Sharks are one of the many dangers that you will need to face while sailing the perilous seas in Raft. You can expect a Shark to attack your raft every 5 minutes or so. You can pause the timer by jumping into the water but that will also attract the attention of any nearby Sharks.
Take note that a Shark can latch on and destroy your raft, forcing you to start all over. You can deal three damage points to a Shark to force it to let go of your raft. They will sometimes retreat but other timers return for another round of attack. You hence have only two options when it comes to dealing with Sharks. You can either kill or distract them.
How To Kill Sharks
The first thing to know is that once you have killed a shark, it takes roughly 3 minutes for another shark to spawn in the same area.
When you are ready, dive into the water. Perhaps the most useful strategy to kill sharks is to lure them toward you and attack their nose and mouth once they open. However, this method requires patience and accurate timing of execution.
As an alternate method, you can continue to jump in and out of the water until the Shark is lured towards the raft. When it is near, jump back onto your raft and attack it with a spear or a machete.
A neat tip is to jump out of the water as soon as the Shark is ready to lunge toward you to avoid any damage taken. Since the attack pattern of sharks is quite simple, you will not have a hard time dodging their attacks.
In the early sections of the game, you’ll have nothing but a wooden spear to kill the shark. You can craft a Wooden Spear with 8x Plank and 3x Rope.
In the late game, you’ll be able to craft a high-quality Metal Spear. You can craft a Metal Spear with 6x Plank, 2x Rope, 2x Metal Ingot, and 1x Bolt.
Compared to the Wooden Spear, a Metal Spear can kill a Shark in just 15 or 19 hits in normal or hard mode respectively. That is exactly half of what it takes with a Wooden Spear.
When it comes to the best weapons that you can use to kill a shark, Titanium Sword and Arrows are the best choices. Titanium Sword can be crafted by 3x Scrap, 2x Rope, 3x Titanium Ingot, and 2x Bolt. To be able to craft the Titanium Arrows, you need 6x Plank, 1x Metal Ingot, and 6x Feathers.
The wooden spear is the most basic weapon to kill a shark and it takes a lot of hits to kill a shark with it. It takes 30 hits by a wooden spear to kill a shark in normal mode and the number increases to 38 when in Hard Mode.
Metal Spears are advanced weapons and take roughly half of the hits to kill a shark as compared to a Wooden Spear. Metal Spear can kill a shark in 15 hits in normal mode and 19 hits to kill a hard mode shark.
Metal Arrows take 10 hits in normal mode to kill a shark and in hard mode, sharks can take up to 13 hits to be killed.
Titanium Sword and Arrows are the best weapons to kill a shark. In normal mode, sharks can take 8 hits of them while the hard mode sharks can bear 10 hits.
How To Distract Sharks In Raft
The hostile nature of Sharks is what differentiates them from any other fish that swims the sea. You can use Shark Bait to distract Sharks from attacking your raft.
Shark Baits have health points that deplete as they get attacked by Sharks. Hence, the best Shark Bait is the one with the most health points.
You can craft a Shark Bait with up to either 800 or 1,000 health points in easy/normal or hard mode respectively. The crafting recipe, however, is the same for both. You will need 2x Rope, 2x Raw Herring, and 1x Raw Pomfret to craft a Shark Bait.
How To use Shark Bait
To lure the Shark to you, simply put meat on the Shark Bait and see the magic as Sharks have the ability to sense bait even from an 80-meter range, similar to them detecting the presence of a human underwater from a 30-meter range.
The time for which a shark bait is effective in the normal mode of the game is 1 min 5 sec and in hard mode, it lasts for 1 min 20 sec.
