The Survival Watch is Stranded Deep's clever way of showing you everything about your character without having to navigate through clunky menus. Through some sort of hyper-intelligent tracking ability, the Watch is somehow able to tell how burned your skin is, how good you are at cooking hogs, and when the last time you drank water was. If only it was smart enough to have the blueprints and materials needed for a speedboat...
Here's everything you need to know about the Watch in Stranded Deep, like how to understand what it's telling you, and what the problem might be if it starts beeping at you.
There Are Three Modes To The Watch
Your character's info is split across three different modes on the Survival Watch, which you can flick through whenever you want. This is available from the start of the game. It's a good idea to get used to the different parts of the watch: it might just keep you alive.
- The first mode includes data about how long you've survived, what your SPF is at, and what time of day it is.
- The second mode includes info on your various skills, which all have a maximum level of 7. This includes stuff like cooking and crafting.
- The third mode gives you information on your status effects, like poison or hydration. There are both positive and negative status effects, dictated by a + or a -.
First Mode - Survival
The first mode tells the player the in-game date, time, and how many days have passed in your current playthrough. This is also where you see the details on your vitals, like Health, Hunger, Thirst, and your SPF rating — that is how hot you are.
If you have low Health, you need to keep your character both fed and hydrated. Hunger and Thirst can be raised by Food and Water respectively, and together contribute towards the overall healthiness of your character. The SPF rating determines the impact of the sun on your character. Taking a quick dip beneath the waves is often enough to cool down.
- The watch will start to beep whenever these vitals get low. You can delay the beeping by pressing the Watch again, although this will only last for 90 seconds or so.
- You should get into a habit of checking this part of the watch regularly.
- Water is probably one of the most important things in Stranded Deep. Here's our guide on getting enough water.
Second Mode - Skills
There are Five different skills in Stranded Deep: Hunting, Cooking, Harvesting, Physical, and Craftmanship. These skills are leveled up by completing different tasks and your progress is measured on the second page of the Watch.
- Cooking is leveled up by cooking food. Higher levels of cooking will provide extra health from any food eaten.
- Physical determines the player's health. It is raised by building stuff with the hammer, running around, and swimming.
- The Harvesting skill determines how quickly your character can gather resources. More Harvesting, the better.
- Craftmanship boosts your ability to build new things, like buildings and tools. You level up your crafting skill by building pretty much anything.
- The Hunting skill raises your overall damage. You gain experience in this skill by killing creatures, like boars and sharks.
Third Mode - Status Effects
Keeping an eye on your status effects is pretty important. They can often be the make or break of surviving the next day. Negative effects, like Poison, can kill your character over the course of a couple of days.
- Status effects, like Poison, also show up on your character's arms.
- You will need to heal status effects through specific methods, like crafting an Antidote if you're bitten by a snake.
- Other negative status afflictions in the game include broken bones, bleeding, starvation, sunstroke... there are a lot of things that can kill you in Stranded Deep.
- Positive effects include craftable buffs, like activating Shark Repellent or building a Splint to fix a broken bone.