We’ve just pushed a small but critical update to the Beta Branch to address some of the most persistent bugs reported by the community. As we continue to refine the survival experience, these fixes ensure your journey across the endless ocean remains as smooth (and shark-free as possible) as we can make it.
How to Access the Beta:If you want to test these changes early, head to your Steam Library, right-click Raft, and select Properties. Under the Betas tab, choose "beta" from the dropdown menu. 🛠️ What’s New in 1.1.01?
Keybind Flexibility: You can now officially bind the "ESC" key to your preferred functions, providing more control over your navigation.
Foundation Integrity: Fixed a "game-breaking" bug where holding a throwable anchor while a shark destroyed its supporting foundation would crash the session.
Creative Integrity: Playing in Creative Mode no longer counts toward achievement progress—keep those trophies for the real survivalists!
Water Physics Fix: The "infinite water" exploit (drinking while simultaneously watering plants) has been patched. Nature requires balance!
World Naming: You can now include periods (.) in your world names without the save files appearing "lost" in the menu.
Bed Safety: Removing a bed while another player is sleeping in it will no longer break the game state. 🧭 Navigating the Ocean
While you explore, don't forget to keep your Receiver handy. If you are hunting for lore, the second crucial code can be found at the Radio Tower.
Thank you for your continued feedback and for helping us keep the raft afloat! Update 1.01 - Official Raft Wiki
Since "Raft v1.1.01 Beta" is likely a minor hotfix between major updates, it does not have a unique "headline" feature like "The Balboa Island Update." It represents the Polish Phase of the game's initial Steam release, ensuring the Plastic Hook and Basic Multiplayer functions worked correctly.
(Note: If you are looking for the major content updates, they came later: v1.05 (The Forest) and eventually v1.0 Full Release (The Final Chapter) in 2022.)
This is not about the survival game, but about the Raft consensus algorithm (used in etcd, CockroachDB, TiKV, etc.), imagined as a specific version with advanced features.
Membership Changes (Joint Consensus Refinement) Raft v1.1.01 Beta
C_old,new) required two-phase switching, risking log divergence during configuration transitions.Pre-Vote Protocol (Production-hardened)
PreVoteTerm field to detect stale pre-votes after partition heal.Versions labeled with "01" in a beta branch typically denote hotfixes. The "feature" of this specific version was likely Stability. The early Steam days were plagued by lag and FPS drops, especially when casting the hook or building large rafts. Updates in the v1.1 cycle focused heavily on:
Use this if you are writing about the history of the game or recalling older versions.
Title: Remembering Raft v1.1.01 Beta
Back in the era of v1.1.01 Beta, Raft was still finding its sea legs. This specific version holds a special place in the community's memory as the "turning point" patch. It wasn't about adding flashy new islands or story content; it was the update that solidified the game's foundation. Before this patch, the ocean felt a bit glitchy—seagulls flew backward, and rafts had a habit of drifting apart. v1.1.01 brought the necessary polish that proved the developers were listening. It was the silent hero that made the vast ocean feel just a little bit less lonely and a lot more survivable.
Title: The Patch Notes of God
Log Entry: Day 847
Raft Version: 1.1.01 Beta
Build Date: Unknown
Status: Drifting
My name is Dr. Aris Thorne. Once, I was a computational oceanographer. Now, I am the sole QA tester for the most important software patch in human history, and I am fairly certain it is trying to kill me.
The Raft is not a boat. It is a four-meter square of lashed-together plastic barrels and decaying plywood, crowned with a single, rain-fouled solar panel. In the center, bolted to the floorboards, is the Terminal—a waterlogged tablet encased in a salvaged lunchbox. It runs the Beta.
The backstory is simple, which makes it cruel. Climate collapse triggered a mass extinction event called the "Great Dilution." The oceans rose, the ice melted, and humanity retreated to floating arcologies. But a software glitch—a rounding error in the global current-prediction AI—sent thousands of emergency rafts into a permanent loop in the South Pacific Gyre. We are the forgotten. The 1%. The Beta testers for a fix that was never finalized.
The update, v1.1.01, arrived three months ago via a satellite burst that lasted exactly 11 seconds. The patch notes were three lines long:
Raft v1.1.01 Beta
Fixed: Current drift algorithm now accounts for thermohaline circulation anomalies.
Added: Dynamic weather seed (revised).
Added: One (1) environmental variable. Unlock condition: survive.
No further explanation. No hotfix. Just me, the endless blue, and a tablet that glows faintly in the dark. We’ve just pushed a small but critical update
For the first month, nothing changed. The same sun, the same circling gulls, the same empty horizon. I survived on collected rain and the occasional plastic bottle that held a desiccated protein wafer. I talked to the Terminal. I cursed the developers. I wrote long, angry bug reports that would never be sent.
Then, on Day 62, the sky broke.
Not figuratively. The clouds began to grow in fractal patterns—perfect Mandelbrot sets of cumulonimbus. Rain fell in geometric sheets, diagonal and impossible. The wind came from four directions at once. I clung to the mast (a snapped hockey stick duct-taped to a barrel) and watched the ocean fold. Waves crashed against themselves, canceling out in perfect silence. The temperature swung from tropical to subarctic in thirty seconds.
The Beta had activated the "one environmental variable."
I learned quickly: the variable is memory. The Raft does not just drift through space; it drifts through time—or at least, through the echo of every shipwreck, every storm, every sailor's dying prayer that ever soaked into the Pacific. When the algorithm cycles, I see things.
On Day 78, I saw a 19th-century whaler, its crew fossilized in salt, still hauling ropes that led nowhere. On Day 112, I floated through the ghost of a WWII naval battle—no ships, just the sounds of sonar pings and men screaming in Japanese and English. On Day 203, I watched a luxury cruise liner from 2029, its decks empty, its buffet still steaming, as if the passengers had simply evaporated mid-dessert.
The Terminal logs everything. It calls these "localized historical current anomalies." I call them hellos from the drowned.
But v1.1.01 is not finished. It is a Beta, and Betas have bugs.
The worst bug appeared on Day 401. I woke up to find a second Raft beside mine. On it sat a man who looked exactly like me, except he was missing his left hand. He didn't speak. He just pointed east, then west, then north, then south—every direction except the one I was facing. I screamed at him until he dissolved into brine. The Terminal flashed: ERROR: Duplicate instance culled. Memory leak suspected.
That's when I realized the truth. The "environmental variable" isn't a weather system. It's me. The Beta is using my consciousness as a processing core. Every fear, every memory, every forgotten childhood nightmare—the algorithm renders it into the waves. The Raft is not a survival simulator. It is a debugging tool. And I am the crash report.
By Day 600, I had stopped trying to escape. I had become something else: a chronicler. I wrote a bestiary of the Beta's creatures. The Hollow Gulls—birds with no insides, just empty shells that screamed my mother's maiden name. The Tide of Regret—a black slick that rose at midnight and whispered every lie I'd ever told. The Compass Fish—silver eels that swam in perfect circles, pointing only to places that no longer existed.
And the Patch.
It came on Day 847, just now, as I write this. A single line of text on the Terminal, glowing brighter than the sun: Plastic Hook: Added as a cheaper
Update available: Raft v1.1.02 Alpha.
Changelog: Removed her. Added silence. Recompiled hope.
Install? Y/N
I stared at the cursor for an hour. My finger hovered over the salt-crusted screen. Removed her. My daughter. Lily. She was five when the Great Dilution began. I put her on an arcology transport. The transport was lost in the Gyre. The Beta has been rendering her laughter from the waves every morning at dawn—a bug, a memory leak, a beautiful glitch. If I update, she disappears.
But if I don't, the drift continues. The storms grow worse. The duplicate versions of myself will keep spawning, each one missing a different piece, each one pointing to a different horizon.
So here is my final bug report for Raft v1.1.01 Beta:
Issue: The ocean remembers everything.
Severity: Critical.
Reproduction steps: Be born. Love someone. Lose them. Float.
Expected result: A patch that fixes the heart.
Actual result: A cursor blinking. Y/N.
I press Y.
The screen goes dark. The waves go silent. The Beta uninstalls itself from the world, and for the first time in 847 days, I hear nothing but water and wind. No ghosts. No duplicate hands pointing. No Lily laughing.
I am alone on a Raft with a dead tablet.
The horizon is empty.
And for the first time, that's not a bug. It's the final feature.
End of Log.
Raft v1.1.01 Beta — End of Life.
The most distinct gameplay feature added in the v1.1 era updates was the introduction of upgradeable hooks. Before this, players only had the basic Hook.