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I started playing this morning! So excited to be doing this all again! I'll be spoilering a lot of my stuff. It looks like when above water your O2 gauge becomes a hypothermia one. I assume this means that there will be upgrades to the suit for that as well as tasks that will require extended time out of the water exploring. I just got my seaglide!
I've found the first cache, as well as a floating cage and lab platform above another work area below. I've been staying real close to home base though. Look out for Sea Monkeys! They will steal your gear! I'm interested in the story wrap, looking for your sister and suspicious about Alterra make a lot of sense to me.
I started playing this morning! So excited to be doing this all again! I'll be spoilering a lot of my stuff. It looks like when above water your O2 gauge becomes a hypothermia one. I assume this means that there will be upgrades to the suit for that as well as tasks that will require extended time out of the water exploring. I just got my seaglide!
I've found the first cache, as well as a floating cage and lab platform above another work area below. I've been staying real close to home base though. Look out for Sea Monkeys! They will steal your gear! I'm interested in the story wrap, looking for your sister and suspicious about Alterra make a lot of sense to me.
Started playing on PS5 as soon as it unlocked last night. Played for... about 3 hours? I've enjoyed it so far, though it hasn't quite hooked me right away like the first game did. Maybe if I was playing this first rather than after Subnautica I'd feel a bit different.
I'm kind of surprised how not great the performance is on PS5, even when set to "high framerate" mode. I'm not sure on the specifics, but it seems like "Performance" targets 1080P60, while "Quality" targets 4K30. There's definitely some tearing when in Performance mode as well. Also there's still some noticeable pop-in in both modes, particularly the icebergs.
I will say, so far at least, it's performance on PS5 is certainly better than the original on PS4, which is where I experienced that game. It's not so bad that it detracts from the experience for me, but after having played better looking games at 4K60 on PS5 I'm just going to guess the game is not fully optimized for the platform. Haptic feedback is nicely incorporated and it does use the adaptive trigger feature of the PS5, though minimally so far. Audio logs also play back via the controller, which is... neat? It at least sounds a lot better than audio coming out of a Wii Controller, which is the last time I can recall a game incorporating audio logs like that.
I've made the first round of equipment and followed a beacon to the first on land section, Delta Outpost. Scanning stuff around Delta unlocks the Habitat builder and the associated core base building pieces, so that'll be my first task when I play next. I did build the Mobile Vehicle Bay, but haven't found any of the blueprints to build anything with it; so it's sea gliding around for now. Also hate those Sea Monkey's already.
Subzero is doing a bit better job of integrating the story it's trying to tell than the first game. Also seems to be doing a bit more to gently nudge the player onto the next major event. That could be a pro or con depending on how you feel about the sometimes aimless portions of the first game.
I AM NOT GOING TO BE READING THIS THREAD, or at least not until I’m pretty far into this game. But I did want to say that like a year ago, I got spoiled on one of the leviathan designs when I was trying to find out the release date for this (at False’s behest, I believe) and I’ve been mad about it ever since. Well, it turns out they put that thing on the box art for Below Zero, so, uh, I guess it isn’t much of a spoiler. Super, incredibly stoked to start playing this tonight! Even though I finished another playthrough of the original game just last night...
I've made the first round of equipment and followed a beacon to the first on land section, Delta Outpost. Scanning stuff around Delta unlocks the Habitat builder and the associated core base building pieces, so that'll be my first task when I play next. I did build the Mobile Vehicle Bay, but haven't found any of the blueprints to build anything with it; so it's sea gliding around for now. Also hate those Sea Monkey's already.
I didn't locate the habitat builder until I found a second on land location. I still haven't found enough pieces to make the mobile vehicle bay... Though I do have a recipe for a vehicle but not the mats to make it. I've got my first base set up. I could really use some exterior grow beds.
I didn't locate the habitat builder until I found a second on land location. I still haven't found enough pieces to make the mobile vehicle bay... Though I do have a recipe for a vehicle but not the mats to make it. I've got my first base set up. I could really use some exterior grow beds.
Not sure if I should consider it my first or second "on land" location. The first beacon I had come up was just the PDA announcing it had found an Altera supply cache, I think that beacon was beneath or at least close to the floating cage and platform you mentioned finding. The second beacon I pursued was the main plot one of the Delta Output Landing, which was on an actual proper floating island. Once you make it to the actual camp there were two habitat sections, one for the employees and one for the manager. I found a habitat builder to scan right outside the employees habitat on a box. Scanning it unlocked the blueprint.
You *may* not want to read this one, though it sounds like you might be further than I am:
I've actually got two more active beacons I have yet to visit. One for the next step in looking for Sam, at Echo I think, which I believe unlocked after scanning the map at Delta? The other was reveled after I found a hiddenish area on back side of Delta Island. This allowed the PDA to decode an earlier SOS signal to an actual location and generate a marker.
Well I apparently did not explore that area well enough, know where I’m heading back to tonight.
This game is definitely going to rule but might melt my poor graphics card, those fans kick on high as soon as the game loads and don’t really ever come back down. Ah well, I knew this cheap card wouldn’t buy me much time.
I followed the Alien Distress Signal marker that was added by decoding the signal after finding the hidden area on Delta Island. I now have ALAN inside my head.
I remember this plot point being introduced differently from the single time I played the early access version on PC for about an hour over a year ago. That was when I decided I just wanted to wait till the game was "released" before playing any further. I do remember reading an update on their website that they decided to rewrite the opening portion of the game, so it seems like this plot point remained but how it gets introduced was changed.
I now have the High Capacity O2 Tank and Rebreather, which extends the O2 gauge to 175 and removes the increased O2 usage penalty when diving below 100 meters. I found both at around 150 meters in the coral bridges area adjacent to the starting area. Both were found from Data Lockers near "mini-bases". One was next to a crane on a platform, the other was next to a tube. The tube also contained a base fabricator and window walls that could be scanned to unlock the recipes.
I built a small base not to far from the starting area, under one of the icebergs. I wasn't sure if the solar panels would have issues being in shade, so I opted to build a platform near the surface with 5 or so of them on it and then use power relays to route power to the main base structure. I know the depth of the panels affects their efficiency, so it was probably a good idea either way. I've got two multi-purpose rooms with the essentials, as well as a scanner room. I can't make it much bigger without re-enforcing so I probably won't expand much further for now.
I now have access to the Sea Truck, whose fragments can be found in the same coral bridges area as the upgrades I mentioned. I also built two of the Sea Truck compartments, one for storage, one with a fabricator. Those fragments can found in the area beneath the coral bridges, just look for some cracks in the floor to go deeper. It's pretty deep, but there's quite a few oxygen plants in the area, so I I wasn't too concerned about O2. There *are* a few nasty surprises in this area, including what probably counts as a leviathan. It patrols around the area and will chase if you get too close, but is large enough that it can't follow you into the crevasses that dot the area. There's also some nasties along the floor, have fun being surprised by those. The Sea Truck on it's own is fairly maneuverable, and doesn't feel too bad with the two compartments attached. It is a bit of a pain to dock with the compartments, and unfortunately it sounds like while there was a rear view camera at one point it got removed for being too buggy. I was able to build the first depth module upgrade, which will allow it to go to 300 meters before damage occurs. You'll need to find lithium to make the aforementioned truck compartments and upgrade module, which I'll mention in the next section.
I've found some lithium in the volcanic area near the Delta Station Landing Dock. The new to this game hand held resource locator made that a lot easier, just set it to scan for lithium as you explore near the smoke stacks. I also found some diamonds in the deep portion of the coral bridges area, along with gel sacks. Past the smoke stacks area, there's definitely a leviathan in a larger volcanic plains area beyond Delta, but it seemed to stay closer to the surface the few times I glimpsed it. Found a bit more lithium there but not much else yet that would warrant sticking around.
Now that I can operate the Sea Truck at 300 meters or so for with just under 3 minutes of O2 I'll probably explore the immediate area near the starting location a bit more. Marker wise, I've got the "Pilot - Last Known Location" and one from ALAN to check out. I also plan to visit some of the other outposts listed on the map you can scan at Delta, not sure which I'll go to first yet.
Stumbled upon Al An today while playing. I was just following the coral bridges looking for pieces of the vehicle building station. Was just cruising looking for wreckage and going from air plant to air plant then saw the alien pylons and followed those. All he's given so far are labelled architect body parts that I don't know how to make. Doing this also lead to the rebreather. I've constructed that and the Sea Truck now. It's only got a depth range of 150 though so I need to build the upgrade station and start trying to work on that. I haven't located a moon pool either... I might set up a second base.
The second base I located was Outpost Zero. I think I need to head back there again and more thoroughly explore. As well as explore Delta Base again because I don't think I got the message you did Kairu that would have led me to Al An. I just randomly stumbled upon him. Once I've done that I guess I can try to explore the other places highlighted on the Alterra map. I can't go deep enough to pursue the pilot so no point in doing that and that is all I have on my map or in my bucket of ideas right now.
Stumbled upon Al An today while playing. I was just following the coral bridges looking for pieces of the vehicle building station. Was just cruising looking for wreckage and going from air plant to air plant then saw the alien pylons and followed those. All he's given so far are labelled architect body parts that I don't know how to make. Doing this also lead to the rebreather. I've constructed that and the Sea Truck now. It's only got a depth range of 150 though so I need to build the upgrade station and start trying to work on that. I haven't located a moon pool either... I might set up a second base.
The second base I located was Outpost Zero. I think I need to head back there again and more thoroughly explore. As well as explore Delta Base again because I don't think I got the message you did Kairu that would have led me to Al An. I just randomly stumbled upon him. Once I've done that I guess I can try to explore the other places highlighted on the Alterra map. I can't go deep enough to pursue the pilot so no point in doing that and that is all I have on my map or in my bucket of ideas right now.
You can actually build the first tier of the depth upgrade for the Sea Truck just in the fabricator. It does take enameled glass and a plastasteel ingot, which I think means a total of 3 lithium. That'll allow a depth of 300 meters. Mark 2 and 3 of the upgrade are created at the Modification (Upgrade) Station and requires materials I haven't found yet.
I found the hidden area with the alien tech (and a ion cube) that unlocked the signal by following the western edge of island from the docking area. There is a path but it's much narrower and not lit like the one that leads to the actual outpost.
There is a mining facility under Delta Station. With the Truck and a rebreather and some luck you can explore most of it. It's got rubies, diamonds, and prawn suit components! Oh and some alien tech. I found it while going around the east end of the island and noticing some lights below me.
Also, there's a crashed old ship just off the west side of the island
Got a late start getting into this but I think I've caught up to everyone, first impressions, colored by having absorbed way more spoilers than I'd have liked from early early-access spam:
- I am really pleasantly surprised that the early goings are actually significantly LESS handhold-y than the first game. I was really really expecting, based on the more emphasized and formally structured plot, that there'd be a breadcrumb trail all throughout, but no, it just goes "so, here's your starter pod. There's a base worth checking out... somewhere. Oh and on your way to it have a vague note of the start of another plot branch, a beacon you can't get, and like, a vague paper world map. Bye!
- Rocks have a random choice of 3 metals per tier changing to rocks having a choice of 1 metal (previewed on mouseover) or titanium is... a marginal improvement? Last time I replayed the original I ended up with a locker full of utterly useless to me gold.
- I'm kind of impressed that there is at least the illusion of having at least 3 independent plot tracks to work on at a time.
- I also really expected the world design to be way more linear. Basically a string of lakes and overland passages, maybe with some too deep to be practical in the early game alternate route. Glad to be wrong about that!
- I kinda hate the resource finder. And I really hate that the scanner room HUD is still pricy because I mean it's kinda useless without one.
- I also have very mixed feelings about the air bubble plants in this and the convenient strings they're in. Feels very game-y and hurts my sense of immersion. Mechanically though I do like how they enable early deep dives/caving while looking for stuff... with "stuff" including any real vehicle or hab builder. Oof.
Wow, for once it looks like I'm actually ahead of the rest of you guys?? Might be because I played like a dozen hours of this over the weekend, I might have gone a little over the top there. In general terms, I can say that this game definitely gives me the thing that I want most out of Subnautica: cool, weird, creepy environments to explore. It's not much of a spoiler to say that the coral canyon right near the beginning of the game is one of the most beautiful biomes the team has created; I like it so much that I set up my primary base at the bottom with a glass dome so I can look up and enjoy the architecture. I explored far and somewhat deep, down to depths of about 600m so far, and I've seen a lot of stuff! I will say that the map design is more labyrinthine in this game, there are times when I've been 100% lost, both early on and later in my playthrough.
Story-wise, so far I'm not quite convinced that this game will measure up to the original, but that's also quite a lot to ask. The first game had a brilliantly subtle story that developed as you explored the world, scanned things and found artifacts left over by planet's previous visitors. You can't really do that a second time when players already know so much about the architects and the mysterious illness that plagued the planet in the last game. Still, I can't shake the feeling that things are a little on the straightforward side this time around. I imagine there will be some late-game twists, so we'll see if they can pull the rug out from under me in an interesting way. But so far it seems like a fairly bog-standard "evil company does evil stuff, tries to cover it up" kind of story, at least outside of the stuff with Al-An.
Tech wise, here's where I'm at after about a dozen hours:
I've got my main base in the coral canyon, where I can live comfortably and there's a very nice view. I've got the scanner room with the HUD upgrade, the latter being one of the biggest sticking points (magnetite is so rare in this game!). I've got a water purifier and a variety of local vegetables - you sure can't beat the peppers that grow on those weird two-legged plants! I've built up my Seatruck to have a fabricator, a storage module and a dock for my eventual Prawn suit. I only just got enough blueprints to actually build the Prawn last night, so I've been exploring by truck, but I have the level 2 depth module and have made it down to 650m. There are some...concerning creatures at those depths, let me tell you. All I need to max out the Seatruck depth is nickel, but I have a feeling I'll need the Prawn to find that. My only real problem right now is that I still haven't found what I need to make the ultra capacity oxygen tank. That means I'm still somewhat limited in my exploration by the max depth of the Seatruck, since the endless caves are way too easy to get lost in and I'm trying to avoid drowning. I also just built a spy pengling, which I only just realized will allow me to explore the stupid knee-high holes in the wall that you find near the Alterra bases. And here I spent all this time wondering why Metroid couldn't crawl...
And finally, my progress exploring the various Alterra bases:
I've explored Delta, Phi and Zero, along with the mining site underneath Delta. I don't think I've been to Omega at all, but I'm guessing that's going to be a deep, end-game location. I can't say that I love traveling on the surface, but I should finally be able to build one of those snowbikes soon to make the process less painful. I've also spent some time exploring the crashed ship in the ocean, where I found 2/3 of the blueprints I needed to make a parallel processing unit. That's obviously going to be an important item eventually, but I've scoured the place and didn't see a third one to scan to complete the blueprint. This game is making me miss the abundance of wrecks in the original Subnautica, they were a lot more fun and atmospheric to explore than a bunch of buildings on the surface.
As mentioned in the other thread, I played this through in Early Access several times, about every other major update. It's been fun to watch it evolve this time and see some of the more opaque stuff become more directed. I played through the release version over the weekend and even knowing more or less what I was up to, spent about 15 hours on it.
I also jumped back in shortly after with the VR Mod which... works better than the official VR mode in the first Subnautica?
Since I missed out on playing the final product blind, I've supplemented that by watching some of my friends streaming it blind on Twitch which has also been great.
I will say I don't know how I feel about the plot... but also that I don't think I care about how I feel about the plot. I like the gameplay loop enough that it doesn't really matter.
I will say I don't know how I feel about the plot... but also that I don't think I care about how I feel about the plot. I like the gameplay loop enough that it doesn't really matter.
This is definitely true for me up to a point - I've been playing this game pretty much compulsively since it launched - but it's the kind of thing that might keep the sequel from being an absolute classic the way the original game was. As it stands, if anyone asks me which game to play first, I'm still going to point them to regular old Subnautica.
I mean, you should be doing that anyway, since BZ is VERY much, in every possible sense, a sequel of the flavor that assumes you've definitely played the original. Like, yeah, it has a cursory "yo, eat these, drink these" mini-tutorial at the start, but in addition to every plot surprise from the original is a thing taken completely for granted here, the level of handholding overall is pretty much "OK take the original Subnautica and just full on remove the radio and all the other lifepods. Wrecks only. Final Destination." Which I like in a sequel (I mean, I also liked it when I was playing the original in early access where tracking lifepod signals took one of your 2 HUD equip slots and most of the freebie map pings straight up didn't exist, but that's just me). Just giving you a wide open world map and saying "go find stuff" is a bit much to ask of someone who doesn't yet even understand the loop of how finding stuff even works though, and hell creepvine clusters are actually significantly harder to find here, especially for someone who doesn't know to be looking.
Side note, echoing Mike, I'm loving the twisty bridges. It's a biome that was originally planned for the first game incidentally, which they had to cut for reasons of just kinda being too sprawling to really fit in with the rest of the world design, and there was a period of time when they were planning an expansion that was basically just going to glom them onto north edge of the map somewhere and put neat new stuff in them.
So... a whole lot of extra time and attention has been lavished on that biome in particular and it shows. I also just kinda like mechanically the general idea that I can go explore out from my lifepod, OR I can go down, and there are similar amounts of variety and cool treasure either way.
I finally gave up and decided to look up the location of the spiral plants that you need to make synthetic fibers. I got my girlfriend to look it up and give me some hints, although she eventually had to spell out that the best place to get them was inside a vent garden - I had seen them before but never had the idea to try that! I used that to build a depth module for my Prawn, but the results were disappointing: it can only go a paltry 50m beyond the maximum depth of my Seatruck, which currently has a level-2 depth module. (And if you're wondering how I managed to get that module for the truck without knowing the location of the spiral plants, it's because I found some synthetic fibers lying around in an Alterra base.)
What's next:
So clearly my next task is to find some nickel, which I expect will be in the deep crystal caves that I've found myself in once or twice. There is a very, very nasty leviathan who lives down there and I'm not particularly looking forward to try to get past it! For the first time ever in Subtautica, I've equipped my Prawn with some gas torpedoes that will hopefully act as a deterrent, if not actually kill the damn thing. I'll probably need to build a scanner room down there to locate the nickel, because I've already explored down to 650m with the truck and I don't know how much farther I'll be able to get with a Prawn than can go to 700. It's honestly a bit disappointing how limited the Prawn suit is in this game, I've had basically no reason to use the thing thus far.
And just for fun, let's talk leviathans:
So far I've found I guess five different creatures that would count as leviathans, three of which are hostile. I don't count the squidsharks, because they're annoying but mostly harmless if you're in a vehicle. First, there's the jumbo shrimp that very aggressively patrols the East/South sides of the map. I'm not entirely sure, but my feeling is that he's a soft barrier indicating the edge of the world, basically. Either way, he's a total pain in the ass and much more aggressive than most leviathans in the original game were. I almost managed to complete a scan of him when I hid my truck in a crevasse that he couldn't get into and he kept trying to enter it, getting his face jammed in the crack three feet away from me. Sadly, he swam away before I could finish and I didn't quite manage to memorize his name.
Then there's the scary, leech-looking leviathan who lives in the deep dark. This guy is also very aggressive, along with being aggressively gross. I definitely get the feeling that it's hunting for me when I go down there, it's pretty of stressful. Not quite sure how I'll get past it, but I'll try to stick to small spaces that he can't get into and blast it with torpedoes if that doesn't work. I have a feeling I might not get to scan this one.
As for the ice narwhals in the cover art for the game, I thought they were sea creatures, but they actually live in the ice and act as a kind of environmental hazard in the northwest ice plains. I didn't get a very good look at them because they're always moving.
And finally, we have the two friendly leviathans: glow whales and vent gardens. I didn't actually know the latter could move at first, I only saw one in transit for the first time last night. It's nice that at least something big out there doesn't want to kill you. And the whales are just generally pleasant to look at, so that's fun.
I don't know if there's anything waiting for me at the very end of the game, but it would make sense if there was a living leviathan of the sort you find frozen in the ice at the excavation site. Or maybe that one gets free somehow? Time will tell!
I guess there aren't a lot of people playing this? Thread has been kinda quiet lately. Anyway, I made some satisfying progress last night:
With my Prawn max depth upgraded, I decided I should go back and make a real stab at exploring the purple crystal biome. Turns out the Prawn was fairly superfluous, in that the extra 50m it could go past the Seatruck didn't do a lot for me, but I was able to find some crevasses below the crystal zone where I was safe from the leviathan. I setup up an outpost with a scanner, which allowed me to find some nickel and also put a name on my goopy adversary: the shadow leviathan. Still not planning on getting close enough to scan it, though! I was a bit discouraged by the leviathan's persistence, it kept chasing me even after I fed it a few gas torpedoes. Since the Prawn was a liability, I started exploring without it using the new outpost as a source of oxygen. I eventually found a deeper cavern completely composed of crystals, in which I located the organs I need to build a body for Al-An. I'm hopeful that I can leave this place behind and never come back, although there is an alien artifact in that area that I could never find a path to get to. It might not actually be connected to those caves, but the place is a huge maze and I can't be sure.
Anyway, at this point I'm only missing one more part to finish building Al-An, though I don't really know where to look for it. I did just find another crashed ship, or another piece of the same one, at the bottom of the lily pad area, but I doubt it'll be in there. I've also stumbled onto some semi-important technology totally by accident while exploring, so I guess the game just expects you to scour the whole map? It kind of makes me wish there was a faster way to get around than my pokey Seatruck, which cruises along pretty slowly now that I've added three modules to it.
I’m playing, just avoiding reading much of the thread unless I get super stuck.
I’ve got the first depth module for the sea truck and just scanned a bunch of stuff near the pilot’s last location signal. Need to explore more around there as I didn’t trigger any more breadcrumbs.
Also still puzzling out how to get to the alien one, can’t seem to find a path.
I really need to play more, I've just been super busy, and the last time I was playing I was dealing with that particular frustration of having like 2/3 of every sea truck module and yes that includes the actual cab.
Doing story progression stuff. I stopped the satellite surveillance and Marguerit invites me to her greenhouse and I spend half a day trying to find out. Which was incredibly frustrating. I've had multiple story beats now that reference an infected leviathan and I'm pretty sure the sister got killed trying to do something about it but I still haven't found anything. I did find the robotics lab but there isn't anything there either. I don't think I can avoid building a robo penguin anymore. The lab has multiple spots that require it (they all seem to have a little battery/radar next to spots. I wonder how much of the story progression is locked behind these? I've got the second depth module for the Truck but none of its modules.
I think I'm going to try and go back to Marguerit's home and explore her room fully and try and make another trip down to the caves below her house (I found some magnetite and kyanite there but dont have much time to explore there and its scary. ) and then try and find the omega lab. Hoping I'll learn more there...
The only other lead I have is the location of a part of Alan's body and another alien location. Hoping something along here points me in the right direction!
Man, the environments in this game are way too maze-like. It gets especially bad in the on-foot surface sections. I was trying to make my way back to an important location that I found about 10 hours ago, and after an hour of trying I gave in and looked the location up. I also discovered an important new area in a region that I thought I had completely explored last night, which would have totally stalled my progress otherwise. And I still haven't found Margeurite's base, which I think is also key to finishing the game. I get that they wanted to change things up after a comparatively open world in the previous game, but they really should have given the player some sort of late-game mapping tool to make navigating all this stuff easier.
So after exhaustively searching for the excavation site (again), I finally managed to find the stash of kharaa antidote and cure the leviathan, which caused...absolutely nothing to happen. Not gonna lie, I was hoping for a dramatic emergence from the ice and possibly a new creature roaming the world map after that. Exploring the surface also got me the last body part schematic for Al-An, who then told me to go look for a place to build it in the depths. After far too many run-ins with the shadow leviathan, I finally found the lower biome with all the red crystal structures and...another shadow leviathan. These guys are just way too aggressive, there aren't a ton of ways to sneak past them and I spent a lot of time frantically repairing my seatruck between goopings. It took me a super long time to spot the entrance to the fabricator facility, which meant I had plenty of time to be annoyed by that thing again. I built Al-An his body, and for a minute it seemed like maybe he was going to be evil, but of course he isn't...just really stupid. It's nice for them to call back to the destroyed containment facility in the first game, at least. Now I have to go meet him at the warp gate, but I expect I'll need to shut down the radio tower before I can finish the game, and that means I still have to find Margeurite's hideout. I swear I've completely scoured the lowest parts of the map, but there's still that one alien artifact signal that I can't reach, so I must be missing something. I'll give it another hour or two and then maybe ask for a hint if I can't find it, because getting lost in endless mazelike caverns isn't really what I want out of these games.
Despite my griping, I'm mostly have a great time with this. The art is gorgeous, the biomes are fun to explore, and it's just more Subnautica to play after all this time. I still think the first game is better, but there are probably some people who would prefer the slightly more guided approach this game takes. I say slightly, because despite the more apparent surface-level story, you're still left to find stuff on your own to a great extent. I'm really happy I lucked into the location for the alien battery schematics, as it wasn't really hinted at until I got within 100m of it.
Put a bunch more hours into this on Friday and Saturday Night.
I've stumbled on quite a few of the Alien Artifacts, even without following the ones ALAN specifically adds to the map. As you find them you get rewarded with Alien technology, though I'm not sure if it's by location discovered or number of discovers. So now I've got the Seatruck powered by two Ion Power Cells, which for all intents and purposes seems like infinite energy. That's been helpful as I seem to have the tendency to get grabbed by some of the Leviathans pretty regularly and the perimeter defense system eats power.
I've managed to stumble into a few areas probably earlier than I was strictly meant to, as I was able to upgrade my Seatruck's depth module to Level 3 at the same time I was able to upgrade to Level 2. I managed to find some Kyanite near one of the artifact sites by taking the truck right to 300 meters than just solo diving down into the Crystal Caves. That's where a Shadow Leviathan lives... those are unpleasant... thankfully the one time that it grabbed me I was above 75 health which means it wasn't an instant death. Thankfully there's some small cracks through the cave you can cower in as the Leviathan snaps at you, the only reason I took damage was deliberately getting closer to scan than thing, not the smartest of moves.
@MCBanjoMike If you want hint's on finding Margeurite's Base, read below:
I found it by following the marker that get's added when you first encounter her in the Prawn on the Delta Base's island, the "Pilot's Last Known Location" one. It'll be in the bottom of the Giant Lilly Pad area, where you'll encounter a bunch of Sea Monkey's and their nests. From the location of the marker look for some light-sticks along the seafloor, if you follow them deeper you'll eventually end up at a location where there's a giant underwater cave with her base in it. She'll radio you as you get close, warning to stay away. My truck wasn't upgraded yet, and it's a depth deeper than 300 meters so I had to leave the truck behind and just swim into her base via the connected moon pool. She definitely gives you a task to progress the story from what I can tell, though I haven't completed it myself yet.
It took all day and I died more than I care to remember but I finally found the frozen leviathan. I really do hate the on ice stuff. It's too samey and too mazey. On top of that are those Ice Worms?! WTF? Not cool. I did manage to find the thumper and that helps. But still. I spent half my time looking in the wrong area entirely to boot! Though that did help because it lead to finding on of Al'an's parts. I only need to find one more. But, I don't know how to finish what Sam started. Is that a false lead? The most offensive part I found was when I located a warp gate that did nothing more but warp me back to the Phi Robotics location. What the hell? How is that useful at all?! At least the warps in the first game let you leap from biome to biome quickly. If I wasn't obsessed with completing this the entire Phi location would have turned me away from the game completely.
I also found Omega Lab. Which took awhile as well. I kept stumbling upon Margeurit's home which I'd already found. There wasn't much there beyond the nuclear generator though. At this point I'm not sure what I'm suppose to do. I need to find the last part of Al'an. I think I've been everywhere but the deep crystal area but finding the resources to make going down there viable will be difficult. Guess I can try free diving it until I find the ones I need. Hopefully there is more direction once I get down there. But it doesn't feel like it.
This game seems to want me to do things in a certain order but then it does a real bad job of highlighting the path they want me to take. The first game which didn't have such a linear path allowed you to solve the game in a much more open manner. There were hints and you could explore but finding things felt more rewarding and there wasn't the frustration attached to it like there is here. I know they want me to find find out what happened to Sam. I know they want me to find the frozen leviathan. I know they want me to explore the bases. But then they make them very difficult to find and instead of feeling like Im stumbling upon things organically and having aha moments I'm just getting frustrated that I can't do the thing the game wants me to do.
Finished! I completed the game last night with a time of about 25 hours and (I think) all story threads tied up. I agree that the game generally doesn't signpost the important stuff well enough, and given the complexity of the map that lead to me spending way more time than I wanted to lost in caves and on the surface. I still enjoyed myself for the most part - I played the game obsessively for 10 straight days - but the farther in I got, the more time I was devoting to annoying scavenger hunts. It doesn't help that there are so many obligatory spots you need to locate to finish the main story - three parts for Al-An, the excavation site, the antibodies, two distinct locations for Margeurite, the robotics laboratory, Omega base - so if you didn't stumble onto one or two of them, you could spend hours combing the map without a lot of info to go on. I was also disappointed that we never got a bigger, cooler leviathan at the end of the game. Still, there were some really cool environments to explore - the coral bridges and the lilypad forest were two of my favorites - and I enjoyed the bulk of my time with the game. I wouldn't recommend it to most people as their starting point, but it's definitely More Subnautica and I can't be too mad about that.
Played some more last night; only for the game to crash on me after having not saved for 2.5 hours :|
That's partly my own fault, since I *know* the game doesn't auto-save... though why, *oh why*, does a game in 2021 not have some form of auto-save? The problem for me at least, is I get in the grove of doing just one more thing and so even when I return to base I immediately start upgrading and building and often forget to save.
Managed to redo the progress that was lost in about 1.5 hours, got back to may base and saved, only for the game to crash again a few minutes later as I was searching for some resources to build new structures.
Both crashes were soon after activating the Scanning Room to search for some lead, with the HUD chip equipped. From what I recall the Scanning Room takes so long to generate results because under the hood the game is loading up each segment of the map and determining if there's any of the relevant resource in it. So maybe it's some sort of memory issue on the PS5, but that's just a guess as the crash reports aren't very useful in determining why a crash happened. So no more Scanning Room for me, guess it'll just be the handheld one from now on.
Kind of soured my experience a bit, though the original also crashed a bit when I was playing it on PS4 last year, so I'm not entirely shocked it happened in Below Zero, just disappointed in the time wasted.
Anyways, I've made the following progress (twice over):
Explored all 3 pieces of the Mercury 2 Wreck to unlock the Parallel Processing Unit
Locate Omega Base in the Giant Lilly Pad Biome, unlocking the exterior grow beds
Locate a Ventgarden and collected a bunch of Spiral Clippings (I already had a few from the Deep Vents area)
Build a foundation with 6 exterior grow beds to farm Spiral Plants, Gel Sacks, Antenna Plants, Creepvine and also store Ribbon Plants
Next I'll probably focus on going to Alien Artifact locations before going back to Delta Station to mess with the uplink tower.
I also completed it today as well. My thoughts largely echo @MCBanjoMike 's . The game is fun. It goes faster and most of it seems less like the chill exploration of the first game (sometimes tense) and instead frustrating searches through some real maze-like areas. The above ground stuff is by far the worst of this! But I felt it to in the crystal caves and mushroom caves. I suppose I could have used the pathfinder for that, it is in the game but I never needed it in Subnautica and forgot about it here as well.
The ending was neat. I don't think they'll follow up on it but it'd be cool if they did. I'm mostly just bummed now that it's going to be probably more than seven years before we seen anything more from this team. SIGH.
I mean, you can always get into Natural Selection 2. It's neat. I'd happily come along if you can find another like dozen people to all properly learn it.
