Oh sorry, you can’t add solar panels to the escape pod. But why don’t you have a fabricator in a base by the time you’re mass producing stuff? I just don’t get you, man! 
No clue about flares. I’ve never used them in all my playthroughs.
Apparently the flares are bugged and frequently never go out. People say they use them to mark large wrecks they fully explored, while others point out that it’s not 100% guaranteed to stay lit forever.
You can pick them up and move them and reuse them all game long because they never go out, but they’re so bright that it’s very difficult to pick them up.
I didn’t know any of this when I hopped out of the escape pod and hucked my two flares at the pack of gasopods to try and scare them off and free up inventory space, figuring they’d just burn up and disappear, but no. I now have permanent glaring flare light outside my escape pod.
When I tried to pick them up it was too bright; I could never find them. So I couldn’t even throw them away when I eventually built a trash can.
ETA: They really light up a huge area though, so conceivably they could be useful in dark cave systems.
So as I understand it, you’re replaying the opening of the game over and over, trying to find the most efficient path to build your perfect base in the shortest time possible? It’s great you’re having fun, but I can’t help but feel like you’re missing the point. Like someone who has a meal prepared by a Michelin star chef, then shoves all the food in a blender and then uses it as skin cream.
To answer your question on the moonpool orientation - put a foundation unit (the flat plate that takes 2 Ti & 2 Pb) down as your very first item, and orient it so the gray trapezoid faces in the direction that you want your seamoth to face when you dock. Then when you build a moonpool it orients itself to the foundation unit. You always exit the seamoth to the left.
Well, I have been reading what you all have been saying, but am I the only one that found(I’ll spoilerbox endgame non-story descriptions):
When you finally have to go and do the final collection stuff in order to be able to craft the device to leave the planet, it was incredibly frustrating and laborious and I was scouring the planet for hard to find items. It might have actually been just before the final device crafting, actually, as well.
I was enjoying the open-world nature of the game, but found the final section too much for me. I flipped to creative after a good-faith effort on stuff and just kind of got it over with.
All of the alien portals you turned on along the way can be used to pop you out in biospheres where you can find the required items pretty quickly. It took me some dedicated searching to find two of them, the rest were easy.
OK, let me respond and ask more:
That was only for the things you needed to hatch the eggs, right? I was able to go out the portals and find that stuff. I think it was the spaceship launcher, etc. that was really hard for me to build.
Yes, that was for the eggs. I didn’t have a big problem with the launcher because I had already gathered a ton of rare items (more than needed) when I was pimping out the cyclops and prawn suit. I just had to go back for a few more and I was ready.
Question for others who have finished:
Did everyone else also turn their Cyclops into a mobile base with food production and sleeping quarters? After I had it going I rarely went back to my main base except for storage.
Yep!!
Yes, absolutely. IIRC, the only thing you couldn’t easily do on a sub was produce water, and there was a fruit that gave you quite a bit of water when you ate it, plus you could always put on your stillsuit.
I had quite a few rare items I needed and no idea where to get them. That was my blind-playthrough and I had zippo clue on some of the key items required. I was also getting fatigued at that point and just kind of wanted to wrap it up.
Great game, though.
My interest in the sequel is not high, though. I don’t know if I have another full game like that in me now.
Gah! You guys are killing me with the spoilers. Haven’t read any of them but I’m kind of dying to…
That’s fair. Again, it’s because I’m too scared to explore deeper waters, at least in my rinky-dink seamoth. If I ever get a cyclops, maybe then I’ll be brave enough to try. But in the meantime, I love the world and the base building. Think of it as me playing Subnautica as if it were Oxygen Not Included.
Nice, thanks much! That works a treat. Unsurprisingly, the foundation ignores the rotate button the same way the moonpool does, but of course if it’s the first building you can face your body in any direction to get that 360 freedom.
It’s so much nicer being able to place the foundation first. Like, hugely nicer. You made my day.
So I was properly shamed by @Gorsnak into trying a new game straight up. It’s currently at 17:19, and please don’t anyone do the math on how many hours it’s been and how I’ve managed to play for 17 of them. It was like 10 hours before I finished building my starter base, but then again, I have scanned just about everything I’ve seen and actually read the entries.
In this newest real game, I have 3/3 cyclops hull and bridge and 2/3 “Cyclops”, but I don’t recall ever scanning any part that just said “Cyclops.” I suspect I missed some pieces in the blue bulb zone so will check back there. (Critters in that area were cranky as hell, though.)
The only unresolved beacon or clue I’ve had for many game days is the Proposed Degasi Habitat. The problem is that it’s 250m directly below my base, meaning it’s under the safe shallows. Yikes. There is almost zero chance I’m going to go explore deep waters looking for a cave entrance. Maybe with a cyclops…
My starter base is great, but the grown food isn’t very filling. I’m getting flashbacks to that old Ultima game from the early 90s where you’d walk around controlling a group of people and they were constantly saying “I’m hungry!” Feed the bastard an apple and 15 seconds later “I’m hungry!” Getting that vibe from gardening. The water filtration machine is kickass, though; loving that thing. In the back of my head I keep thinking “It’d be so much better if I built an alien containment to grow peepers for food. I have the blueprints…”
I also have the blueprints and all ingredients for the stillsuit, but my base is in the radioactive zone so I have to be wearing the radiation suit while in the base. Because of that, my next project is to explore and hopefully de-radiate (not a word, because it’s not a thing in reality) the Aurora. I finally got a propulsion cannon and cleared the entrance at the front of the ship. Tossing the spiders with the cannon was immensely satisfying.
Within one turn I was about to get hopelessly lost so I went back home to make some of those pathfinding thingies. Haven’t done that yet; that’s where I last ended. Before heading back home I did stock up on a shitload of lithium, so that was nice. Now I can switch from lightweight high capacity to ultra high capacity tank.
The Cyclops blueprint consists of three components, each of which need to be scanned three times - hull, bridge, and engines. The engines blueprints are not found in the same biome as the hull and bridge.
Exploring the Aurora is a good plan.
Pursuing the proposed Degassi habitat is also a good plan. I don’t believe the Cyclops can get to it, though, as it’s too big to fit through the entrance to the cave. I guess you’ll need to find the blueprints for courage?
It’s not the creatures, though some of the roars are enjoyably scary. On the one hand it’s depth. If I was running a dev version that had no objects whatsoever – no plants, no animals, no wrecks, no nothing, only landscape and water – I would still be scared to go into deep water. It’s the depth itself that scares me.
Additionally, I get very freaked out when I can’t see where I’m going, especially at speed. It’s a similar low-level primal fear as the depth one; the idea that a giant object is just going to appear in front of my face and I’m going to slam into it without any time to react… just horrifying. It turns out I could never be a pilot, at least not through clouds or fog.
The cartoon monsters are the least of it. 95% of the of the job of scaring me was done just by creating the setting. Then again, the unknown is scary but the known rarely is. Once I do go deeper I’m sure I’ll be fine. It’s not like there’s scary cartoon monsters that are trying to freak me out or anything…
anyone have the artic expansion? and if so whats the differences/improvements and what did they nerf …
Is it just an expansion? I thought it was a whole new game. Anyway, I don’t have it and I’m curious to see the answers to your questions.
I’ve played the arctic expansion. The gameplay is very similar. The new environments are just as beautiful, and the game is worth playing for that. There are a couple of great scare moments.
But I don’t like either of the new vehicles they introduce, and there’s an interminable section of the game that I hated, and the story’s ending wasn’t satisfying to me at all.
Get it for the loveliness, but don’t expect the story itself to be as satisfying as Subnautica’s.
That is a full sequel game called “Subnautica: Below Zero”
The Aurora is slow going. I’ve got a beacon set up at the hole to aim the seamoth at, and a set of pathfinders directing me through the underwater part when you first enter. After finishing the living quarters I decided the upper level was the only other way to go. So I burned through 6 batteries worth of the propulsion cannon (the two extras I brought plus stealing three from other gear), 7 waters and 3 or 4 cured peepers trying to stack these stupid crates high enough to get to the second level. After every battery I had was dead I headed back to restock. My staircase is not particularly close to finished. Not loving this mechanic.
From my two playthroughs, I don’t recall ever needing to build a staircase. I only ever needed to use the prop cannon for like 1 or 2 things.
Yeah googling spoilers says I’m supposed to be opening those locked doors where the keypads don’t respond to any button on my controller. Apparently it’s keyboard only? The pointer never changes either. No indication the panels are anything other than textures.
That was not a 90 minutes of futility well spent.
EDIT: Nope, controller works. It’s the jump button, because of course it is. (I remapped them.)