Recently I got a request by Wittol_XXX who wanted to help me out and/or update this guide by himself. I made him a contributor. Any changes following March 2024 are his work.

Have fun!

Skarmo

You as the only passenger have survived the crash of starship Aurora on a foreign planet. Now you are drifting in an escape pod near the crash site, on an ocean which covers the whole planet. Under you there is an unknown, beautiful, yet dangerous world.

The Aurora's wreck lies east. It emits radioactivity, so beware when getting closer to it. Sunrise on this planet is south, sunset is north.




Your escape pod is equipped with a beacon, which on the water as well as underwater is visible over a long distance, night and day. You will find your emergency accommodation easily when coming home from a prey.






In the inventory you can mount and unmount equipment, eat and drink. You can choose items like tools and assign them hotkeys by pressing key 1 to 5. Using the right mouse button, you can remove items from the inventory (drop them).

(the screenshot is in Polish)

When opening a storage, you can exchange items between your inventory and the storage by left-clicking.



The heads-up display integrated into your goggles shows various information about you and your vicinity. Besides your diving depth shown up in the middle of the screen on top, most important are the following four values displayed bottom left:

• Breathing Air
• Health
• Food
• Water

Note: All information given in this guide refers to Survival mode. In Freedom mode, food and water values will not be shown, since starving or dying from thirst is not possible there.

Here your struggle for survival starts. Your first provisional base has been slightly damaged in the crash, but you don't have to care about this. There are two exits available (one in the floor, the other one accessible by using the ladder), a small storage and a fabricator.




Look if there is something usable in the storage. The items contained in there will vary from game to game, so there is not much sense in concerning with them. Being a little lucky, you will find an advanced tool, a compass or something similarly helpful.

You can craft all items by yourself using the fabricator. We will deal with it in detail a bit later.

Your general condition is good to start off with, but your HUD shows that you are hungry, so you should go out and find some food. Open your escape pod's floor hatch and let the adventure begin!

Down on the sea ground you will find colonies of acid mushrooms. They aren't edible, but combined with copper you can also use them to make batteries.


When you encounter an bladderfish, go and catch it. In the fabricator, you can transform it into a portion of filtered water, which will give you 20 points of thirst. You can also eat the bladderfish, by cooking it in the fabricator.




Gather everything you can find, you will need it later. Just stay in the shallow water on your first dives, keep yourself away from the larger creatures, and don't forget to take air occasionally.

A bit further west from your escape pod - in opposite direction to the Aurora's wreck - you will find deeper waters with creepvine growing. These plants are going to give you +3 hunger and +1 thirst. However, you will need a knife to harvest them, so this will be something for later explorations.



Meet the peeper, quite a nice fellow to be honest, eating him raw (uncooked) will give you +12 hunger but it will take -7 water (thirst) from you. Cooking him on the other hand will give you +32 hunger and +5 water, so it's pretty obvious that you should cook him.





This is salt, it can be used to "salt" fish meaning that they will not rot and you are going to be able to keep them in your inventory for a longer time, but they take water so be careful.








All fish that you can catch are edible, but eating them raw will make you a bit thirsty, so it is better to cook them in the fabricator before. You can also cook them with salt to make them last a little bit longer before they rot.

Cooked fish contains more nutritive value than raw fish, plus an additional small amount of digestible water. Initially, in your immediate environment, the most profitable fish is the peeper, giving 32 points of food and 5 points of water when cooked. It is not quite easy to catch, though.

Finding sufficient water resources can be more challenging than finding enough food. Besides bladderfish, there is a second resource called bleach. You can gain it from salt and the calcium carbonate contained in corals (do not confuse the calcium corals with the darker, red or purple ones, which are needed for crafting chips). Bleach can be processed to desinfected water, which will still 30 points of thirst. For breaking corals you will also need a knife.



When you have lost health (because of an attack or radioactivity), you will need a first aid kit, which you can produce out of fibrous mesh (two pieces of creepvine). The first aid kit will recover 50 points of health.

The fabricator inside your escape pod is a technical masterpiece. It refines raw materials to resources and processes them to various components, items and tools.


(early access ss)

The fabricator will detect everything you are carrying with you and then analyze possible crafting options. This is why its menu is quite empty in the beginning. It is aways a good idea to "show" new resources and components to the fabricator in order to unlock more options. Some items will require blueprints to be crafted (see what has been said about the fragment analyzer above).



The most important raw material sources are scrap metal, which will give four pieces of titanium each, quartz to make glass, and limestone, which contains copper or titanium. Noble metals can later be found in sandstone.


(early access ss)


There are three very useful equipment items you should produce as soon as possible.

• Fins:
  For moving faster underwater. Fins need to be crafted only once.
  
  
• Knife:
  With a knife, you can defend yourself against enemies, harvest creepvine and break corals.
  
  
• Tank:
  At first you only have enough air for diving 40 seconds (45 units of air). You can then craft a standard air tank and a high capacity tank. The standard tank is going to give you 75 air units, and the high capacity one is going to give you 135 units of air.

Here is your "shopping list"...



These basics will enable you to survive on this fascinating planet. Some hints and tips are following, but in principle you can find out everything else on your own.

The waters of this planet are full of the strangest creatures. The ones of them looking dangerous are dangerous. Two of the first you will probably meet are the stalker (down left) and the crash (down right). However, they represent only a small part of the bizarre life forms you will encounter in this foreign world.

The stalker by itself is not particularly aggressive, but malicious. It will get dangerous only when being approached too near, but then it tends to attack from behind, when you are not expecting it.
A stalker bite causes 30 points of damage, so in good health you will be able to survive three of its attacks. The enamel of this predator's teeth is needed for refining glass to enameled glass used in shipbuilding. The stalker likes playing with metal pieces and is able to damage bases.

The small crash is a real kamikaze warrior that builds its nests in ravines and caves. Often you won't see it coming rushing towards you and then exploding. Depending on distance, these explosions can cause significant damage. The nests of this fish contain a rarely needed substance called cave sulfur , which will be required for crafting the repair tool a,k.a welder, a tool used for repairing bases and ships.


(early access ss)



Occasionally you will find violet balls on the sea ground, giving off bubbles that you can absorb. Each bubble will contain breathing air for ten seconds. In deep waters and caves, these structures can be life-savers. Use them strategically.


(early access ss)



It will take some time until you can build your first base or ship. Until then, materials and items will accumulate in your escape pod, and the small storage will become insufficient quite quickly. Having things lying about loosely is not recommendable. Instead, I would recommend building section I and placing a single solar panel on top to power it inside you can build more storage, of course you can place more things in there but that's for later.




For building underwater bases you will need a tool called builder (down left), some glass and greater amounts of titanium. To power it u will need to place a solar panel or a reactor, but if you are reading this guide you probably don't have the materials nor the blueprints to build a reactor. Using the builder, you can also dissolve the buildings and regain their resources entirely. Pay attention to the hull strength being displayed after finishing an element. The deeper a base is built, the greater is the water pressure weighing on it. Windows and interior works will additionally weaken the hull. If necessary, attach reinforcements to your base to prevent a hull break.

Ships can be built at the water surface using a constructor (down right). Higher value materials and the respective blueprints will be required. Be sure to set up the constructor in an area with sufficient water depth.


(early access ss)

I hope this guide has been helpful. If you think so, you might leave a positive rating (on top of this page) or a comment (in the guest book below). Also, since I am not an English native speaker, corrections are welcome.

Please use the Feedback function (F8 in game) to report bugs to the developers. In the Forum (Discussions) you can discuss all game-specific questions that go beyond this guide's scope. Before opening a new thread there, you might use the Search function to see if your question has been asked and answered before.

SOME SCREENSHOTS ARE FROM THE OLDER VERSION OF SUBNAUTICA


Have fun and good luck!


Wittol_XXX