Subnautica - SCUBA, Unknown Worlds, drowning

certainly, or punching them with the prawn. but its just as easy and usually less damaging to yourself to just evade.

most importantly violence is never the only way to progress. taking a good look at things and being curious always is.

i just capped my experience by writing a glowing review on steam. least i could do.

In terms of typical progress, when should I be aiming to build out my base with vehicles, etc. vs. progressing with the story arc?

I got the Seaglide and a barebones base going but not much else and the story bits is starting to either requiring items I don’t have (i.e. a laser cutter to get inside the Aurora) , or go much further down than what I can probably survive for (e.g. 250m deep).

Needing to find all of these random fragments is a bit of PITA…

Get a base up and running, get the scanner room working, scan for wrecks / data boxes and you will get just about all the gear you need to progress in the story. :)

I need more silver (I think?) before I make the thing that allows you to build a base and I’m having trouble finding it… but at least I got a high capacity tank and a rebreather now, which helps with deep(ish) dives.

Just take your time and explore wrecks, scan items in the white crates, check out the lifepods, etc. There’s no need to rush in this game. You’ll find the laser cutter when you least expect it (then you’ll find five more and wonder how you missed them all lol).

Almost every lifepod is a breadcrumb to a major piece of wreckage, sometimes 2, whenever you go to a lifepod you should then search the general area for a wreck. Don’t give up until you find a wreck because there is one nearby. You need to get the seamoth built, it is basically a portable air supply so you don’t have to go to the surface every minute and a half.

Sandstone deposits have silver, they are pretty common in kelp forests and grassy plateau biomes

Yeah, I know, but they also give out other stuff? I have lots of gold and lead but no silver. I think the RNG hates me. ;)

I must be missing something b/c the scanner room only scans a very small area around my base & I abandoned it as anything useful. What am I missing?

I spent 2 hours trying to add a moonpool to my base. It just wouldn’t connect. I deleted / re-added connectors and it was pathetic. Connectors that should connect, no longer connecting, or they connect but when you go inside, there is a bulkhead where a pathway should be.

Took me an hour to get my base back to where I had it & then built the moonpool next to it, so I now have to exit / re-enter to switch between them.

Ugh.

Craft the 4 range upgrades for it. It will then have a 500m radius, pick on the list what you want it to then find. :)

ah, ok, will try that.

But even when it was short range, I had a hard time interpreting the contours to something that I could find. I think instead of using a range and a direction as a guide rather than trying to find it via the underwater shapes.

How do you go & get something once the scanner identifies it?

There is a HUD upgrade you can put in your suit (I think) which allows it to show everything the scanner has found as you are out swimming about. You can literally just glide around to each thing you need, with no searching at all. Wrecks, fragments, sandstone, stalker teeth, whatever.

Yep, the HUD is a must-have. My only complaint is when scanning for datapads, it will show you ones you’ve already opened, which is annoying.

I felt the same way at first, but when I started using the eyeball thingies, and then got the scanner room implant, and used it to find wrecks - wow! It became indispensable. I have 3 bases, 1 small, 1 medium, and 1 large and they almost intersect with the 4 distance upgrades. Also a huge huge thing I wish someone had told me earlier:
The scanner room does not show stuff in caves. But if you use the eyeball things and go into a cave, it will! The eyeballs extend the scanning capabilities of the room. This is how I finally located, ummm dang I can’t think of it. One of those rarer things you need to build advanced thingies.

I have to rebuild my scanner room as I took it off, but when I do I will try your suggestion.

In other news, I went down deep b/c I was trying to find some magnettite, found one of these eery areas with these long stalks with what look like octopus heads that have blood oil all over the ground. The music gets really “bass”-ee and these warpers are all over trying to get into my head and this GAME MAKES ME SWEAT WITH NERVOUSNESS.

There was an interesting cave nearby but I only ventured in a bit b/c I kept getting turned around and the music and the warpers and WHERE IS MY MOMMY.

lol. Seriously though this game can go from 'do dee doo what a cool cave / fish / ’ to OH SHIT OH SHIT so quickly.

I had a similar moment. I was deep around one of the structures the story leads you to, in my seamoth. I had upgraded the depth on it and was hovering just above anything that would crush it, but still able to wander around in the cave to the location. It’s spooky as hell and I’m shining my lights on the structure so I can dart in and out based on my oxygen level.

Then I started hearing these strange creature noises followed by a tick tick tick … tick. What the hell could that be? Then this deep DUUUUUUUUM and screeches. Spoiler: sounds I look out and see my seamoth getting it’s ass kicked by a bulbous headed squid. I freak out and watch it attack some more, realizing I am inside a structure, that’s my only air refill point, and I’m several hundred meters down in a cave. Fuck. Sure enough, a few seconds later I hear my seamoth pop. Gone to the depths. I made it about half way back on the seaglide before my air ran out.

It wasn’t until much later I heard the voice of Sgt. Al Powell from Die Hard in my head, “They’re shootin’ at the lights!” The thing didn’t like the lights on my seamoth being on. :(

RIP Seamoth #1

Man the sounds in this game, I followed that link you put up and the next one to autoplay was the full soundtrack.

Such a great soundtrack!

It is indeed. Hell, this should have been in the Thunderdome thread.

Damn! That works quite well out of game! Not only that, but those tracks have such sweet connotations due to the sweet game they belong to… I need to get these in my music library.

I want to listen to this in twenty years and tear up remembering playing subnautica with my 4year old son sitting copilot pointing out bits to pick and discussing base layout and being scared of the big fishy thingy with me.

… and then I found out it’s a neatly labelled OST folder of MP3 in the games’ file structure lol.