Raft: Food, Water, and Storage

A beet cooking on the Simple Grill over a fire in Raft, with a prompt to place a plank as fuel

Cooking food: the Simple Grill

Eventually your food meter starts flashing, and you need to start cooking. The Simple Grill handles it: six planks, one scrap, and three rope, tucked under the Food/Water tab. It “can cook a piece of food,” using planks as fuel. Set it down, feed it a plank or two to burn, and you can start grilling the potatoes and beets you’ve been pulling out of crates and barrels. Cooking them raises how much they fill you up by about half again as much (Raw 10 to Cooked 15 Hunger, the same for both potato and beet), at the cost of a little wood for fuel. Because those vegetables come out of the crates and barrels you hook so reliably, a grill plus a steady supply of crates is often all the food security you need early on, with no fishing rod required.

The Food and Water crafting tab showing the Simple Grill recipe in Raft, used to cook food with planks as fuel
The Simple Grill: six planks, one scrap, three rope. It burns planks as fuel to cook one item at a time, and cooked veg fills you up about half again as much as raw (10 to 15 Hunger), the same for potatoes and beets.
A beet cooking on the Simple Grill over a fire in Raft, with a prompt to place a plank as fuel
A beet on the grill. Press E to feed it a plank when the fire needs fuel, and collect the cooked food when it’s done.

The Fishing Rod can wait, but build one before long. It’s a Tools-tab craft costing six planks and eight rope. But crate loot is random. If you find yourself swimming in leaves and wood while the vegetables aren’t showing up, you’ll struggle to keep your food meter up, and that’s the signal to build the rod. By then you’ve almost certainly turned all those spare leaves into rope, so eight rope is easy to spare. Fishing doesn’t put your gathering on hold. While your line is out you can’t throw the hook, but any flotsam that drifts within arm’s reach can still be grabbed by hand, so casting off your wide front edge lets you fish and collect at the same time.

The Tools crafting tab showing the Fishing Rod recipe in Raft, costing planks and rope
The Fishing Rod: six planks and eight rope. When crates stop dropping enough vegetables, this is a reliable backup food source.

Drinking water: the Simple Purifier and a cup

Water is the other survival meter, and you can’t drink the ocean. Your thirst meter drains steadily, and the fix is the Simple Purifier: six planks, six palm leaves, and four plastic, in that same Food/Water tab. As it says, it “can purify one cup of saltwater into freshwater,” and like the grill it burns planks as fuel.

The Food and Water crafting tab showing the Simple Purifier recipe in Raft, which turns saltwater into freshwater
The Simple Purifier: six planks, six palm leaves, four plastic. It burns planks to make a cup of seawater drinkable.

You also need something to carry the water in, so craft an Empty Cup (four plastic) while you’re in that tab. The routine: scoop seawater into the cup, pour it into the purifier to clean it (planks burning as fuel), then drink the fresh water straight from the cup. The last item in that tab, the Small Crop Plot, is for later, when you’d rather grow your own potatoes and beets than rely on whatever floats by.

The Food and Water crafting tab showing the Empty Cup recipe in Raft, which can be filled with water
The Empty Cup costs four plastic. It’s the vessel for both scooping seawater into the purifier and drinking the clean water back out.

Out of inventory space? Craft Small Storage

It doesn’t take long before your inventory is bulging: twenty-stacks of leaves and planks, scrap, food, tools, and no room left to grab the next thing that floats by. The fix is Small Storage, found under the Other tab (alongside the Research Table and a Simple Bed). It costs eight plastic, one scrap, and two rope, and it’s a box bolted to your raft that holds items you don’t need to carry. Drop one or two on the deck, offload your surplus building materials into them, and you can pick things up again.

The Other crafting tab showing the Small Storage recipe in Raft, a cheap box to store items
Small Storage: eight plastic, one scrap, two rope, under the Other tab.
Placing a Small Storage container on the raft deck in Raft
Set it down anywhere on the deck (press or hold R to rotate it), then stash your surplus inside.
An open Small Storage container holding leaves, planks and stone next to the inventory in Raft
Open it and move materials across from your inventory. That’s a stack of leaves, planks, and stone off your person and out of the way.