If you’ve spent even a few hours wandering Embervale’s overgrown fields and half-buried homesteads, you know how tedious gathering grass, straw, and small plant matter can be by hand. Punching every tuft of grass you pass wastes valuable time you could spend clearing Shroud zones or upgrading your base. That’s why learning how to craft a rake in Enshrouded is one of the first quality-of-life upgrades you should prioritize early in your playthrough. I missed out on this tool for my first 10 hours of gameplay, and once I finally made one, I couldn’t believe how much faster my resource runs went.
What You Need to Craft a Rake in Enshrouded
You won’t have access to the rake recipe immediately when you start a new playthrough. First, you need to rescue the Farmer NPC from the small Ancient Vault located just west of the first Flame Altar in the starting grasslands biome. Bring a basic sword and a few healing potions for the small group of Shroud creatures inside the vault, and lead the Farmer back to your base once freed. As soon as she’s settled, the rake recipe will automatically unlock in your basic workbench menu.
The resource requirements for the basic rake are extremely accessible, even in the first few hours of gameplay. You won’t need any rare or hard-to-find materials to put one together:
- 3 Wood Logs: Gathered from felling any small to medium trees with a stone axe, or looting from abandoned cabins and lumber piles across the starting biome.
- 2 Stone: Mined from loose rock nodes on the ground or small rock outcroppings, no pickaxe upgrade required to collect these early game.
- 1 Rope: Crafted from 3 plant fiber at your basic workbench, or looted from bandit camps and broken wagon chests scattered around Embervale.
If you’re having trouble finding enough plant fiber for rope, just run through any open field punching tall grass for a minute, you’ll have more than enough to make several ropes in no time.
Step-by-Step Process to Build and Equip Your Rake
Once you have the Farmer unlocked and all required resources on hand, crafting the rake takes less than a minute. First, make sure all your resources are either in your personal inventory or stored in a chest connected to your basic workbench. Connected chests are any chest placed within 10 tiles of the workbench, so you don’t have to carry every material on you to craft items.
Interact with the workbench and scroll to the “Tools” tab in the crafting menu. The rake will appear near the top of the list, alongside your stone axe and pickaxe. Select it, click craft, and the tool will be added to your inventory immediately. There’s no waiting time or fuel required for this craft, so you can make one whenever you need it.
Move the rake to one of your hotbar slots to equip it quickly when you need it. I recommend putting it on the last slot of your hotbar so you don’t accidentally mix it up with your combat or mining tools. You can repair a damaged rake at the workbench for 1 wood log and 1 stone, so there’s no need to craft a brand new one every time its durability runs low. I used to carry two rakes on long foraging runs before I realized how cheap repairs are, so save that inventory space for extra resources instead.
Key Uses for Your Rake Beyond Basic Foraging
Most new players only use the rake to collect grass and straw, but it has far more uses that make it worth crafting even if you don’t plan on running a farm. First, it clears small weeds and brush from your base plot 3x faster than any other tool, so you can lay down floor tiles and building pieces without having to clear each plant individually. That cuts down base building time by almost 30% in my experience, especially if you’re building on a grassy plot.
You can also use the rake to harvest wild wheat and barley plants scattered across the grasslands, which you need to make flour for baking and crafting certain decorative building materials. If you hit a fully grown crop plot with the rake, you’ll collect twice as much produce as you would picking it by hand, so it’s essential for anyone growing food to feed their NPCs or make healing items.
One thing to note: the rake does almost no damage to enemies, so don’t try to use it to fight bandits or Shroud creatures. I learned that the hard way when I tried to fend off a wolf with it during a late night foraging run, and I ended up wasting half the rake’s durability before I could switch to my sword. Always swap to a combat tool if you see enemies nearby while you’re foraging.
Common Mistakes to Avoid When Using Your Rake
Even though the rake is a simple tool, there are a few common mistakes new players make that waste durability and time. First, don’t waste durability on large plants or trees. The rake only works on small, low-lying vegetation, so if you hit a bush or tree with it, it won’t drop any resources and you’ll just wear down the tool faster. Stick to grass, wild crops, and small weeds only.
Second, don’t forget to switch to a different tool when you’re done foraging. It’s easy to leave the rake equipped and accidentally hit a rock or building piece with it, wasting durability for no reason. I keep mine on the last hotbar slot so I don’t mix it up with my axe or pickaxe, and I only pull it out when I’m specifically foraging for plant materials.
Third, don’t skip making a rake just because you don’t farm a lot. Even if you only build and explore, the extra straw you collect from raking grass is used for thatch roofs, bed crafting, and fuel for your campfire, so you’ll always need more of it. I used to avoid making one because I thought it was a niche farm tool, and I ended up spending hours punching grass every time I needed straw for a new build.
Finally, you don’t need to upgrade the rake to higher tiers early on. The iron and steel rake variants only have higher durability, they don’t give you extra resource drops or faster gathering speed. Save those rare metal resources for weapons and armor until you have a surplus later in the game, the basic stone rake will work perfectly fine for 90% of your playthrough.
The rake is one of those underrated early game tools that makes a huge difference to your overall gameplay flow, even if it doesn’t seem exciting at first glance. Taking the time to learn how to craft a rake in Enshrouded as soon as you unlock the Farmer will save you hours of tedious resource grinding down the line, and free up more time for the parts of the game you actually enjoy, like exploring hidden dungeons or building your dream base. If you haven’t added one to your tool roster yet, grab the required resources on your next run and put one together tonight, you won’t regret it.