It's not necessary to use Raft mods to have fun with the seafaring survival game, but they can certainly make your life a little easier. Maybe you're having a blast playing with friends but want something more chill for your own solo world.
Some mods offer quality of life improvements, while others remove certain mechanics altogether. So if you're ready to dive straight in, here are the best Raft mods and how to install them. Whatever the reason you're here, you should find something to suit how you want to play.
How to install Raft mods
Raft has a large modding community, and you can find many mods over at the RaftModding website. This is also where you'll find the handy ModLoader, which makes installing mods incredibly simple.
Once you've downloaded ModLoader, install it and make sure it's pointing to your Raft installation (SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Raft). Now you can download any mod that catches your eye and you'll be prompted to open ModLoader to install it. When you're done, use the program to launch Raft.
You'll see the ModLoader window on the title screen when you load into the game. Navigate to the Mod Manager tab on the left to view your mods and choose which ones you want to load by clicking the small circular button on the far right. Once you're happy with your selection, you can close the window and load your world normally.
Best Raft mods
Here's a list of the best Raft mods to get you started.
It's annoying when you go to craft something, only to spend ages hunting through your many storage chests to find the needed materials. Luckily, this mod allows you to craft items even if you don't have the required resources in your inventory. As long as you have the materials in one of your storage chests, it will use those.
Speaking of storage, this mod gives you more options for storage, at least aesthetically. The default small storage chest is turned into a Minecraft chest, and then you have the choice of five different larger chests, so you should be able to find something to match the decor of your raft.
This adds a mini map to your UI, which can be dragged around and repositioned to your liking. It also allows you to use map markers and will alert you to enemies and other animals that might be close by.
If you miss the low-stress of Valheim or just don't want to worry about constantly having to watch your hunger and thirst meters, this is the mod for you. It stops your hunger and thirst stats from decreasing, though bear in mind it will make them stay at whatever levels your meters are at when you load up the mod.
This allows you to swim underwater for double twice as long and swim sprinting won't use any extra energy. This is ideal if you want to explore some of the deeper recesses of the ocean but don't have the lung capacity for such a deep dive.
This ingenious mod takes the most tedious tasks aboard your raft and lets you assign them to little helpers. There are five different sprites which all have different purposes, from collecting crops and replanting seeds to doing the cooking for you. This gives you plenty of free time to take on bigger projects or just bask in the sun.
If you aren't happy with the amount of trash floating in the ocean, this mod lets you increase it. By default, it doubles trash flow, but this can be configured by downloading the Extra Settings API mod. One man's trash is another man's treasure, right?
