Building in Raft is quite complex, especially when you’re planning to expand your raft vertically. Unfortunately, you can’t just build a floating structure like in Minecraft.
So, in this guide, we’ll show you how to build a second floor in Raft.
Recommended Read: How to Remove Foundations in Raft
To build a second floor in Raft, you must build support structures (pillars, walls, roofs, or gates) on the first floor of your raft and build Wooden Floors instead of Foundations to construct the second floor.
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How to Build a Second Floor in Raft
As Raft’s building system is more realistic than other games like Minecraft, you cannot build free-floating structures. Structures have to be connected and supported, like in real life.
Understanding Support Structures
Building structures in Raft can collapse if they don’t have any support structures below them.
There are plenty of building structures in Raft, but only a few are support structures. Each structure can only support a certain amount of floor being built on top of it.
How much a specific structure can support depends on its type and how it’s built (straight or diagonal).
Here’s a full list of all support structures in Raft and their supported space:
- Wooden Roof*: 1
- Vertical Pillars: 4 for both full and half versions
- Horizontal Pillars: 8 for the full version and 6 for the half version
- Wooden Wall: 6
- Wooden Window: 6
- Wooden Door: 6
- Upside-down Triangular Wooden Wall: 6
- Wooden Gate: 6
*Note for Wooden Roof: You can’t use corners, inverted roofs, double roofs, junctions, endcaps, or pyramid roofs as support. Only straight roofs can be used as support structures.
If support structures are built diagonally, they can only support 1 floor instead of 6.
Despite there being various support structures available, most players prefer to use pillars or walls, as they look better and serve multiple purposes compared to other structures.
For example, walls are great for creating separate rooms and blocking off things and areas, while pillars are small and don’t take up much space on your raft.
Build a Second Floor
Once you have sufficient support structures, you can use the Building Hammer to build the second floor on top of them.
To get started, equip your Hammer, hold the right mouse button, and choose the Wooden Floor or the Triangular Wooden Floor.
These two structures can be found in the first tab of the building menu (Foundation and Floors).
Next, look above the support structures, and you’ll see a preview of the selected floor on top of the support structures. Finally, left-click to build the second floor.
Remember to choose a Wooden Floor or its variants (Solid or Triangular). You cannot build a second floor using Foundations.
As far as we know, many new players have difficulties building a second floor because they’re mistakenly selecting Foundations instead of Wooden Floors.
It’s essential to plan carefully before building the second floor in Raft, as you may want to change where a support structure is located on the first floor, which can lead to the collapse of the second floor.
Examples and Tips for Building a Second Floor
There are lots of ways to build a second floor in Raft, but in our playthroughs, we mostly used pillars as support structures.
To give you a clear demonstration of how building structures work in Raft, we’ve included the following step-by-step screenshots and tips to help you save some resources when building a second floor.
Let’s say you’re building a 4×6 second floor.
With no experience, you may use a lot of support structures like this.
It takes 15 pillars for a 4×6 area if you build like this. But as explained earlier in this guide, a pillar can support up to 6 floors around it.
So, the build above can be improved by removing the unnecessary pillars, as shown below.
It’s optimized, but it can be optimized even more by putting horizontal pillars like this.
The material cost is the same, but clearly, you have more space to work with.
However, that’s not the end! You can even remove the vertical pillars after this step to gain the resource backs and have even more space underneath.
We’re not sure if this is a bug for now, but this is probably the most efficient way to build a second floor currently in Raft.
That’s how to build a second floor in Raft!
Have any suggestions for this guide? Let us know in the comment section below.
