Life is Game: How I Survived 208 Days on a Raft

Skippity doppity doo, Brucey’s coming for you!

If you’ve been reading the articles that I’ve put out on Megazine, you’ll probably realise by now that I’m a Grade-A troll. Mountain troll in the girl’s bathroom in Hogwarts Castle kind of troll. Snot and all.

If there’s ever a competition for trolling people, I’ll take the first, second, third and consolation prize. My competition to sweep, broom and dustpan all. I even troll myself, because I’m a joke who doesn’t know what she’s doing on this earth, and if I’m here on this earth to suffer, I might as well have some fun while I’m at it.

For the basis of this thing I’m writing today, please read this lovely article (How I Survived my 12-hour Flight and Learnt Some Important Life Lessons) by our beloved Business Editor, Mr. See Tho Yong Yang.

If it wasn’t clear enough by now, I’m trolling him with this article. Just kidding. (Not really.)

But I thought it’d be nice to break away from all the drudgery of whatever article Clement has cooked up for Megazine and ramble about the game that I’m obsessed with now. So… here’s my experience (and some additional tips for beginners, if this article spurs you to buy and download Raft – available on Steam) floating in an ocean and fighting for survival.

Shout out to my ex-boyfriend for buying me this game, by the way. I’ve got at least 120 hours in on this game, so at least your money didn’t go to waste, I guess. *Update: Went into Raft yesterday to get them screenshots and he was playing Raft too. Congratulations on catching your first batch of bees.

*Update: I’m reading this article right now and it’s screaming “I’m going to be single and lonely for perpetually the rest of my life with six hundred cats to feed and a potato chip-dust encrusted keyboard and a broken-down ASUS laptop that’s wheezing for its life.” If this article goes viral – fat hope – Aftershock, could you hook me up with one of those fancy schmancy CPUs of yours?

Just kidding. (Not really.) Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

*Update 2: Yooo, this article is 1.7k words long. Turn back now while you can – I got too excited yammering about Raft.

Welcome to the <s>Jungle</s> Ocean.

Day one dawns.

You’re a Forward Scout in a post-apocalyptic world where water covers most of the world, and you’ve miraculously landed on a small, two-by-two wooden raft. All you have with you is a Captain Hook-esque scrap hook, and with it, an ocean of debris for your picking.

Plank. Plastic. Palm Leaf. Stone. Scrap.

With plank and plastic, you can build more of your raft. But wait, there’s a shark approaching from afar! It’s Bruce, fueled by a fiery vengeance for all things wood and plastic, and he’s here to chompy-chomp on your raft to break it apart. Stab him with a spear to chase him off! Repair your raft to prevent your small patch of safety from disappearing.

*Update: To get the above screenshot I had to build a foundation that isn’t reinforced so I could lure Brucey to attack my raft. Amazing. What a waste of three plastic and three plank.

Two palm leaves make one rope. Why? Don’t ask me. I don’t know either.

But you’re here now, so you have no choice but to fish for raw materials to expand your raft, make it to the nearest island, farm for more raw materials, make your raft livable, and then build a whole navigation system to a chain of story islands to restore human civilization by hunting down Utopia.

*Sidetrack: There was once in junior college that a friend of mine accidentally wrote “Ethiopia” instead of “Utopia” for an answer, and she’ll never live that down, because it’s been nine years since that happened and it’s still being brought up today. She’s also doing very well for herself right now, so all ye hopeless heathens out there, have hope.

Lesson #1: The Four Founding Squares

Right in the beginning of the game, all players will spawn on four foundations of the raft. These four wooden pieces are incredibly important, because the field of debris in the ocean spawns thirteen foundations wide, with these four foundations as the center of it all.

Build too much to one side, and it might just affect how much debris your collection nets can collect because your raft is too far off center to properly collect debris. I learnt about this far too late, so my raft currently skews too much to the left. All my collection nets on the right are often empty.

Speaking of collection nets – build them as early as possible in early game. Your weapons and tools will break after a while of using them, so save yourself the heartache of going through too many Scrap Hooks by using the collection nets to net yourself a plentiful bounty of flotsam.

Lesson #2: Park Your Raft Far from the Island

Bruce is desperately hungry. Desperately hungry enough for human meat that when he doesn’t get enough of it, he attacks your raft. Use your raft as a decoy, park far away from the island, and go hunting underwater with your scrap hook for more precious minerals, such as metal ore, copper, clay, seaweed, and sand.

“Wait, doesn’t that mean that by the time I get back to my raft, it’ll be gone?”

Nope, because Bruce doesn’t attack your raft if you’re not on it. It’s a good method because who the hell has time to fish and build Shark Bait and all the other things in between? ‘Sides, the shark bait only lasts for 1 minute and 5 seconds or 20 seconds depending on which game mode you’re playing in, and that’s barely enough time to hoover up the ocean floor. Don’t make mommy disappointed now – you need to vacuum everywhere thoroughly.

Lesson #3: Wegetable Soup is Your Best Friend

The second time I started a new raft (my first raft has 208 days and counting), I used a Simple Grill for the first few days in-game, then went straight to building a Cooking Pot rather than the Advanced Grill. There’re three grills: Simple, Advanced, and Electric.

Screw all of ‘em, you don’t need ‘em.

Just craft three small crop plots, plant them potatoes and beets, and cook vegetable soup using the Cooking Pot. Two vegetable soups fill your hunger bar extremely well, and they even give you bonus fullness that takes a longer time to dwindle.

*Update: I’m rebuilding my raft so my inventory is really messy. But yes. Wegetable soup is life, wegetable soup is love. If you know where that reference came from, I’m sorry for the childhood trauma you suffered – how’s therapy going?

If you want to explore everything the game has to offer, then go ahead and do them magical things like building a Grill for yourself. For me personally, vegetable soup’s the best way to fill my hunger bar, and I’m still early-stages in my second playthrough that I can’t afford to waste any raw material that I have.

Lesson #4: Hardship is Hard Please Just Give Me the Rewards

The one thing that blew me away mid-storyline was how grindy the game could get. If you have big pipe dreams for a fancy ass raft, please go stock up on scrap, plank, and plastic. Seriously. I’m so traumatized from my first run that I scoop up any scrap that I see on the ocean floor. I have too much scrap on my second run now.

Also, there was once in the middle of my first raft that I nearly rage quit. To save space on the raft, I built four Medium storages and stacked them on one wall. Little Miss here didn’t realise that when you remove the wall, everything attached to it just disintegrates to dust. Storage and materials inside included.

*Update: Lesson learnt, these walls are never coming down until I finalise a place for them on my raft.

I got rid of all my chests containing precious material that took me days to collect in this manner. Bye bye Metal Ingots, bye bye Copper Ingots. Bye bye everything that I collected and smelted. Including scrap for nails.

*Update: I still don’t have enough scrap for my first raft.

Ahh, fond memories. I didn’t play Raft for two days straight after that happened, too caught up in the mire of having to grind for my materials again because of my own stupid mistake. Ahh, story of my life. But the allure of finishing up the game was too strong to ignore, which is why I went back in again. Don’t be a Hsiao Ying, make extra storages and shift everything.

Good Riddance, Olof!

Olof’s the main antagonist in Raft. Not Olaf, the snowman from Frozen. I won’t spoil the storyline of Raft too much. But it’s an extremely fun game. Did you know that the developers started it as three students in university?

It’s like Mary Shelley and Frankenstein – she wrote it when she was eighteen. When I was in eighteen and in university, I was busy being a hot mess. Honestly, I still am a hot mess. So. There’s no difference.

Please give Raft a try – it’s really fun.

Also, if this article isn’t incentive enough for you to try Raft – you can catch heckin’ llamas and rear them for wool. I love the acknowledgement of human greed and the perpetual human condition of taking advantage of the natural environment to get further ahead in life. Alas, I am a fallible human prone to giving in to my irreversible nature.

In other words, I caught ten llamas. For the heck of it. So many poisonous puffer fishes died to supply my explosive powder. I’m so proud of myself. Anyways, my first llama is named Yyama. The second is named Yyyama. The third is named Yyyyama. You get the gist. Because if Llao Llao is pronounce yao-yao, I get to name my llamas Yyamas. Also, the special stripey llama is named Yyripey because there’s a 4% chance of coming across one so he’s special.

No, I didn’t name any of my llamas Kuzco. Missed out on a great opportunity there.

Also, in case you’re wondering – the name of the goat is Yoat. I can’t remember what I named my Cluckers – I think I just dumped them into the pen without renaming them.

Till next time, Forward Scouts.