Making a deserted island a home in Stranded Deep is what the game is all about. With a variety of different materials and designs at your fingertips, you can create some awesome beach bases with what you find lying around on the sand.
In this guide, we'll go over some of the best materials, some unique building techniques, and the general process behind establishing your first house. The rest is up to your own creativity.
Updated June 23, 2021, by Harry Alston: We've updated this list to include some more details about the best way to build a house in Stranded Deep.
Although designing a base is about your own creativity, our list of tips will help you make the right choice about which materials to use, where to build your base, and how to keep that grind for resources to a minimum.
Five Steps To Build A House In Stranded Deep
Here are the basic instructions to build a house in Stranded Deep:
- Craft or equip a Hammer
- Gather the materials and resources needed to craft a Foundation
- Open the building menu and select the Foundation
- Place the foundation and build it with your Hammer
- Repeat until you have an entire base
At the start of the game, you probably want to stick to building simple driftwood structures. A Driftwood Foundation only requires one piece of driftwood and four sticks. This makes it one of the easiest building pieces to craft in Stranded Deep, as driftwood and sticks are plentiful on your starting island.
Why Do You Need To Build A House?
There are really only two benefits of building a base in Stranded Deep: having somewhere to shelter from the sun, and somewhere to store your items. A base does not provide any sort of buff or boost, and the size of your base makes no real impact on how successful you'll be in the game.
Both of these can be achieved by just building a small 2x2 house with a Sleeping Bag and a couple of chests inside. Items will despawn if you leave them out in the open, although you can place some items underneath a roof to add a few aesthetic touches (lanterns, planks, etc).
A simple house just needs to be:
- Four walls
- A foundation
- Floor
- A ceiling
There is no need to build this massive sprawling base, really, but you might want to experiment with some of the construction materials and create an aesthetically pleasing home. Keep in mind that metal and other resources are finite in Stranded Deep. You might not have enough to build the base you have in your imagination, but with enough time put into the game, you can get pretty close to a sprawling island fortress.
Some practical uses of a house might include having a fishing dock at the front of your home, somewhere to park your boat or a tower with a launchpad for your Gyrocopter.
The Basics Of Building A House In Stranded Deep
Before you start planning your base, you need one item and one item only: a hammer. Without a hammer, your plans will never get off the ground.
Thankfully, a crude hammer is pretty easy to come by. It's crafted with 1 Lashing, 2 Rocks, and 1 Stick. Here's our guide on how to make Lashing. In the early days, a hammer is used to craft Foundations and various other tools and equipment you might need on your island adventure.
Later in the game, you will have access to a Refined Hammer, although this can only be found in Shipwrecks. You'll want a base before you start exploring Shipwrecks, that's for sure.
Building Menu
The building menu is where you find all the Foundations. These are basically blueprints for the type of construction you want to build, whether it's a small half wall, a palm frond roof, or a wooden wall.
You won't be able to build a Foundation unless you have the required materials. Getting enough to build an entire base can be a bit of a grind.
How To Build A Foundation In Stranded Deep
Foundations can be crafted with four different types of materials:
- Wooden Sticks
- Clay Bricks
- Corrugated Scrap
- Plank Scrap
There are different variations of foundations, like the Driftwood Foundation and the Wood Foundation. They both have unique styles. Likewise, you can build triangular foundations for more variation in style, like making decorated corners and rooftops. Once a foundation is placed down it provides a platform for further building, like walls and arches.
Building Tips In Stranded Deep
Building in Stranded Deep requires a lot of effort, time, and resources. Although you might just want to jump into building a megabase right away, sometimes it's better to start off small and build on your foundations over the course of the game. Here are some general tips for better building in Stranded Deep.
- Don't jump straight into building with the more expensive materials like planks and corrugated steel. You just want to set up a rudimentary base out of sticks to start with. Those expensive materials are pretty rare, and it's a good idea to go in with a decent plan before you start placing them down.
- It appears that tarp does respawn in Stranded Deep (presumably washed up on the tide) so this can be an effective method for getting some cheap walls up.
- Carry the whole palm log back to your base rather than breaking it down into sticks out in the field. This saves you a lot of time and effort ferrying resources back to your base.
- Hang lanterns on Hooks inside your home to create lighting.
- Mix and match building styles (half walls, windows, arches, etc) to create more interesting bases. Unfinished walls and floors can be used to create an interesting beam style.
- It's a good idea to start your base somewhere clear and open, so you can get the foundations down without the frustrations of finding the exact right spot.
- Build a platform at the front of your house across the shallow water, ideal for placing fish traps and docking your boat.
Best Materials To Use For Your Base
There's one major tip to offer here: don't use wood as fuel for your campfire, especially at the beginning. Wood is required for most building foundations, and you'll likely need a lot of it to build a base of decent size.
Wood does not grow back. If you've cut down all the trees on your starting island, you'll have to venture across the waves to collect more. That being said, driftwood is a common spawn on the beach. Driftwood will always drop Wooden Sticks.
Use Fibrous Leaves instead. These are much easier to come by and much easier to collect. Here's our guide on how to get Fibrous Leaves. They might not burn as long, but they provide enough heat to keep you warm during the early game.
These are collected from Young Palm Trees and Yucca Plants. They're pretty much all over the island, and unlike trees, do grow back. You can harvest them over and over again for fuel. This saves the more valuable wood for building material, even though the materials don't make much difference to the viability of your home, you might want the nicer aesthetic of proper wooden floors and foundations.