Basic Walkthrough for the original EA version (EA8)

This is a bare-bones walkthrough for completing Early Access 8 (Feb 2020) in Subnautica: Below Zero. It only contains a minimal amount of information you need to complete the objectives.

I have separate walkthrough for the new story (EA11 and later): https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2143851874

EA8 was the last major update for the original story before it was wiped and re-written. The only way to play EA8 and earlier is on the Steam edition. Enter the following Steam beta access code, "belowzeroearlyaccess", in the place you would normally enable Experimental Mode[subnautica-belowzero.fandom.com].

While I have attempted to minimize spoilers, there are still huge spoilers in this guide. So please try to get as far as you can on your own before reading this guide.

You can find my BZ FAQ in the BZ subreddit.

- HSuke / SSuke

General Info

See Wiki if you need exact locations

To minimize spoilers, this guide does NOT tell you the exact locations of objects and places. For detailed locations, please search the Subnautica: Below Zero Wiki[subnautica-belowzero.fandom.com]. Many of the upgrade locations can be found on the Sea Monkey Nests page[subnautica-belowzero.fandom.com].

You can press F1 in-game to bring up statistical information, including your coordinates.

Triggering Events

Many of the events in the story require waiting before being triggered. If you're having trouble triggering an event or dialogue after completing a task, please try entering any powered player base, vehicle, or lifepod to trigger a "safety check". You might also have to wait up to 1/2 day in-game (or 10 minutes real-time). Sleeping will pass about 1/3 of the day.

Note that non-player bases (e.g. Rocket Island Base, Jeff's Bunker, Omega Research Base) will not trigger safety checks.

Info about EA9 (Apr 2020)

Accessing EA8 and earlier

Now that EA9 has been released, the only way to play EA8 and earlier is by entering the following Steam beta access code in the place you would normally enable Experimental Mode: belowzeroearlyaccess

EA9 Guide

For Early Access 11 and newer, visit this guide:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2143851874

As for EA9 specifically ... it's story is so incomplete it's not even worth writing a walkthrough for it. There's a new introduction and 2 new Marge cutscenes. Beyond that, there really isn't any new story. Most of the story content from EA8 and earlier have been removed.

Here's how the trigger the 2 new Marge cutscenes:

1) Visit Marge on Rocket Island. This time, you don't even need to be holding a ship wreck salvage.
2) Visit Marge at her base under the Tree Spires biome
3) Revisit the Communications Tower and fix it. If you're unable to fix it with a repair tool due to a bug, you need to purposely trigger another bug to make it break. Visit the Glacial Basin and then return to the Tower. It should magically break, and you should be able to fix it afterwards.
4) Visit Marge at her Greenhouse. This is quite hard to find. It's on a tiny iceberg in the SW corner of the map floating in the sea.

Story changes from EA8 to EA9

- Unchanged: Meeting AL-AN and building its body
- Modified: new Marge scene at her base
- Modified: new introduction
- Added: new tiny Marge scene at the greenhouse
- Removed: Radio Tower repair quest
- Removed: Omega Research Notes quest
- Removed: Colleague PDA quest
- Removed: Kharaa sample quest
- Removed: Enzyme 42 quest

Completion Checklist

This the checklist for triggering the "THANK YOU FOR PLAYING" ending of Early Access:

• Visit Sanctuary Zero and download AL-AN
  
• Gather 1 Ship Wreck Salvage from a Crashed Ship
  
• Fix the Communications Tower
  
• Visit Maida at her base
  
• Visit the Glacial Basin: Collect Jeff's PDA
  
• Visit the Glacial Basin: Collect the Kharaa Sample
  
• Send the Kharaa Sample via rocket
  
• Collect the Omega Research Notes
  
• Send the Enzyme 42 Sample via rocket

After sending the Enzyme 42 Sample, check your PDA logs for the "THANK YOU FOR PLAYING" message. You can still continue playing afterwards.

Optional Tasks:

• Build Seatruck + Prawn Suit and their upgrades
  
• Visit Mining Base
  
• Find and construct AL-AN's body from the 3 body fragments

[Part 1] Research Base Zero to Sanctuary Zero

First 10 minutes:

• Exit Research Base Zero and head to Alien Research Site Zero
  
• Leave Site Zero and head back to the research base.
  
• Escape the starting area

After losing contact:

• Acquire tools: Search around for the following blueprints and tools: habitat builder, compass, high capacity oxygen tank, rebreather, seaglide, laser cutter
  
• Find Sanctuary Zero in the Twisty Bridges ~200m below and acquire AL-AN

[Part 2] Repair the Communications Tower

• Build a laser cutter (fragments in sea monkey nests)
  
• Gather a Ship Wreck Salvage part. Location: There are 3 large Crashed Ship Wrecks around the Lilypads biome south of Rocket Island. 2 of them (the 2 on the border of the Purple Vents biome) contain a "Ship Wreck Salvage" part, which requires using a laser cutter open a rusted box.
  
• Visit Rocket Island (the small one near the center of the map) and repair the Communications Tower at the top
  
• Construct a rocket
  
• (Optional Tools) mobile vehicle bay, sea truck, prawn suit, sea truck modules

Wait 12 minutes after entering a base, and you will receive the "Crashed Escape Ship Signal - Entrance to Glacial Basin" beacon signal for the Glacial Basin.

[Part 3] Post-Tower repair quests

Note: Sometimes, the Communications tower breaks again while doing these quests. (This seems to happen if you leave far enough from the area and revisit.) This is a bug, and it doesn't break your quest progress. You only need to fix the the Communications Tower once.

Task 1) Visit MM in her Base

• You need to trigger 2 cut scenes with Marguerit Maida
  
• 1st Maida cut scene: [Prerequisite: Collect 1 Ship Wreck Salvage] You should've already triggered this scene before repairing the Communications Tower. If not, while carrying a Ship Wreck Salvage part, visit the cave right before the Rocket Island Base (with the Mineral Detector), and then head towards the base.
  
• 2nd Maida cut scene: After triggering the 1st cut scene, visit Maida's base located
  in caves below the Tree Spires near the Crystal Caves and wait for audio dialogue, check PDA for code

Task 2) Get Colleague's PDA and send Kharaa Sample

• Glacial Basin: Make sure you actually get the "Crashed Escape Ship Signal - Entrance to Glacial Basin" signal before heading there. Doing so without the signal will prevent you from being able to pick up the Kharaa Sample, which might break your savegame.
  
• Note that the Glacial Basin in EA8 is huge and a poorly-designed maze. I recommend bringing plenty of beacons to mark locations.
  
• Find Jeff's Bunker and grab his PDA. Its rough location is in a tunnel 150m north of where you first arrive at the Glacial Basin. It's roughly between the 2 man-made bridges. The PDA is required for triggering the Enzyme 42 dialogue later on. (Note that there is a bug in which you can get stuck in the Bunker. If this happens, use the "warpforward" console command to get out.)
  
• Find the Frozen Creature and get the Kharaa Sample. The entrance to the cave is across a man-made bridge north of where you arrive in the Glacial Basin.
  
• Visit rocket: Send Kharaa Sample
  
• (Optional Tools) snowfox, hoverpad, cold suit

Task 3) Get Omega Research Notes

• Outpost Omega code: In order to trigger the code, you need to have already repaired the Communications Tower, downloaded AL-AN, and waited for the signal to visit Glacial Basin to show up on your screen. Only then will you receive the code in your PDA ("Codes & Clues" section) after visiting Output Omega (Location: large underwater mound in the lilypads biome).
  
• Note that the Omega Research Notes will not spawn inside unless you properly obtained the Outpost Omega code.

After collecting the Omega Research Notes and sending the Kharaa sample, trigger a safety check by entering a player base or vehicle while healthy. Within 20 minutes or 1 day in-game, you should receive 2 separate audio dialogues where Sam asks why she didn't receive the Kharaa Sample or the Omega Research Notes.

[Part 4] Send the 2nd Sample

Once all steps of the previous parts are complete and their respective audio dialogues are triggered, wait 1/2 a day in-game. That will trigger the audio dialogue to send Enzyme 42 to Vesper Station and the beginning of Act 4.

• At this point, the Emperor Leviathan will spawn in the arctic biome near the edge of the lilypad biome. The game annoyingly does not give you any clues about this obtusely hard-to-find location. Coordinates: around (1000, -170, -780)
  
• Get an Enzyme sample from him.
  
• Build Rocket a 2nd time and launch it.

This triggers the ending of the story portion for Early Access 7/8. You will receive a developer notification (in your PDA, no audio) thanking you for playing through Early Access.

You can continue playing afterwards, but everything else is optional or not covered in Early Access. See the "Optional Tasks" section below.

Build AL-AN's Body (optional)

Rebuilding AL-AN's body is optional in EA8.

Warning: Unfortunately, I accidentally deleted this part of the guide, so I'm recreating it from memory. It might not be 100% accurate.

Prerequisites

You should've already visited Sanctuary Zero and downloaded AL-AN. That's covered in the Early Game section.

After acquiring AL-AN, he will ask you to find suitable body parts for rebuilding himself. He will occasionally provide signal markers for the location of those parts as you progress the story.

Finding the blueprints

Organs

• Scan AL-AN's organs from the Crystal Caves cache. You have to go very deep to reach here. The entrances to the Crystal Caves biome are the cave networks with sea monkey nests near the Lilypad and Purple Vents biomes. One of the entrances is past Maida's base. You want to look for a trench along the bottom of the Crystal Caves biome.

Tissues

• Scan AL-AN's tissues from the Deep Lillypad cache. This is deep under the large underwater mound (with Omega Lab) in the Lilypad biome

Skeleton

• Scan AL-AN's skeleton from the Arctic Spires cache. This cache is very difficult to find because there are few in-game hints about its exact location. It's basically in the extreme north section of the Arctic Spires biome and the entire map.
  
• To get there: Head north from the Glacial Basin entrance to get to the Arctic Spires. Then keep heading north. The cache entrance will be near the end of a long, green, mechanical alien cable. It's also immediately west of the ice worm boneyard
  
• There are at least 4 purple tablets fragments hidden in the Arctic Spires biome. Scan 4 of them to unlock and build the purple tablet. Depending on which EA version of the game you're playing, you might need it to unlock the entrance to the Arctic Spires Cache.
  
• Once in the cache, scan the skeleton.

Constructing AL-AN's body

• Find the Fabricator Base in the Fabricator Caverns. Start at the Crystal Caves biome and head east until you reach a biome with red crystals. The Fabricator Base is in the deepest underwater part of this biome.
  
• Construct AL-AN's body from the 3 body fragments

Other Optional Tasks

Build Seatruck and Prawn Suit

For locations of fragments or parts, search the Wiki[subnautica-belowzero.fandom.com].

Seatruck Modules: Aquarium, Fabricator, Sleeper, Storage, Docking, Teleportation
Seatruck Upgrades: Depth MK1/2/3, Afterburner, Energy Efficiency, Perimeter Defense, Horsepower
Prawn Suit Upgrades: Depth MK1/2, Drill Arm, Propulsion Cannon, Jump Jet, Thermal Reactor

Visit the Mining Site

This area under Rocket Island contains many blueprints related to the Prawn Suit. There are some interesting PDAs and blueprints you can collect, but nothing required to progress the story.

[ThePotatoGamer]

thanks for the code man it gave me so much more to to in the game :)

[mijxero]

This is a great guide, wish I would have found it before I finished slogging through some of the last sections blindly.

[Paprica]

al an Coordinates please and the fabricator base

[n3c]

thanks very much ❤! the beta has much more content than i thought in it = O

[HSuke]

@KretaceousKit Thanks for the heads up. I've crossed out the Energy Efficiency module. I can't find it in survival/freedom modes anymore. In additional, it doesn't have any effect currently.

[KretaceousKit]

Is the energy efficiency still in the game, if so do you know where I can find it, thank you. Also great guide, very useful!

[Unleet]

@Pestilence
They are completely rewriting the story this year. The original writer left and they brought on Jill Murray for a complete story rewrite. Check out they news update from Nov 22th. They say this is the last version of the current story that they are scrapping and in 2020 we will be getting a new story with a full save wipe.

Feel free to blast through and explore without ruining anything.

[Pestilence]

Biggest pull from this walkthrough: Don't play yet.
That's not a burn... I just don't want to ruin the full experience by playing any more now that they have enough of the story to ruin the story for full release.

[OurFriendIrony]

Thanks, that is exactly what I needed!

[HSuke]

@OurFriendIrony
I've added extra location hints in this guide for the Bunker. Check [Part 3].