crafting Table guide — every level and unlock order
- How to raid — when the tutorial throws you at other players
- Codes page — no codes exist yet, but here’s where they’ll land