So we played Raft...

After Evil West we decided to play another survival base builder game and landed on Raft. The first world we started we didn't realize the raft would leave us behind if we jumped off it, so we jumped to the first island we found, ran around, realized the raft was gone and then came to the realization that it wasn't possible to build another raft from scratch. (Why not? You can add as many raft pieces as you want to the existing raft, but somehow you can't tie two raft pieces together to make a new raft). So we were stranded on a tiny little island and had to restart another world. 

We soon realized this game came with a lot of annoyances, the most glaring one was durability and how fast things broke, and when things break you can't repair them, they just vanish completely, disintegrated. The second was how extremely fast hunger and thirst needed to be satisfied. The third was planks. The first few sessions all we did was stand on the raft and fish for materials and food. We stopped at every little island we found to strip it from resources and then continue on our way, floating aimlessly. 

Planks were needed for everything. You want to cook the fish you've caught - planks. You want to build more raft - planks. You want to repair your raft after the goddamn shark's been at it again - planks. You want to make clean water - planks. You want to smelt ores into ingots, or make sand into glass, or seaweed into vine goo (basically glue) - planks. You want to make tools - planks. You want to keep your engines running before you get the blueprint to make biofuel - planks. You want to build anything at all on your raft - planks. So many planks. We'd deforest every single island we went to, fish up every single plank, barrel and crate from the water and yet somehow we were always short on planks. It saved us some planks once we got a metal frame around the entire raft so the shark couldn't attack and got biofuel set up for the engines and a proper electric water tank. Batteries were a major resource drain until we finally got the battery charger and didn't have to make a new battery every time one ran out. The timing discrepancy between needing a battery for the receiver and being able to craft batteries, and actually being able to recharge batteries is too vast (blueprint for battery charger is at Caravan Island, the fourth story location after you've set up the receiver). At which point you likely need batteries not only for the receiver, but also for the recycler, and the juice machine, and the sprinkler. 

Hunger and thirst diminished at such a fast speed that whenever we went to explore a story location we'd make sure we were full on hunger and thirst, brought food and drink with us, and yet were forced to return to the raft to eat and drink at least twice before completing the location. We'd also have to return to just dump stuff in storage because inventory is extremely limited and story locations offer a shitload of loot. Even after we got the backpack and got slightly more inventory space it still became a whole lot of back and forth to the raft to dump into storage and "might as well eat and drink while I'm here".

Eventually we managed to get the receiver and antennas up and running and started going through the story. The radio tower and the Vasagatan yacht were simple enough. Balboa Island was when the annoyances started to tip over into actual problems. Caravan Island was when we realized that the availability of resources was extremely skewed. Tangaroa was pretty nice compared to Caravan and Balboa, although it still had its annoyances. Varuna Point was when we quit the game to never return. 

Balboa Island was when we realized we needed armor due to the bears, but we hadn't yet managed to catch any animals, so we didn't have any wool or leather to make armor from. We could build the net gun and the pens well enough. But we couldn't get any ammo to the net gun because to craft it we needed explosive goo, which we could get from puffer fish, which were so rare we barely ever encountered them and when we did they were liable to just explode into poison clouds rendering them unlootable. It wasn't until after Tangaroa that we finally managed to catch any animals. And only because Caravan Island had puffer fish in abundance. 

Balboa Island was also where we discovered that unlike other survival games we've played together you don't drop your gear in the place you died for you to go and collect once you respawn. No, in this game everything is counted in durability, so when you die everything in your inventory loses durability which means that depending on how much durability the item had when you died you either lose the item entirely or its durability is halved from where it was before you died. We almost quit the game right then and there, because we had to remake pretty much every single tool from scratch. And of course we were low on planks, because when the fuck weren't we.

Caravan Island was so confusing we had to look up a guide on how to get through it and find everything needed to progress. Same deal with Tangaroa and Varuna Point. Varuna Point was a major hassle since it was mostly under water. The guide said diving gear was recommended, but not required. We tried without but that made things go so slowly so we went back to the raft to fix some diving gear. Two sets each due to durability and after that we were basically out of planks, seaweed and vine goo. It was still slow going so we had to return to the raft a few times for food despite finding it in containers and bringing it with us. The boss of Varuna Point is the Rhino Shark and unlike the Mama Bear at Balboa Island, it's unskippable. The strategy is to make the shark swim into the concrete pillars and once the pillars are broken up place explosives in them and make the shark swim into them again, creating a hole to the next level and injuring the shark. This would have to be done on three levels, each level had less pillar. We had to take turns to do this so that one of us could be off to the side to heal and/or eat/drink. We had only just started to be able to catch animals and had yet to find chickens since being able to catch them and so we had no eggs, so we couldn't make any healing salves... So our only healing option was to chill in the water and let the health replenish over time. On the last level of the boss we ran out of food/drink and durability on all our diving gear. We chose to return to the raft to replenish, but when we were set to return to the boss arena we were both attacked by the rhino shark which was now suddenly outside?! Also the regular shark decided to join in. First I died, so bf decided to try to go get me and return me to the raft (because you gotta be on a bed to rez). On the way back to the raft he was attacked by both sharks and he also died. We respawned on the raft with all of our gear either lost or with most of their durability gone. We had no resources to make new equipment because we had used up all our planks to make vine goo to make diving equipment that couldn't even withstand the time the area required. 

Softlocked due to shitty durability and bosses roaming free we dumped this game and moved on.