A major feature of the Tangaroa story island in Raft is the plantation, an underground area where locals tried growing strawberries and bananas. That's why most of the blueprints on the story island have to do with water and water infrastructure.
These blueprints include the water tank, which stores large amounts of water the same way the fuel tanks store biofuel. Raft players can freely store and collect water from the water tank, but to make the most of it, they should use the water pipes they can also get from Tangaroa and create a complete water infrastructure on their raft. That is, assuming they need all that water.
Water Tank Basics
A water tank costs 30 plastic, 10 planks, 3 ropes, and 3 titanium ingots. Once placed, the tank can hold an incredible 33 units of water.
While the biofuel tank only fills up one square, the water tank needs two squares. This is because one square is for adding water to the tank and the other square is for taking water from the tank. Since players can use the same containers to do both jobs, it would otherwise be impossible for the game to figure out how players want to interact with the tank.
The water tank also has two pipe connections, one for each square. It also features a small barrier that sticks out from the tank to prevent the two pipes from connecting directly. However, this barrier is mostly for show. If players connect the two pipes together somewhere else, the water tank will still work without any problems.
The water pipes work just the same as biofuel pipes. Players get two pipes by spending 4 scrap, each one occupies a cube of space half a story in height, and players can only place them on empty, flat surfaces or on other pipes. Players can remove pipe pieces from below if the pipe is supported horizontally by other pipes, and by repeating this, they can create horizontal pipes that are overhead and out of the way.
Is a Water Tank Worth Building?
For most players, the answer to this question is "No." There are only three objects in Raft that use water pipes: sprinklers, water tanks, and electric purifiers. Sprinklers spend their water slowly, even when they're watering a lot of crop and grass plots, and since the electric purifier stores 15 units of water in its own tank, it can refill several sprinklers directly without running low.
A water tank could be useful to a player who doesn't have an electric purifier. After all, it can store vast amounts of water compared to a water bottle or even a canteen. However, the water tank and electric purifier blueprints are on the same island, so only players with vast livestock farms will need the extra water storage the tank provides.
Raft is available now on PC.