Stranded Deep: How to Get Started (Beginners’ Guide)

Once, when you arrive at your first island, there are things you must do immediately.

1. Build a shelter.
2. Build a fire pit and smoker.
3. Build a water still.
4. Get food.

You can do those things in pretty much any order. But, they need to be done as fast as possible. And, in order to do any of those things, you need tools.
To build a shelter, you will need palm fronds and lashes. To make lashes, you have to harvest palm saplings. To harvest palm saplings you will need a knife. To get palm fronds, you need to cut down palm trees. That means you will need a crude ax. To make either of those tools, you will first need to make a stone tool. Once you have tools, you can build a camp and find food.

To do all of that, just follow some simple steps.

BUT FIRST.

Be sure you have dragged your raft onto the shore. Try to get it above the surf line. The surf line is that segment of the beach that always looks wet and smooth. A good guideline is to place it on top of sand that looks like it was walked on, or that has actual plants growing on it. Pick a good location where you can build a campsite without being cramped for space.

Once your raft is safely on the beach, your first step is to gather materials. There are sticks, rocks, and various scrap items all around the beach. So, make your way around the island gathering the sticks and rocks, and cloth. Ignore everything else, for now. Gather until you inventory is full. Drop everything by your raft.

Tip: Be on the look out for animals. There are three types of land animals, and they can all hurt you: Giant Crabs Giant Boars, and, Snakes. We will cover how to kill them shortly. For right now, with no weapons or tools, you must avoid them.

Depending on whether you must deal with any animals, your first tool is either the stone tool or the crude spear.

The stone tool is basically a crude knife. You can use this to cut the palm saplings. One rock is required to make it. The stone tool takes two swipes of a stone tool cut down a palm sapling. It takes 4 palm saplings to make a lashing. With the lashing, the stone tool, and a stick, you can make a refined knife. The knife can be used to cut down small trees, one hit the palm saplings, or skin animals you have killed. BUT. With the lashing, two stone tools, and a stick, you can make an ax. The ax is more important than a knife, at the moment. The ax can be used to harvest palm saplings. More importantly, the ax allows you to chop down palm trees, from which you obtain palm fronds. You get 5 palm fronds from every palm top. Palm fronds are required to make the shelter (4)and the water still (1). Palm trees also yield coconuts, which can provide water and food.

Using the sticks you find, you can make crude spears. Crude spears can be thrown or used as a stabbing weapon. You will need 5 to take down a Giant Boar, 3 to take down the small boars, 2 to take down a snake. Rocks can also be thrown at snakes to kill them. You have to stab the giant crabs to kill them. The best way to do that is to approach them from behind.

Tip: All of these animals yield meat. If you harvest the meat, it will spoil within about 24 hours if left uncooked. However, if you do not skin the animal, the meat never spoils.

With tools and materials on hand, begin building your campsite. There are only 3 things you need to build. The order you make these items is more or less up to you. Make them in any order you please, or build based on materials as you gather them.

Sticks make a campfire. Rocks then make the campfire into a fire pit. Once you have that, you can begin cooking meat. You cannot eat raw meat. It will make you throw up. And, throwing up makes you dehydrated. Dehydration can kill you. So, you must first cook the meat. Unfortunately, cooked meat will still spoil. To have meat last indefinitely, you need to build the smoker. Fortunately, you can easily make a smoker using cloth, a lashing, some sticks, and the fire pit you already made.

Some sticks, 4 palm fronds, and a lashing is needed to make your shelter. The shelter is where you sleep and save your game. Until you build a shelter, you cannot do either of those things.

A piece of cloth, a palm frond, a lashing, 3 rocks, and a coconut flask is needed to make a water still. Without a water still, you can only get water from coconuts. There is a finite supply of coconuts on every island—and they do not replenish. Also, it takes 4 palm fronds to till up your still. You only get 5 per palm tree. But, palm trees do not regrow. Alternatively, you can use palm saplings or Yucca plants—which do regrow every 3 days.

With these 3 things made, you can last almost indefinitely on your island.

Tip: Having enough sticks will be a problems. As I said, trees do not regrow. Sooner or later, you will end up either cutting down the last tree and moving to another island, or harvesting the trees from other islands to maintain your life on your island. Think ahead about how you want to deal with that issue.

There are rations in the raft storage compartment. They provide a huge boost to both the water and food meters. However, there aren’t many of them. You must establish an ongoing food supply as quickly as possible.

In the surf area, there are small animals you can harvest for food with either a crude spear or a fishing spear. Those are crabs, and sardines. They each yield a small meat portion. It will take several of those per day to keep your hunger in check. Crabs respawn every 4-5 days. And, there are not enough to keep you properly fed. There are lots of sardines, though. But, it is a lot of work to get enough of them. The boar, giant boar and giant crab yield larger meat pieces. These creatures do respawn—roughly every 7 days.

There is one very important consideration when it comes to cooking meat. The smoker can only hold 5 pieces of meat—regardless of size. So, that means 5 small meat pieces (ie crab), OR 5 medium meat pieces (boar or giant crab), OR 5 large meat pieces (giant boar, or deep water fish). So, either make multiple smokers (if you can find or make the necessary cloth), or choose carefully what you are going to cook.

There are 2 plants you can harvest for food: potatoes and quawara fruit. However, there are usually only 1-2 wild potatoes on an island, and quawara fruit does not grow on every island. Also, once you pick them, the wild plant will not regrow. To have a continuous supply, you must create farm plots and plant them. Once planted, they regrow every few days. So, plan accordingly.

Bonus Tip.
There are poisonous creatures that sting or bite you. On land, those are snakes, and Crown of Thorns Starfish (also found under water in the shallows).

To counteract the poison, you need to find a Pipi plant.

There are generally, but not always, 2 per island. Some islands do not have any. Remember, these do not regrow after you pick them. If you want more, you will have to plant them in a farming plot. Remember, they take a few days to regrow. So, plan accordingly.

And, that’s it! If you follow those basics, it is easy to progress to more difficult things—like exploring and looting wrecks, or killing sharks (make lots of spears) or inter-island travel (take food and water), or ultimately making you escape.