The intended way to take down leviathans?

[SMJSMOK]

I waited until after finishing the game to ask this, so here we go. How are you "supposed" to fight these creatures? In my playthrough, I used the stasis rifle and knife. It worked pretty reliably, but it wasn't exactly the most exciting fight :)) All the time I had a feeling that there must me some better way, but I couldn't find it. I tried torpedos, but I couldn't kill them that way (maybe stasis rife + torpedo, so his head stays in the toxic cloud? But that sounds about as exciting as the knife approach.) The first time I saw a reaper, I figured they would basically be small boss fights (especially some later ones, but I won't spoil here), which I thought was pretty cool.

[Coops]

The answer is that you are not supposed to kill them at all.
Avoidance is the preferred course of action. I've played the game maybe 20 times and have never even tried to kill a leviathan. There is no such thing as a "boss" in Subnautica.

[nimue]

gas follicles (gaspods) or whatever it's called. use stasis rifle, throw a lot of follicles near head. leviathan will die quickly. you can also fight on PRAWN: you need a hand-grip and a hand-drill. attach to the leviathan and drill it. :)

[SMJSMOK]

Originally posted by Coops:

Avoidance is the preferred course of action.

Oh, that explains it I guess. Still, especially the reapers always seemed to lurk exactly where I wanted to explore. And exploring with giant monsters around who want to eat you is a bit...intense :-D

[SMJSMOK]

Originally posted by держу пиво:

you can also fight on PRAWN: you need a hand-grip and a hand-drill. attach to the leviathan and drill it. :)

Hell that sounds like a lot of fun, I'll try it. Thanks

[nimue]

Originally posted by SMJSMOK:

Originally posted by Coops:

Avoidance is the preferred course of action.

Oh, that explains it I guess. Still, especially the reapers always seemed to lurk exactly where I wanted to explore. And exploring with giant monsters around who want to eat you is a bit...intense :-D

the easiest way is to swim around them or use the seamoth perimeter defense system.

[grzegorz77]

These fish add some excitement to the game. When you kill them it gets boring. And they are not a renewable resource. So it's definitely better to avoid them.
Some places, like the back of the aurora and the map behind it, completely lose their charm without predators.

[admiral1018]

There were no intended ways, and I've always questioned why UWE actually made them killable at all. The game would arguably more interesting if they were a threat that always had to be managed.

But in terms of how quick/easy to kill, the list would be:

1. Habitat builder. Creating a structure that comes into contact with the leviathan's head will instantly kill it. Even easier when combined with the stasis rifle. Note that this was fixed in BZ and the experimental branch, so it's a bug. But still an incredibly useful one.

2. Stasis rifle + gas pods. Freeze leviathan with a fully charged stasis shot and drop a few dozen pods. This method takes a lot of planning and spare inventory to avoid return trips to the shallows, so I typically save it for just the Sea Dragons.

3. Stasis rifle + thermal blade. Again, charged shot and then start knifing. Once you get the rhythm down, you should be able to get in about 30 slices between stasis shots. Reapers go down very quickly this way, and Ghosts can be killed within a single O2 tank. Sea Dragons are immune to the thermal blade, so you can either use the regular knife or a different method.

4. Prawn + stasis rifle. If you can get the leviathan close enough to the ground for the Prawn to strike, freezing it and then double punching (no arm attachments) is a fairly quick and reliable way to kill leviathans. This can be tricky to pull off though, since the leviathan needs to be frozen (and then refrozen) at the right spot to access without moving the Prawn.

5. Prawn + Grapple arm + Drill arm. You can grapple the leviathan like you're at a rodeo and then inflict damage with the drill arm when you drift close enough. This method is highly inconsistent in terms of how long it takes to kill leviathans, and it is prone to causing glitches. You may also get dragged half way across the map.

6. Fauna from the ACU. Releasing Ampeels and Gasopods from the ACU in the area of a leviathan will cause an ongoing battle that should eventually kill the leviathan. This can take a while and may take many creatures, but it does allow an elimination method where you are not directly involved.

There may be other fringe ways to kill leviathans (torpedoes, charged PDS, etc.), but none of those as effective in terms of time and resources as the methods above.

[dreamrider]

Re #1: I believe Ignis (moderator who keeps close contat with the dev team) has said in another thread that mentioned this method, that the dev team specifically intends to fix this, and the "build ghost" disintegration of other items, like wrecks in the next update.

Edit: Sorry, Admiral - being familiar with the method, I read your stuff too fast and loose.

Re #5: Some hunters prefer PRAWN + Grapple arm + standard Claw arm, with punching. The punching actually does more DPS than the drill, but apparently is a bit more finicky about exactly where you are hitting the snake.

In regards to the fringe methods my hero the Admiral mentioned at the end of his post, I personally prefer, for Reapers, to shock them a few times with the PDS, which gets them withdrawing towards the center of the map. They may try to stop at an in between spot. Shocking them a few more times in the new range should send them to the vicinity of center. I have a major base at center, surrounded by a pretty large number of gasopods. Once the Reaper is in the neighborhood, I can take my time with a combination of torpedos, angry gasopod clouds, PDS, stasis & knife, etc. In between, I can park in my moonpool, go sleep in my bed, eat well, think about what I want to try next, etc.

It DOES take a few game days, but it is much less scary than trying to stasis one way out in the Dunes at -250m.

My favoite Reaper hunting picture:
(It was pretty weakened, and there is a Grav Trap in the coral tube.)
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2659353395


The most complete discussion of leviathan hunting that I am aware of is among the Guides on this site, entitled: How to Make Subnautica Less Terrifying, by DOOT.
(He doesn't like forums generally, so he doesn't post/respond in here.)

[admiral1018]

Like I said, method #1 already has been fixed in both the SN experimental branch and in BZ. Both of those games use the new placement mesh and also prevent clipping wrecks. However, in stable SN, that method still works.

[Voodoojedizin]

I will never understand why people think they must kill, it's the lowest form of thinking. I have played this game several times through and never killed anything I used my brains to work around the problem. And it was just as fun and exciting, and better yet challenging.

[SMJSMOK]

Originally posted by Voodoojedizin:

I will never understand why people think they must kill, it's the lowest form of thinking. I have played this game several times through and never killed anything I used my brains to work around the problem. And it was just as fun and exciting, and better yet challenging.

So you didn't cook a single fish? That's also killing, you know (especially when you have the thermal blade that cooks them automatically). And so is throwing them into a bio reactor.

Also don't come at me with the lowest form of thinking, this is completely rational. There's something that actively tries to kill me and lurks in areas I want to visit often. Removing the threat reduces the chance of me being eaten. And I don't want to be eaten. If I could sit down with the leviathan and talk it out, I would do that instead.

Speaking about rational, one thing that sucks IMO is that you can't process the dead leviathans for food. There's a LOT of meat on them. Would probably save a lot of peepers from my thermal blade.

[Mr. Stuffy]

Dammit y'all beat me to it

[Voodoojedizin]

Originally posted by SMJSMOK:

Originally posted by Voodoojedizin:

I will never understand why people think they must kill, it's the lowest form of thinking. I have played this game several times through and never killed anything I used my brains to work around the problem. And it was just as fun and exciting, and better yet challenging.

So you didn't cook a single fish? That's also killing, you know (especially when you have the thermal blade that cooks them automatically). And so is throwing them into a bio reactor.

Also don't come at me with the lowest form of thinking, this is completely rational. There's something that actively tries to kill me and lurks in areas I want to visit often. Removing the threat reduces the chance of me being eaten. And I don't want to be eaten. If I could sit down with the leviathan and talk it out, I would do that instead.

Speaking about rational, one thing that sucks IMO is that you can't process the dead leviathans for food. There's a LOT of meat on them. Would probably save a lot of peepers from my thermal blade.

Hate to disappoint you, but yes I've played the game several times without eating the fish. It's entirely possible and other players have also done this. In fact it makes the game much more challenging, and rewarding. You can actually grow more food than you'll ever need.
And you don't need to kill fish to make water, you get much more by using
other resources.

The reaper is trying to kill you because you entered its territory. It is not actively seeking you out. Myself and many other players have played this game without any deadly encounters with the reaper. In fact there's only one in the entire game that actually gets in your way, but even it can be avoided if you're smart enough. There are no resources that can't be found elsewhere that forces you into their territory. You can hear and see it coming from a long ways away, so why would it ever get close enough to kill you?

Why do you think there are no real weapons in the game? Because it is entirely possible to play the entire game without killing anything.

Killing is always the easy way out for people who don't like to think about other possibilities. If you can't use your intelligence to outsmart a fish
then just how smart do you think you are?

[admiral1018]

I don't understand the condescension some of you have about other people's choices to kill leviathans. This is a single-player game that allows people the freedom to do what they want. There is no moral element here since no real creatures are hurt if someone decides to massacre every lifeform on the map, and no one else's games or experiences are made worse in the slightest. It's an absolutely ridiculous thing to get worked up about.

With that said, there are plenty of reasons why people might choose to kill leviathans. They include, but are not limited to:

- Makes the game easier. Some people like to optimize efficiency, and killing leviathans in certain areas fits that bill. The developers programmed the game in a way that you are rewarded for killing creatures in terms of less annoyance, quicker travel, and fewer resources used in the future.

- Some people have fears of the leviathans and prefer to remove them from the game. In some cases, players have said that killing them helped with their fears.

- It presents a challenge in and of itself.

- It offers multiple ways for ingenuity -- look at all the creative methods players have found using just the tools in the game that are not intended as weapons.

- It gives some people a feeling of mastering and conquering the world. That's a big part of the post-game playability for many.

As I said above, the game developers made the leviathans mortal and thus gave players the perfectly valid option of killing them. The game may be more challenging to some if they're left alive, but not everyone plays this game for the challenge. Some like the exploration, some the base building, some the feeling of taking over the world, etc. Play the way you want and don't attack others who have different preferences.

[Mr. Stuffy]

@admiral
Players that tell people the 'proper' way to play are fairly common in RPGs and story games.
probably the greatest example of this is the Undertale pacifist Nazis.
They are some of the worst fans on the planet simply because they feel they need to enforce other players, youtubers, and streamers to do the pacifist route and nothing else.
and yes, their reasoning behind it is because pacifist is the canonical route.

It's more then that, while we have the players who kill cuddlefish for fuel, they'd be called sadists and heartless (granted most of this community grew out of that and just doesn't care what happens to cuddlefish anymore)
In undertale, if you killed Toriel or any of the skele-bros, the community would start a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ riot over it. Not realizing that it's a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ videogame character so their lives automatically don't matter.

Then there's this thread where OP wanted to no how to kill reapers that are bothering him and half the responses are people telling him to not kill them because "tHaT's NoT hOw YoU'rE sUpPoSeD tO pLaY tHe GaMe"
Like bruh how about you give him the answers he came in the first ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ place to get, instead of wasting time criticizing.