Penner's Unusual Walkthrough

Sick of endlessly searching for something you just can’t find? Out of radio beacons and don’t know what to do next? Then this guide is for you. It combines locations, blueprints and other achievements into efficient missions that will help your progress. Not recommended for new players who prefer to explore and discover on their own. Spoiler alert for the entire game.

Early Game

Medical Kit Fabricator

First thing after putting out the fire and listening to your PDA’s introduction, take a Medkit from the fabricator. The fabricator will continually make new Medkits, unless it has a complete one in it, at which point it will do nothing. Maximize the output of the machine by always taking a Medkit if one is available. Always try to keep one or two Medkits on hand in your inventory.

PDA

When you open your PDA, it will show your personal inventory on the left and your personal equipage on the right. Any fins, tanks, or other equipment that you are wearing can be ‘unequipped’ and transferred into your inventory. But if you open a locker or other container, the right side of your PDA will be those contents, rather than your equipage. You cannot access your equipage while viewing the contents of a container. Eating, drinking, and using a medkit are also disabled while looking at a locker. You can, though, still access all the other functions of your PDA, including blueprints and beacons.

Pay attention to the information the game is giving you. Look through your blueprints carefully so that you are aware of what you can build and what materials you need to build it. Subnautica is quite an easy game, but you can make it hard by not reading the entries in your PDA. Bright yellow numbers in the tabs of your PDA indicate information there that you haven’t seen yet.

The blueprint tab will show everything that can be built with any fabricator. There are no fewer than nine different fabrication devices in the game; but you can look up any blueprint (that you have acquired) in your PDA at any time. Many of these will be organized under the device that fabricates them; i.e. Vehicle Upgrades or Modification Station. Other items will be made either with a standard fabricator or with the habitat builder. You don’t need to swim out to your mobile vehicle bay to see what’s needed to build a seamoth.

Inventory management is very important early-game. Open the storage locker in the lifepod and take what is useful, leave what is not. There is food and water in the locker that can last a little while.

As you gather materials, only gather what you can use right away. Until you have a base, be focused in your gathering and don’t just pick up whatever’s in front of you.

By processing materials with the fabricator, you can in many cases reduce the inventory space required. For example, a four-slot Creepvine seed cluster can be processed into a one-slot bottle of Lubricant. As soon as you construct the habitat builder (whose blueprint is given to you at the start of the game), you can build a base with as much storage as you want, so inventory management stops being an issue.

Threats

Overall, the fear factor in Subnautica is derived primarily from ambiance and sounds. All animals (except for the reaper and sea dragon) sound much scarier than they are.

It is almost never necessary to do battle with a leviathan or other fearsome creature in order to achieve a game objective. Until the endgame, important areas are largely safe, and most threats can be avoided just by swimming away. Subnautica is intended as an anti-violence game, and although most animals can be killed, there is never any benefit to doing so. Honestly, the best defense against any given threat is just to keep moving.

Early game, do not worry too much about dangerous animals. Stalkers, gasopods, crashfish and sandsharks can all be annoying and can indeed kill you, but if you remember to carry Medkits with you, and don’t go out of your way to antagonize them, they are of minimal concern. Later on, it is useful to prepare defensive measures such as the seamoth’s perimeter defense upgrade, or the repulsion cannon. But it will never be necessary to gird for battle, unless you are making it a personal mission.

The wildlife often seems more offended by your vehicles than by you yourself. Predators will occasionally attack a seamoth or prawn suit, even when you are not in it. Keep that repair tool handy.

Gathering

After exiting the lifepod for the first time, resist the temptation to fill up your inventory with Acid mushrooms. There is no reason to gather them as they are lying around literally everywhere. For now, take only 6 or 8 of these (always gather them in pairs) to make into Batteries.

Put your Fire extinguisher away. You’ll swim faster when you aren’t holding anything.

Locate some Creepvine (almost always in view from any location in the Safe Shallows), and swim towards it, picking up resources along the way. Creepvine actually consists of two different commodities: seed clusters, which can be picked off the plant, and samples, which must be cut with a knife. These can also be scanned separately.

With one of its few on-screen text prompts, the game will point you toward your first limestone block, which you want to collect for Titanium and Copper. You may also pick up a few pieces of Metal salvage, which can be processed into Titanium, but don’t take more than two or three for now as they will fill up your inventory fast. Once you reach the Creepvine, take some seed clusters. Feel free to fill up on these, as they can all be processed right away.

While in the Creepvine, look around for some sandstone blocks: sources of Silver, Gold, and Lead. Sandstone and Quartz are available in caves and amid Creepvine; pick these up freely as well. Also in this area you will find Salt, which is not crucial but very useful.

Return to the lifepod and process what you have gathered. In general, it is a good idea to process raw materials rather than saving them. This reduces inventory requirements and also generates secondary materials that you can use for more building. Specifically:

• Metal salvage cannot be processed into anything but Titanium. There is no reason to keep it around or store it. If you have Metal salvage, make it into Titanium so that you can use it. If you have way more Titanium than you can store, process some of it into Ingots — they will come in handy later, and will collapse ten Titanium into a single-slot Ingot.
  
• Creepvine seed clusters can be processed into Silicone rubber and Lubricant. You will need quite a bit of both of these, so do not hang on to the seed clusters. Note that one seed cluster will convert into one bottle of Lubricant, or two units of rubber.
  
• One piece of Copper can be combined with two Acid mushrooms to make a Battery. Copper is needed for a great many things, but don’t skimp on the Batteries. You’ll need them for all the tools you’re about to make, and you’ll want spares as well. Use up all the Acid mushrooms you have collected to make Batteries. In general, try to have two spare Batteries on hand at all times.
  
• Quartz can be processed into Glass, and is also useful in its unprocessed form.

Tools

With the Silicone rubber and some Titanium you can make a knife, which is not only useful for self-defense but essential for collecting certain resources.

With three Titanium you can make an oxygen tank, and with some Silicone rubber you can make a pair of swim fins. Pay attention to your diving equipment and always upgrade it when you can, as it will vastly improve the experience of swimming around looking for stuff.

You can then upgrade your oxygen tank to a high-capacity tank, one of the ingredients of which is the original oxygen tank. Note that you don’t have to construct a second tank for this; just unequip your first tank by opening the PDA without looking at a locker, so that your personal equipage appears on the right-hand side. Now you can move the tank from your person to the inventory, where the fabricator can use it. For any upgrade like this, that requires an existing piece of equipment, the item will have to be ‘unequipped’ and placed in your inventory before it can be used to build something.

With a Battery and some Titanium you can make a scanner. This is also an essential resource-gathering tool, as you will use it to acquire blueprints for equipment you want to make. Scanning lifeforms is interesting and fun but generally not essential. (Blueprints that use local resources tend to be given to you when you pick up that resource, not when you scan it.)

All of your hand-held tools run on Batteries. When the Battery dies, you can put in a fresh one. While holding the tool, press ‘R’ to swap the Battery with another one in your inventory.

Note that for any blueprint requiring a Battery, you can use a dead Battery. The resulting item will be fully charged. Presumably the fabricator recharges it during the fabrication process.

In order to acquire a repair tool, you will have to confront the crashfish. They will trigger whenever you get near, swim towards you and explode. You may avoid them with some deft swimming, but have some Medkits on hand. After the crashfish blows up, investigate the plant that it came from. In most cases there will be a piece of Cave sulfur there. You will need very few pieces of Cave sulfur in the entire game, so don’t collect more than two or three.

Once you’ve made some Glass, you can make a flashlight. Many players abjure the flashlight as useless, preferring to use other light sources such as flares or the seaglide, or just put up with the dark. But the flashlight provides a much better light source, and you will tend to miss things if you are searching in darkness.

Trying to avoid the darkness altogether is futile: 4546B has an unknown but very short rotational period, and at least two large moons resulting in frequent and unpredictable eclipses. The game designers use this as an excuse to make it turn dark whenever you enter an area they want you to be scared of.

When going out looking for fragments to scan, don’t go too far afield yet. The first machines that you’ll need (the seaglide, the beacon, the grav trap) are all available in the Safe Shallows.

After all this, try to construct a habitat builder as soon as you can. This will be a bit of a project, as it requires gold and silver, but having one will enable you to build as much storage as you want and stop worrying about managing your inventory.

Ignore:

• The pathfinder tool is virtually useless. It places holographic nodes that you can use as digital breadcrumbs to find your way through complicated caves or wrecks, but they are difficult to see unless close up. Do not use this as a replacement for a beacon.
  
• Eggs are not useful in the early game. Once you acquire an alien containment you may entertain the notion of hatching eggs, but this is for amusement only and is not a victory condition for the game.
  
• Flares can be useful prior to acquiring the flashlight. They can be carried while lit, or dropped anywhere. A Flare’s lifetime is infinite — it will continue to burn wherever it’s dropped. Their light is lurid and red, and so bright that it can be more of a hindrance at times. Overall, it’s more effective to simply build the flashlight.
  
• Floating lockers are just crutches for those who lost control and gathered too much early on. They’re impossible to organize, cannot be deconstructed, and will become eyesores once you don’t need them anymore. Just build a base.
  
• Air pumps and pipes are meant to help you explore caves and wrecks, but they’re overkill. These, along with the air bladder, are just for players who can’t manage their oxygen. It’s better just to upgrade your equipment, watch the gauge and head up for air with enough time to spare.

Sustenance

The contents of your lifepod should be able to keep you alive thus far. But now, it’s time to start managing your food and water needs.

Food

Fish are the primary source of food early game. The peeper provides the most nutrition (i.e. it will keep you fed longer) among the early-game fish. You can hold a live fish in your inventory or in a locker indefinitely. You can cook it in the fabricator, after which it will begin to spoil rapidly. Eat it right away, because spoiled food actually has a negative nutrition value. By combining a fish with a piece of Salt, you can cure the fish and carry it indefinitely — it will provide the same nutrition value as a cooked fish, though there is a small negative thirst penalty.

Overall, the most nutritious fish in the game is the reginald, at a remarkable +44 whether cooked or cured.

Once you have a base and have visited one of the islands to collect specimens, you can put in a growbed and grow your own food. Degasi Island is a better source for this, as the only edible plant present on Gun Island is the Bulbo tree. Degasi Island also offers Lantern trees, Chinese potato plants, and Marblemelons.

Growing food is an excellent way to stay nourished while at base. None of these foods is good for carrying on long expeditions, however, as they spoil rapidly after being picked. The only food sources you can carry indefinitely are cured fish and Nutrient blocks.

Certain other items in the game, for example Creepvine and Gelsacs, may be edible; relying on them is not recommended.

Water

Bottles of water come in three sizes. 20 oz. bottles are made by putting one bladderfish in the fabricator. 30 oz. bottles are made (two at a time) with one Salt and one Coral tube. 50 oz. bottles are produced by the water filtration machine.

Obviously, bigger is better. Bladderfish are very easy to collect and can be found almost everywhere. Once you find a good amount of Salt, however, you can easily generate a surplus that will last you a while. In the fabricator, one Salt and one Coral tube sample will combine into one bottle of Bleach, which can then be processed into two 30 oz. bottles of water. Bleach is not useful for anything else.

Water can also be found in various wrecks and bases, as well as throughout the Aurora.

Blueprints

Once you have the knife, the game will start putting a message on the screen whenever you get near Creepvine: “cut creepvine with knife.” This is all the education you’re going to get on the fact that some resources can simply be picked up, while others must be harvested with your knife. Bring a bunch of Creepvine back to your fabricator and process it into Fiber mesh. This will enable you to make things like the radiation suit and rebreather.

Radio

After acquiring the repair tool, repair the lifepod and the radio. Repairing the lifepod will not do much except make the lights work. But you will need the radio. The radio will play an automatic message when repaired; if you click too soon to play the transmission that is waiting for you, both will play simultaneously which can be a little disorienting.

The radio is the game’s progress engine. Radio messages provide objectives that will help you advance. When a message comes in, you will get a HUD notification and the light on the radio will blink. Messages come in one at a time, and you will not miss or skip anything by waiting to listen. Messages do not always come in the same order, but overall the sequence is designed to move you along.

Most radio messages are accompanied by a beacon signal being added to your PDA. You can make these invisible or visible, or change their colors, using the beacon tab of your PDA. These beacons will take you to various Aurora lifepods or other points of interest.

When you follow a radio beacon, it’s important to explore the surrounding area as well for resources, blueprints, and routes for further exploration. The game expects you to be curious and explore, rather than making a surgical strike on the beacon’s location and then skedaddling home. By doing so you will gain a general knowledge of the map and will be ready for late-game adventures that don’t provide beacons.

The game’s progression mechanism is straightforward. It will not require you to enter areas you’re not prepared for; first it will lead you to the resources and equipment you need in order to safely venture further out.

For example, one of the earliest radio messages comes from Lifepod 3, where you can find the blueprint for the compass. By looking around this area you will also find some sandstone, containing Silver which is needed to build the compass. You can also find a fragment of the seaglide blueprint, and possibly also the beacon. So, during such forays, it is advisable to explore and collect as much as you can before heading home.

Some radio messages come with ‘corrupted’ location signals, meaning that the game does not give you a beacon but just vague clues as to where the lifepod is. Do not worry about these until later. They contain PDA downloads with background information, and in some cases fun souvenirs, but they are not essential for game progress.

The only time-critical message you will receive from the radio is when the Sunbeam is on approach. Three introductory messages from the Sunbeam will play before this. Once the countdown timer starts, it doesn’t stop until the Sunbeam arrives and is destroyed.

The detonation of the Aurora is not related to the operation of the radio. This happens a certain amount of time into the game, and occurs no matter where you are or what you’re doing. Once it occurs, you will acquire the blueprint for a radiation suit. Once you make that, you are free to explore closer to the Aurora without ill effects.

Safe Shallows

The blueprints you can find in the Safe Shallows include the seaglide, beacon, and grav trap.
The seaglide should be your top priority, as it will provide an important speed boost. Try to have this in your hands before venturing below 100 meters.

Once you can make beacons, it is advisable to carry at least one with you as part of your regular inventory, in case you find something in your travels that you want to mark for later exploration. (Important note about beacons: They will not work on land; instead they’ll glitch into the terrain as soon as you walk away and you’ll never be able to pick them up again.)

The grav trap is a rather goofy way to catch fish; experiment with it yourself to see if you like it better than other methods of acquiring food.

Lifepod 17

After Lifepod 3, the radio will begin delivering messages from the red grass areas, where you can acquire useful blueprints and materials. Lifepod 17 is a key location, as you can find all the seamoth fragments here. Also, search the scattered crates all around the larger area for fragments of the laser cutter, which is essential for exploring wrecks. You will also be able to find blueprints for the scanner room, bioreactor, and the mobile vehicle bay — which you will need in order to build the seamoth.

The grassy plateaus may also be the first time you’ll encounter a tiger plant, which will fire darts at you. Be careful to stay out of range.

Propulsion Cannon

Opinions vary about the propulsion cannon, but it can be very useful especially if your gaming skills are not quite l33t: it is much easier to catch fish. It also provides a great advantage for some of your early missions, so it is helpful to acquire it early on. (It is a fine defense against crashfish, for example.)

Put on your radiation suit and head towards the Aurora. Once there, head toward the northern third of the ship (the prow), but not so far that the ground starts to drop away. (If you can hear the reaper, you’ve gone too far.) Then, turn west and explore the slopes on that side of the Aurora. The fragments of the propulsion cannon can be found in scattered boxes in this area.

The Island Loop

The Sunbeam

You do not have to go to the island when the message from the Sunbeam comes in. You do not have to respond to the Sunbeam in any way. If you are elsewhere when it arrives, your PDA will inform you in stark tones, i.e. “massive energy discharge detected;” “radio signal lost.” You will be able to see the explosion in the sky from wherever you are, but you will not get the majority of the monologue from Avery Quinn as the ship descends.

You can do this island mission at any time, either before or after you acquire the seamoth. But, if you want to view the arrival of the Sunbeam, and pay your respects to its lost crew, the timing is right to head out when the countdown clock appears on your screen. (The timer represents real gameplay time, not world-time.)

Since the islands are not located in the radiation zone, you can bring your rebreather on this mission and leave the radiation helmet at base.

Gun Island

Follow the beacon signal north to the island. Once there you may wish to place your own beacon, as the Sunbeam’s signal disappears after the ship is destroyed and this is an island you’ll want to return to.

While on this or the other island, you will have no sustenance concerns: You can grab healthy samples from bulbo trees or any of the other edible plants (as long as there is still room in your inventory).

Be careful of warpers; this will likely be your first encounter with them and they are best avoided.
On the beach, scout around the southern edge just at the waterline. Occasionally, a lone Gelsac may be found around here. If you find it, take it home and plant it. This will give you a head start on growing Gelsacs.


Make your way up the beach. Use the propulsion cannon to deal with the cave crawlers, or give them three hits with your knife. At the other end of the beach you’ll find the entrance to Gun Base, i.e. the Quarantine Enforcement Platform.

The base requires a purple key to enter. There is a broken one in front of the door; you can scan this but it won’t open the door. However, there is an intact key on the path directly above the door, the one that leads past the roof of the base.


Enter the base and go through all the story elements. Be sure to pick up every Ion cube you find, as they will be useful throughout the game.

The objective here is to attempt to deactivate the gun. It won’t work, as you are now infected, but by making the attempt you will get a PDA file with information about other precursor bases.

Once this is done, go back outside the base and up the path that curls around the mountain. This path will lead you inside the mountain, where you will discover caves that are an excellent source of Lithium, Diamonds, and Gold.

Continue along the passageways that are lit by alien bollards, and you will encounter your first warp gate.

Degasi Island

Activate the gate with one of your Ion cubes, and pass through to Degasi Island. On this island are three Degasi bases, and lots to gather. Two of the bases are very easy to spot, as they are atop high hills; the third is directly between them.

While exploring the island, collect seeds for any of the plants that you want to grow at your base. The Lantern fruit, Chinese potatoes and Marblemelons all provide good nutrition, while Voxel shrub seeds and other plants may make attractive decorations for your base.

The most important blueprint to acquire here is the multipurpose room, the primary unit of basebuilding. (The multipurpose room blueprint will also unlock the blueprints for the large room and both glass domes.) You can also acquire the bulkhead, spotlight, growbeds, observatory, desk, and various planters. In the multipurpose room in the central base, there is another purple key. Sometimes, you can also find the stasis rifle blueprint in this area.

From that central base compound, follow the path southwest toward the sea and then to the left, southeast. Just inside a tunnel on this path is a PDA that will give you a beacon signal for the jellyshroom cave, which is where the Degasi folks decamped to after they left this island.


You may wish to place a beacon here as well, in case you wish to return later to gather more plant samples. Remember not to place it on land — the pool in the center of the island is a good spot.

After you have explored this island to your heart’s content, return through the warp gate to Gun Island. Continue exploring the caves here until you have filled up your inventory with Lithium, Diamonds, and Gold.

If you are feeling up to it, the nuclear reactor blueprint can be acquired here, though at considerable risk. Position yourself at the end of the moonpool in Gun Base, and look down the mountain slope. At some distance off to the east are a pair of fumaroles, and just beyond them is a large wreck lying at an angle. Scattered on the seabed outside the wreck are nuclear reactor fragments, enough for the full blueprint. Cyclops, alien containment, and other fragments may be found around here as well. You do not need to enter the wreck itself unless you are feeling adventurous. Two reapers patrol the vicinity, so extreme caution is warranted.


There are at least five more intact purple keys lying in arbitrary locations around Gun Island. One is on a stone walkway near the entrance to the warp gate chamber; one is outside the cave system on one of the upper plateaus of the mountain; one can be found in the cave pool near the beach; there is one shortly within the entrance of the cave just below the beach near the Gun Base entrance; and there is one lying in the sand beneath the exterior warp gate (just below and to the west of the moonpool entrance).

Basebuilding

Once you have a base, you can build and organize storage in any way you want, and then go crazy gathering anything and everything. Lots of base blueprints are given to you at the start of the game; you can start small and then expand once you have acquired the multipurpose and large rooms.

Note that anything you construct with the habitat builder can be ‘deconstructed’ as well, which will return all of its component ingredients to your inventory with no loss. This is not the case with any of the other fabrication methods in the game.

Be very mindful of the structural integrity of your base as you build. Each time you add or remove a component, the game will update the structural integrity with a message in the upper left corner of the screen. If your structural integrity goes below 1.0, you will begin to see leaks and flooding. (Building above the water line does not affect structural integrity.)

There are four base elements that will increase your base’s structural integrity: Foundations, reinforcements, bulkheads, and interior partitions. Most other elements decrease it. Reinforcements add the most structural integrity (+7 points) but require Lithium. Foundations, which require Lead, can also be useful as platforms on which to place exterior growbeds. Bulkhead doors, if kept closed, can also isolate areas in the case of flooding. Partitions can only be placed inside large rooms, and add very little structural integrity – less than a point in most cases.

Location

You can build your base pretty much anywhere, but it’s hard to beat the Safe Shallows for convenience. If you build your base anywhere else, you will probably find yourself returning here often for Creepvine, Coral, Stalker teeth, and Acid mushrooms. The points of interest in the game are scattered all across the compass, making a central location advantageous.

That said, finding a spot at the edge of the Safe Shallows will give you easy access to the Creepvine and Red Grass biomes. You will also want to allow enough clearance below your moonpool.

As soon as you choose a site, set a beacon. There are few experiences more embarrassing than not being able to find your own base.

If you are interested in building a base in a more exotic area, note that animals do not seem to attack or damage base structures. You or your vehicle may be vulnerable getting to or from the base, but inside the base it seems that you are safe.

A base built in deeper water will be under greater pressure and will require greater structural support. Be ready with those reinforcements.

Power

A base needs power. With power, a base will generate a breathable atmosphere automatically. You don’t need to supply oxygen separately. There is no way to do so in any event; the two craftable air pumps are not for this.

It is very easy to supply your base with an overwhelming excess of power. There are four different methods of supplying power; choose based on your own preferences or base location; or combine them for even more power.

• Solar panels are simple, easy to build, and require no maintenance. They do require sunlight to operate, however, and only generate 75 units of power per panel. At night, a solar panel will continue to supply power until its stored energy is depleted. Building more panels will add to this total and, with enough, you will be able to make it through the night without losing power.
  
• Thermal plants are small remote units that need to be placed very close to heat sources. The amount of power they generate depends on the functional temperature of the location where they’re placed, which is displayed on the side of the unit. Once placed, a thermal plant runs continuously without maintenance. Energy from thermal sources does not fluctuate, so it’s a stable source of power. One or more power transmitters may be required to get the power from the heat source to your base: When placing the transmitter, bright blue lines will appear to show you the power connections that can be made from that location.
  
• A bioreactor takes up an entire multipurpose room (or part of a large room), and can run on any organic material — including plants, fish, mushrooms, coral, Gelsacs, Blood oil, etc. These items yield varying amounts of power and the reactor can expend them in less or more time depending. The bioreactor does need to be maintained with fresh fuel, but it can operate in any environment.
  
• The nuclear reactor can be a difficult blueprint to find, but it affords by far the most power in the game. With one reactor rod, the reactor will supply 2500 units of power for hours and hours of gameplay. Additional rods do not add additional power, they just increase the duration of that 2500 units. In other words, a nuclear reactor with four rods may never need to be touched again for as long as you are playing. Unlike nuclear power in the real world, nuclear power in Subnautica is 100% safe and efficient, and the waste can be disposed of with zero byproducts and zero environmental effects.

Scanner Room

The scanner room is a point of frustration for many, and simply does not work well enough to be broadly useful. It will generally display a list of scannable items within range, but this list can fluctuate and bug out, especially at the beginning of your gameplay session.

The drone cameras are virtually useless, especially if you build anywhere near Creepvine, because stalkers will make off with them. You may wish to remove them and store them in a locker, or use the beacon manager in your PDA to turn them off so they don’t continually appear in your HUD.

Building the scanner HUD chip will make scanner results show up in your HUD, so you can see them when you go out to grab them. (It’s difficult to make any real use of the scanner room without this upgrade.) Even these will fluctuate and bug out from time to time.

The scanner range and speed upgrades are optional, and they stack. The range of your scanner is 300m by default, and each range upgrade adds 50m, for a maximum of 500m.

The scanner is excellent for stationary items – quartz, limestone, sandstone, etc. For objects that move – e.g. Stalker teeth and Metal salvage which are dropped by stalkers and slowly sink to the seafloor – they tend to glitch into the terrain when you are not around, so that the scanner will find signals that can’t be picked up because they’re under the ground. Even so, the scanner may be useful for these as it will also find some that can actually be picked up.

The scanner room is also less than useful for wrecks and databoxes, because they don’t disappear after you pick them up — they’ll continue to appear on your HUD, making it difficult to sort which ones you have visited from those you haven’t.

When not using the scanner room, turn it off — it draws a lot of power and will clutter up your HUD with orange circles.

Furniture

The game provides several blueprints for various chairs and benches. When you build one of these you can, surprisingly, sit on it. In a swivel chair you can even swivel. What is of slightly more interest is that while sitting, your stats are static — you will not grow hungry or thirsty while sitting.

With a bed, you can actually sleep through the night and wake up in the morning. This is convenient if you don’t like playing in the dark. If you go to bed during the day, the game will assume you are a nocturnal creature and will wake you up at dusk.

Farming & Grinding

In between missions, or whenever you feel motivated, farm and grind up materials for your base. There are few experiences more satisfying than going to make a complicated machine and finding that you already have everything you need.

From your starting point at the beginning of the game, you have access to rich resources that you can use to create materials. As you explore more areas and discover more resources, these options expand considerably.

• Collect Table coral and Coral tube from immediately outside Lifepod 5.
  
• Collect Creepvine samples and seed clusters to make Fiber mesh, Lubricant, and Silicone rubber.
  
• Collect Metal salvage to convert into Titanium.
  
• Collect Quartz to convert into Glass.
  
• Collect Stalker teeth to make Enameled glass.
  
• Process Titanium into Ingots.
  
• Process Copper into Copper wire. Process Silver into Wiring kits. Process the results further into Computer chips and Advanced wiring kits.

Growable resources differ depending on the specific item. For Blood oil, you just need to plant one in order for it to grow into a full blood kelp plant that will continually yield more Blood oil. For Gelsacs and Deep shrooms, slice one with your knife and you will get multiple spores or seeds that can be planted.

After carrying a sample for a short while, it may show a word like ‘decomposing,’ ‘old’ or ‘rotten’ in your inventory. Do not worry; these samples will lose any nutrition value, but can still be planted and will grow normally.

Things grow pretty fast in the game; by husbanding the process attentively you can quickly amass a surplus.

The blueprints you need for farming are called ‘interior’ and ‘exterior’ growbeds, but that only applies to where you can build them, not what you can plant in them. The plants found throughout the game are either sea plants or land plants, i.e. they grow either in water or in air. In your PDA, the icons for sea plants have a purple background, and land plants have a green background. Land plants cannot be planted under water, but you will need an ‘interior’ growbed if you wish to grow them inside your base; and an ‘exterior’ growbed if you want to grow them outside your base on a platform above the waterline. Sea plants cannot be planted inside your base, except within an alien containment.

• Grow Gelsacs, Deep shrooms, and Blood oil.
  
• Process Blood oil into Benzene. Process Deep shrooms and Salt into Hydrochloric acid. Process Gelsacs and Rubies into Aerogel.
  
• Process Benzene and Fiber mesh into Synthetic fabric. Process Hydrochloric acid and Gold into Polyaniline.

If your base is not in the Safe Shallows, you can also grow Creepvine and Acid mushrooms so as to have them on hand. If you plant a Creepvine sample, it will grow into a plain Creepvine without any seed clusters. If you want to grow Creepvine with seed clusters, plant a seed cluster.

Teeth

Stalker teeth are needed to make Enameled glass. These teeth are dislodged when stalkers pick up and play with Metal salvage. It makes no sense that you can’t just grab a stalker and yank out its teeth, but in this game teeth must be found rather than won by conquest.

Many players like to make a mini-game of luring the stalkers by picking up and dropping bits of Metal salvage; in practice it is just as effective to simply watch them. Stalkers seem to drop more teeth when being observed; so if you find a group of stalkers playing with a bunch of metal, you can just sit and watch them, listening for the prominent ‘crack-chime’ sound effect that plays when a tooth is dislodged.

How to Fill an Electronics Locker

Total Contents Needed:

• 46 Copper
  
• 26 Silver
  
• 25 Gold
  
• 26 Table coral

First crafting round:

• Make 23 Copper wire
  
• Make 13 Wiring kits

Second crafting round:

• Remove 13 of the Copper wire and make Computer chips
  
• Remove 6 of the Wiring kits and make Advanced wiring kits

The Aurora

Once you have acquired the laser cutter and propulsion cannon, it is time to head to the Aurora. You only need the repair tool to complete the main mission at the Aurora, which is the repair of the radiation leak. But the laser cutter will get you in to all the available areas of the ship, and the propulsion cannon just makes life easier.

Before going, empty your inventory as much as you can, because there is a lot to collect. Wear your radiation suit and leave your rebreather behind. Leave your seaglide behind (unless you do not have the seamoth yet). Leave your habitat builder behind. Take nothing but your basic tools, and optionally one fire extinguisher and one bottle of water. You will need nothing else.

Getting to the Aurora is a source of anxiety for many, since there are reapers that roam directly fore and aft of it. But if you stick to the surface of the water, and stick to the edge of the ship, you will get in with no problem.

Go directly up against the hull, and then head north toward the prow, staying at the surface. The gap that lets you in to the interior is large and difficult to miss. (You can see this part blowing up when the drive detonates.) From here you can get onto the deck surface.



The deck surface swarms with cave crawlers; give them the propulsion cannon or the knife.
There are two doors in to the Aurora. One of them is right in front of you, and will require the propulsion cannon to clear. This, though, is where the designers expect you to come out. You can easily complete the Aurora mission in ‘reverse’ order, but the PDA messages will come at the wrong time and will seem out of sync.

To get to the other door, head around to the left, along the edge of the broken deck. Curving right again, you’ll come around to another section with a steep incline, followed by a broken metal beam that will let you get to the main door.

Even though the Aurora continually shakes and rumbles threateningly, you are actually safe while in the ship — unless you’re standing in a fire.

Throughout all your time on the Aurora, be constantly on the lookout for crates and other resources lying around on the floor. This ship is a munificent source of all the basics of civilized life: Water, Nutrient bars, Medkits, Fire extinguishers, Batteries. There is more of all this than you can possibly carry. That's why you want your inventory as empty as possible before going.

Inside the ship, there are four doors that require codes to open. These codes are given in various PDA files and radio messages, and they are all sorted into the “Codes & Clues” section of your database. They are:

• Cargo Bay: 1454
  
• Cabin 1: 1869
  
• Captain’s Quarters: 2679
  
• Lab: 6483

The rest of the PDA information is not exactly actionable, but paints a picture of Alterra Corp. as a vast, decadent, cynical quasi-authoritarian culture slowly drowning in its own version of neoliberalism. At best, it could be described as unready for an encounter with the kharaa bacterium or precursor culture.

The primary mission at the Aurora is to repair the 11 radiation leaks in the Drive Room, which will enable you to put away the radiation suit for good — and incidentally save all life on the planet. But there are plenty of other good things to look out for as well:

• In the Seamoth Bay, you can find the Mark 1 Depth Upgrade for the seamoth. This will let you increase the seamoth’s range from 200m to 300m.
  
• In the Prawn Bay, you can find five fragments of the prawn suit – and only four are required for the full blueprint. There is also a storage upgrade module in the central area of this room, though you will have to extinguish some flames to get at it.
  
• The living quarters contain lots of swag and souvenirs for your base including posters, baseball caps, and figurines.
  
• In the Captain’s Quarters, be sure to download the blueprint for the Neptune Escape Rocket. You will need this at the end of the game. (The radio message that includes the code for this room, the one guest starring Appsro and Neebs, is not programmed to appear until later in the game, but who wants to wait for that. Use the code now so you won’t have to return.)

If you run out of inventory space and still want to collect more from the Aurora, here’s a suggestion: Go back out to your seamoth, and install the depth module and the storage module in the upgrade panel. That removes two items from your inventory, and also adds 16 slots of inventory in seamoth storage. Fill that, then go back into the Aurora and continue collecting.

When you return to base, immediately remove your radiation helmet and store it somewhere so it is not taking up space in your inventory. You will not need it again in the game.

Now that you have the laser cutter, always be on the lookout for wrecks during your travels. A wreck is always worth a recon.

Midgame

Jellyshroom Cave

After increasing the seamoth’s depth capacity to 300m, it’s time to follow the beacon signal to the ‘Proposed Degasi Habitat’ at 250m. This is the Jellyshroom Cave, and it’s one of the few locations in the game where you can acquire Magnetite.

Bring your propulsion cannon for defense. When exploring the base, be careful of the drooping stingers, which are difficult to avoid. Be mindful of your seamoth when you are out of it, because crabsnakes may attack unattended vehicles. Leave the lights off so it won’t attract them.

Look around outside and inside the base for useful blueprints. You can acquire the water filtration machine here, and you can frequently find modification station, thermal plant, battery charger, stasis rifle, and sometimes even nuclear reactor fragments here.

There are also several PDA downloads that will continue the story of the Degasi crew. One of them, inside a locker, will give you a beacon signal for the next Degasi base at 500m, “Danger Base.” Outside the base, one PDA is located in the broken habitat compartment just outside the base entrance, and another is lying in the sand about halfway down that slope toward the jellyshroom.

After cleaning out the base, explore the cave a bit further and collect all the Magnetite you can. Magnetite is needed for the next seamoth depth upgrade and scanner room accessories, among other things, so take the opportunity.

Lifepod 13

The next radio signal that you’ll want to follow is for Lifepod 13. Follow this and you will discover the Mushroom Forest.

After checking out the lifepod, continue exploring the Mushroom Forest in a generally northeasterly direction. Cut a sample of a mushroom tree and save it for later. Search the seafloor in this area and you will be able to acquire the moonpool blueprint; you may also find cyclops bridge and hull fragments. There is plenty of Lithium in this area as well.

About 360 meters northeast of Lifepod 13, you will find a wreck located at the top of a tall mushroom tree. This is a useful wreck, where you can find the blueprint for the vehicle upgrade console, an important accessory for the moonpool.


This wreck is very close to the edge of the Blood Kelp area. The cliff is located a short distance north of the wreck. You don’t need to explore the Blood Kelp biome yet, but duck quickly over the edge and grab one Blood oil and one Deep shroom. Take these back to your base and plant them; they will be very useful later.

You may also want to leave a beacon here, because this is a very convenient place to enter the Lost River — though it is too early to do so at this point.

More Base Building

You now have the resources to add great new capabilities to your base.

With the moonpool, you can dock your seamoth and charge it — no more carrying extra power cells. Inside the moonpool you can build the vehicle upgrade console, at which you can fabricate upgrades for your seamoth and prawn suit (even when not docked). The available upgrades cover quite a range of capabilities; choose based on what you like and what you want to do. Note that the moonpool charges vehicles, but does not repair them.

Storage modules behave differently in the seamoth and prawn suit. In the seamoth, each storage module you install becomes a separate 16-slot compartment visible on the seamoth’s exterior — since there are only four upgrade slots on the seamoth, this is the maximum. The prawn suit, however, has only one storage compartment, which gets bigger with each additional storage module you install.

The water filtration machine uses a lot of power but continually produces water and salt. Note that it will not work in a room above the water surface, because it needs to draw seawater from outside the base.

The modification station upgrades the upgrades — it takes items that you made in other fabricators, and enhances them. By the time you build this, you will probably have all the resources that you need to make what you want, provided you have been gathering resources during your various forays:

• The hot knife is an upgrade to the regular knife, allowing you to cook fish just by slashing them out of the water.
  
• The repulsion cannon is an upgrade to the propulsion cannon, though they are two very different tools and it’s useful to have both. While the propulsion cannon can grab things and move them around, the repulsion cannon simply yeets them away. This is actually a quite effective defense against the various threats in the environment. It even works on warpers. It wouldn’t defeat a leviathan, but may in fact stun one for a brief time.
  
• The ultra high capacity oxygen tank is an upgrade to the high capacity tank. Remember to unequip your tank first so that it’s available in your inventory.
  
• The second depth module for the seamoth is an upgrade to the first depth module. This will increase the vehicle’s operational range from 300m to 500m.
  
• Swim charge fins and ultra glide fins are two optional upgrades to the standard swim fins. Ultra glide fins will increase your swimming speed to maximum, while swim charge fins will continually charge whatever tool you’re holding, presumably by kinetic energy. Unfortunately you can’t use both at the same time.

Lifepod 19

Once your seamoth’s depth capacity has been increased to 500m, it’s time to follow the beacon signal south to Lifepod 19. This is a dark, deep, and somewhat scary area, but it’s actually fairly safe to explore and gather resources.

There are two PDA downloads available at Lifepod 19, and one databox.

If you have not found a Gelsac yet, pick one up here. Take it back to your base and plant it.

When you find the Eyestalk plant, cut a sample and save it for later.

But the chief resource you will find here is Rubies. Rubies, when combined with Gelsacs, make Aerogel, which is required for the water machine and the prawn suit among other things. While here, collect all the Rubies you can.


Once you are done exploring these trenches, move up to the seabed above, where there are two small wrecks at about 207 meters deep. In and around these wrecks you may find several useful blueprints, especially the reinforced dive suit. This suit will increase your resilience especially in high heat areas, and oh by the way will make you immune to tiger plant attacks.

When you get home with Rubies, you will be able to make the final depth module for the seamoth, increasing its depth capacity to 900m.

Danger Base

The Danger Base mission is an extended journey that accomplishes many things, including your first foray into the Lost River. Bring extra food, Water, Batteries, and Medkits. Bring both your propulsion cannon and repulsion cannon. Bring one purple key.

First, follow the beacon signal south to the “Proposed Degasi Habitat” at 500m. This is almost directly beneath Degasi Island. The base is located in the Deep Grand Reef, which is a large cavern underneath the Grand Reef, accessed by a hole in the ground you can find fairly easily by going straight for the beacon (the seamoth’s sonar module can help as well).



It’s one of the most unpleasant locations in the game, populated by warpers, crabsquids, and sometimes even ampeels. When you approach the base, try to hide your seamoth against the rocks below the base or against the ceiling above it — crabsquids and other enemies may attack it, so try to make it inconspicuous. Never use your seamoth’s headlights when crabsquids are around. They hate electricity and it will make them berzerk. Equip your repulsion cannon immediately upon exiting the seamoth, to repel any enemies that may be nearby. This will buy you some time to explore the base. (A warper may warp you out of the base, so beware.)

There are several important things to acquire at the base, all of them in the upper section which can be entered through an open hatch. Scan the alien containment for its blueprint, which will allow you to breed fish and hatch eggs. In one of the observatories to the side you will find the cyclops shield generator. This blueprint is essential for the endgame, even if you don’t intend to use the cyclops.

Find the ladder down to the lower room, and locate the orange key. Scan it, and then grab it. You can also find one of the cuddlefish eggs here, if you’re into that sort of thing.

There are other items to scan and PDA files that will complete the story of what happened to the Degasi crew, but those are the essentials of Danger Base.

When you leave Danger Base, head southwest.



Keep the wall of the chamber to your right, and you’ll angle gradually upward. As you exit the Deep Grand Reef into the Grand Reef proper, you’ll come upon a large wreck lying against an incline at about 425m deep. Explore this wreck, as you will be able to find the blueprints for both the grappling arm and the drill arm for the prawn suit.



After exploring the wreck, turn around and head back down, northeast into the Deep Grand Reef again. Continue heading downward, in a generally northerly direction, looking for signs of the green brine mist, and you will enter the Lost River.

You will be entering at one of the ‘ends’ of the Lost River. Follow it along northwest, and shortly you will be presented with a fork. Take the left fork to the west, and you will soon find the remote research station. There is a crabsquid who lives in this area, so be mindful of it.

This precursor base is where you will use the orange key you just acquired, and you can find several Ion cubes inside. There is also another cuddlefish egg if you’re into that sort of thing.
When exiting the outpost, turn right and look above you along the side wall of the cavern. The alcove above this area, at about 645m, is an excellent spot to look for Nickel. You need five Nickel at this point.



Go back to the fork in the river, this time taking the opposite fork and heading northeast. Pretty soon you will come to a large cavern that is home to a ghost leviathan. Once you get past this leviathan, you will go through a few more chambers, in a roughly northerly direction, depth increasing. Slice a sample of Ghost weed along the way — save this for later. Soon you will see the ‘Junction’ of the Lost River, with a sea dragon skeleton at its center, at about 820m deep.

From here turn right, and look northeast for the alien pillars that denote the location of the Disease Research Facility. This is a busted and flooded alien base that contains several Ion cubes, as well as backstory data about the kharaa, the precursor attempts to cure it, and the warpers. You will also get more detailed information about the endgame installations you’ll need to visit.

Return to the Junction. Upon exiting the tunnel from the Disease Research Facility, turn right and take the next available tunnel, heading north. This passage angles up sharply ending in the Ghost Forest at about 640m, where you can collect Crystalline sulfur from the brine using the propulsion cannon.



Be careful not to get into the brine, as it’s quite harmful. (Note that the prawn suit will not be damaged by the brine, but the seamoth will.) You only need 3 sulfur at this point. Be careful not to go too far into the chamber, because another ghost leviathan lives in the upper section.

When you have collected enough sulfur, you can exit the Lost River by hugging the east wall of the chamber. Stay close to the wall and behind trees wherever possible, to make it harder for the leviathan to attack you. Stay to the right and soon you will ascend into the Blood Kelp biome. Keep going straight up and you will find yourself near the Mushroom Forest and the treetop wreck — a kilometer or less from the Safe Shallows.

Using the Alien Containment

The alien containment unit will take up an entire multipurpose room, and you must build a hatch in the side to access it. The bottom surface can be used as an aquatic growbed, with 16 slots available. If built in a large room rather than a multipurpose room, the containment unit will be larger and the growbed will have more slots.

Eggs that you place inside the tank will eventually hatch, resulting in baby animals that will grow over time. Animals that you hatch in the tank are docile and will not attack you, even after being released into the surrounding water.

But by far the most profound benefit of the alien containment is for food. Since all life on 4546B is unisex, any two fish of the same species that you put into the tank will begin multiplying. They will rapidly increase up to the capacity of the tank.

Building additional alien containment tanks directly above or below an existing one will increase the capacity of your tank. Instead of two separate tanks one above the other, they will join to form one large tank. If you have a room above the tank without an alien containment in it, the floor will become transparent allowing you to look down into the tank.

Some animals may exhibit the telltale green splotches indicating infection by the kharaa bacterium. Even though, according to Bart Torgal, the kharaa is present in “every organism,” nevertheless some of them show symptoms and will read as ‘infected’ on your scanner, while other animals will read as ‘normal.’ This has no practical effect on gameplay, since you become infected early on and remain so (without symptoms) until you are cured no matter what. However, an infected animal placed in an aquarium or alien containment will rapidly infect all the other animals in that unit.

You can reverse this by picking up a ‘golden peeper,’ or enzyme host. These can be spotted infrequently everywhere, but most easily inside the Primary Containment Facility and also near the vents that connect to it. Golden peepers emit a prominent spray of golden sparkles in their wake. If you place one in a containment or aquarium with infected animals, it will quickly cure their infection and keep the enclosure kharaa-free. (A golden peeper cannot cure you, unfortunately.)

Endgame

Enzyme Base

At this point or any point before commencing the Endgame, make your way back to Gun Island carrying the following:

• 9 Titanium
  
• 3 Quartz
  
• 1 Copper
  
• 1 Gold
  
• 1 Table coral
  
• Any plant samples among the following that you have collected so far in your travels: Fungal sample, Eye stalk, Bulb bush, Ghost weed, Sea crown. Do not worry if you don’t have them all; just bring what you have.

On the side of the mountain next to the warp gate, or any convenient location you choose, construct a single plain habitat compartment. Give it a hatch and a single solar panel. Inside, build a fabricator and a wall locker. Then, place your plant samples into the locker.

If you are using the cyclops, you can forego all this and use the sub as your mobile fabricator. With a fabricator built in the cyclops and your plant samples in storage, park the cyclops in the Gun Base moonpool prior to setting out for the Endgame.

You should now have the resources to fit out your prawn suit with the drill arm, grappling arm, jump jet upgrade, and first depth module — which increases its depth capability to 1300m. This will enable you to begin preparing for the Lava Zones. There are other arms and upgrades for the prawn suit that may be fun to play with, but these are the essentials for the business at hand.

The Case Against the Cyclops

The cyclops is an awesome and fun invention. It is very cool to build furniture in it and fit it out as a mobile base, to build upgrades for it and to dock other vehicles within it. All of this may be worth doing for the entertainment value, but in fact you may find the game easier without it.

The cyclops is large and ungainly, and a challenge to operate. It’s slow. It is difficult to get through tight spaces or around obstacles, and it’s a huge target for threats. It burns through energy fast.

It’s fairly clear that the game designers expect the player to use the cyclops as a transport mechanism, to get the prawn suit to deeper important places. However, in practice it is not that much trouble to simply use the prawn suit on its own. Taking the prawn suit from the Mushroom Forest down through the Lost River into the Inactive Lava Zone is not that long a walk. However, you may wish to create a ‘staging area’ where you can regroup and prepare yourself for the expedition.

Despite all of this, you will need to build a cyclops, even if you never intend to use it. The escape rocket requires the cyclops shield generator as a component, and you can only make one of those at the upgrade fabricator in the cyclops.

The Case for the Blue Room

At the end of the Lost River, just at the depth limit of the seamoth, is the fabulous Giant Cove Tree — surrounded by rays and containing an unhatched ghost leviathan egg. The Lost River brine here changes to blue, and this brine is safe to enter. Beyond this chamber is another one, with a cove tree whose egg seems to have hatched already. Just beyond this is the steep drop into the Inactive Lava Zone.



Barely anything happens in this “Blue Room.” Warpers from the Lava Zone rarely make it up this far. It is quiet, well-lit, populated only by rays and bladderfish. Yet, hidden in plain sight, it contains practically everything you need to construct an entire base. Almost all needed resources are available within a short walk in mostly safe areas.

To prepare for this, pack your prawn suit with one nuclear rod, and the materials you will need to build a nuclear reactor. If you haven’t found the nuclear reactor blueprint yet, you can make do with a bioreactor or thermal reactors. But the nuclear reactor is by far the best as it provides massive power with almost no management required.

Also bring resources that are specific to the surface: One Creepvine seed cluster to grow Creepvine, and an Acid mushroom if you think that you will need to make Batteries; Enameled glass, and all the alien keys and Ion cubes you have collected. Extra food and Water is useful also, to last you until your new base starts producing.

Once you arrive in the Blue Room, establish your base and then start collecting resources. In the Blue Room itself you can drill Titanium, Lead, Uraninite, and Gold. In the blue pools on the slopes below you can drill Lithium. Under the blue brine you can pick up Magnetite. Gelsacs and Rubies line the walls of the chamber. Deep shrooms abound.

In the Cove Tree chamber, you can find more of all of the above, plus possibly Nickel and Silver below the brine. There is more Nickel and Silver in the green brine in the Junction room, immediately adjacent. This Junction also contains drillable Quartz and Copper. Table coral is available atop the central island in this chamber. Diamonds obtrude from the walls in this and adjacent chambers.

If you take either of the passageways out of this chamber other than the one to the Disease Research Facility, you can find Crystalline sulfur. There are two safe ways to collect sulfur:

• Stay above the brine and pull sulfur up using the propulsion cannon
  
• Remove one of the arms from the prawn suit, and use its standard claw to pick up sulfur

If you need Kyanite, you can venture down the long passageway to the Inactive Lava Zone, where drillable Kyanite can be found.

With these resources and what you brought with you from the surface, you can build an entirely self-sufficient base.

Install a fabricator, battery charger, and water machine in your base. Add a moonpool and an alien containment. You now have water, food, power, and a place to dock your prawn suit.

Once you have all this established, you have an excellent staging area directly on the edge of the Lava Zone.

Lava Castle

The Inactive Lava Zone is a huge open cavern, with the Lava Castle in the middle. This can be reached by going over the cliff at the edge of the Blue Room, then southeast down the long sloping channel. Once you reach the open area, continue east straight across to the center, where the Lava Castle is hard to miss.

Be sure to bring two purple keys with you. Standard preparations for dangerous areas are also in order: multiple Medkits, repair tool, repulsion cannon/stasis rifle.

To be fair, there is another entrance to the Inactive Lava Zone that you may prefer: Go past the Disease Research Facility and continue along that passage; soon you will come to a giant pit in the floor that leads directly down into the lava. A ghost leviathan resides directly above this pit, but you can usually sneak past him. This ‘shortcut’ brings you down practically right next to the Lava Castle, so it’s a shorter journey from the Lost River. On the other hand, your starting point is considerably less resource-rich and less safe. The choice is yours.


The conventional method of exploring the Lava Zones and making your way to the Lava Castle is certainly with the prawn suit. It provides considerable protection and eliminates oxygen worries.

However, the Lava Zones are extremely unpleasant. The sequence in this guide is designed to take you through the Lava Zones once and only once. Warp gates make this possible. You will not need to return to the most dangerous areas again, unless you choose to.

If you know where you’re going, it can be fast and simple just to take the seaglide. If you are fully equipped with rebreather, reinforced dive suit, and ultra-high capacity oxygen tank, you will have enough time to make it there in one breath from the Blue Room. (You can also fabricate a second tank and hot-swap it midswim.) It is a straight shot across the Inactive Lava Zone, and the entrance is easy to spot. From this direction, you will want to curve around the left side of the Lava Castle, and the green glow of the doorway will be prominently visible about halfway up, at about 1185 meters. There is a second such arch on the opposite side of the mountain.


Naturally, be on the lookout for the sea dragon. He is a very dangerous individual (there may even be two of them here) and not easy to dodge if you get too close. Keep your distance, take a zig-zag or serpentine path, and stay close to obstacles like the outcroppings on the slopes of the Lava Castle.

Inside the Lava Castle, it becomes obvious that the game designers expect you to be here in the prawn suit: There is a stone track that will lead you pretty easily into the central chamber. If you are swimming with the seaglide, it is easy not to notice this path and very easy to get lost. Time is of the essence here, so follow this path even if you aren’t using the prawn suit, so you can get into the Thermal Plant as quickly as possible.

Inside the plant, you will need two purple keys: One to open the alcove where the blue key is kept, and one to open the primary generator room. Both of these are essential.
Before taking the blue key, scan it.

When you are in the generator room, be sure to walk up the ramp and collect the ion power blueprints at the rear of the chamber. Scanning the plant itself is not actually required to complete the game, but ion power is. Just outside the generator room is one more Ion cube.

Upstairs, there is a drillable pile of Ion cubes. If you are here in the prawn suit, you can drill this for 8-12 Ion cubes. If not, you can come back later via the warp gate.

Before leaving the Lava Castle, hop out and swim around the central chamber with your seaglide, looking for Kyanite. Several pieces of Kyanite can be picked up from the interior walls, and you only need 5 right now. The only real threat in this chamber are the warpers, though the lava lizards should be avoided too.

Take one Ion cube, open the warp gate, and step through. This will take you back to Gun Base, through the gate in the lower section that couldn’t be opened from that side.

You now have a respite of as long as you want before proceeding with the rest of the endgame. Go back to base, sort your inventory, get some rest, eat and drink, and read all the PDA information that you’ve collected. During this break, there are two tasks that you must remember to do, using the Kyanite you just found:

• Make a second blue key in your fabricator
  
• In the modification station, make the second depth module for the prawn suit. This will enable the prawn suit to visit the deepest points in the game.

This is also your first opportunity to make Ion batteries, which last an insanely long time. After making these, you may never use your battery charger again.

Primary Containment Facility

When you are ready to complete the final challenge of the game, return to Gun Base and prepare to visit the Primary Containment Facility. Again, this sequence is designed for making the trip only once. This can be achieved in various ways, depending on a combination of factors:

• If you arrive with only one blue key but you have at least one Ion cube, you can activate one of the portals and use that to go back and fabricate a second key.
  
• If you have two blue keys but no Ion cubes, you can still complete the game using the two Ion cubes in the empress’s aquarium.
  
• If you are in the prawn suit, you can drill an unlimited number of Ion cubes and open all the warp gates.

Take the warp gate from Gun Base back to the Lava Castle. Before you step out of the force field, get ready for a long swim. The journey from the Lava Castle to the Primary Containment Facility is farther, but also more straightforward.

Find your way out of the Lava Castle the same way you went in. At the archway, head straight down the side of the mountain and be on the lookout for a reaper skeleton directly below you. This skeleton’s tail is your pointer down to the Active Lava Zone. There is a huge pit to the right of it that you should head down. As always, be very careful to avoid the sea dragon. (There is also another pit down to the Active Lava Zone, on the opposite side of the mountain.)


Continue swimming down and following the lava flow, south-southeast. Presently you will see the huge open chamber of the Active Lava Zone (or Lava Lake). Some alien structures (sonic deterrents, evidently ineffective) are visible along the bottom. Once you get some distance across, the Primary Containment Facility will render and become visible. The door is front and center.

Another sea dragon lives here, and he is very aggressive. Inconveniently, this is also usually the moment the sea empress chooses to make her final telepathic pitch to you, which can be disorienting especially if you are trying to dodge the sea dragon at the same time. There’s no question that this is the single most stressful moment in the game. Once you step through that forcefield with a blue key, though, you’ve won the game. (Even though there’s a lot left to do.)

When you get into the main atrium of the Primary Containment Facility, the first thing you will see is the Ion cube generator. If you are in the prawn suit, you can drill this for 3 Ion cubes. The generator will then commence generating more, which takes about 5 minutes. If you are patient you can drill an unlimited number of Ion cubes.

This atrium has 9 doors leading out of it. The 4 corner doors lead to warp gates. Their destinations are, clockwise starting from the aquarium entrance:

• The Ghost Forest in the Lost River
  
• The Crag Zone in the south
  
• The Bulb Zone in the northeast
  
• The Mushroom Forest in the west

The arch directly ahead requires another blue key and leads to the aquarium holding the sea empress. The other passages lead to interesting artifacts, data downloads, and lore.

Use your second blue key to get into the aquarium, and then jump into the water. When you reach the landing platform below the surface, the sea empress will appear and perform a short monologue. After this, head down into the aquarium proper.

This aquarium is a huge rectangular structure. At the northwest end is the aquarium’s warp gate and the incubator. Scan the incubator and the sea emperor eggs, then use an Ion cube to activate the incubator. This will induce the sea empress to come down and give you some more information, which is your next objective.

If you have come down here without the prawn suit, look around for a brain coral situated near the incubator. This is a nice place to sit and grab some oxygen while the empress delivers her spiel.

The sea empress will now swim over to the warp gate and regard it. When you approach it, she will blow off the sand heaped around it so you can access the control and activate it with another Ion cube. Once this gate is activated, the empress will communicate the recipe for the Hatching Enzyme. Even if you already have all the ingredients, you need the recipe to make it, and you need to make it in a fabricator.

If you arrived in the aquarium without any Ion cubes, do not worry — there are two available in the tank:

• One can be found at the southeast end of the tank opposite the warp gate. In a large hall behind the far wall, a single Ion cube sits on a plinth. It is right in front of another warp gate, which returns you to the upper area of the same chamber, evidently provided in case you have trouble getting out of the pool. Do not activate this gate unless you have an extra Ion cube to spare.
  
• The second Ion cube is near the incubator, in a cave under the ground surface near the western-most corner. Explore the sides of the aquarium at this end, looking for gaps where the precursor equipment cables lead down. At the bottom of this area is another single Ion cube.

Enzyme 42

If you have all five ingredients of the Hatching Enzyme back in your ‘enzyme base’ at Gun Island, you may proceed through the warp gate to your fabricator there and make the enzyme. If not, do not worry. This part of the game is specifically designed to be easy and painless.

The Hatching Enzyme requires samples of five plants from around the map:

• Fungal sample (mushroom tree)
  
• Eye stalk
  
• Bulb bush
  
• Ghost weed
  
• Sea crown

Each of the four warp gates in the main atrium leads directly to one of these ingredients. Use an Ion cube to activate the gate, step through, and as soon as you get into the water on the other side you will see the plant you are looking for, probably directly in front of you.

You may also want to leave a beacon at the other end of each warp gate, so you can find it later from the other side. This is the game’s fast-travel system.

The fifth ingredient, Sea crown, is available right inside the sea empress’s aquarium. Look in the caves below the ground surface, especially in the area where you found the spare Ion cube. (Sea crown can also be found elsewhere in the game, though it’s pretty rare.)

Once you have fabricated the Hatching Enzyme, return to the incubator and click to ‘insert’ it.
The five baby sea emperors will hatch immediately.

The sea empress will now deliver her final monologue, during which the juveniles will make their way through the warp gate to Gun Island. As they do so, they will begin to expel great spherical gobs of Enzyme 42 — the cure for kharaa. All you have to do is touch it, and an animation will play curing you right through your reinforced dive gloves. If you follow the juveniles through the warp gate, you will find even more Enzyme 42 on the other side.


Now, before doing anything else, remember to go into Gun Base and deactivate the weapon. The system will allow you to do so now that you are no longer infected, but you won’t be able to launch your escape rocket if the gun is still active.

Post-Game

Although you have completed all the objectives of the game, it could be argued that now is when the fun begins. You have access to all blueprints, the fast-travel system, and ion power. With the kharaa cured, the animals are slightly less aggressive.

Best of all, the warpers will no longer trouble you. Since their job is to monitor (and apparently harass) infected individuals, they are not concerned with you once you’re cured. (Indeed, since you have cured the entire planet and disabled quarantine enforcement, it’s unclear what the warpers’ job is going to be now.) This makes it much easier to collect resources or explore in areas where warpers are present.

At this point, you may wish to explore some of the less essential areas of the game:

Lifepod 4

If you head in a straight line from the prow of the Aurora to Lifepod 5 (or vice versa), you will probably come across Lifepod 4. It is floating on the surface, but upside down. Inside is one PDA recording, and the blueprint for the cyclops ‘creature decoy’ upgrade.

Lifepod 6

Lifepod 6 landed in the Grassy Plateau biome to the east of the Safe Shallows, in an area near a very resource-rich cave system. Note that in addition to the PDA inside the lifepod, there is a second one in the grass outside it. For reference, this lifepod is:

• 421m E of Lifepod 3
  
• 954m ENE of Lifepod 17
  
• 1307m E of Lifepod 13
  
• 1677m NE of Lifepod 19

Lifepod 7

In the Safe Shallows, look for the coral tube that sticks up above the water surface at both ends. Place your seamoth in the center of this ‘horn,’ and then go due south for approximately 1 kilometer.


Lifepod 7 is behind a set of crags in an area frequented by bonesharks. For reference, it is:

• 780m E of Lifepod 19
  
• 1089m SSE of Lifepod 17
  
• 1457m S of Lifepod 3
  
• 1774m SE of Lifepod 13

The chief draw here is the swag: You can pick up a toy car, a baseball cap, and you can scan a blueprint for a Markiplier bobblehead that you can craft in your base. (Sadly, it appears that the Septiceye is not available in the game except by special arrangement.)

Lifepod 12

This lifepod ended up in the Bulb Zone, an extremely dangerous and unpleasant (albeit pretty) biome. If you decide to risk it, look for the two large wrecks in the area; both are prolific with useful blueprints.

If you venture into the Bulb Zone prior to commencing the Endgame, slice a sample of Bulb bush while you’re here, and add it to your Enzyme locker.

Floating Islands

The Floating Islands biome is to the west near Gun Island and the Blood Kelp. It’s a fascinating area with islands of all sizes at different depths, some with their own cave systems. One of them features a very large wreck that contains a good deal of useful items.

However, the bonesharks in this biome are unusually aggressive, and a single bite deals 15 points of damage to the seamoth. Rubies can be found in the caves inside the islands, but other resources around here are minimal. There are easier places to get everything that can be found here.

Sea Treaders

The sea treader is a benign type of leviathan that lives in the Grand Reef at about 375m deep, roughly south of Degasi Island and Danger Base. They can be difficult to find, but their migration route is marked by a flat, open track that runs through the otherwise lumpy vertical landscape of the Grand Reef. The sea treaders are notable for their design, and for the fact that when they stomp on the ground they draw shale outcrops up from below. This area is busy with warpers, but once you’ve made friends with them this can be a good source of Diamonds. The sea treaders’ droppings can also be a potent fuel source in a bioreactor.

Precursor Sanctuaries

In addition to the remote research lab in the Lost River, there are three other alien facilities that do not yield anything other than data downloads and Ion cubes. Each one requires a purple key to enter:

• Alpha: Start by following the beacon signal to Lifepod 19. Instead of descending into the canyon, stay above in open water and look to the northwest. About 270 meters away is a bridge-like rock structure with an opening below it. It takes a few twists and turns, but at the bottom of this passage is the entrance to the sanctuary.

• Beta: Follow the beacon signal for Lifepod 2, which ended up 500m down in the Blood Kelp biome. From this location, point yourself northwest and go over the hillock that is in front of you. On the other side of this, about 175 meters away at a depth of about 485m, you should be able to spot a small alien pillar. There is a brief trail of these pillars that leads down to the entrance of the sanctuary.

• Kappa: Return to the treetop wreck in the Mushroom Forest that marks the entrance to the Blood Kelp and the Lost River. Turn west-northwest, and a few hundred meters on you will find the edge of a large impact crater, with the mounded remains of a meteor at the center. This is a dangerous area; several reapers live just beyond the opposite edge of the crater. For this reason it is best to leave the seamoth or other vehicle behind and head to the sanctuary using just the seaglide. The entrance is in the side of the crater across from you, approximately 685 meters from the wreck; it emits a green glow that is easily visible.

Neptune

Once you are ready to depart 4546B, it is time to build and use the escape rocket. The first component of the rocket, the launch platform, is constructed with the mobile vehicle bay. The launch platform itself features a fabricator that will be used to build the remaining components.

The rocket is built with a total of five components with five separate blueprints. Annoyingly, the game does not give you the blueprint for any component until you build the previous component, making it difficult to plan ahead for everything you’re going to need. So, to this end:

Total Ingredients Needed to Build the Neptune Rocket

• 4 Plasteel ingots
  
• 2 Titanium ingots
  
• 4 Lead
  
• 3 Nickel
  
• 4 Crystalline sulfur
  
• 4 Kyanite
  
• 2 Computer chips
  
• 1 Wiring kit
  
• 1 Copper wire
  
• 1 Lubricant
  
• 2 Aerogel
  
• 1 Enameled glass
  
• 2 Ion power cells
  
• Cyclops Shield Generator

Rocket Storage

The Neptune Rocket includes four 18-slot lockers just below the cockpit level. Putting things in these lockers will make no difference to your gameplay experience. Filling them with Diamonds, Gold, Ion cubes, alien lifeform samples, or anything else you deem valuable will do nothing to defray the 1 trillion credits that you owe at the end of the closing credits.

Blastoff

All the internal components of the rocket must be activated except for the Time Capsule, which is optional. When ready the prompt “Launch Rocket!” will appear when you look at the pilot’s chair. Clicking this is the last action you will perform in the game; the rest is an animation.

[antced001]

thus guide seems useful might use during one of my chill games or well if i am bored and want something to do

[egg]

basically just shitting on the underrated early game tools
air bladder is amazing! you can stay underwater for as long as you want and then just right click when you feel its dangerously low (unless you're in a cave)
pathfinder tool is niche, but theres a few tricky wrecks and caves it helps with

[penner3]

@Spezi Just made it up!

[a scrub]

All in all, this seems to be a guide for completing and then moving on from the game as quickly as possible. I don't want to do that. I want to continue to play and enjoy the game even after I've unlocked everything I can. Unusual really isn't the word I'd use for this guide, as these tips are all pretty typical, and the locations for all the fragments is on the wiki. I guess the unusual part is where you list things as useless when they can actually make progression flow better. Those things are only useless if you don't want to enjoy the game at a relaxed pace and instead rush through the game screaming at the top of your lungs the entire time.

[Spezi]

Very useful guide. Thank you so much. On Gun Island there are aliens attacking me. Where did you get your name Penner?