Sharks are a constant threat in Raft that you’ll have to deal with eventually. At the start of your adventure, you’ll be trapped on a tiny raft, surrounded by infinite sea — and sharks will show up to chew up your only safe place. You’ll need to collect resources from the ocean and fight back. Early in the game, dealing with the shark can be a huge challenge — it just keeps coming back, ripping up your raft foundations and trying to eat you up.
The shark is your most immediate threat in Raft and until you can craft reinforced foundations there’s no permanent solution to get rid of it. Even if you kill the shark, another will appear eventually. To help you overcome this early hurdle, here’s a few tips to make shark survival easy.
More Raft guides:
Unlockable Characters | How To Get Scrap Cubes | How To Get Titanium | Reaching The Radio Tower
How To Stop Shark Attacks | Protecting Your Raft
The shark is a hungry predator that is always near your raft — it will attack every 5 minutes. It will leave after taking 15 HP of damage. If the shark is killed it will disappear for about 3 minutes, giving you time to explore the water around your raft. The shark is a constant threat, so here are a few tips to handle it.
- Dealing With The Shark | Early Game
- At the start, you won’t have weapons. Use your hammer to attack the shark. It isn’t effective, but it is the only way.
- Stay away from the teeth. The teeth are the shark’s “damage” so try to avoid being close when the shark bites into the raft.
- You can repair raft foundations for up to 50% with more planks to delay the shark, even when they’re being attacked.
- Build triangle foundation on the edges of your raft. These take just as long to destroy by the shark but cost half as many planks to construct.
- Make sure to move any important infrastructure off the foundation that is being attacked. If it breaks you will permanently lose whatever is on that foundation.
- Craft Shark Bait to distract the shark. If you need to enter the water for any reason, throw Shark Bait — it will distract the shark for 80 seconds — just don’t get too close. If you get within 30 meters, the shark will still target you instead.
The shark is a constant threat. Your first goal will be to get a weapon. Once you have weapons, the shark becomes much less intimidating.
- Dealing With The Shark | Weapons
- Eventually, you’ll be able to craft the Wooden Spear. The Wooden Spear can drive off the Shark with 3 stabs — 5 damage each, for a total of 15 damage. Killing a shark with the Wooden Spear requires 30 stabs. The Wooden Spear only has a durability of 20, so you’ll need at least x2 Wooden Spears to kill your first shark.
- You can jump into the water and time your dodges to avoid the shark bite, but I don’t recommend this for early players. You’re much better off stabbing the shark from your raft.
- Next, you’ll need the Metal Spear ASAP. The Metal Spear can drive off the shark in 2 stabs or kill in 20 stabs. It has much higher durability and can be used 40 times before breaking.
- The Metal Spear is unlocked through the Research Table and requires x6 Planks, x2 Rope, x2 Metal Ingot and x1 Bolt. Use your first metal resources to create the Metal Spear.
- The Basic Bow is the best weapon against sharks. It deals as much damage as the Metal Spear with Stone Arrows. The Basic Bow can be used 60 times. You can recollect your arrows when you loot the shark’s body.
Weapons are still only a temporary measure when dealing with sharks. If you want a permanent solution to stop shark attacks, you’ll need metal.
- Dealing With The Shark | Permanent Deterrent
- Finally, if you want to stop sharks from attacking your raft forever, you need Reinforced Foundations.
- This requires metal resources. Once you start exploring islands, radio stations and lost yachts, you’ll have much more access to metal.
- Metal can be used to reinforce Foundations and Collection Nets. To completely shark-proof your raft, you need to surround the outer edges of the lower level with reinforcement. You can also build a smaller lower level with reinforced edges, and then build an upper level that’s as large as you want. The shark can’t attack the upper level.
The shark won’t disappear. It will still circle your raft and attack if you swim in the water — the reinforced raft will just keep the shark from attacking your raft directly. If there are any section of your raft that haven’t been reinforced yet, the shark will chew them up. Once you’ve got enough metal to reinforce the lower level of your raft, you’ll be free of constant shark attacks.
