How to cool off and increase SPF in Stranded Deep

When you’re stranded in the middle of several islands, food and water are your top priority, so you can expect to spend the first few hours trying to learn how to acquire these in Stranded Deep. Another factor you need to consider is that the hot sun overhead is slowly cooking you alive. You’ll need to spend time cooling down and trying to prevent your SPF meter from getting too high, but it’s not immediately obvious what you can do to cool off.

You can check your SPF meter on your watch. It’ll be the last item on the small list.

How to cool off and increase SPF

You can tell when your character is starting to cook in the sun when you hear the sizzling sound, and your character starts to make small, “Ow, ow!” sounds. When this happens, the quick, easy solution to prevent yourself from taking additional damage is to run off underneath some trees and cool down. When you check your watch, you’ll likely see the SPF meter is completely gone, but if you wait underneath the trees long enough, you’ll see the meter slowly starting to rise. The downside to this is it takes forever to cool off this way.

A quicker way to cool off is to jump straight into the water on the island you’re attempting to survive on. You cannot merely have your character standing knee-deep in the water. Instead, you need to submerge them completely in the water until you see a blue meter on the lower portion of your screen. This blue portion represents how much air they have left, and if it reaches zero, they start to take damage, so make sure to pop their head out before that happens. Once they hit the top, and the bar goes away, dive straight back into the water, and the breath meter should be full once again. You’ll want to be careful when driving straight in, as there predators lurking in the waters.

Alternatively, you can also try to use resources on an island to help you out. One recipe you’ll want to learn is an Aloe Salve, and you can use it to prevent heatstroke. You’ll need to harvest an aloe vera plant and to make a coconut flask. The flask requires you to make a lashing and use a regular coconut, which has not been opened. After you have those two items, combine them in your inventory, and the Aloe Salva will make you immune to the effects of the sun for a small amount of time. You can just eat an aloe plant to help cool yourself off.

While overheating is an annoying management tool, there are several ways to work around it. Plus, when it becomes dark, you won’t have to worry about the SPF meter at all.