Stranded Deep: Tips & Tricks

Stranded Deep is a survival game developed and published by Australian studio Beam Team Games for Microsoft Windows, MacOS, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One and Linux.

This game is an open-world survival game in which you attempt to survive on an island, struggling with the resources you are provided with, to continue on and explore other islands.

Image: Beam Team Games

In Stranded Deep, there’s an online mode which was recently added where you can play with one other player, so you can play with one of your mates and start your adventure together.

When you first create an island save on the game, you go through a small cut scene where your engine will fail therefore you crash an airplane in the ocean, and have to swim out of the flaming plane up onto a raft. Once you’re done with the cutscene, you will spawn on the water with your safety raft (which includes storage, a paddle, and an anchor) next to an island. When you make your way to the island, don’t forget to drag the raft on land or to use the anchor, so that it doesn’t float away.

You will want to keep your safety raft because it can be used as transport before getting a proper raft. After that, you will want to grab everything on the island like scrap, rocks, and sticks. Make sure to loot any boats around you, as they always have good resources. The most important items from the start are sticks and rocks. As soon as you get a rock, you should go to the crafting menu and craft a stone tool. The stone tool is used for cutting stuff such as trees, coconuts, yucca, and killing mobs that spawn in such as crabs.

Image: Beam Team Games

In Stranded Deep, you have stats such as thirst, UV, hunger, and health. When you start you want to focus on your thirst and your hunger. When trying to get your thirst level up there is a water still and coconuts. Coconuts are found on the top of the palm trees that spawn on the islands. When you collect the coconuts, cut them open with a tool like a stone tool, knife, or an axe.  A method that helps you stop losing water levels from diarrhoea when eating coconuts is to crack the coconut shell off. Then you will be able to drink it. Once you have drunk it and it’s empty cut it in half, and eat one half of the coconut and wait ten seconds before eating the other half.

Make sure you use palm trees wisely as they do not respawn. When you progress further in the game and get more resources you will want to craft a water still. A water still is an automatic water catcher although over time you will need to restock it with palm fronds or fibrous leaves. You can obtain palm fronds by cutting down palm trees. You can also use fibrous leaves once you run out of palm fronds. If you are low on fibrous leaves and you have enough resources, you should grow your own. To grow your own yucca trees there’s a yucca plant that is located on the inner line of the tree. You are required to have a hoe that you can craft in the crafting menu, and once you get the hoe, you need to make the plot, which is also located in the crafting menu, but in the farming tab. If I were you, I would only start growing one or two crops at a time so it’s easier to manage, it’s wise to only grow crops once you make a water still because you need to water your plots often.

Image: Beam Team Games

Once you get enough resources, you can make a hobo stove that uses a campfire and a barrel. You can find barrels on abandoned shipwrecks which are scattered around your world mainly near the island. If you’re lucky you will come across cargo ships that are full of loot. Cargo ships are very useful for gathering resources to build your raft, such as buoys, barrels, and tires. When looting cargo ships, there are a lot of crates that spawn (often around 20-30).

Be careful when you’re exploring other islands. In the sea there are sharks, sea snakes, and regular snakes, and on land, there are king crabs and hogs to watch out for too. It’s a bad idea to go exploring at night, because there’s a lot of sharks in the ocean that can flip over your raft.

When you’re exploring, don’t use the safety raft because it’s so easy for sharks to knock over even with the slightest touch. I highly suggest making a raft by hand. Though you are required to have a hammer to make this raft.

When making a raft, if you don’t have a lot of resources, you can use sticks. If you have loot boats and cargo ships, you can find better resourses to make a raft base like tires, barrels, and buoys.

Image: Beam Team Games

When you’re making the raft, you need a sail and a rudder because these are essential to utilize the raft. I also recommend to have an anchor, so the raft doesn’t float away, but you don’t need it. You can always drag it on land. The rudder is used for steering and the sail uses the wind to get you where you need to go, like a motor. For the raft, you need to have cloth to make the rudder and sail, but if you don’t then you can make a loom station. Which is a crafting bench where you can use four lashings to craft a cloth. To make the loom station you need: six sticks and four lashings. (Lashing is made from four fibrous leaves which spawn on yucca plants scattered across islands). It’s important to know there are only three yucca trees spawn per island.

Consumables are very useful and important because they have a lot of abilities that can help you so much. Or even save you from death. Most of the consumables can be used as heals such as antidote, bandages, and splint. A splint can be used for curing broken bones, an antidote can be used for curing poison and bandages can be used for curing bleeding. There are also some very useful consumables such as shark repellent which is used to avoid sharks, breath boost which allows you to breathe underwater. (Breath boost can be used for four hours in-game time which is equivalent to four minutes in real-time.) There’s also gauze which acts the same way as a bandage, and also an Aloe salve that works as sunscreen allowing you to stay in the sun for longer.

Fishing is a very reliable food source because there are infinite respawning fish that are obtainable in many ways such as a fishing rod, spear, fishing spear, spear gun, and a fish trap. The fishing spear is the most efficient because with one hit the fish will go to your inventory unlike the normal spear which hits the fish, and they float up to the surface ready to be picked up. Fish traps aren’t very useful as they only catch a couple of fish at a time. When fishing the deeper you go the bigger the fish but don’t forget to be careful of sharks.

Image: Beam Team Games

There’s a total of 20 islands to explore. One of them being the exit to complete the game. The escape island is a massive aircraft carrier with an abandoned ship you need to rebuild, but you need parts for the plane and to get the parts you will need to kill all the bosses in the game. Although it’s only three bosses they’re not easy to kill. The bosses are the Meg, the Kraken, and the Moray Eel.  The best and most efficient way to kill the bosses is to use spears and make sure to stay on your raft and try not to get hit or pulled into the water. These bosses can be found deep in the ocean and have random structures in the ocean. These being a random big yellow buoy, a broken ship with a giant squid attached, and a big ship underwater. When killing the bosses, you get the part for the plane and the ability to craft a trophy.

I hope this helps you a lot and now you know what you’re doing and don’t keep dying. Have fun exploring!

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