How to get a good start ?

[Casual Cucumber]

Hi guys i have played around 9 hours of subnautica, but i never have gotten a real good save. I am not like a total new player, but could you please try making a step by step, for what i should be doing. So i can get the most fun experience with this game. Ty if you will try making one :)

[Cougarific]

How I do it (your mileage may vary):

-You start with 50% hunger so first priority is getting some food. Do this immediately because otherwise you will be doing it as the sun is setting - which is when you need to be hunting for Quartz.
-Gather food/water (fish and Airsacks), titanium, copper, salt on your first day.
-Gather as much Quartz as possible during first night
(always be on the lookout for Fragments (they look like little grey safes) - Seamoth frags are top priority)
-Gather materials for/make Knife
-Gather materials for/make at least one Air Tank and Swim Fins
-Make at least two First Aid Kits - keep one in Inventory, put others in storage.
-Make the emergency floatation thingie.
-Gather materials for/make Rebreather
-Gather materials for/make Stillsuit
-Build Seaglide
-Build Constructor
-Build a Bouy and keep it in your Inventory for marking places you want to return to.

-Start a small base near Lifepod - just big enough to hold/power a Fabricator, extra storage and the Fragment Analyzer
-Build Deployable Mobile Vehicle Bay
-Build Seamoth


At this point you should be pretty well set up, just keep exploring, gathering and building. Push out in a new direction after each trip back to the Lifeboat/Base, and leave a bouy at places you want to return to.

[Casual Cucumber]

Thank you so much, this will really help me :)

[Khelonos]

Personally - apart from food which you can't ignore - I make a base ASAP. That can require some slightly 'advanced' knowledge in terms of getting the components, but the builder and silver (needed to craft one) are also in the random loot table for the lifepod locker so you can also just start a new game a few times to get what you need. Only things I make before a base - if I don't get a builder in the storage locker - are fins, air tank and knife.

[NotThatHarkness]

This is how I start:

-Find food, 4-5 peepers and 4 or so air sacks.
-Look for quartz, enough for fins, 2-3 tanks, and the knife.
-Grab 1-2 scrap metal for titanium, you don't need much titanium initially.
-Grab 4 salt if you come across them.
-Construct the knife, tanks, and the fins. Store the salt for later. Eat. Use the air sacks for water.

Don't pick up too many things, you don't have the inventory. Ignore fragments initially, you can't use them until you make the fragment analyzer anyways and they don't move around. I personally don't use the Air Bladder. Don't bother with the Rebreather until you start exploring under 200 m down.

-Next venture out to the kelp forest and pick up some creepvine seeds for lubricant.
-Cut enough creepvine for 2 health kits.
-Cut enough coral for 4 bleach.
-Search the huge coral tubes in the safe shallows for enough copper for 2 batteries and copper wire.
-Build the Seaglide (requires having lubricant in your inventory to show up on the Fabricator). This will use 1 battery. Keep the other in your inventory to use with the Seaglide once the 1st battery is dead.
-Build 2 health kits and 2 disinfected water. Keep one health kit with you and store the other in the life pod.

Fish as necessary and use airsacks and/or the disinfected water as necessary. Also mind the power level of the Seaglide and construct batteries as necessary. I always keep a spare in inventory.

-Once that's done, return to the kelp forest and possibly the red grassy plateaus and look for silver. At least 3. A gold or two might come in handy depending on your base design and whether you need power transmitters. Keep an eye out for stalker teeth just because those can be a pain to find when you want them.
-Construct another battery (for the builder)
-During the nights pick up at least 5 quartz (for the next two items), but don't go overboard, mind your inventory.
-Construct the stillsuit (which greatly helps with thirst).
-Construct the builder tool.

Now you are ready to build a base. Once you have some storage built you can go crazing collecting things. If your base isn't near the life pod, use a beacon to mark it's position.

Once my base is built, I concentrate on the fragment analyzer and begin to pick up fragments as I come across them. I start with the propulsion cannon and workbench (for the upgrades) fragments. I use the Seaglide to find them in the red grassy plateaus. I usually research the Seamoth fragment (in the analyzer) after those two. I squeeze in the MVB while I'm gathering supplies for the propulsion cannon and workbench upgrades (heat knife and fin upgrade). Once I get the Seamoth blueprint I focus on building that. I make 2 power cells (one for the Seamoth and one for a spare).

After that, I think you are in a pretty good position to explore with either the Seaglide or Seamoth depending on where you want to go and what you want to build next (moon pool or Cyclops or expanding your base).

[Willi the Gifter of Chaos]

This is how i start:
1: Gather food
2: make a radiation suit
3: build a base
4: explore
5: repeat steps 1,3-5
6: have fun
All the other tools feel a bit exessive and pointless. (beyond the flashlight)

[Azraile]

where is a good place for a base away from the starting spot?

[Khelonos]

Originally posted by azraile:

where is a good place for a base away from the starting spot?

IMO the best base location is on the border of the safe shallows. Where the leftmost grassy plateau looks like a bit like a boot. That puts you on the border of 4 biome types (1 not shown on map) with easy access to most resources and the Aurora.

http://subnautica.wikia.com/wiki/Biomes

On the tip of the boot - on the clifftop above the little caves with crash fish.

There's even a lone stalker who swims by occasionally so you can leave scrap metal outside and pick up teeth at your leisure.

[Azraile]

between the mushroom forest and the grassy plateau, over looking the kelp forest?

[NotThatHarkness]

Originally posted by n13green:

IMO the best base location is on the border of the safe shallows. Where the leftmost grassy plateau looks like a bit like a boot. That puts you on the border of 4 biome types (1 not shown on map) with easy access to most resources and the Aurora.

http://subnautica.wikia.com/wiki/Biomes

On the tip of the boot - on the clifftop above the little caves with crash fish.

There's even a lone stalker who swims by occasionally so you can leave scrap metal outside and pick up teeth at your leisure.

I tend to build near that area too. I usually start a base in the southern most dip of the safe shallow area. That area borders the kelp forest and red grassy plateau while the grand reef and sparse reef is pretty close by. The kelp forest bordering that location to the south is devoid of stalkers too. The only downside is that there aren't any fish in that area either, so you have do do your fishing in other biomes. I haven't found that to be a problem though.

[Khelonos]

Originally posted by azraile:

between the mushroom forest and the grassy plateau, over looking the kelp forest?

Not there. But see the east most bit of that grassy plateau where it juts in between the two kelp forest biomes and into the safe shallows? There's a cliff there which drops from the safe shallows down to the grassy plateau. That's where I typically build my first and main base.

Easy access to nearly everything. Only the koosh zone is not close by and I like to build a base there later anyway cos it's pretty.

[Azraile]

hum, it's not highlighted with the others, but there is a tiny brown spot betwen the plataue and the forest.... is there vulcanic vents there?

[Khelonos]

I'm not sure what that brown spot is. There is a relatively tall pillar in that general region. Might just be that. I can't remember seeing any vents there.

I know there's at least one volcanic vent in the safe shallows, koosh zone and grand reef. None of those have brown spots on the map.

Though if you watch the map cycle through the biomes it marks lots of the other little brown spots as inactive lava zone.

[cniht]

Those strategies are all great but my kink in the road has been finding silver. I've got gold coming out my backside but silver is pretty hard for me to find in the quantities I need it. I must just be getting unlucky.

[Myrador]

Originally posted by cniht:

silver is pretty hard for me to find in the quantities I need it

with a bit of skill, dodging biters and sharks its very fast to get in the grassy plateaus
i have 2 screenshots the first shows O2 at start and empty inventory the 2nd shows what i got by collecting all stuff i found there
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=585636587
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=585636675
maybe it helps but i find it very easy to get silver there

[Cougarific]

Gonna bump this as the best Tips and Tricks thread I've seen so far.