r4d6

The water pushes the drifters and drifter corpses toward the fire, where you can kill & harvest them.

The campfire doesn't attract them, but it is mandatory to be able to deal enough damage to the drifters, as otherwise dead bodies can eat hits that were meant for living Drifters.

I am currently trying it for the first time in the middle of a Heavy Temporal Storm. The Drifters are killing each other more than the campfire because they keep trying to throw rocks at me. I do get hit by rocks quite often, even if they hurt way less than what the melee attacks would do. It is near-impossible to actually cut up any of the bodies, as the sheer mass of drifters keeps moving them, and then you right-click the campfire whose hitbox occupy like 90% of the hole.