How to Avoid & Kill Sharks in Stranded Deep

The shark, aka the king of the ocean, is the most dangerous predator in Stranded Deep. It’s fast, smart, and aggressive. Even worse, it often seems to be looking for trouble, which usually ends up being bad news for players.

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Naturally, players will be looking for ways to avoid sharks in Stranded Deep, particularly when they are first starting out. Thankfully, the game does offer a few different techniques to evade shark attacks, the best of which can be found below.

The Best Strategy for Avoiding Sharks in Stranded Deep

To keep the sharks away, players can use shark repellent. It’s a craftable item made up of a Lionfish, a coconut flask, and an antidote. Shark repellent scares sharks away for 12 hours, and its effect can be tracked using the watch.

Here’s how to craft shark repellent in Stranded Deep:

• Create an empty coconut flask with one coconut and one lashing.
• Put one Pipi plant into another coconut flask to get the antidote.
• Finally, catch a Lionfish and craft shark repellent.

It's important to note that Lionfish are extremely poisonous and can’t be held. So, to get around this, players will need to keep them in the inventory and void touching them (If anything goes wrong, they can consume an antidote to cure its poisoning effect).

Another way to avoid sharks in Stranded Deep is to swim in shallow waters near the islands. While it’s not a guaranteed method, it minimizes the chances of shark attacks, as these creatures generally prefer deeper waters.

Eye contact also reduces a shark’s aggression. Players report that looking a shark in the eye makes it 50% less likely to attack. However, that’s only a workaround when no other protection is available.

How to Kill a Shark with Minimum Resources

Since sharks are stronger underwater, it’s best to kill them while standing on a raft or some other solid object above water. To do so, players simply need to look down into the water and shoot the shark with a spear every time it passes by.

The best weapon for killing sharks is the crude spear. It might inflict less damage than the refined spear, but it’s easier to craft and has the same power as the arrow.

A hunter proficiency of level 6 or above is okay for killing sharks, but there’s no actual limit to hunting them. Any beginner player in Stranded Deep can take down a shark with enough resources and patience.

Things to Know About Passive and Aggressive Sharks

Stranded Deep plays different music whenever a shark is nearby. That should be considered a subtle warning sign, but not all sharks in Stranded Deep are predators. The blacktip reef and whale shark, for example, are passive. They never attack players and flee when someone tries to hunt them.

• Sharks don’t respawn.
• Players earn large meat for killing a shark.
• Sharks can flip over wooden and rubber rafts.
• Passive sharks never attack players—not even in self-defense.

The following table shows which sharks are aggressive and which ones are not.

Stranded Deep is available now for PC, Xbox, PlayStation, and Switch.

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