If you are playing on PC, you have two primary ways to connect:

For years, fans of Beam Team Games’ survival masterpiece, Stranded Deep , have asked the same question while staring at their empty rafts: "Why can’t I play with my friends?"

: Islands have limited food and water; supporting three players requires much more aggressive farming and water still management.

indicate that the game's engine is highly unstable even with two players; adding a third would likely cause severe desync, bugs, and server crashes. Resource Constraints

The mod is technically an "unlimited players" mod, though it is most famously used to unlock the third player slot. It bypasses the hardcoded check in the game’s code that limits the lobby size to two.

Both players must own the game on the same platform (no cross-play).