I’ve never really understood why game creators care about save-scumming. If someone wants to do it, let them. It doesn’t hurt you in anyway.
I mean, I understand that many Rogue-likes and Rogue-lights is that you can’t save-scum, but that’s kind of their idiom. It’s part of what makes the genre.
But it would seem more effort to me from a programming standpoint to only allow saving at fixed points, and at the end of the day, what does preventing it actually get you?
There’s usually a way to do it, such as making a backup of a file and replacing it when you don’t get the result you want, but agreed there’s often no way to do it in the game itself.
Um, not that I would ever save-scum or stair-scum. My friend, he did it. Yeah, not me. 
I’m making progress on my little project. I get back from the floating island at around the 51-52 minute mark with every blueprint I need except Scanner Room, Alien Containment, Water Filter and Plant Shelf. I also have every seed I need to complete my gardens except the Bulb Bush, with the caveat that I still have to physically harvest the three local seeds I plant: Creepvine, Brain Coral and Acid Mushroom.
It’s possible I can build everything I have blueprints for before the Aurora explodes. I’m not that far off from already having enough gold/silver/lead to build the modification station, vehicle upgrade bay, battery charger, laser cutter and propulsion cannon. The biggest challenge is starting to look like Copper, but I think that’s solvable.
The idea was originally to end the scripted portion of my run sitting atop the LifePod watching the Aurora explode, after which I climb down the ladder, craft and equip a Radiation Suit, The End. But my base wouldn’t technically be complete yet.
So now I’m thinking 90 minutes instead of 60. After watching the Aurora explode, I climb down, craft a radiation suit, then board my upgraded seamoth (depth mk 1 plus 3 storage lockers) and head straight out to repair the Aurora. The Aurora is on rails; that could easily be a single 15-minute take from start to finish, not counting travel time. On the way home from the Aurora I’m thinking I swing by LifePod 12 to pick up Bulb Bush for my gardens as well as Water Filter and Alien Containment blueprints. That would give me everything I need except the Plant Shelf.
So then I get back from the Aurora, finish the base, sit down on my bench in front of my garden and open the PDA to start reading, The End. I’m looking at this as like a play or movie. Scripted.
In related news, I finally broke down and watched a speed run. Technically this means I have been spoilered, but I didn’t really understand or absorb the sea lady part. I intentionally tried to tune that stuff out. But I wanted to see what actual speed runs are, so I watched the current glitchless record from cinnamon cookies:
The primary rule for a speed run is that it must be a single segment. You cannot save and reload at any point. My 60-minute run has five segments total, then I’m envisioning maybe three more segments for the extended version. I could theoretically do it all in one take, but that’s more memorization and practice than I’m willing to commit to. I also couldn’t stomach having to restart 15 times every try waiting for a good location.
That’s clearly what they did for the record run above, I think. Their LifePod just happens to be right next to where they build their first “base.” Zero chance that was coincidence. They do write about almost giving up but then getting finally getting a lucky spawn. Starting location probably wasn’t the only factor that needed to come up just right. Taken all together it must have been brutally tedious.
Speaking of their bases, they build two permanent bases, and both are a just a single I compartment. The first base has two each solar panels, large lockers, and fabricators. They keep two fabricators running non-stop for minutes at a time. It’s jaw-dropping. Their second base has only a single solar panel, small locker, and fabricator, out by the tower gun that shoots down the Sunbeam.
And finally, everything in the run is all optimized for speed. They never even build a seamoth because that would just slow things down. They use suicide as transportation, building an unpowered single-room habitat to enter and exit (and then deconstruct) right before suiciding so no gear is lost.
So I’m not doing anything like that. I’m not interested in doing it all in a single take, though currently my segments are around 15-20 minutes each. I’m not interested in building the least amount required; in fact building a nice base is kind of the entire point of what I’m doing. Not only am I building a seamoth, I’m upgrading it. Death is right out, though I run Survival instead of Hardcore because I like oxygen warnings.
In fact, now that I mention oxygen warnings, one of my main “rules” is “Respect the Animation.” If Riley just gets to the surface and is gasping for air, I wait for him to finish catching his breath before diving back under. If he equips a new tool, I let him check it out without interruption. (I’m usually moving while he does it, though.)
Watching that run was incredibly impressive, but in the end I was kind of happy that it’s not at all what I’m looking to do. My run will definitely come off poorly by comparison, no doubt, but it’s not really the same kind of thing so wouldn’t invite comparison. If I had to name it, I’m doing a 90-minute base building challenge with up to 8 segments allowed.
The glitched speedruns are a lot more fun. Super seaglide, clipping through the Aurora long before it explodes, deconstructing moonpools for titanium in one of the weirdest duplication bugs I’ve ever witnessed. They’re just over 30 minutes.
That speed run was a fun watch, thanks for the link!
The best part about it…no eating of that shitty creepvine!
But I coulda swore I saw him find a cyclops shield module, so why did he have to bother building a cyclops? This question is for anybody. I’ve only played twice, but 2nd time I tried to go without a cyclops and found I needed to build one just for the shield module (since I never found one).
Amen to that.
With my run I’m mildly hungry when I get back from the floating island. I could cheese the gel sacs for extra seeds and eat those (not the seeds) the quickest if needed, but I don’t think I’ll need to. I only bring back one marblemelon seed so that has to grow twice before I can eat melons. That should mean that chinese potato will be my first food. I have 2 waters waiting when I get back which should be plenty to keep me going until I can start eating marblemelons and bulbo samples.
I definitely don’t need to bring food or water to the Aurora, that’s for sure. As long as I’m full and not thirsty when I head out for it, I should be bringing surplus food and water back from it.
There are no Cyclops shield modules in the world. You have to make a Cyclops to build the rocket. Are you sure you’re not mistaking him finding the shield module blueprint?
I’m not sure of anything. I was watching it at the bar and wasn’t totally focused. I probably just misinterpreted what I saw.
There is a Cyclops engine efficiency module in the Aurora engine room.
Well that was frigging amazing. I have to think using suicide as a transportation method is kind of hinky, but going from surface to the Lava Castle with a seamoth was just unbelievable. And had the programmers just randomized the captain’s cabin code of course something like this would be completely impossible.
BTW, he definitely gets the Cyclops Shield module blueprint at around 47:50 in the video. He constructs it at 57:30, right after constructing the otherwise useless Cyclops.
Just this morning finished segment 5 (S5). Here’s what I have so far:
S0 @ 0:00 Intro
S1 @ 0:01 Gear up, start base, deploy Mobile Vehicle Bay
S2 @ 0:21 Seamoth, LifePod 17, Blood Kelp, end at LifePod 19
S3 @ 0:37 LifePod 19, Floating Island
S4 @ 0:50 Expand base, plant gardens
S5 @ 1:12 Watch Aurora explode, finish gardens, go to Aurora entrance
S6 @ 1:24 …
I timed it so I just happened to be in the LifePod crunching metal scrap when the Aurora explodes so I can quickly climb the ladder to watch the show. It’s around 90 seconds into segment 5. As soon as the bulbo tree finishes growing and I can plant a second one I take off for the Aurora.
My first test pass at the Aurora took 20 minutes. I can probably get that down to 17 or 18 with a couple tries but likely no lower. I’m really digging the grav trap to help keep the bleeders at bay while I’m repairing the Aurora. It’s probably slower but way cooler.
It’s looking like I probably won’t even get under 2 hours, much less 90 minutes. Right now it’s looking more like around 2:15 all told. I’m doing my level best not to be too precious when placing things with the builder but it’s tough. The plant pots and wall lockers are the worst, and when I leave for the Aurora I’ve placed all plant pots but only 12 of 23 wall lockers.
My biggest issue is the scanner room fragments never spawned pretty much anywhere. I know of exactly three fragments on the entire map, and it’s like a 1.5 km trip to hit all three and return home. That’s excessive. Crossing my fingers that maybe some will have spawned in the bulb zone when I hit up LifePod 12 on the way home from the Aurora.
Yay for LifePod 12 coming through in the clutch. Not only plentiful scanner room fragments, but also a nice surprise. The ampeels and bone sharks are ridiculously aggressive, to the point I couldn’t just leave my seamoth out in the open. So looking around LifePod 12 for somewhere to stash it while I do a quick ruby/shale run, I find this perfectly sized cave entrance. And what do I find right next to that cave entrance? Sea Crown! The last plant I was missing, that I had never seen before, and which I’d already resigned to having to look it up on wiki to find. I found it straight up legit! I get a gold star.
The ampeels are super annoying because there’s nothing I can do about them. Bone sharks, on the other hand, I welcome them being aggressive. It’s very satisfying to jump out of the seamoth, equip my knife, and then just start stabbing the absolute s*** out of a bone shark. They turn tail and run right quick.
For ampeels, I suppose I could try launching things out of inventory at them with the propulsion cannon like a gun. Maybe gold? So annoyed every time a shale chunk drops gold.
And I finished. The game says it’s 2:39, so the only way to spin that is “under 3 hours” which is hardly impressive. Still, I had a bunch of fun doing it.
The youtube video starts with a 5 minute tour of the completed base, so you don’t have to blow 3 hours watching the whole thing or try to skip around with the progress bar thing on such a long video if you just wanna check out the base design.
I expect few or no people to watch the whole thing from start to finish. It’s just for me. Man I enjoyed this tremendously. (I already watched it start to finish this morning and may watch it again right now.)
I guess I no longer have any excuses, and I have to go explore deeper water now. *gulp*
You’re definitely playing the game wrong, but I’ve really enjoyed your posts about it. I will probably watch your video here in a bit. Please do continue!
I’ve been playing Below Zero all weekend. I’m about 12 hours in and I guess about a third of the way through the story, as parts are designed to move along faster than the original, plus I have a good idea of which tools and equipment are important and which can safely be ignored. I have died about five times.
It’s good fun, a very different plot, a notable improvement in graphics with fewer buggy bits, but also seems like there’s not as many environments and scary beasties.
After completing my “base race” video last summer, linked a couple posts up, I promptly stopped playing. Never got up from the bench that I sat down on at the end of the video. Just wasn’t interested, and then I started playing cities skylines and it was all over for me.
A few weeks ago, my skylines city hit a wall. It’s around 90% done, but that entire 90% was a vision realized. Or, rather, it was a hundred different visions, all realized. My problem is I can’t visualize the last 10%, so that abruptly ended my cities skylines time. (I fully intend to return to it, but not until I ‘see’ it.)
After a brief detour with vampire survivors, I fired up subnautica a couple weeks ago, resuming from my save game with the styling base, just to try it out and see how I liked it playing for real. Holy shit I love it it’s too good oh my god I can’t take it.
I’m no longer optimizing or recording anything, just playing it straight up. Granted I have the huge head start of my base, but I’m okay with that. Everything I’ve tried since resuming play has worked flawlessly, pretty much first try, even parts I had previously failed during my base race. Here’s a recap:
I started by sitting on the bench and reading through all the PDA data, then scanned all my plants and all the flora and fauna around my base and sat down and read that too. Then the sunbeam countdown started.
During the countdown, I cheated by looking on wiki to see where prawn suit drill and grappling arm blueprints were, and managed to find one without any real threats nearby. Picked up the blueprints on my way to the Sunbeam rendezvous.
At the Sunbeam island I grabbed the purple tablet outside the door (forgot to bring mine, of course) and went in. I’ve been in this place at least a dozen times before and never found anything. This time, for whatever reason, I was successful exploring. I found the alien moon pool, two ion cubes, those two weapon displays, and the two scannable altar things. As this was essentially my first foray into continuing the game, the resounding success was hugely motivating.
So I returned to my base, sat down on the bench and started reading all my new scan data (I’m now scanning everything I see everywhere I go), and while I was doing that I got a radio message with the code for the captain’s quarters. Holy shit! I immediately raced to the previously-cleared Aurora, got the blueprints, headed back, and built the first two pieces of the rocket because I had all the materials onhand. (Still no nickel yet.) This was my second resounding success.
So I dropped down to the jelly shroom caves, farmed up a bunch of magnetite with my brand new drill arm, scooted back with my shiny new grappling arm, and built all the magnetite stuff: Max seamoth depth module (900m), seamoth defensive shocker thing, scanner room upgrades and a stasis rifle.
Naturally the very first thing I did after these upgrades was go straight for a reaper. I let him grab me, shocked him good, he let go and kind of wandered off. Followed him and did it again just for practice. At this point he was kind of loopy, so I hopped out and stasis rifled him and got a successful scan. Then I returned to the base and read his scan. That was about a half hour ago.
One of the scans of the altars in the alien installation gives me a hint on where to find the bio research cure place, or whatever.
I am now ready to go deep.
Right on! Keep us updated. I like reading about your adventures. It’s almost like playing this great game for the first time again.
Two quick things I forgot to mention above: around the same time the captain’s quarters code came in on the radio, the alien lady tried (failed) to contact me telepathically. Haven’t seen that before. Also, in the planetary defense installation I also found and scanned an alien arch, which I assume is the teleporter. I didn’t try and figure out how to use it yet.
In other news, remember I said I shocked, stasis’ed and scanned a reaper? Yeah, so about that…
Turns out he followed me home. The video above is my first and only effort at leading him back to where I found him, but I can’t seem to get him to follow me. Any suggestions?
I could kill him a number of different ways, but I’d rather not have his dead body littering my back lawn for the rest of the game.
(This video is unrehearsed. At the end I show off my three most impressive scans to date: reaper, mesmer and warper.)
Spoilers follow.
Last summer the furthest I ever got was to the final Degasi base at 500m, but I never made it out alive thanks to the crab squid.
This time around I used a stasis rifle to scan the fucker, then hightailed it back to my base to read the scan. Attracted to light you say? Well how about that; all I have to do is turn out the lights and they ignore me. Good thing flying around blind isn’t terrifying or anything, but still, big win.
I built a prawn suit and cyclops, but so far I haven’t managed to squeeze the cyclops down to the Lost River. So I took the seamoth exploring and found the research facility.
Unfortunately my game is saved at the research facility, where I have only one water left, maybe 20% of my health (I went brine pool diving for some sulfur, used up both health packs I brought) and kind of don’t have any clue how to get out of this place. So this will be fun. My only other save is from last summer.
I’m starting to seriously consider trying VR. The only name I know is Oculus, so I assume I’d be trying that. Anyone here do VR Subnautica? I hear everything looks absolutely massive in VR due to how the field of view gets scrunched for display on monitors.
ETA: All I knew about the Lost River was that there was that advanced sulfur. Had no clue what a brine pool was or that the research facility was actually down there. Exploring the brine pool, and then dipping my seamoth down into it was really cool. Getting out of the seamoth while I was under there was much less cool…
Interestingly, getting into your seamoth doesn’t save you if you’re still under the brine line. You have to pull the seamoth up out of it to stop taking damage.