Subnautica - another stranded survival game..looks good.

[Paingod]

And a minor spoiler question from the first hour or two of gameplay;

Spoiler:

Do you have to keep radiation gear on all the time? I have a rebreather helmet that I'd like to use but It's not clear to me if it's safe to use since the ship's reactor blew up.

Each time I've played in Early Access...

Spoiler:

Radiation doesn't spread, from what I remember, and you'll only need that suit in places where you're warned about radiation. IIRC, I always got a voice saying "Danger, radiations levels increasing"
or something similar as I entered a radiated zone.

I can't say if this has changed with the official release, though.

[Sepiche]

And a minor spoiler question from the first hour or two of gameplay;

Spoiler:

Do you have to keep radiation gear on all the time? I have a rebreather helmet that I'd like to use but It's not clear to me if it's safe to use since the ship's reactor blew up.

Spoiler:

Yeah, you only need that gear in the area around the ship. Outside of that you'll be fine.

Extra spoily about radiation:

Spoiler:

When you explore the wreckage of the ship, you can get into the reactor room and if you have a repair tool you can repair the leaks to the reactor so there is no more radiation.

[Blackhawk]

Exploring the lost river. Holy crap

Spoiler:

I got myself chased by a ghost leviathan. Heart about burst!

[killbot737]

I've got a phobia about being stranded in open water. Is this game for me?

[Archinerd]

Absolutely! Just be sure not to leave the escape pod. You won't be able to advance the plot or experience the thrill of explorying, but you will enjoy a relatively short and pleasant in-game life as you slowly starve in your snug little capsule!

[Blackhawk]

Rather than post a bunch of pictures, I made a video of my base. The only spoilers for most of it are about what can be built in a base. The end shows a couple of biomes that are past the starting area (grand reef, crags), but I warn before I visit them.

[jztemple2]

Rather than post a bunch of pictures, I made a video of my base. The only spoilers for most of it are about what can be built in a base. The end shows a couple of biomes that are past the starting area (grand reef, crags), but I warn before I visit them.

Holy smokes, now that's a base! Was this in Survival or Creative? If Survival, I marvel at your patience

[Blackhawk]

Survival.

This is the same character flaw that informs the way I play Elder Scrolls and Fallout games. I'm a planning-obsessive, and I tend to embrace the fantasy (by which I mean that I don't just create a warehouse with everything in one spot, I create something that feels like a sea base.)

[Lorini]

Please don't spoil the game for those of us who aren't as far. Thanks.

[naednek]

Everytime I try to play i give up, have no idea what to do. Looks beautiful. I swim, gather stuff, and no i can build things in the fabicrator but that's about it.

[Blackhawk]

Please don't spoil the game for those of us who aren't as far. Thanks.

If that's directed at me, I went to pretty respectable lengths to make sure I didn't. I warned about exactly was in the early part of the video in the description (stuff that can be built in the base), then in the video I warned clearly when I was about to show what biomes were nearby, and again when I was about to enter the Cyclops.

[Blackhawk]

Everytime I try to play i give up, have no idea what to do. Looks beautiful. I swim, gather stuff, and no i can build things in the fabicrator but that's about it.

The secret is that you have to be curious. What's over the next rise? What's at the bottom of that drop-off? What's in that wreck? What's beyond the horizon? Scan everything you see. You'll hit spots where you can't advance (radiation, depth, lack of oxygen), but as you explore what is available to you, you'll find technology that lets you counter those things one by one.

The game is a mix between an open world adventure and a sandbox. It really doesn't hold your hand, but as long as you keep two rough motivations in mind (get stronger, stay curious), you'll advance.

[Lorini]

Please don't spoil the game for those of us who aren't as far. Thanks.

If that's directed at me, I went to pretty respectable lengths to make sure I didn't. I warned about exactly was in the early part of the video in the description (stuff that can be built in the base), then in the video I warned clearly when I was about to show what biomes were nearby, and again when I was about to enter the Cyclops.

The problem is that I see your base every time I come to the thread. The image is a spoiler.

[Blackhawk]

I suppose that's technically true, but only that rooms and one fish exist, both of which are available pretty early. There are much worse spoilers on the Steam page when you buy the game.

I'm very careful with spoilers, but there are levels of spoilers. Doom has skeleton demons. Civilization has tanks. if your goal is to have zero knowledge of the game, to see less than what the marketing materials show, then you should probably avoid discussions of the game entirely. I do the same for threads about movies and TV shows I haven't caught up on yet. After people have been actively playing this game and posting in this thread for three years, there are going to be mild spoilers in it.

[Chaz]

I super wish I had a map in game. I keep getting turned around (even with a compass) and can't remember what's where, let alone where I've been vs where I haven't. I think I'd do better if I could see "oh, I haven't gone that way, let's see what's there. Without that, I'm kind of just wandering aimlessly. It was doubly bad when actual progress that I wanted to make was gated on having a particular tool, and I couldn't find the fragments of it hidden by tall grass. I also managed to clip through the world, which required using the debug console to warp home, which also somehow toggled the "hide water shaders" debug options on. This game is weird with invisible water, and it took me a bit to figure out what had happened.

It's a neat game though. I've got a small, functional base near the starting area. I need to figure out where I'm going to put a bigger, deeper one that's more elaborate.

[Daehawk]

Im with nae.....I swim, I gather a bit, I make a bit of food and items then get lost or cant find a ore or something and quit again.

[Blackhawk]

I also find myself wishing for a map. I get by using a few tricks. First is landmarks. The ship is an obvious one. I know that X is straight back from the ship, and that Y is straight left from the front. Use beacons. Once you have the ship on the horizon, drop beacons at major landmarks like

Spoiler:

the two islands and entrances to deeper zones.

Beacon visibility can be toggled per beacon in the PDA. The beacons themselves can then give you a rough idea of where you are. It gets much, much easier when you get a compass.

The second trick is the F1 key. It opens a data window that gives your current coordinates. And old-fashioned notebook combined with F1 lets you create a pretty good reference.

[Blackhawk]

Once you establish a base, the scanner room (a fairly easy blueprint to find) makes finding specific ores easy. If you scan the various stone chunks before you mine them the first time, your PDA will also tell you which chunks give what materials. I just spent an hour last night with the scanner set to sandstone to collect a bunch of a particular material.

I actually have four bases, and will likely get more in the future. The first base is the one in the video. Each of the others just has a double room (one for a generator, one for everything else - mostly just quick food/water) and a scanner room. Two are in important resource areas far from my main base, the other is in one of the deeper biomes. If I need a material that only shows in certain areas, I just pop into the appropriate base, turn on the scanner, collect what I need, then turn the scanner back off.

[Chaz]

My thing with the scanner is that until I get the right mod, I can't get scanner data when I actually go out and collect things. So far, the best I can do is use a camera drone to go locate a thing, leave the drone parked over it, then swim to the drone.

I also need to find the mod that lets my moth go deeper. Once I actually locate some of the deeper spots, I'll probably want that instead of swimming. And I really want the equipment modification station, but no idea where to find those fragments.

If anything kills this game for me, it's going to be eventually losing interest because I've got no idea where to go to find either stuff or places to go to progress, and I'm tired of wandering aimlessly and hoping I find somewhere I haven't been to before.

[Blackhawk]

For a lot of that early stuff - vehicle upgrade console, moonpool, modification station, search wrecks and the sea floor. As to where...

Spoiler:

the grassy plateau and the mushroom forest have most of the early stuff you need

To find those...

Spoiler:

The grassy plateau is near the side of the aurora, and the mushrooom forest is to the side and slightly behind it -
just don't go directly behind the aurora. You may need to get the radiation suit to explore these areas.

The other thing that people have trouble finding early are the basic rooms for the base. Here's a series of hints on that one, getting slightly more spoilery as they go:

Spoiler:

South (the Aurora faces north)

Spoiler:

To the rear and slightly to the side of the aurora, but quite a ways in that direction

Spoiler:

On the surface

Spoiler:

Look for an island. What you want is on it.

[Lorini]

I forget that it’s been out for so long. Point made.

[jztemple2]

For those with an interest in getting assistance in mapping, there is a page in the wiki about it. You can see maps in various stages of exploration, from just the basic outline of the area and then progressing with more and more detail. The page is fully equipped with spoiler warnings.

[Chaz]

For reference, I've:

Spoiler:

Found both floating islands, seen the rescue ship get shot down by the alien installation, fixed the radiation in the big ship, got the basics of the base (multipurpose and scanner rooms, along with a few other bits), built a seamoth and the handheld motor thing, rebreather, and built the propulsion gun, and laser cutter. At this point, I've got blueprints for a bunch of things that require materials I haven't seen yet, and have no idea where the plans for the upgrade station or the thing that lets the seamoth go deeper are. I think I saw an entrance to a dark tunnel going down, but I don't remember where.

[Blackhawk]

For reference, I've:

Spoiler:

have no idea where the plans for the upgrade station or the thing that lets the seamoth go deeper are.

The depth module:

Spoiler:

There is one already made sitting in the Seamoth bay in the Aurora. it is in a thing with four holes that looks like a battery charger. There are two other items like that for other vehicles you can find in the Aurora as well.

The vehicle upgrade console, straightforward answer this time:

Spoiler:

Look in the grassy plateaus or mushroom forest for a wreck, and find a data box inside or nearby (looks like a flattened storage chest.)

I finally found a solution to my long-term copper problem. Copper has been my bottleneck for the entire game.

Spoiler:

I built a mini-base in the middle of the mushroom forest near the Aurora (one room with a generator plus a scanner room.) I put in all four range upgrades, then told it to look for copper ore. If you tell it to look for ore, it shows you the huge deposits that you can mine with the PRAWN suit for about a dozen ore each. The whole area lit up with the things.

[Lorini]

Thanks Blackhawk. I realize it's kind of weird as the game has been in EA for so long, but I just started playing it very close to release.

[Blackhawk]

I've always spoilered stuff that gives meaningful information about the game away!

Now that I have copper and my base is in near-complete form, I think my next plan is to finish off the full set of upgrades (up to what I have the ability to make, of course) to the Cyclops and PRAWN, then head into the deeper areas and move things forward.

[killbot737]

Absolutely! Just be sure not to leave the escape pod. You won't be able to advance the plot or experience the thrill of explorying, but you will enjoy a relatively short and pleasant in-game life as you slowly starve in your snug little capsule!

Amazing! I sat in the capsule and watched the alien fish from the bottom hatch, all the while eating and drinking my rations. Then I fell asleep and never woke up again.

[Octavious]

I picked this up a long time ago and was waiting for it to get updated more. I sthe gane not replayable? IE once you have seen everything you are done? I nver read much and assumed some stuff was random.

[Tao]

While Subnautica does have an evolving story, it really serves more as a trail of breadcrumbs rather than the "goal" of the game. The story assists with moving the player forward in discovering new areas and moving up the technology tree. At it's heart the game is really a sandbox survival game. So to answer your question, IMHO, once you complete the story if you decide your done with the game there would be no reason to replay. Having said that, once you end the story you can continue to play for many, many hours expanding your base, coming up with new design ideas, exploring some of the "end-game" biomes and trying to gain a foothold there. But once you build a widget or vehicle, building it again in another play through won't be much different.

[Blackhawk]

I picked this up a long time ago and was waiting for it to get updated more. I sthe gane not replayable? IE once you have seen everything you are done? I nver read much and assumed some stuff was random.

Very little is random. I think some of the resource spawns may be, but the rest is not. That said, it is replayable the way something like Skyrim is. The content isn't different, but your approach can be, and the world is big enough that you likely won't 'use' all of it in any one playthrough.

If you had played it a couple of years ago, it would certainly be replayable now. I first played it about a year and a half ago, and there is so much new stuff now that my old experience is largely irrelevant.

[mori]

I had not played the game for about a year. Had a little trouble getting ahead this time. Finding the resources needed to advance up the technology tree changed since my last time playing. Lead all of a sudden became an important resource. Salt and crystal is not scattered all over the ocean floor in the starter area. A player cannot stay in or around the Safe Shallows for long or else progress will stall very quickly.

[Blackhawk]

I noticed the same thing. It gives you enough to stabilize your situation, then really pushes you to move on and explore. The lead, salt, quartz and so on are still plentiful in the zones surrounding the safe shallows.

Quartz tip: gather it at night. It glows, which makes it really, really easy to find, even in tall grass.

[Lorini]

Can't find the third laser cutter, any hints? Also just spoil tag the images, everything else is easy to skip . Sorry to keep bringing this up but I meant to say this earlier.

[Chaz]

I got stalled on the laser cutter too.

Spoiler:

Look in the crates that have an open side in the areas around the starting shallows, especially the areas with red grass. If you're still having trouble, build the scanner room if you can, and have it search for fragments.

Took me a long time to find them, and of course as soon as I built it, I started finding the pieces all over the place.

[Octavious]

Really liking it so far. I'm a bit lost on the building part, but I'm always terrible with that stuff in any game.

[Daehawk]

It now has a neat trailer to start the story off.

[jztemple2]

It now has a neat trailer to start the story off.

If anyone still cares, there are some spoilers in the trailer, so if you want to be truly surprised at what lies beneath the surface, you might want to skip it.

[Lorini]

Too late!! Now I really really apologize to Blackhawk!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Daehawk]

Wait whats a spoiler in that video? Is that place really in the game?

[AWS260]

No, none of those things are in the game. In fact, forget you ever saw that trailer, or anything else about Subnautica, until you play the game.

As someone who has played well into the same, I thought it was neat that the trailer

Spoiler:

showed the story of the Degasi instead of random clips of the player character.