the hint for the place seems kinda misleading at best. spoilers.

[ WraithGear]

so i am looking for the disease research facility. the clue said 800m down. to the southwest. i spent hours combing everything to the south west from the QEP to the void. even built scanner stations to get a topographic layout of the ocean floor to find the cave entrance...





i caved and looked it up. turns out that the cave is to the north east of the QEP. and i could have also gotten there i think from the proposed settlement location on the opposite side of the map that i was avoiding thinking i should go to the disease research facility first. i am sure that the facility itself might be to the SW but at that point no hint at all would have been more helpfull.

[KippenKaasBaas]

Yes the facility is exactly south-west of the QEP.
like the hint says, it's in a ''cave system with extensive fossil record''.
The problem is that this 'cave' (Lost River) has not one, but 4 entrances. The one you decide to take is up to the player.
And there absolutely is an entrance south-west of the QEP. It's the one in the Blood-Kelp zone.

[ WraithGear]

isn't the blood kelp zone to the north west of the QEP? i didnt come accross that zone when i was searching... i didnt know that nearly all the deep parts connect to the lost river. i thought it was its own cave, as i had been throughout that area wit ht he seamoth. maybe i just didn't go deep enough, but i did get to 900M before i was forced back. i guess i missed it...

it just seems kinda cruel when by the time you find a way into the cave system you ultimately(supposed;y) run into the facility without needing its position compared to the QEP.
its got that wild goose chase feel to it is all.

the nearest cave entrance would be much more useful

i don't know how i didn't find the facility, cuz i found the ghost leviathan tree and even deeper multiple times without finding it.

[KippenKaasBaas]

Originally posted by  WraithGear:

isn't the blood kelp zone to the north west of the QEP? i didnt come accross that zone when i was searching... i didnt know that nearly all the deep parts connect to the lost river. i thought it was its own cave, as i had been throughout that area wit ht he seamoth. maybe i just didn't go deep enough, but i did get to 900M before i was forced back. i guess i missed it...

it just seems kinda cruel when by the time you find a way into the cave system you ultimately(supposed;y) run into the facility without needing its position compared to the QEP.
its got that wild goose chase feel to it is all.

the nearest cave entrance would be much more useful

i don't know how i didn't find the facility, cuz i found the ghost leviathan tree and even deeper multiple times without finding it.

There's multiple Blood-Kelp zones.
One is all the way north. The other is in the south-west, connected to the Grassy plateaus. Both have a Lost River entrance.

But you're right. It would be bette if the hint pointed you towards the nearest entrance. That's the one in the Bulb Zone. This entrance is also the easiest and biggest entrance for the Cyclops.
Only problem is that this entrance takes you dangerously close to the Mountains/Crash zone biomes which are filled with Reapers...

[admiral1018]

The facility itself is just below the area around Lifepod 3 in the Kelp Forest, which is technically southwest from the QEP. The problem is, as you mentioned, that most players assume those coordinates are the location of the entrance, with the closest one to the QEP being almost directly east. This is confusing and could have been communicated better.

[westrud]

Usually people will go to the proposed settlement first, since it isn't as deep, and it acts as sort of an introduction for getting to the lost river. The disease research facility is also hidden back in a corner but it has the light towers that lead to it from the big chamber with the big skeleton and the ghost.

[dreamrider]

Originally posted by KippenKaasBaas:

Yes the facility is exactly south-west of the QEP.
like the hint says, it's in a ''cave system with extensive fossil record''.
The problem is that this 'cave' (Lost River) has not one, but 4 entrances. The one you decide to take is up to the player.
And there absolutely is an entrance south-west of the QEP. It's the one in the Blood-Kelp zone.

Kippen, you are as much my buddy as anyone on-line, so it pains me to tell you...You Are Wrong...a little.

There are 5 Cyclops-sized entrances to the Lost River cave system.

There are two distinct and separated entrances down in the Blood Kelp Trench, which lead into / open into different caverns / sub-biomes of the LR system.

(I know that you never go in from that side, you are a Mountains Corridor guy, so I will forgive the lapse in your God-like powers.)

[dreamrider]

Originally posted by admiral1018:

The facility itself is just below the area around Lifepod 3 in the Kelp Forest, which is technically southwest from the QEP. The problem is, as you mentioned, that most players assume those coordinates are the location of the entrance, with the closest one to the QEP being almost directly east. This is confusing and could have been communicated better.

Admiral,
I kind of think that the writer / developers did not WANT to communicate the true path deeper any better. To encourage that feeling of confusion, and to provoke wider exploration. I think that, for them, merely establishing that there was a place apparently deeper down than any of the available biome seabeds was enough. Oh, and that it is vaguely "over thataway".

And it could be said that the entrance that the most players are likeliest to find first, the one that they are actually led quite close to, IS to the southwest (well, SSW) of the QEP.

Though maybe I am wrong, and most players are too wrapped up in the very different mission that brings them to that vicinity, and don't take time to look around the area.

[ WraithGear]

i did eventually find it at pod 2. there was just too many reapers in the east of the qep that was said by others. but it was a tight fit.

also the fire dragon is an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. the energy leeches are smaller yet much more troubling ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

wiel the fire dragon killed me when i was in the door air lock. behind my prawn thinking "A BLUE ONE!?" and yoink... there i go.

reloaded a save and collected some mats and come back to my ship absolutely covered keel to sail in leeches and without any power. i am going to have to migiver myself out of this mess, but this is by fal better then searching for where to go.

[rdbury]

The directional hint _is_ misleading and you'll find the location faster if you ignore it. The bit about the fossil record would be helpful if you pay attention to what the PDA says when you enter a new biome. But for that to work you'd have to remember where you were when you heard the message; you only hear it once per playthrough and while you can listen to it again in the PDA, the location isn't recorded. It's only in hindsight that you realize that the location where you hear this message is incredibly valuable for finishing the game.

The fact that previous location hints _are_ useful makes the situation worse. Lifepod 4 is fairly easy to find once from the hint and using the compass. Lifepod 6 is findable with its hint once you find pod 4. (Though there is a good chance that you'll get the lifepod 6 hint before the lifepod 4 hint, which can be confusing.) The lifepod 7 hint isn't misleading, but it's vague to the point of being nearly useless. That one doesn't matter much though because pod 7 is kind of optional. The point is that by the time you get the research facility the game has trained you to trust these hints an try to follow them, when really you should just ignore this one.

So is this a bug or a feature? Dreamrider claims it's "To encourage that feeling of confusion" in one of the previous comments. I can't disprove this interpretation, but the game certainly isn't bug free otherwise.

[ WraithGear]

yea, for me i found the ghost leviathan egg tree using the path from the Dagrassi island, and then that lead me to the Dagrassi proposed base, and that to the lost river almost 2 km south of the QEP. but i couldn't go any lower in my seamoth. i decided to follow the hint for the 800m base instead of trying to get deeper in the lost river. i though it was a whole separate cave system, and was the next step to get the deep dive mats. i got there in the end thanks to everyone posting different routs here.

also sea dragon had to die. i don't know what is up with his aggro, and wall phasing. but woof. he ate so many torpedoes. kinda weird that the cloud of the first torpedo detonates the following ones early and wasting your shots. but manageable after you know about it.

[dreamrider]

@Wraithgear:
It takes a long time, but I prefer putting in a temp Scanner Room somewhere near (a niche up on the main cavern sidewall will do), and ramming that 'bad boi' to death (or permanent relocation behind the walls), with the camera drones.

Any method you choose down there in that distant, awkward environment is going to take awhile. Stasis rifle + a backpack full of poison pods is certainly quickest, once you have caught up to the snake, in a good position, but you need nerves of steel. Drone ramming has the advantage that it is perfectly safe, and the SD doesn't realize what's happening and can't use any of it's formidable weapons. But it is just small increments of accumulating damage.

The SD has 5000 HP, just like a Reaper - you'll have to smack it solidly with a drone a couple of hundred times. You'll go through maybe 6-7 drones, unless you are bothering to bring them home to repair.

Have a water. Have some melon or Bulbo. Walk around, stretch your legs (?fingers?). Then send out another drone and smack it some more.

[ WraithGear]

wow i didn't know the drones did damage. i play on vr, and there the drones are cursed. do to their speed and small size, and lack of grounding for the player, it will make me, a 6 degrees of freedom veteran, and a salty sailor not susceptible to seasickness, feel the kick in my guts. but i will remember that

[dreamrider]

They do a bit more damage than the damage that they take, if it is a solid hit. Maybe 2x as much. But then, the drones are repairable, or easily replaceable (for free, if you want to go to the trouble.)

I have dealt with all kinds of levis this way. But then, I am a very patient guy. It IS slow.

The really cool thing is that the targets ignore them. Oh, they will run away from the damage, but they don't react / counter the drones.

Warning though: If you build an Attack Scanner Room, and you go to it in your PRAWN Suit, park the PRAWN Suit ON TOP of the building. You will be in there at the drone console for a long time. Suit might sink if on seabed.

[KippenKaasBaas]

Originally posted by dreamrider:

[
Kippen, you are as much my buddy as anyone on-line, so it pains me to tell you...You Are Wrong...a little.

There are 5 Cyclops-sized entrances to the Lost River cave system.

There are two distinct and separated entrances down in the Blood Kelp Trench, which lead into / open into different caverns / sub-biomes of the LR system.

(I know that you never go in from that side, you are a Mountains Corridor guy, so I will forgive the lapse in your God-like powers.)

Me? WRONG?!
HOW DARE YOU!!!!


Nah, you're right. There are actually 5 entrances instead of 4...
To be honest, I forgot how many entrances there were so I just checked the Subnautica Map and it only displays 4.
Because it counts the Blood Kelp Trench as a single entrance.

[dreamrider]

I could swear that, way back when, when I didn't know any better, or what a big deal it would be, I found what I think was an LR entrance that you could NOT get a Cyclops through. Maybe just big enough for a Seamoth.
------
But I've never found such a thing again.