Complete Walkthrough [Subnautica Below Zero]

This is a complete walkthrough of Subnautica: Below Zero.

This guide has major spoilers. If you wish to avoid spoilers, stick to the "General Info" and "Completion Checklist" sections. You have been warned.

Please try to get as far as you can on your own before reading this guide. This game is all about discovering things on your own.

If you have any questions, just leave a comment at the end of the guide.

- HSuke / SSuke

General Info

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

If you're playing this game, you should already be a veteran of OG Subnautica. The first one is an absolutely amazing game. Go complete the first one if you haven't done so yet. You'd be doing yourself a disservice otherwise.

---

If you need a walkthrough of the previous story before the rewrite (EA8, Feb 2020), please visit the EA8 walkthrough.

Completion Checklist

This a quick completion checklist of events and locations you can visit in Below Zero.

Early game [Part 1]

• Find the drop pod and acquire basic tools
  
• Visit Sanctuary Zero and download AL-AN Once acquired, you can complete the rest of the game in any order.

Delta Island & surroundings [Part 2]

• Visit Delta Island, meet Maida for the 1st time, and explore Delta Station
  
• Explore surrounding biomes: Thermal Spires, Lilypad Islands, Purple Vents, Tree Spires, Deep Twisty Bridges
  
• Explore nearby abandoned sites: Omega Lab, Koppa Mining Site, Outpost Zero. Some of these are also related to Parts 2 & 3.

Story Events related to the Exosuit pilot [Part 3]

• Meet Maida for the 1st time on Delta Island
  
• Scan 3 fragments of Parallel Processing Units from the 3 Crashed Ships
  
• Meet Maida for the 2nd time at her base and receive the Test Override Module blueprints.
  
• Reprogram the Satellite Tower
  
• Visit Maida at her greenhouse
  
• Re-visit her underwater base.

Story Events related to your sister [Part 4]

• Explore the Omega Lab
  
• Explore the Glacial Basin
  
• Find Phi Robotics Lab (i.e. Snowfox Base) in the Glacial Basin
  
• Visit Outpost Zero and the Architect Gate Base
  
• Find the Kharaa Antidote in Spy Penguin Cave #3
  
• Inject the Kharaa Antidote into the Frozen Leviathan

Story Events related to AL-AN [Part 5]

• Scan AL-AN's skeleton from the Deep Lillypad cache
  
• Scan AL-AN's organs from the Crystal Caves cache
  
• Scan AL-AN's tissues from the Arctic Spires cache
  
• Construct AL-AN's body from the 3 body fragments
  
• Visit the Architect Gate Base

Optional Tasks and locations

• Build Seatruck + Prawn Suit and their upgrades
  
• Visit Koppa Mining Site
  
• Find the Architect Artifacts

General Tips

Beginner's Tips

There are NO beginner's tips.

If you're playing this game, you should already be a veteran of OG Subnautica. The first one is an absolutely amazing game. Go complete the first one if you haven't done so yet. You'd be doing yourself a disservice otherwise.

However, if you still wish to ignore this warning. Here is my Beginner's Guide:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2407993691

General Tips for Returning Players

• All the formulas and recipes have changed from the first game.
  
• There are no limited-time events. You can relax and take as long as you want to complete the game.
  
• Most of the story objectives can be completed in any order.
  
• Movement is generally slower in Below Zero. Swim and Seaglide speeds have been reduced, and there is no Cyclops or Seamoth.
  
• The Air Bladder is amazing early game
  
• Your main underwater vehicle, the Sea Truck gets much slower with every additional module. Try not to make it too long. It's not a replacement Cyclops.
  
• Similar to the first game, growable plants will make survival mode much easier
  
• Mineral deposits and naturally-occurring plant seeds will not respawn after you collect them. The one exception is Fevered Peppers, which can regrow after you leave the area.
  
• You will know when you swim too far off the map into the Void if it gets really dark and the background music stops playing. If your feeling of dread rises off the chart, it's time to head back to safety.
  
• On the rare occasion that you die, if you have a beacon in your inventory, it will deploy where you died.
  
• If you ever see a glassy hole you can't enter, and none of your tools work, it probably opens from the other side.

[Part 1] Intro Area and Early Game

Intro Area

• Exit the crashed shuttle and head to the Drop Pod location in the Shallow Twisty Bridges biome. That will be your starting base, and it is located near the north end of the map.
  
• If you have played the first Subnautica, feel free to skip the rest of this introduction section and figure out everything on your own. Most of the construction recipes have been slightly adjusted from the 1st game.
  
• Collect raw material and build up the standard tools and equipment: e.g. Scanner, Survival Knife, Flashlight, O2 Tank, Swim Fins, Compass, Air Bladder. Unlike in the original Subnautica, the Air Bladder is actually really powerful in Below Zero.

Early Exploration

• As you explore outward, there are 2 other biomes near the starting area: the Twisty Bridges and the Arctic Kelp
  

  Twisty Bridges

• There are data boxes and fragments scattered around the region that contain blueprints for the Rebreather, High Capacity O2 Tank, Habitat Builder, and Seaglide. Scanning a Habitat Builder will also unlock half a dozen other base components including the Battery Charger and Bioreactor.
  
• This biome goes up to 200m deep, so the Rebreather and HCO2 tank will help immensely.
  
• Once you construct the Habitat Builder, feel free to build small bases as you explore outward.
  

  Arctic Kelp

• Be careful around here. There is a certain playful creature there that will steal your items. You might drown trying to get the item back, so instead, just build a new one.
  
• There is an emergency cache location in this biome containing some food and water supplies.
  
• There are several winding caves near the kelp regions that contain sea monkey nests. You can find laser cutter and a propulsion cannon fragments in these caves. However, be careful because they are a winding maze. You can easily get stuck down there and run out of air.

Acquire AL-AN

• Once you can safely dive 200m down, head into the middle Twisty Bridges biome and find Sanctuary Zero. It is near alien precursor pillars that blink SOS signals.
  
• 
  
• Head inside. Then meet and download AL-AN
  
• After acquiring AL-AN, Sea Monkeys will no longer steal your items. Instead, they will give you minerals.
  
• Afterwards, leave and keep exploring south.

At this point, you can complete the rest of game in any order.

[Part 2] Delta Island and Surrounding Areas

Note: [Parts 2-5] of this guide are numbered by their recommended starting order, but you will most likely be working on their objectives concurrently. They can be completed in any order.

Delta Island

As you keep exploring south, you'll come across a small island with a tower at the top. This is Delta Island

• Visit Delta Island and head towards Satellite Tower at the top. Don't stay out in the cold too long or you will freeze to death.
  
• There's a metal detector in one of the caves before arriving at the top.
  
• The Horseshoe Shrub plants here are amazing. You can grow their fruit in plant pots, and they provide food, water, and health.
  
• Meet Maida for the 1st time when you exit the highest cave
  
• Explore Delta Station and scan everything. There are a lot of base blueprints you can unlock here. The name plates are also scannable. Make sure you also the map here to unlock the Alterra Facilites Map.
  
• 
  
• You can also unlock the multipurpose room, scanner, and observation room
  
• Then explore the Satellite Tower.
  
• 

Alterra Facilities Map details

• After you scan the map at Delta Station, it'll be listed in your PDA under Databank > Logs & Communications > Maps > Alterra Facilities Map.
  
• This map has changed since EA11. It used to be called the Delta Station Map.
  
• Purple Ø: Outpost Zero
  
• Yellow ∆: Delta Station near the Satellite Tower
  
• Blue Ω: Omega Research Base
  
• Brown Ϙ SW of Delta Island: Koppa Mining Site entrance
  
• Green ϕ W of Delta Island: Phi Robotics Lab in the Glacial Basin

Further Exploration around Delta Island

Architect Artifacts

As you explore outward, you will probably come across alien Architect Artifacts. AL-AN will usually message you when you swim close to one. You can unlock upgrade blueprints after scanning enough of them. More details on these artifacts can be found in the "Find the Architect Artifacts" section near the end of this walkthrough.

Thermal Spires

• This is biome north and northwest of Delta Island. You will find sea truck fragments scattered here. Now is a good time to build a sea truck for exploration.
  
  Between the Twisty Bridges and Thermal Spires, there is also a small garden with exterior grow beds. These are so powerful because you can build them anywhere. Use your survival knife to cut flora to grow in a grow bed.
  

Lilypad Islands

• The large biome is southeast of Delta Island. There are 2 ship wrecks to explore here. There are also sea truck aquarium modules fragments scattered about.
  
  
• Omega Lab: There's a huge mound in the middle of the Lilypad Islands biome that hides this base. You can scan and unlock many base parts here, including the swim charge fins, exterior grow bed, plant pots, nuclear reactor, bulkhead, power cell charge, water filtration machine, and control room. You will also find more clues about your sister here. Danielle Valenti and Vinh Pham researched here.
  
  
• Sea monkey nests: You will find many sea monkey nests deeper in the lilypad biome. Scanning them will unlock many tool and sea truck upgrades. After acquiring AL-AN, sea monkeys will give you material instead of stealing objects from you.
  

Purple Vents

• The biome east of Delta Island that contains exploding purple vents. Be careful as there are many hostile creatures here.
  
  
• There is one ship wreck to explore here.
  
• There are also many sea truck module fragments you can find here in the crevices.

Tree Spires

• This biome is south of Delta Island. You can find several huge Ventgarden aliens here.
  
  
• Beneath the northern-most Ventgarden (the giant jellyfish-like creature) is one of the entrances to the Crystal Caves.
  
• There's not much here storywise.

Koppa Mining Site

• There is an Alterra mining site under Delta Island that 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.
  
  
• There are 2 Sea Truck-sized entrances to the mining site. One is through an underwater lava geyser cave on the NW side of Delta Island near the main entrance. The other is hidden deep in the Purple Vents biome behind many purple vents. The easiest way to find the NW entrance is to enter the main entrance to the Koppa on the West of the island, look to the left for the hole in the wall that leads to the lava geysers, and then back trace this to the exit. It's barely large enough for a Sea Truck to fit through.
  
• You can also find prawn suit fragments, a prawn suit jump module, prawn suit drill arm fragments, thermal plant fragments, and a headlamp blueprint here.

Outpost Zero

• Outpost Zero is a large base that has many PDA pick ups that reveal more of your sister's background. You can also scan an indoor growbed, builder fragment, prawn suit fragments, modification station, trash can, locker, vending machine, control room (databox), aquarium, power cell charger fragment, plant pots, lantern fruit, multipurpose room glass dome, and water filtration machine here.
  
• Some of the researchers like Sam Ayou and Lillian Bench worked here.
  
• Trivia: This location is also the starting area of the original Below Zero story (in EA1 to EA8)
  
• You can find the entrance to this region in a underwater cave near the northern-most area of the main water region (marked by a purple Ø on the Alterra Facilites Map),
  

Deeper regions

• Deep Twisty Bridges: You can find the seatruck fabricator and storage module fragments here.
  
  The rest of these regions are very deep. You visit them later in the game.
  
  
• Deep cave area between the Tree Spires and Lilypad Islands: This connects to Maida's base and the Crystal Caves biome.
  
  
• Deep Purple Vents: This connects to the Crystal Caves biome. You will visit this later in the game.
  
• Deep Lilypads Cave: This is the biome at the bottom of the huge mound. You will visit this later in the game. It contains an important cache.
  

[Part 3] Story Events related to the Exosuit pilot

Note: [Parts 2-5] of this guide are numbered by their recommended starting order, but you will most likely be working on their objectives concurrently. They can be completed in any order.

Meeting the Exosuit Pilot

1st Visit

• You should've already met the exosuit pilot once while exploring Delta Island as you exit the last cave before Delta Station. This is Marguerit Maida from the 1st Subnautica game, who managed to survive inside of the Reaper Leviathan she killed.
  
• After you meet the pilot, you will receive a signal beacon of her last known position.

2nd Visit

• Find the cave system between the Tree Spires and Lilypad Islands biomes. Go deeper and find Maida's Base.
  
• This cave system is a bit hard to find. There are 2 main entrances to it:
  Entrance 1) Go to the signal beacon in the Lilypads biome for Maida's last known position. It's 100m directly east of the northern-most Mercury II shipwreck (the one SE of the Satellite Tower). You'll come across a giant floating rock. Then head straight down and follow the trail of light sticks to her base.
  Entrance 2) In the Tree Spires biome, find the northern-most Ventgarden. Head straight down and keep exploring the cave. There's a branch of the cave that goes up a bit and leads east to the Base. If you end up in the Crystal Caves, you've gone too far.
  
• Meet Maida for the 2nd time at her base. She'll ask you to disrupt the radio tower. After her dialogue, you'll be able to walk around some of her base, but her pet Snow Stalker will be blocking the rest of her base. (You won't be able to access the rest of her base until after finishing all her quests.)
  
• Scan the Test Override Module and the Snow Fox for their blueprints.
  
• Hover over text to unhide: Maida's Base
  
  You can also scan her base to unlock the Moonpool (which also unlocks the Seatruck Dock), vehicle upgrade console, and large room. There is a Seatruck Perimeta Defense Upgrade module on the floor by the table.
  
• Nearby her base, you can find a Water Filtration Suit blueprint, Thermal Plant fragments, and a Spy Pengling fragment.

Dealing with the Satellite Tower

Finding the PPU - Mercury II Ship Wrecks

• There are 3 crashed ship wrecks around the Lilipad biome. Two of them border the Purple Vents biome. The 3rd borders the Tree Spire biome.
  
• Stern: The middle-sized wreck. Between the Lilypads biome and Delta Island.
  
• Bow: The largest wreck. Southwest area of the Lilypads biome. This part is a bit of a maze and has 2 separate sections. You can find lots of scannables here, including: Chinese Potatoes, Exterior Growbeds, an Alien Containment, Nuclear Reactor, Water Filtration Machine. There is a Reinforced Dive Suit in the crew sleeping quarters you can scan.
  
• Thruster: The smallest wreck. In the Purple Vents biome.
  
  
• Make sure to bring a laser cutter. A propulsion cannon is also useful for accessing a few hidden areas on the ships.
  
• Within the ships, search for and scan 3 fragments of Parallel Processing Units. Each ship will have 1-2 of them.

Re-programming the Tower

• After constructing the Parallel Processing Units, build the Test Override Module and use it on the Satellite Tower on Delta Island.
  
• 

Visit the greenhouse

• If you try to visit Maida's base afterwards, it will be locked. Instead, you'll find her at her greenhouse.
  
• Visit Maida at her greenhouse. It's located on an iceberg in the east Arctic biome that's far east of Delta Island.
  
• It can be very hard to find the greenhouse iceberg when there's a blizzard, so I recommend you wait until a clear day. At night, you can spot night sticks when you get close to the iceberg.
  
• 

• Maida will provide some vague clues about your sister.
  
• After visiting Maida at her greenhouse, her underwater base will fully unlock for exploration. You can revisit it for some optional base blueprints and PDAs.

[Part 4] Glacial Basin and Arctic Spires

Note: [Parts 2-5] of this guide are numbered by their recommended starting order, but you will most likely be working on their objectives concurrently. They can be completed in any order.

A Prawn suit will make it much easier to traverse both the Glacial Basin and Arctic Spires.

Exploring the Glacial Basin

Entrance

• The entrance to the Glacial Basin is northwest of Delta Island. It's on the surface near a very long green alien cable.
  
• Starting in EA12, there are now a ton of Jellyfish in the area. Only their tentacles do damage. If you use a Seatruck, be very careful how you park, or you may find it destroyed by the time you get back.
  
• Later on, you can repair the bridge at the entrance needs to access the Arctic Spires.

Phi Robotics Lab

• Keep heading west from the entrance of the Glacial basin to find the Phi Robotics Lab (i.e. formerly the "Snowfox Base") in the Glacial Basin (Green dot marker and the ϕ symbol).
  
• Scan everything here. You can get blueprints for the cold suit, snowfox hoverpad, spy pengling, refrigerator, and large room. There are also a few clues about your sister.
  
  
• There's a section of the cave hidden behind boxes that can be removed using a propulsion cannon. It hides extra material.
  
• There is also a architect gateway here that you can't access from this side. It can only be opened from a cave in the Arctic Spires region.
  
• There's a "Glacial Basin" map of the region (shown below) you can scan in the base there. It'll be listed in your PDA under Databank > Logs & Communications > Maps > Glacial Basin Map.
  

Finding Frolo

Use the "Glacial Basin" map from Phi Robotics Lab. It's hard to navigate this region without it. (Note that this replaced the "Research Sites" map from EA11.)

• Progressing without a cold suit is difficult. You may want to collect some fur from snow stalkers by using the spy pengling. You can also prevent coldness by riding a Snowfox, or by building a ton of exterior growbeds with Fevered Pepper plants across the region.
  
• Find the spy pengling caves (marked by blue spy penglings on the map). These provide small amounts of resources (mainly quartz and magnetite). You will need to control the spy pengling to enter them.
  
• Storywise, the only important spy pengling cave is one circled in red. It has a Kharaa antidote you can bring to Frolo, the Frozen Leviathan
  
  
• Find Frolo in the Glacial Basin. It's in a large cave (the Phi Excavation Site) in the western-most section of the Glacial Basin. On the Research Sites map, it's marked by the mountain symbol. You'll know you're close when you see the grove of purple flower trees (Frost Acacia).
  
  
• You will find Parvan's Bunker near near the entrance to the Phi Excavation Site.
  
  
• When you get to Frolo, use the robot to inject the Kharaa antidote
  

Hints for Spy Pengling cave locations

All the Spy Pengling caves have a little radio box in front of them. You can estimate their locations using the Glacial Basin map, which has 5 Spy Penguin markers.

• Cave 1: Right outside of and below Phi Robotics Lab
  
• Cave 2: Inside a small cave near the purple flower trees
  
• Cave 3: Near a flock of penglings
  
• Cave 4: Inside a small cave near a narrow pass a bit east of the purple flower trees
  
• Cave 5: Pretty hard to find. Hidden inside a pitch-black cave with Snow Stalkers.
  
• There are also several non-cave areas that are only accessible by spy pengling, like the southwest-most area of the Glacial Basin, which has a PDA and some minerals.

Arctic Spires

Exploring the Arctic Spires

• This is the north half of the island at the west side of the map. It is a gigantic maze.
  
• It is recommended that you have a Snowfox or Prawn Suit before exploring this region.
  
• To get to the Arctic spires, you will need to repair a large bridge at the entrance of the Glacial Basin.
  
  Scan the broken Hydraulic Fluid canister on the bridge and fabricate it. Then insert the new module in the bridge and extend the bridge to cross it.
  
• You can explore this area with either a Snowfox or Prawn Suit. Both of the vehicles will reduce the cold. It is also the home of the Ice Worms, so bring med kits. I personally dislike the Snowfox since it gets hit by the Ice Worms so often, even with the Snowfox Ice Worm Attack Reduction Module.
  
• You can build a Thumper to keep away Ice Worms, but I've found them to be quite useless because they have a limited effect range and only last 5 minutes before running out of battery. Still, it doesn't hurt to carry one for when you need to exit out of your vehicle.
  
• The goal of this area is to find the Arctic Spires cache at the very NNW end of the map. This topic is covered in more details in the next section of this guide.
  
  
• There used to be purple tablet fragments scattered throughout the region in previous versions, but they have been removed in EA12.

Finding the Arctic Spires teleporter

• The teleporter entrance is quite hard to find. It's directly north of the Artic Spires entrances, but you'll travel through many winding paths to get to it. Look for some orange poles above ground leading to a cave (see left image).
  
• You will need an ion cube to power it.
  
• The other side of the teleporter is the Phi Robotics Lab.

Notable locations

Press F1 to see your position.

• (-1348, 62, 133) - Cave entrance to a cave with 3 deposits of ion cubes
  
• (-1344, 42, 121) - Spy Penguin cave to ion cubes
  
• (-1242, 32, -70) - Cave entrance to an Architect Artifact
  
• (-815 65 261) - Cave entrance to an Architect Artifact (Greenhouse)
  
• (-1127, 80, 153) - Cave entrance to teleporter gateway
  
• (-1097, 68, 338) - Databox for the Snowfox Ice Worm Attack Reduction Module
  
• (-1014, 25, 720) - Entrance to Arctic Spires cache

[Part 5] Story Events related to reconstructing AL-AN

Note: [Parts 2-5] of this guide are numbered by their recommended starting order, but you will most likely be working on their objectives concurrently. They can be completed in any order.

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

Skeleton

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

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.
  
• The Sea Truck's Perimeter Defense module is very useful here.
  
• You want to look for a trench along the bottom of the Crystal Caves biome.
  
  
• The cache is at the end of the trench.
  
• 

Tissues

• Scan AL-AN's tissues 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: Cross the large man-made bridge (assuming you already repaired it from the previous section) above 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
  
• For the synthetic fiber, you should've already picked one up next to Frolo in the Glacial Basin.
  
• Strangely, the recipe for Polyaniline is unlocked by collecting a flower spore in the deep lilypads, despite that it's not used in the recipe.
  
• 

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.
  
• The Sea Truck's Perimeter Defense module is extremely useful here. To activate it once you're attacked, select the number key [1-4] that corresponds to the icon and left-click.
  
• Construct AL-AN's Body from the 3 body fragments
  
• 

[Ending] Final Area and Ending

Visit the Architect Gate Base

• After constructing AL-AN's body, you'll receive a signal to visit the Architect Gate Base.
  
• It is right next to Outpost Zero at the northern-most area near the drop pod.
  
• Follow the small path near Outpost Zero to the Architect Gate
  

Ending

* This is the last time you can save the game.
* Follow AL-AN through the gate. You will arrive at a new location and will no longer have access to any of your items or PDA.
* Talk to AL-AN
* Then use your new arms to pick up and move the 2 pillars
* Follow AL-AN and enjoy the ending scene





Thank you for reading my walkthrough!

For more info, see https://www.reddit.com/r/Subnautica_Below_Zero/comments/gcs5mh/faq_below_zero_mid2020_update/

Optional Tasks and Locations

Build Seatruck and Prawn Suit

For locations of fragments or parts, search the Wiki[subnautica-belowzero.fandom.com]. I'm not going to list them because they tend to change after every update.

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

Depth modules can be upgraded at a Modification Station.
It is possible to beat this game without any vehicles.

Find the Architect Artifacts

• There are many architect artifacts (15) scattered around the map. AL-AN will notify you sometimes when you get close to one and then enter a player base.
  
• Scanning enough of them will unlock the Quantum Locker, Recylotron, Ion Battery/Cell, and Seatruck Teleportation Module
  
• The full list of artifacts can be found on https://subnautica-belowzero.fandom.com/wiki/Architect_Artifacts_(Disambiguation)

Some location codes for Artifacts with Beacon locations:

• LF0 - Fossil Excavator - Deep Purple Vents
  
• NM6 - Ground Sampler (#1) - Tree Spires (under Vent Garden)
  
• PK8 - Ground Sampler (#2) - At the bottom of the east Artic Caldera
  
• Q59 - Alien Statue - Inside of the Koppa Mining Site
  
• X3J - Water Analysis Station - Article Kelp Cave
  
• Z13 - Energy Generator - Glacial Basin Dark Cave
  
• Note that there are more artifacts that don't have beacons. Check the Wikia page for the rest.

Challenge runs

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2404760489

Hard-to-find Materials

This is a list of locations for harder-to-find material

In-organic material

• Lead: Mainly in the Shallow Twisty Bridges. Surprisingly uncommon elsewhere. They're also on the smaller floating Lilypad rocks.
  
• Lithium: Plenty in the Purple Vents, some in underground areas of the Arctic Spires
  
• Kyanite: Only the Crystal Caves
  
• Magnetite: Deep Lilypads, Glacial Basin in some ore veins and Spy Pengling caves, hidden back area of Phi Robotics Lab, inside of a large hollow iceberg
  
• Nickel: Deep Lilypads and Fabricator Caverns
  
• Silver: Thermal Spires, and tons of it in ore veins in the Arctic Spires

Organic material

Most of the plants can be collected using the survival knife and grown in a plant pot or growbed. It is recommended that you grow some of each at your main base.

• Table Coral Sample: Twisty Bridges. On some floating Lilypad rocks.
  
• Flowering Spore: Deep Lilypads. Not plantable
  
• Gel Sac: Lilypads near Sea Monkey nest areas. Deep Purple Vents, Deep Twisty Bridges.
  
• Spiral Plants: In the Deep Purple Vents and inside Ventgardens
  
• Young Cotton Anemone: Deep Lilypads

Scannables / Upgrades

• Reinforced Dive Suit: Mercury II - Bow wreck - Crew Quarters
  
• Alien Containment: Mercury II - Bow wreck - Crew Quarters

List of notable coordinates

The Wiki has a coordinates most unique objects in the game: https://subnautica-belowzero.fandom.com/wiki/Sector_Zero_Map

Location of all 8 Jukebox Disks: https://subnautica-belowzero.fandom.com/wiki/Jukebox_Disks

Pro Tips, Glitches, and Secrets

Random pro tips

• You can press F1 in-game to bring up statistical information, including your movement speed, biome, and coordinates.
  
• You can equip multiple air tanks. Note that the having the Ultra High Capacity Tank in inventory or equipped will slow your movement. You can actually beat the entire game without any vehicles or bases by carrying 3 High Capacity Air Tanks.
  
• The Seatruck can equip multiple copies of the same module. The Prawn suit and use multiple copies of the storage upgrade. However, there is no benefit to equipping multiple Afterburner upgrades.
  
• Each of the 3 parts of the cold suit provides partial protection against the cold. This way, you can wear something different on the head while still being mostly protected against the cold

Advanced Movement Tips

• The Booster Tank (7.53 m/s) and Seaglide (8.28 m/s) stack for a combined speed of 10.15 m/s
  
• Movement vectors stack for vehicles with thrusters (like in Golden Eye 64). You can move up to 41% faster by holding 2 movement buttons simultaneously and up to 73% faster by holding 3 movement buttons.
  
• While the Jump suit upgrade is equipped, the Prawn Suit can accelerate very quickly while in the air. Combine this with the 2-directional movement trick, and you have a ultra-fast prawn suit that's even faster (15-25 m/s) than a speed-boosted Snowfox (15 m/s).

Known glitches

• Propulsion Cannon glitch #1: Using the propulsion cannon to break a mineral deposit can cause the mineral deposit to break into many copies.
  
• Propulsion Cannon glitch #2: You can use the propulsion cannon to pick up Waterproof Lockers and the Quantum Locker. This allows you to nest them infinitely inside of each other.
  
• Propulsion Cannon glitch #3: You can pick up objects with the propulsion cannon while stepping on them to hover on them like a flying carpet.
  
• Propulsion Cannon glitch #4: If you use the booster tank while holding an object with the propulsion cannon, your speed will increase from ~7.5 m/s to ~47 m/s. Probably the fast way to travel underwater.

The propulsion cannon is just broken.

Secrets

• The devs left the Ice Worm Arena in the final version of the game. This is a large testing area where you can view all the Ice Worm animations.
  
  To get there, you need the prawn suit with the jump suit upgrade and grappling hook arms. Head along the west side of the Glacial basin. There are several places where you can climb above the high walls on the west side of the Glacial Basin. Then head north until reaching the area between the Glacial Basin and Arctic Spires to find a large flat area with dozens of markers on the ground.
  
• The ending scene isn't just a cutscene. It's actually mostly modeled in-game. Using console commands, you can enter "speed 0" and turn on "freecam" to look around.
  
  
  

Search Index

Because Steam prevents you from searching under black spoiler text, I've included an index here.

To find the phrase on the left side of the 3 dashes (---), search for the phrase on the right side of the dashes.

START SPOILER SECTION
..
..
..

Redacted Phrase --- Text to search for
..
Architect Gate Base --- [Ending]
..
Frozen Leviathan --- Finding Frolo
..
Kharaa Antidote --- spy pengling cave is one circled in red
..
Mercury II --- Finding the PPU
..
..
END SPOILER SECTION

[CmentSk8er]

I don't know if this will get updated but a tip for beginners scan 4 of the artifacts and build a recyclotron to save inv space converting items like 5 titanium into 1 ingot thus saving 4 spaces if inv

[ddoerr]

omg, I feel like I'm reading a redacted top secret military file with all your spoiler tags. A walkthrough is nothing but spoilers. If someone doesn't want spoilers, then they should NEVER read a walkthrough in the the first place...coz it's ALL spoilers...geez! Like others have said, the spoiler tags makes this guide useless & unprintable. It's too bad coz I'm sure you put a lot of time & effort into it just to ruin it with spoiler tags

[[ERROR]]

al-an what have you done

[SkyDrifter]

remove all spoiler tags as a guide should not have this hidden text at all ! The point of a guide is to walk thought the game in the first place, if the cry babies complain about spoilers they should never even check guides hence the point of guides is spoilers.

[Aryel_Emrys]

it's super annoying trying to read this guide with so many hidden spoilers making this guide
super anoying and useless for me. if I'm looking for a complete walkthrough why would I be worried about spoilers?!. This is counterintuitive and only creates a pointless difficulty.

[HSuke]

It's been about a year since my last update. I've now removed about half of the spoiler tags, mostly ones dealing with blueprints. Some story spoilers will gradually be revealed the further down the guide you go.

[Heavy]

[Krecik]

I'm gonna test it again but I wandered up and down around these coordinates and was unable to find anything for 20 minutes.

[HSuke]

@Kercik: I just tested it. The cave is there, and the nearby architect artifact is at -1170 36 -42

[Krecik]

" (-1242, 32, -70) - Cave entrance to an Architect Artifact" - there is nothing here. No cave.