I can't figure out what to do in Subnautica.

[ThricebornPhoenix]

Did you never use the sonar or shield modules?

I tried the sonar in the Seamoth, and it just made the landscape much harder to see. I don't remember if I ever made one for the Cyclops.

I was thinking "so what, I'll just install a power cell charger on my Cyclops," then realized the critical error in my logic. Guess I'll be spending some time fabricating some spares.

If you're not averse to danger, there are a bunch of supply crates

Spoiler

around and behind the Aurora (probably a couple in the nearby kelp forest, as well)

. You can usually get a few power cells that way.

You can also carry enough items to build a small base with a bioreactor/thermal plant and a power cell charger if you have the patience for that sort of thing.

Fun fact: installing a charger on the Cyclops did at one point work, I think because of the engine efficiency module.

 

[zonetrope]

The value of the Seamoth sonar for me is illuminating the terrain ahead of me when it's pitch dark, plus any Leviathans who might be hanging around.

And thanks for the advice on power cells. I really need to psych myself up to start a session of this game, because the experience is so mentally draining, but I'll probably explore that area some more next time around.

 

[MCBanjoMike]

If it helps, far side of the Aurora is 100% optional. There are enough scary places that you actually have to go through to complete the story...

 

[Troa11]

Missed this before. No, I only ever used Sonar on my Seamoth and I had the solar module in that often. Most of the late-game places you need to take the cyclops are pretty well lit. I never took it anywhere dangerous enough to need shields much. Or I'd just patch damage I guess? Also, I always traveled with a full set of spares batteries in a locker, just in case. You get so many batteries exploring the Aurora and the area around that making another half-dozen power cells isn't hard.

Of course, after I got familiar with the map I never really used sonar again.

 

[zonetrope]

The game keeps crashing on me when I try to go to deeper, more visually intense areas. Three times this week already. I'm going to try to clean the dust from my PS4 and see if that helps, but otherwise this might have to wait till I upgrade to PS5, because this is really breaking my immersion and making me not want to load up the game.

 

[Troa11]

See, it's anecdotes like that which make me absolutely shocked this is getting a Switch port. Like... it can barely handle the consoles it was made for and performance is an issue often even on really good PCs... what makes them think they can get it running well on Nintendo's little device? (Not belittling the Switch, I love it, but let's be honest about its capabilities, too.)

 

[MCBanjoMike]

Oh I would not recommend the Switch port to anyone, barring reports that it's somehow ultra-stable. It's disappointing to hear that the PS4 version is giving zone so many problems - the game has been out for years, you'd think they would have fixed some of those major bugs by now.

 

[Kairu]

Oh I would not recommend the Switch port to anyone, barring reports that it's somehow ultra-stable. It's disappointing to hear that the PS4 version is giving zone so many problems - the game has been out for years, you'd think they would have fixed some of those major bugs by now.

They were still patching the PS4 version as of a few months ago. In my playthrough on a base PS4 I had a few crashes, maybe 3 or 4, and saving started taking a real long time. The most immersion breaking thing for me though was it could take a long time for the terrain to stream in if you were moving at any reasonable speed in the Seamoth. I had to be real careful not to drive through terrain that hadn't yet rendered in and end up in the void. Otherwise performance was mostly... OK... the worst was parts of the Lost River, which would tank the framerate to single digits at times.

I should take the game for a spin on my PS5, I assume at least with the new data pipeline the streaming of terrain wouldn't be an issue any longer.

 

[zonetrope]

I've never cleaned my PS4's fan, even once, since I got it in 2015, so that might be compounding the issue. I just cleaned a bunch of caked-up dust from the side vents and ordered a special screwdriver to get at the insides, so we'll see how that goes.

 

[Purple]

Go east instead of west.

I mean, there's a lot to be said for going different places, but I find setting up camp east of the Aurora leads to having a bit of a rough go of things, what with the lack of food and the lack of drinkable water and the difficulty of just getting to and powering your base what with the crush depth and total lack of power sources. View can be quite nice though I guess?

Fun fact: installing a charger on the Cyclops did at one point work, I think because of the engine efficiency module.

During the early access beta period, yeah. I remember cycling around power cells and giving the finger to thermodynamics quite fondly.

 

[Troa11]

Oh, I didn't quite mean that literally. I just meant go in a direction you usually don't. Progression resources occur in more than one biome or the biome has more than one location on the map. On top of which there are multiple paths to the endgame zones so try working your way along a route you're not familiar with is all I was really trying to say.

I will say that in my recent playthroughs I do tend to mainline getting cured so warpers will leave me the fork alone.

 

[Purple]

I do really love that one of the many ways to route Subnautica is to basically just go STRAIGHT DOWN from where you start through a super convoluted tunnel system leading you directly to the final area of the game.

 

[zonetrope]

Yup, turns out the problem was my PS4's fan. I cleaned it out and played for a few straight hours last night without any issues. Whew!

 

[zonetrope]

I'm kind of feeling stuck in terms of mobility. I have a Cyclops and want to take it into the deeper areas, but the field of view in the cockpit is super zoomed in, and I can't see anything while I'm submerging, so I have no idea where I'm going and keep banging into things and starting fires. I have a prawn suit with a drill arm, but I never want to use it, because it's so hard to get it back into the Cyclops. It feels like all of the minerals I need to fix these problems (magnetite, crystalline sulfur, nickel ore) are in these hard-to-reach areas, so I'm in kind of a catch-22. What am I missing?

 

[MCBanjoMike]

I also found visibility with the Cyclops to be really terrible, but there is an upgrade that can help. Look up the sonar module, it basically renders the world in wire-frame view and makes navigating dark areas way easier. Careful, though, it chews through batteries like no-one's business! Another option would be to build a forward base in the deep: bring the Cyclops down as far as you can and then venture out with the Prawn until you find a good spot for gathering resources. Personally, I like building near the big blue tree, which is a pretty safe spot that is close to a lot of useful resources. You can probably find a geothermal vent nearby, which will give you a steady supply of power - and then food and water as a result.

 

[Exposition Owl]

There was a post in the corresponding thread on the previous forums that said something like, "Every time I see a new post in this thread, I get really excited for a second in the hopes that it means Below Zero has hit 1.0." I would just like to say that this is still true.

 

[Troa11]

I pretty much stuck to the Seamoth for exploration due to its maneuverability. It wasn't until I wanted to massively relocate somewhere that I'd load up the Cyclops and take it there. I almost never took the Cyclops back and forth anywhere. Now, there is a point when the Seamoth just can't go any deeper, but at that point, I stuck to my Prawn for exploration.

That said, beyond the proximity indicators, cycling through the cameras can often be helpful, particularly the bottom one when diving deeper. Still, I always took it slow and steady. Even if you hit stuff at low speeds it doesn't really do much for damage.

(Seriously though, the way I play now, I only build a Cyclops to meet the end game requirement, I almost never use it anymore.)

 

[JBear]

I almost exclusively used the Cyclops for the back half of the game. There's a couple of tight squeezes on the way, but I just banged it around and jammed it down. I couldn't imagine going without it.

The Prawn stayed in the bay until I needed the drill or wanted to pretend to be spiderman.

 

[Purple]

I'm kind of feeling stuck in terms of mobility. I have a Cyclops and want to take it into the deeper areas, but the field of view in the cockpit is super zoomed in, and I can't see anything while I'm submerging, so I have no idea where I'm going and keep banging into things and starting fires. I have a prawn suit with a drill arm, but I never want to use it, because it's so hard to get it back into the Cyclops. It feels like all of the minerals I need to fix these problems (magnetite, crystalline sulfur, nickel ore) are in these hard-to-reach areas, so I'm in kind of a catch-22. What am I missing?

The only real sensible way to navigate the cyclops is via the keel camera. Or in non-boaty terms, the camera mounted on the bottom. Pretty much gives you a clear view of everything around you except for whatever is above you, but, usually, you don't need to worry too much about up. Even in caves you have HIGH ceilings everywhere.

The real trick though is to learn not to worry about it quite so much. It's a huge heavily armored super clunky sub. You just need to accept you're constantly going to be scraping the walls, plowing through schools of rays, etc. BUT it's tanky enough that most of that won't matter. You bang hard into a wall, there's going to be a dent in the WALL (seriously, it's a surviving feature of when they built the whole game on a voxel engine planning to have random maps and a teraforming tool). I'd still suggest taking things kinda gingerly with it, don't go full speed unless you're sure you're in the open, listen for those about to wham a thing pings, but, don't worry about chipping the paint is my point.

And hey even if you do seriously wreck it, you tend to just get a couple leaks and maybe fires. You always have time to finish what you're doing, get somewhere safe, get out, and spot-weld any ruptures. The only thing you ever really have to worry about is running your power all the way down, and even then, it's only a real concern if you're like, running around with shields up at all times/ignoring one other source of serious power drain I don't want to spoil.

 

[MCBanjoMike]

One thing I never figured out with the Cyclops was if you were supposed to be able to run it at high speed for long. Any time I would max out the speed, I'd get like 10 seconds before I'd hear the phrase "cavitating" and everything would start exploding. Anyone know what the deal is there?

 

[zonetrope]

I didn't even realize the Cyclops had cameras, so that should help. I still need to find the sonar blueprints.

EDIT: LOL, yeah, I just found the camera controls, and this is a profoundly different experience than just looking out the front window. Oops.

 

[ThricebornPhoenix]

I have a prawn suit with a drill arm, but I never want to use it, because it's so hard to get it back into the Cyclops.

One thing you may not have even considered is moving the Cyclops over the Prawn, which should (once in the correct area) prompt the docking procedure. I believe I did this only once; it may or may not be easier than doing it the other way.

One thing I never figured out with the Cyclops was if you were supposed to be able to run it at high speed for long.

In addition to the eventual fire problem, running at flank speed creates insane noise (detection-wise) and drains power twice as fast as standard. I'd recommend only using it for emergencies, e.g. you need to outrun/ram into a leviathan.

 

[zonetrope]

One thing you may not have even considered is moving the Cyclops over the Prawn, which should (once in the correct area) prompt the docking procedure. I believe I did this only once; it may or may not be easier than doing it the other way.

That's what I'd been doing, but it was tough before I realized the sub had cameras (again, oops). I also didn't have the grappling arm yet, which also fixes that problem.

One problem leads to another, though: I just managed to get my prawn suit completely stuck in some level geometry in the Jellyshroom Cave. This cave feels like a practice level for the grapple, so it's odd that it's so easy to just get lodged in a crevice. The suit seriously won't move an inch now, and you'd never be able to tell from the outside that it's stuck. But at least I'm at a point in the game where I can just take out my upgrades, power cells and minerals and fabricate a new suit (or two) without much bother.

 

[Troa11]

The Prawn suit getting stuck places is a major flaw with the current patches. Look forward to it just getting randomly stuck if you're walking on dry land over alien architecture. When that happens you can usually grapple yourself free, at least.

 

[zonetrope]

I have a new prawn suit and I'm in the Lost River, and the way this thing maneuvers and operates really sucks. I don't know if it's the current patch or something inherent to the design. But I'll probably only be using it exactly as much as I need to.

I do love the feeling of taking the Cyclops to a new, deeper level though. It feels like I'm finding a new place to park the Technodrome.

 

[Troa11]

It's a good idea to rarely walk in the Prawn and mostly just jump/grapple. Especially since by that point you can fabricate the jump jet upgrade.

Though for all its bugs the best way to move in the Prawn in open areas is to grapple a distance ahead of you, start getting pulled and once you got some speed release the grapple and jump!

 

[MCBanjoMike]

The Prawn is something of a necessary evil for me. I tend to do as much as I can without it, either in the Seamoth of just with the Seaglide.

 

[zonetrope]

Yeah, I'm primarily trying to use the grapple to get around, but more often than not I just thunk against the wall, or the hook gets caught on some nearby, invisible piece of level geometry. It doesn't really feel optimized for this game engine.

Question about the River: when my character comes into contact with the green cave brine, even after I get out, the brine keeps eating away at me until I die, basically making any contact with it a timed death sentence. Poking around various forums, I'm not sure whether this is supposed to be happening. Is this a bug?

EDIT: Never mind, turns out that in those situations I was still in the brine pool. I'm clearly very bright.

 

[zonetrope]

I just started a third base at the big tree, and I think I finally, finally have a solid grasp of what I'm doing in this game and how everything fits together. The prawn suit jump jet is a lot more useful than I expected and basically resolves the mobility issues I was having. And this entire second layer of the game is just so breathtaking and immersive once you can traverse it without worrying about getting back to the surface.

 

[zonetrope]

Man, this endgame really isn't intuitive at all. I thought it would just be a matter of "get to the bottom and the game ends," but there are all sorts of steps you need to take to roll credits that the game doesn't do a great job conveying to the player. I didn't even realize that there was an escape rocket I'm supposed to be building. It feels like a lot of work (rightfully) went into the environmental design in this game, but the story needed more polish and signposting.