Quick Links

  • How To Craft A Receiver
  • How To Get To The Radio Tower
  • Navigating The Radio Tower

Beginning your journey in Raft, you'd be forgiven for thinking that your only real aim was to stave off shark attacks and to gather enough raw ingredients not to starve to death. While that's not totally false, there is more here than meets the eye.

Dragging barrels to your raft and collecting their goods will eventually reward you with a blueprint for the receiver, and one for an antenna. This is when your adventure takes a welcome, more structured, turn.

How To Craft A Receiver

A View Of The Moon From A Raft Window

When you have both the receiver and antenna blueprints in your inventory, you can get started on adding them to your raft; you'll need both items working correctly to find the first story mission. Once you pick up a blueprint, it is automatically added to your research table, learn it from there, and you're good to go.

To construct a receiver you will need:

  • 8 Plank
  • 6 Plastic
  • 2 Circuit Board
  • 1 Hinge
  • 1 Battery (in order to power the device)

To construct an antenna you will need:

  • 4 Scrap
  • 1 Circuit Board
  • 1 Bolt

For the receiver to work correctly, you need to place it above sea level on your raft. It also only works in conjunction with three antennas, these also need to be placed at a higher elevation on your raft for it to function.

This is the first time you're required to expand your raft if you hadn't already. It might be worth taking some time to gather planks and plastic to spruce up your vessel and increase its surface area. You're required to build some verticality to your raft here so keep that in mind when choosing how to expand your foundation.

When the receiver is on and functioning correctly, you'll notice that it shows nearby points of interest on its display. The green dots are large islands (usually ones with trading posts) and the blue dots are story-critical locations. The display always shows dots in relation to the way the receiver is facing, so you'll always know which way you ought to be drifting.

To the right of the display, you'll notice a device with four digits. This isn't going to be used right now, but for future reference, this is where you'll input coordinates you find from story areas in order to figure out the next direction you need to be sailing.

How To Get To The Radio Tower

A View Of A Structure In The Middle Of The Ocean

Once you have a working receiver on your raft, you'll see a blue dot some distance away. To ensure you make it there sometime this century, you'll need to build a sail, if you haven't already. This will nudge you in the right direction even if the wind isn't always blowing in your favor.

Keeping active during this journey will put you in good stead for the extended trip, you will always want to be collecting the floating resources. It's also not a bad idea to start thinking about building storage units if you haven't already. You're going to be picking up a lot of items very soon.

Try not to keep the receiver powered on the whole time you're sailing as it will constantly be draining the battery, which can be difficult to craft this early in the story. Simply flip the receiver on and off at various intervals to make sure you're still traveling in the right direction.

Eventually, you'll notice a large structure in the distance. This is the radio tower.

Graffiti Sprayed On A Wall Reading 'I Got You Bruce'

Try and get your raft as close to the structure as possible, you don't want to swim for too long with the shark on your tail. It's also vital that you craft yourself a disposable anchor. If you don't, there is a very real possibility of your raft floating away while you're busy climbing to the summit.

Hop aboard and start making your way to the radar dish at the top. The jumping here isn't too brain-taxing, there are plenty of crates and beams for you to carefully make your way across, and on two occasions you will have to make a jump to a broken staircase. Once you reach the top of the tower, there will be an NPC to speak to that unlocks them as a playable character and also the coordinates for your next destination.

On your way up, make sure you check each and every room that's open to you. There are a lot of valuable resources here that you won't be able to craft on your own just yet, and also a few interesting notes that start to flesh out the story.

At this point, you can get back on your raft and continue your search, but it may be worth your time to head below the waters and explore the rooms underneath first. While this isn't essential to the story, the rooms house a fair amount of resources, and collecting them will save you time in the future. It's worth noting that while the shark cannot follow you into the rooms, you can absolutely drown, so many sure you don't get lost down there.

NEXT: Raft: The Best Mods