Sharks Guide
The ocean in Build and Defend Your Raft is green, polluted, and patrolled. Sharks are the environment’s way of taxing every minute you spend in the water — and, oddly, one of the game’s resource drops. Here’s what’s confirmed and what’s still mysterious.
When sharks attack
- Sharks home in on swimmers. Wading off your raft to hand-grab a crate is how most players meet their first one.
- You can only hold your breath for a limited time underwater — a dive that meets a shark usually meets it mid-ascent.
- They will kill you. Combat footage includes sharks finishing players mid-chase. Death respawns you on your raft (chest intact), so the cost is time and pride — and whatever you were carrying in hand.
The safe-loot rule
Because the water is hostile, the game hands you two anti-shark tools early:
- The harpoon — pull floating loot to your deck without touching water. The upgraded harpoon 2 extends range and pull speed.
- Nets — the raft does the swimming, not you.
Between the two, a well-run raft barely touches the ocean surface. Reserve swimming for island stops where the shallows are short.
Shark drops: a swimming treasure chest
Killed sharks can be looted, and they drop wood, metal, scrap and gold — the full resource table. (No shark meat, which one player formally protested in the official Discord.) That makes sharks:
- The only renewable mob source of all four resources, including gold, which otherwise comes only from floats and islands.
- Risk-priced: every second in the water is aggro time.
Multiple players have encountered rafts accompanied by what is clearly a personal shark — one streamer had a shark shadowing their raft and fighting for them, to the visible shock of everyone in the lobby. Another player was casually told the attackers’ sharks “were tamed.”
How taming works is not yet confirmed — there is no visible taming item, shop entry or gamepass (the game currently sells no gamepasses at all). Watch the updates page: a shark taming system riding a Saturday patch would explain the “gold is for something in the future” teaser.
Shark farming, safely
If you want the drops without the drama:
- Bait the shark from your deck edge — it will circle the raft.
- Meet it with your best weapon; the reinforced sword shreds it fast.
- Loot immediately and get back on deck; a second shark is rarely far.
- In a crew, one player baits while the driver keeps the raft between you and open water.
Related pages
- Resources guide — the full drop table in context
- Weapons tier list — what kills sharks fastest
- Getting started — surviving your first week