There’s almost no other game in the entire gaming industry that’s even remotely similar to Subnautica. While yes, games with survival and crafting elements roughly fall in Subnautica’s genre, there isn’t a single title that strands players on an unknown, water-logged planet to explore the depths with an ancient anddeep-rooted mystery to uncover.
10 Short Horror Games You Can Play in One Night
If a gamer wanted to stack their October to the brim with plenty of short horror games, where would they even start?
So everyone, even the gamers who regularly play survival and base building games, will benefit from keeping these nine tips in mind when they first start to play Subnautica.
9Keep a Pair Of Beacons at All Times
Death Could Be Right Around the Corner
Players can get the blueprints for crafting Beacon fairly early, but because they haven’t explored the massive map of Subnautica yet, and have barely gotten out of the Safe Shallows, they don’t feel a need to use Beacons.
That’s exactly what builds bad habits, and soon, they’ll have stumbled upon an interesting area or some loot that they cannot explore yet, either because they’re low on oxygen or their inventory is full, but since they never had any Beacons on them, they won’t be able to return to that spot again without a lot of effort. It’s better to be safe than sorry, and having at least two Beacons when players go exploring is a bare minimum.
8Going Too Deep With A Seaglide
Only to Realize it’s Too Late to Come Back Up for Oxygen
In the first few hours of the game, players don’t have the option to just stick to the Safe Shallows, not just because of the smaller oxygen tank, but also because the swimming speed of the character is slow.
But as soon as they fabricate the Seaglide, they’ll be able to travel surprisingly huge amounts of distances in no time. That’s when things start to get out of hand, though, because while their travel speed has increased, their oxygen tank capacity hasn’t improved a lot. So it’s super important to keep a judicious eye on the oxygen levels and the depth in case the player needs to surface for oxygen.
7Using Multiple Oxygen Tanks
To that end, players who frequently end up running out of oxygen on their explorative endeavors and just don’t have the resources or blueprints for the next tank upgrade or the rebreather will be glad to know that if they put an extra oxygen tank in their inventory, they can swap it out for their currently-equipped tank when it runs out.
They just have to make sure to refill the unequipped tank separately by equipping it from the inventory when they surface for oxygen.
6Keep Swimming After Running Out of Oxygen
There is Still Time
If, even after having multiple Oxygen Tanks, a player finds themselves constantly drowning, they can do a couple of things to alleviate the insult. Firstly, running out of oxygen doesn’t insta-kill the player; first, their health bar depletes acting as a small buffer, after which the screen slowly starts to turn black as the world fades away. Even when the screen has completely turned black, whichmight get scary, the character can still move about for a couple of seconds, so make sure not to let go of the ascend button.
Another thing the player can do is to keep a Beacon in slot one, and when death is imminent, they can just drop the beacon and die peacefully, knowing that they can just return to the spot and recollect the loot. Or they can just save the game more frequently before doing something risky.
5Build A Base Early On
Extra Storage And Unlimited Oxygen
If there was one tip that couldn’t be emphasized more, it would be to startbuilding a base, no matter how rudimentary, early on. Safe Shallows works for a first-time base setup location, and not only will this teach players how base-building works in Subnautica, but having a base already set up will open up so many new modules to build that can accelerate progress, such as full-sized lockers for storage or a battery recharge station.
Games Are Better Off Without Shallow Crafting
It’s also advised to build a small base with the basic equipment in every biome and mark it with a Beacon so players don’t have to spend too much hauling loot.
4Nuclear Reactor is the Best Energy Source
Almost a Never-Ending Supply of Power
Unless players try each energy source for themselves, they won’t know that the Nuclear Reactor is the best one out of all of them. So players should save their resources, and instead of building twenty Solar Panels on top of their base, only to find out that it’s too deep underwater for sunlight to power the panels efficiently, invest their resources in building a Nuclear Reactor.
Each nuclear rod holds about 20,000 units of power, they aren’t too hard to build as long as players stock up on Uranium, and unless players are planning on running on opening a water filtration company underwater, these rods will last them a long time.
This actually happened to me; I was so used to building Solar Panels for all of my bases that for my first base that I made underwater, I didn’t realize that there was no sunlight reaching that deep into the water to power the panels up. That’s when I started to look for other sources of power.
3Build a Chair to Sit on When Reading PDA Entries
Sitting Stops the Body’s Metabolism, Apparently
Hunger and thirst are oftentimes a nuisance than a mechanic in Subnautica. This is especially true when players are in their base and are going through some of their PDA entries since that doesn’t pause time. What the game doesn’t tell players is that the blueprints of the chairs that they pick up on the Aurora aren’t just for making their bases feel more lived in. Players can actually sit on them.
While sitting, the hunger and thirst meters of the character stop depleting, which is a godsend when there are a bunch of PDA entries to go through.
2Easy Way To Craft Batteries
There’s Always an Easier Way to Do Something
Under normal circumstances and if the players didn’t know any better, making a battery using the fabricator requires a Copper Ore and two Acid Mushrooms. The problem is that both of these resources are located in completely different locations. The Acid Mushrooms are plentiful in the Safe Shallows, but that’s about it. The Copper Ore, even though it sometimes appears in the Safe Shallows, is more common deeper underwater in other biomes.
Plus, since the Copper Ore is used when crafting so many other items, players will often find themselves scrambling for it. So players who don’t have either of these resources when they want to make batteries can just build a repair tool instead, which comes with its own, fully-charged battery. It requires Cave Sulfer, Silicon Rubber and Titanium Ore to build, all of which can be obtained easily in the Safe Shallows.
1Don’t Use the Cyclops to Charge Power Cells
Perpetual Energy is a Scam
Something that many players fall trap to is installing a Power Cell Charger within the Cyclops. The huge submarine uses six Power Cells as an energy source and they can get used up quickly on their own. But assuming that thedeveloperswouldn’t have thought of this and using the energy from the Power Cells installed in the Cyclops to charge more Power Cells for cheap, infinite energy is going to waste players a lot of time and resources.
This will only cause the Power Cells within the Cyclops to deplete much more quickly, forcing players to swap Cells from the charger to the Cyclops continuously. Instead, it’s better to keep a bunch of charged Power Cells on hand when planning to go too far from a base.
