Build and Defend Your Raft Raft build tier list

Raft shape is the quiet half of Build and Defend Your Raft. The experience is live Roblox PvP (max 18) by Raft Pirates, released 28 July 2026. Official art contrasts a tiny Hour-1 boat with a stacked Hour-100 mansion, complete with cannons, spikes, and chests. Those pictures are a promise, not a blueprint with measurements. This page ranks footprints you can staff: compact fortress, wide deck, and mansion. Building steps live in how to build your raft. Defense pieces live in defense rankings. Run the live checklist on the raid checklist.

Why footprint outranks furniture

A mansion with nobody on the stairs is a loot tour. A compact core with one sitter and a hidden chest can waste a raider’s whole timer. Scrap, whether harpooned or bought in 50 / 150 / 500 packs (49 / 249 / 499 Robux), should buy a shape that matches crew size. Saturday patches may add pieces. They will not staff your third story for you.

We will not invent block counts or recipe IDs. Rank the idea.

S-tier: compact fortress

S — small rectangle or tight cluster with an interior chest. Short board line. Spikes on the lip. Cannon covering one obvious step. Harpoon perch that does not require a parkour course. This is the default from Hour 1 through the first real raid. It still wins later if your crew is two people.

S — grow in rings, not in random planks. Add a ring only when the last lip is closed. The fortress stays S-tier while it stays readable. The moment you cannot see your own chest from the cannon, you left S.

Compact does not mean cramped forever. It means every tile has a job: stand, shoot, spike, store, craft.

A-tier: wide deck with a reason

A — wide deck as a gather platform. Extra floor can mean safer harpoon angles and space to dump scrap without blocking the sitter. A-tier wide decks keep the chest inward and accept that the outer ring is expendable.

A — staging deck for a planned second story. You place supports because you will staff the stair, not because Hour-100 art looks cool. If the Crew button still shows one name, stay compact.

Wide decks fail when they become airports: huge, flat, chest somewhere in the middle, cannons pointing at nothing. That is C or F dressed as ambition.

B-tier: pretty plans that need more people

B — early second story. Official multi-story shots are real. Early second stories are a maybe. You gain a hidey-hole for loot and a new climb path for raiders. B-tier if a sitter can watch the stair. F if you built it and left to raid.

B — themed layouts copied from screenshots. Fine for a calm timer. Build the core first, decorate after the raid checklist is green.

B — long piers for harpoon reach. Spike a pier or treat it as expendable wood.

C-tier: Hour-100 mansion energy

C — mansion footprint on an Hour-5 economy. You copied the poster. You cannot spike the lip or see the chest. C-tier is “someday” architecture eating today’s scrap.

C — many rooms with no labeled jobs. If a teammate has to ask where the table is, the build is already late.

C — symmetric palaces that ignore the board line. Raiders walk the shortest path to your box.

F-tier: unstaffed palaces and loot piers

F — Hour-100 mansion, zero sitters. The art is a destination. It is not a defense. Empty palaces are how 18-player servers eat well.

F — chest at the end of a decorative dock. You built a pickup line.

F — expanding during an active raid. New floors are ramps. Hammer after the timer, not during it.

Matching build to crew

Solo: compact fortress, one cannon angle, no extra story. Duo: compact plus a gather lip, short pier only if spiked. Trio or more: wide deck or a staffed second story; mansion only if stairs are watched. Use the Crew button before you place the next plank. If people keep getting lost, your rank dropped even if the screenshot got better.

Hour 1 is a tiny deck, a harpoon, gather objectives, and the Free Reward cannon if you claim it. Hour 100 in official art is stacked and rich with chests. The honest path is closed rings, not one session of empty palace. Saturday updates may add toys that make height better or worse. Walk the board line after each patch.

For placement order — table, chest, spikes, cannon — stay on how to build your raft and the defense rankings. This page only answers how big it should be: as big as you can watch.

Compact until the chest is boring to steal. Wide only to gather. Tall only if a name on the Crew list owns the stair. Mansion as a flex after the server is yours, not as a prayer that wood will fight. If the timer starts and you cannot see the box from where you stand, you built a tourist attraction. Tear a ring off before you add another. Scrap is cheaper than a raid you donated. Shape is a crew size. Hour-100 art is a postcard. Send the postcard when someone is still home.