The (almost) spoiler free primer for Subnautica

Subnautica is a game of discovery, finding new things, finding new blueprints, finding out how to survive and how to progress. So giving out a step-by-step tutorial would kinda defeat this purpose. If you're looking for a tutorial that holds your hand as you dive down, this is not the goal of this primer. I will go into more detail down in the bottom section (and if you try to avoid spoilers, I will give a spoiler warning before we get there). If you are looking for something that gives you a hint what to look for, how things work here and how you can progress without giving away all the secrets the game has to offer, this is the guide for you. I will tell you how to interact with things, what is what and what to look for when you're looking for something, what I will not tell you (in the first section at least) is what the blueprints are for, what things to build and what's unnecessary, and where exactly you find what resources and how you harvest them. There is a FAQ-Style part at the end of the guide that goes into each "where do I get" and "how do I do" question tacked onto the end of it, so you don't have to read it if you want to explore yourself, but you can look it up in case you're running out of ideas where to get what and how to do something.

This guide was written for the Development Build 34210, Jun-2016 which is the experimental build branch as of writing this. There might not be all the features discussed available to you if you are using the stable build. I am fairly sure that at least the top half will stand the test of time, even if some bits change.

First things first: The basics

You start in your escape pod. As you have already noticed when you put out the fire, left-clicking interacts directly with the environment (picking stuff up and touching stuff) while right-clicking makes you use whatever you're holding right now (like the extinguisher once you picked it up). Dropping things is done from your inventory, which you can reach by pressing tab. Here, again, the two mouse buttons have different general function. Clicking onto something with your left button means using it (as in eating it if it's food or putting it on if it's clothing, etc) while the right button simply drops it. So right click the extinguisher and watch out that you don't drop it on your toe. To keep your escape pod clean, dropping stuff is only allowed while you're outside the escape pod. The outside can be reached by either climbing up the ladder to exit through the top, or by dropping through the hatch in the bottom of the pod. Personally I prefer the latter, simply for practical reasons. We're in water, after all.

Your escape pod and its functions

Your escape pod and its functions

You are alone in a two man escape pod, making you probably wonder whether some hapless person was left without one. Way to save your own a...nyway, you probably didn't want to hear that. As you might have noticed it's not in the best shape but the things that you really need are still functional. These being the fabricator



Which allows you to build all the necessities for survival (provided you can feed it the raw materials it needs), the storage container



which serves as a stowing place for a few things you will find and don't want to lug around and the MedKit fabricator



which provides a medial emergency kit every half hour. My advice would be to remove one whenever possible and store it, even if you don't need it right now, there might come a time when you need a few of them in rapid succession. I also advise to take one with you wherever you venture. Using one restores 50 percent (points) of your health, so using one when your health drops beneath 50 is advisable.

Your escape pod also has other features, but they are currently broken.

Food and water

Food and water is your first concern. Have you noticed the fish swimming around you? Catch some with your hands and see what your fabricator can make out of them!



When you catch one (simply with your hands), you will automatically get new blueprints for your fabricator. Check all blueprints, you might learn more than just a food receipe when catching certain animals.

Resources

Now that you have what's needed to survive your first few moments, it's time to find out what we can do to build stuff. First, we need materials. They come in four kinds. First, little outcroppings of sand-colored stone.



Hit them (left click) a few times and a unit of some material will fall out. Around your escape pod, this is mostly titanium, copper and lead. Further away and deeper down, you will find other such rocks that contain silver and gold. And even further down, more exotic materials will be found in such rock outcroppings.

The second kind of resource is spots of crystals that simply lie on the ocean floor. Again, what kind of crystals you find depends on where you look.



Around your escape pod, you will find mostly Quartz, which can be turned into glass. Further away, more exotic crystals are waiting for you.

Third kind are scrap metal pieces called Metal Salvage. These are most likely parts of the Aurora that flaked off its hull as it was breaking up during reentry. They can be smelted down in the fabricator to gain Titanium.



And finally we have the kind that you have to harvest using tools. So once you get a tool that allows you to cut things, you might want to see what things you can cut with it. I'll leave it to you to find that out.

The Scanner

I really don't want to get into details what to build (seriously, experiment and build what you feel like, the resources respawn, no later than at loading a save game at least, and there is NO shortage whatsoever of anything, so build, build and build!), but there is one thing you simply MUST build: The Scanner. The scanner is the universal tool to find out stuff about the stuff you find. It's the tool that gives you more info about the things (and plants, and animals) you encounter and tells you everything you can do with them. The scanner is basically giving you all the hints you might want to get about the things you encounter. Plus, it's needed to gain additional blueprints of more advanced tools and equipment.

So what's the part list for the scanner?

Mouse-over the Scanner in the fabricator



And we learn we need titanium and a battery. For the battery, we need copper and acid mushrooms.



The former is in one of those sandy outcroppings as stated above. The latter is something you'll find on the ocean floor, keep looking!

Scanning lifeforms

When you have built the scanner, equip it (hit tab for the inventory screen, mouse over the scanner and press a number 1-5 to put it in the quick bar down below, then close the inventory and press the associated number button to ready it). With it equipped, you can now scan for information on the things you see all around you. Swim behind fishes until the "scan" icon appears in the middle of the screen, then hold down the right mouse button to scan. Scanning takes a few moments (from 1 to about 10 seconds, depending on target) and then you'll get information about the thing you scanned in your PDA, on the rightmost tab. In the example here, I scanned Writhing Weed



and behold, in my PDA an entry about it appears.



You might want to sit down in your escape pod every now and then and review the scans you take. Some things and animals have more uses than they seem at first glance.

Scanning for blueprints

Another thing the scanner is good for is discovering new blueprints. You will encounter things that look like boxes on the ocean floor



These things are actually blueprint fragments. If you scan enough of them, new blueprints will unlock in your fabricator. If you scan superfluous fragments (because you already know the blueprint they contain), you will gain titanium instead. Of course, different blueprints are hidden in different areas of the game (called "biome"), so whenever you swim into an area where the landscape changes radically, be prepared to find new blueprint fragments, new raw materials but also new threats. Stay alert!

Scanning for submarines

You might have heard people talk about Seamoth and Cyclops. These are two different (VERY different) kinds of submarines. They, too, require you to first discover a few fragments. They don't look like the aforementioned boxes, though. They have more in common with the metal scrap you find. Don't worry, you can't accidentally harvest them as scrap, but if you run across something that looks like scrap but you can't pick it up, try scanning it, it just might be your ticket to a ride!

Building a base

To build a base you need a habitat builder tool. There is no reason to wait too long to build one, you can fully recycle everything (i.e. if you decide to scrap the base and move it somewhere else, you get 100% of everything invested back out, provided you're careful and don't dismantle rooms that still contain lockers, or lockers that contain materials). When building a base, note the change in its structural integrity (displayed every time you complete a part or start dismantling a part in the upper left corner of your screen), that numbers should always be above 0 to ensure that it is airtight. The cheapest way to imcrease structural integrity is build foundations, which can be anywhere around the base (needn't be below, though it is advisible so you can continue building on top). I would recommend building a "storage base" early, i.e. as soon as you have the build tool, so you can store your stuff without building floating lockers. They are incredibly pricey and later they're pretty much worthless. And afaik you can NOT dismantle them. Plus, in the current build, they tend to disappear from time to time, including contents. Also, you do want to put a beacon down near your base so you can easily find it again, it does NOT broadcast its location by itself!

END OF THE SPOILER FREE ZONE

The spoiler-free zone ends here. From here onwards, you will get direct answers to direct questions, so if you plan to explore on your own, you might want to stop reading now. Thank you for reading, and happy exploring!

If you happen to get stymied by something you can't find, can't build or simply don't understand and ONLY want an answer to this one question, what I did was to note down the questions that have been asked time and again on the board here, and I tried to answer them as good as I could without giving away anything else that you'd want to find out for yourself. If your question isn't here, drop a comment down below.

What's useful and what's useless? Starter tips on what to build.

What you want, in no particular order: Fins, O2 tank (one!), knife, scanner, air bladder, seaglide. The fins are pretty much a requirement to get around and to manage to evade the early predators. The O2 tank doubles your submerged time and the first one doesn't take up room in your inventory, you can take additioanl tanks with you, but they clog your inventory for just 30 more seconds, and you will soon find that your inventory is small enough. You need the knife to gain access to kelp fiber (for suits), corals (for bleach and CPUs), and of course to defend yourself against predators. The scanner is a requirement, if at all possible build it as one of the first things you build because it is your source for information. The air bladder is your life insurance because it WILL surface you, and it will surface you FAST, and it will even do so when you run out of air and black out, saved my life more often than I could count. Get that one as soon as you plan to dive down into the kelp forest. The seaglide is very useful to get around fast but it does eat through batteries like crazy, so you will have to build a few of them until you find a way to recycle them.

To inflate the air bladder, ready it and press the right mouse button. To deflate it so you can dive again, press the right mouse button again. Note that inflating it consumes 3 units of air. There is a bug (at least I assume it's a bug) right now that lets you keep an inflated air bladder all the time because it only "counts", and forces you to the surface, if it is ready, i.e. if you hold it in your hand. Which is a double edged sword, because on one hand it means you cannot defend yourself when you do an emergency surface (since you cannot ready your knife, you have to keep the air bladder in your hand to surface quickly), but it also means you don't have to waste oxygen to inflate it. I.e. you don't need to deflate it when you want to dive again, you simply ready something else and you can dive at will.

Where do I get Crash Powder?

Crash Powder is found in places where there is ... Crash. Now, what is Crash? Crash is a suicide bomber fish that lives in something akin to a round plant inside of caves.



Here you see a closed crash plant near the cursor, with one that is open to the upper right of it, the red thing.

When you approach it, you do want to have at the very least 60-70 HP because if you get too close, the Crash Plant opens and the suicide bomber fish comes out and swims right at you.



Try to dodge it as good as you possibly can, a point blank hit of a Crash cuts 50 HP. And they rarely live alone. You might want to save the game before going after a Crash. And take at least one HP kit with you. I'm serious!



This is the crash plant, open, with the crash powder inside. Notice my HP bar? And I am pretty good at dodging those critters!

Did I mention that you should save your game before going after Crash?

Where do I get silver?

The closest source of silver would be in the Kelp Forest. Swim until you see large, green algae, then dive down into the depths. It's in the sand rocks waaaay down there. Yes, they look like the other ones that you found around your escape pod, but these have silver and gold instead of titanium, lead and copper.

What does that acid mushroom for the batteries look like?

This:

They grow in the starter biome. Harvest them with your hands, don't cut them with your knife!

How do I get fiber for the suits?

Get a knife and cut the Kelp forest down. Make room in your inventory before you do, kelp takes up quite a bit of space.

Where do I get the oil for the rubber and the lubricant?

Kelp Forest, the yellow fruits on the Kelp stalks. Make sure you come with an empty inventory, that stuff is bulky!

Where do I get the table corals for the CPUs?

They grow at the side of slops in the first biome. Usually near Acid Mushrooms. You need a knife to harvest them.

And the other corals, for the bleach?

Simply scrape the huge natural pipes in the first biome with your knife a few times.

I'm looking for blueprint X but only find Y

Likely you're looking in the wrong biome. Most blueprints are only found in one certain biome and you might need to move to another one if you're not getting what you're after.

I built a base but there is no air in it

You need to power your base. Early power for the base is in solar panels or bioreactors, for both there are blueprint fragments in the first biome, you have to scan those fragments to unlock the blueprints for the panels or the reactor.

The bio-reactor is a pretty big unit that you can put into a multi-pupose room in your base. The solar panels can be attached anywhere on the outside of your base.

As soon as your base has power, it will automatically produce breathable air, provided it is air tight (i.e. the durability is positive). Note that you replenish your air level slower in the base than you would by surfacing.

Can I grow my own fish in a sustainable way? I.e. so I don't have to go out and hunt but simply farm them at home?

Yes. You need an alien containment system in a general purpose room in a base. Simply drop two fish of the same kind into it and, well, wait. I suggest growing Reginalds or, if you don't have them yet, Peepers. You might want to grow Airsacks for water, but generally, by the time you can build the alien containment, you should have a good source for salt already, so Airsacks are usually not really an issue.

I can't get into my alien containment system.

Add a hatch to it. Simply build a hatch onto the alien containment tank.

Do fish inside the alien containment system need food plants?

I don't think so, but I usually routinely build Kelp in them, and according to the PDA info kelp is fish food, so...

I planted Kelp in the alien containment, but it somehow doesn't seem to grow

For Kelp to grow, the containment system has to be two stories high. To accomplish that, build a general purpose room right on top of the general purpose room that holds the containment system (you have to do that while outside the base, of course). Then get back into the base, build a ladder in the general purpose room holding the alien containment system, climb up the ladder and build another alien containment system there. The two alien containment systems will now combine to a tall one that can grow kelp and can hold up to 20 fish. I advise planting kelp seeds (the yellow things) instead of planting kelp, because only kelp that grew from seeds will itself carry seeds, kelp grown from kelp will only yield kelp. And since there isn't really anything else that you can sensibly grow in there as of now, why grow anything but kelp? You might want to experiment with acid mushrooms, but for mushroom seeds, you have to cut the mushrooms. Come with a high HP level if you do.

Do fish breed in an aquarium too?

No. The aquarium is for looks only.

What can I do with all the empty batteries?

There are blueprints for a battery recharger that you can build in your base. The prints are supposedly to be found in the Grassy Plateau, I could have sworn I found some in the Kelp Forests near the Plateau. It's quite the power hog so you might want to have a well powered base to run these things.

Note that they have been added in the experimental branch only so far, if you play with the stable branch you will not have access to the battery charger.

Can I swap out batteries before they're fully empty?

Yes. Ready the tool that you wish to change the battery (or remove the battery from) and press R. Now you can use A and D to scroll through the available spare batteries you have (or the green X to just remove the battery) and hit the left mouse button to select. There seems to be no penalty for charging a half-empty battery.

[Insane]

Good guide mate. Appreciated the whole spoiler-free read.

[cswheele]

by the way i dont think resources respawn when they are gone i believe they are gone. resetting the cell caches and oct trees will respawn them again tho.

[Lashida]

Excellent first read when starting to play!