Anyone who has ever played a game with a crafting system knows that there are some items you must gather before moving on to the next plot point or before trying to craft more complicated items. After all, you must learn to swim before you can dive with dolphins; and the same concept applies to crafting; you can't make amazing things without having the most basic and important materials first.

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In Stranded Deep, these important materials are ordinary things you wouldn't think twice about under normal conditions. However, when you find yourself in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, suddenly a stick and a rock could be the difference between surviving or starving to death. Here are all the important materials in the game and where to find them.

Wood Sticks

cutting a tree in Stranded Deep

You'll find these lying around in small and large islands, which is really convenient since wood sticks are an essential ingredient for many recipes in the game, and they also work as fuel for your campfire. However, you don't have to rely on luck to find these sticks; if you have a cutting tool (like a Crude Axe), you can chop up wood logs to obtain wood sticks.

When gathering wood sticks, keep in mind that the available amount is finite, which means you can run out of sticks if you craft too many resources. If this happens to you, you'll need to go to another island to find more of this important material.

Leather

Tanning Racks in Stranded Deep

This material is essential once you've mastered the game basics and you're looking for ways to improve the tools you already have. You'll be able to gather once you've crafted the Tanning Rack (which requires x4 Lashing and x4 wood sticks).

But before you can start making Leather, you'll need to get Rawhide first, which is a material you'll get by skinning animals like Boars, Hogs, or Sharks.

Moving on, after you have the Rawhide, craft the Tanning Rack and just open the crafting menu, select the "Tools" tab and then select the "Leather" option.

With Leather, you can make all sorts of useful tools like:

  • Refined Axe
  • Refined Pick
  • Refined Spear
  • Sleeping Bag
  • Speargun
  • Water Skin
  • Tool Belt Pouch

Rocks

mining a rock node in Stranded Deep

Since the beginning of time, rocks and stones have aided humanity in our evolutionary process. In Stranded Deep, these small items will aid you in many ways. For example, you'll be able to craft useful tools like the crude axe or the hammer using rocks. Moreover, pivotal structures for your survival (like the Fire Pit) need rocks to be crafted.

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Using the Crafting Menu, you can transform rocks into a Stone Tool, an item that can be used to gather Palm Sapling and Yucca Tree as well as an ingredient for other things like:

Luckily, rocks are very easy to find, they are scattered all over the island in the game, or you can mine rock nodes using a refined pick to get a total of six rocks (at least one rock node will be in an island unless it is the starting one).

However, just like it happens with wood sticks, this important material has a limited amount on each island. This means that you'll have to think twice about where you're using rocks and probably make a trip to another island to find more once you run out of rocks.

Lashing

making Lashing in Stranded Deep

Whether it's a craftable structure or a tool, Lashing is needed to make lots of items in Stranded Deep. You'll get this material by hitting yucca trees or palm saplings, the time it takes it to fully break each one will solely depend on the tool you're using. Nevertheless, you'll get one Fibrous Leaf from a sapling and six from the yucca tree.

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You can start gathering Lashing early on in the game as you can use something as simple as the stone tool to hit yucca trees or palm saplings. Keep in mind that this stone will only last 100 swings, so if you're farming Fibrous Leaves, maybe you'll want to go for a more resistant tool.

Each Lashing requires x4 Fibrous Leaves, so it's best to focus first on gathering the leaves and then crafting Lashings.

Keep in mind that, unlike other materials like rocks or wood sticks, Lashings are a renewable material since yucca trees and palm saplings will regrow.

After you've gathered a nice amount of Lashings, you can use them to craft things like:

  • The Tanning Rack
  • The Speargun Arrow
  • The Crude Bow
  • The Crude Hammer
  • Arrows
  • The Speargun Arrow
  • The Loom
  • Lashings also have a medical use as they're needed to make Bandages.

Cloth

a piece of Cloth and a loom in Stranded Deep

Cloth is one of those important materials that wasn't always in the game; in fact, it was added in version 0.02 of Stranded Deep. Before Cloth, you had to use Tarp, a waterproof blue sheet that could be found on shores and in the Console Cabinet. Unlike Cloth, Tarp wasn't craftable, and it was later removed from the game.

If you're lucky, you'll be able to find pieces of Clots inside the Container Crates that are within plane wrecks and shipwrecks. However, you can also craft your own Cloth by gathering x4 Fibrous Leaves and using a Loom.

Similar to the Tanning Rack, which produced Leather, the Loom is a crafting station that makes Cloth. To build a Loom, you'll need x4 Lashings and x6 Wood Sticks.

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