Build and Defend Your Raft Tier List
What to craft first when wood is short and raiders are already swimming over.
This tier list ranks jobs, not a fake item encyclopedia. Build and Defend Your Raft is new, the public recipe book is thin, and inventing cannon names would mislead you. What we can rank is the loop Raft Pirates published and the rafts they showed: a pallet spawn versus a plated fortress with spikes, blue lights, cannons, and a chest room.
S-tier is anything that unlocks the next layer of the loop. F-tier is anything that looks great on a thumbnail and does nothing when someone boards.
How we rank
- Progression: does this get the Crafting Table up a tier?
- Loot safety: does this slow a raid long enough to fight or hide chests?
- Raid value: does this help you leave, break in, and return?
- Wood tax: is the piece expensive for the time it buys?
Full breakdowns live in defenses, gear, and raft layouts. Use those with how to defend and raid loadouts.
S tier — craft these before you decorate
Crafting Table upgrades. Nothing else in the game matters until the table can print walls and better tools. Official copy is blunt: upgrade the table to unlock better gear.
A compact square deck. Promo art starts you on four planks. A 3x3 or 4x4 with room to strafe beats a long pier that raiders walk like a hallway.
Perimeter walls with one door. Chests in the open are free money. A closed ring with a single choke is the first real defense.
A tier — the raid tax
Spikes and plated edges. The cannon raft in official art wears a spiked skirt and metal-looking plates. That kit is why hour-100 rafts survive a board that would delete a pallet.
Cannons or turret lines. The same art shows guns firing while the owner stands on the roof. Place them to cover the approach, not the ocean behind you.
Central loot room. Blue chests belong one floor in and one wall deep, not on the welcome mat.
B tier — strong once the core is done
Second floor and ladders. Height helps you spot swimmers and drop fire downward. It is wasted if the ground floor has holes.
Barrel pontoons and extra float. Both promo rafts sit on barrel rings. More deck is useless if the hull feels tiny under fight knockback.
Harpoon or fishing boom. Scripts already target auto-harpoon loot, which tells you the tool is part of the gather loop. Use it to pull crates; do not skip walls for a prettier boom.
C tier — comfort, not power
Furniture, palms, umbrellas, lanterns. Hour 100 looks cozy. That is the reward for a raft that already has plates. Build them after the loot checklist is green.
Face flags and cosmetics. Fun. Zero HP.
D and F — common traps
Skinny docks and decorative gaps. Pretty, and they create climb points.
Spending a future code on cosmetics. If a code ever lands, dump it into table tiers and walls. See what codes give.
Raiding before you can restock. Leaving an open chest farm to steal one crate is how you donate a session.
How to use the list in a live lobby
If the server is quiet, push S and A until the table and walls are done, then peek how to raid. If the server is loud, stay on A-tier defenses and skip the palm. Recheck ranks after Saturday patches — a wall nerf moves pieces overnight.
This list will grow named items as Raft Pirates publish them. Until then, rank the job, not the skin.
Frequently Asked Questions
Quick answers for raft builders and raiders.
Why are there no named weapon rows?
The game is new and public item names are still thin. We rank jobs (table, walls, cannons, loot rooms) so the list stays true. Named rows will land when Saturday patches make them public.
Is a huge raft always S tier?
No. A huge open deck is a runway. Read raft layouts for compact cores that actually hold loot.