vinraith
1564
The Cyclops is basically just a trailer to haul around the prawn. It’s indefensible, noisy, and delicate - you can’t really take it anywhere without having to constantly worry about it. If the Seamoth had another depth upgrade and a Prawn-friendly tow hitch there’d be no reason to even build a Cyclops.
Zylon
1565
I was talking about the Cyclops. Not sure why you’re responding with talk about the Prawn.
OK, appreciate the input folks. I think at this point I’m leaning toward the prawn suit, just because it sounds like it has more immediate applicability for me. I found blueprints for some attachments like a drill, which sounds like would be useful getting into those larger ore blocks that I can’t get into by banging with my knife. So that first, and start saving up for the Cyclops which sounds like will be more useful as I range farther from home base.
I said that I was getting fewer breadcrumbs but I forgot the little “codes and hints” section of my PDA which is actually pointing me to a couple alien facilities. One is a disease research center which sounds ominous, and it’s 800 meters down. Guess I need to get that level 3 Seamoth pressure upgrade.
Built an alien containment tank too! Now I can see what’s in all these alien eggs I’ve been collecting. The joke will probably be on me when they hatch and trash the place.
Speaking of aliens, I’ve run into a bunch more and they seem mostly hostile. There are giant electric eels that don’t seem to like me much and some freaky octopus with big eyes with a nasty area effect blast. And I still just have my knife. I should look into more offensive options probably.
Skipper
1567
Shit, my bad, man. I contest my previous statement, your points are valid on the cyclops.
Zylon
1568
The Prawn drill arm and grapple arm are absolutely essential. Without them you’re basically just piloting the Prawn Suit Trial Edition.
Ultrazen
1569
I had a great time with the cyclops, and didn’t really have any problems getting around, repairing etc. I found it really fun to drive, especially when trying to get down to the end game portions of the map. The feeling of weight and actually being in that environment was really appealing, /shrug.
A lot of people didn’t care for the cyclops, which I can understand, I just found it really fun, but then again I love subs, and spent a lot of time in it. The Prawn is certainly a great choice, and one that you won’t regret, it’s an absolutely essential tool in the game.
geggis
1570
It exists in the game because after some 50+ hours of base-building and all the item faff that entails, it was wonderful to be free of that (this is why there are mods to make base-building less fiddly, which I wasn’t privy to when I played it). Subnautica’s tech loop is as much about eliminating inconveniences as it is overcoming obstacles, from having to come up for air and cooking fish, to storing items and… simply returning to base. Even quantum lockers in Below Zero feel like a way of sidestepping a lot of the item schlepping. With the other vehicles you’re on a bungee cord attached to your base for repairs, charging, food, water, crafting, storage etc. but the Cyclops more or less severs that. You can just go. That was liberating to the adventurer/explorer in me and came at just the right time when I was tiring of the repeat trips to and from my base(s). You call it a sop, but I call it endgame tech. Goodbye base, you cold tin can! Hello abyss, you hot hell!
I don’t think the endgame would have been nearly as cool without it either. It felt like this big thing to be descending in, equipped to face whatever dangers await. I never had any issues repairing or defending it either, and I say this as someone who didn’t realise that silent running allowed you to sneak past leviathans. I just motored past, wheee!
(Seamoth for life though… and the PRAWN suit is amazing too with the grapple arm.)
Skipper
1571
Seamoth was like that early game RPG item that you loved so much that once you outleveled it, your take on the whole game is slightly-soured, you’ll never have better. And it’s pretty true. If there had been technical ways to go to endgame with the Seamoth, I’d wager most of us would have. But in a nod to the devs, the whole game is about pushing you outside of your comfort envelope in small steps until you take a new giant leap to something new. I like that they did that but I hated having my woobie taken away.
#tear
Calelari
1572
Me too. In my entire playthrough there was only one time my cyclops came even close to being in danger, and I just had to shut down for a few minutes until “Casper” (cough) moved on. Oddly enough I never encountered any of the, shall we say, boys in the open ocean.
My use case was to use it to get to the general area and then Prawn around. And late game to haul a crapload of materials down to where I built my second base.
Teiman
1573
Can’t play this game. too scared of big fish.
You know, I’m pretty ok with the big fish in and of themselves. They’re scary, no doubt, and big and angry and all that. But the reapers, the biggest and meanest of them - they scream at you. If they see you, they’ll scream and chase and eat you. It’s intense as all hell. So yeah, I get it. They are pretty scary.
Houngan
1575
Difficulty! I’m a baby at these games and Subnautica was perfect for me, The Long Dark initially frustrated me, then killed me, then killed me several more times, then depressed me, then ate me and I quit.
OK so - to catch up, I now have a Prawn suit and a Cyclops and, to make a long story short, no real idea what to do with them.
To expand on that, I’ve gotten some use out of the Prawn, bounding across the ocean floor looking for large ore deposits that I can drill and stuff in a locker. I just built the Cyclops today and good grief, that thing is unwieldy. I can tell you need a lot of space to work with this thing, and my relatively shallow water base is not that space. I also learned that you can’t dock this thing in a moon pool, though I had to try, and filled my base with seawater in the process. I’m not sure what to do about powering the thing, I don’t have enough replacement power cells to swap out on the fly, at least until I craft a few more. But I see that there’s an upgrade to allow it to recharge from thermal sources which sounds super helpful. I just don’t know where to find all the ingredients for that blueprint so I guess it will be a while yet.
I’ve found another deep water Degasi base that the last jellyshroom base pointed me to. Found some good stuff there too, though at the moment it seems to be a dead end. It’s possible I didn’t find all the PDAs I was supposed to because I kept getting chased by those EMP octopus and just eventually got tired and noped back to base. I don’t have any better clues at the moment so I should probably spend some more time there I guess. In the meantime, I keep exploring and mining and upgrading. It’s not a bad life, really.
Go deeper. Always go deeper.
Well, I’ve found (so far) two places that seem like they go significantly deeper than I’ve been so far. One seems to be a broad and open plain to the south of the shallow starting area, and the other is a bit west and seems to go back under the main area I’ve been exploring. I didn’t go too far exploring either because in the first section, my computer noted that there were a large number of leviathan signals out there and was I completely sure that I really needed to do this? I was not, so I turned around. In the second case, I ran into a lot of various boogey men, like those EMP octopus and some smaller leviathans and I got nervous and turned around.
I can always do a suicide run and push onward to see what’s out there, I just figured at some point I’d get some indication of a correct way forward. Maybe this is where the training wheels come off and I just need to go everywhere eventually. I haven’t put any time or resources into the available offensive options, or even the shield for the Cyclops or the defensive system for the Seamoth. So I guess I’m going to need to keep running until I find something and scramble to investigate, like I did with the last Degasi base.
vinraith
1579
That’s the absolute best defensive tool in the entire game.
Not to spoil anything, but don’t get your hopes up for offensive systems.
That’s not much of a spoiler, I have access to a bunch of upgrades and very few look like viable offensive options. The few that do look like weaponry, like the torpedoes, I haven’t really bothered with because they just don’t sound very helpful. I think I can carry a loadout of two torpedoes?
So anyway, I guess my strategy of doing suicide runs and looking for stuff in the depths is the only way to go, unless I’ve just missed some pointers along the way in which case I can do what I’m doing now - hang out, explore around, dig up minerals, add on to my base, do chill stuff. But it feels too safe, and I know the game is pushing me downward and onward. I know stuff is down there because I’ve got a few data records telling me about at least a couple of alien bases down there somewhere. Oh well, I’ll get there eventually.
Yeah, I believe that deeper Degasi base is the last thing the game will blatantly point you toward. After that you’re on your own to go deeper and find the alien facilities listed in the logs.
As for fighting, I didn’t bother except once just to get a little revenge on a critter that scared me early on. Just run from everything; there’s no loot to be gotten by killing anything so why bother? Other than the really big fishies nothing hits hard enough that you won’t have plenty of opportunity to run away and I don’t believe the big ones can one shot you either.
They can definitely get you in two so use that health kit and run. I don’t believe I ever died in this game except to my own incompetence, though I also didn’t push the boundaries of where you’re clearly not intended to go.
