Acquiring Water and Food

Water

To have a steady supply of water, first you must scavenge. You can obtain water bottles (filled or not, it doesn’t matter) from floating containers like crates. Or the other containers you find when you use the boat to visit nearby islands. You can even sometimes find them on the corpses of infected enemies you kill.

If you pick filled bottles, just carry them around till you need to drink. If you got empty bottles, place them in the raincatcher so they start collecting water. The queue can take 20 empty bottles and the Raincatcher can also hold 20 filled water bottles. You only need one raincatcher to supply your water needs provided you have collected enough bottles. If you carry 20 filled water bottles with you, then when you drink, place the empty ones inside the raincatcher, you will never go thirsty.

Food

The first food item you will get is canned food. You can sometimes obtain it from floating containers like barrels or crates. They replenish a decent amount of hunger but it isn’t something you should be relying on as it isn’t stable and much reliant on luck.

Making a stable supply of food is a bit harder than water. First you must have the Bonfire station. Then, after crafting the fishing rod, take a few minutes to catch some fish. When you have obtained raw fish, select the fried fish in the bonfire and then put the raw fish inside alongside some Thatch to cook the fish. Leave it there for some time and cooked fish will be ready.

A better food source would require the lobster trap. Craft a lobster trap and place it on the edge of your raft, on the water. It takes some time to catch a lobster and the trap can only hold a single one so it is ideal that about two lobster traps are placed to have a constant supply of lobsters.

Once you catch a lobster, put it into the bonfire. It doesn’t require thatch to cook.

It takes a long time to cook the lobster as well. However one cooked lobster will fill you up nicely and give a decent amount of water too. Once you have this set up, hunger will be a minor inconvenience and you will probably have enough lobsters to start a business… provided you get back to civilization.