First one was a cool premise but really annoying in some ways. The game sort of assumes you get certain fragments of blue prints by certain points but doesn’t actually make them easy to find nor really give you any hints to find them.
For people who’ve played it was for the sea moth and and later the moon well.
Fragments of the Seamoth can be found around wrecks in the red grass plateaus, there’s a guaranteed one near Lifepod 17 aka “Ozzy from the cafeteria WHAT THE HELL GUYS?” The game hints that you can find Seamoth parts around there by the line “Our pod was almost crushed by the Seamoth bay on the way down.” You can also find several guaranteed Seamoth parts in the Aurora, I think enough to outright complete the blueprint.
Moonpool parts can be found just about anywhere you’ll find Cyclops hull fragments; I tend to find them either in the Mushroom Forest or around wrecks in the Sparse/Grand Reef.
The Scanner Room you can add to a seabase can detect scannable fragments, and you can display them on the HUD with a craftable upgrade.
Also found in great abundance around the red grass plateaus especially near wrecks.
You’ll get radio messages from Lifepod 17, 6 and 7.
Lifepod 17 will give you a HUD marker that takes you straight to it, depending on where your lifepod spawned you’ll likely pass a small wreck and a scatter, and there is a large wreck within sight of it. I would actually be surprised if you couldn’t complete the Seamoth, scanner room and bioreactor right there.
Lifepod 6 and 7 are both “coordinates corrupted” quests; it won’t give you a HUD marker but a picture and a hint as to their location (lifepod 4 is similar). 6 is similarly within sight of a large wreck and a scatter, going to Lifepod 7 will take you past a large scatter and a small wreck.
All three of these are fully explorable with a seaglide, high capacity air tank, and repair tool. I recommend a rebreather and an air bladder. You can find scanner room, bioreactor and seaglide parts in addition to scrap titanium outside the wrecks, and laser cutter, propulsion cannon, mobile vehicle bay, modification station, battery chargers, plus several useful databoxes including the vehicle upgrade console, and a strong chance of +30 bottles of water in supply crates.
It can be a bit of a bother for new players telling scannable fragments from the background scenery of the wrecks; act a bit like a bloodhound, drag your nose around looking for the scanner icon to pop up in the corner of the screen.
I’ll give an oblique hint for further in the game: there may come a point where you say to yourself, “Well now what?” And the game doesn’t seem to give you somewhere to go like it has been. go deeper.
I don’t need hints because I’m not playing the game and I’m not planning on continuing. I’d gotten further than you think. But for context I’d already begun to explore the deeper areas when I ran into this conundrum. I built a stupidly long oxygen tube to get down there. I think the game expects you to have the sea moth first. That was one of the first moments I thought something was wrong. Then I think once I got it I couldn’t take it down there without an upgrade because I also didn’t have the moon pool unlocked. You’re talking about life pods, I never had a problem finding life pods. Those were easy and fun. It was going deeper without the sea moth and upgrades that was troublesome.
Yeah, it sounds like you didn’t explore the wrecks or their surroundings, because all the blueprints you say you need can be found above 250m fairly easily. There are Seamoth parts and a free depth upgrade for the Seamoth available right at sea level in the Aurora. I’ve finished the game several times without building a seabase at all.
It was weirdly a little light on crafting in some ways. But extremely heavy in others. I tried playing it like Minecraft and stockpiling stuff but that’s not really the way. I found it slightly more enjoyable to gather things only when I needed them.
Also the game has no map and I’m REALLY bad with directions. Like REALLY bad.
Yep, it loops between exploration and basebuilding / crafting.
The exploration part is what usually gets people hooked because the alien underwater setting is amazing. The other stuff is more to give you a reason to stick around for longer, and pace your exploration since need to unlock things at certain points.
This is a survival game, gathering resources from the environment to craft tools, vehicles, food and water are core mechanics, as is finding and scanning fragments of technology to unlock blueprints. You actually don’t need to craft very much, I have done a run of this game where I built no seabases, only one of the three submarines, crafted no food or water surviving only on what you can scavenge, and only made seven tools.
A common complaint I see people make with this game is that the inventory doesn’t stack, so where do I put my 900 titanium? Frankly they’re playing it like Minecraft, and it’s not Minecraft. You don’t need to hoard treasure chests worth of everything, most common materials are relatively easy to find and with the possible exception of Lithium, if you have more than five of basically any raw material on hand that you don’t have an immediate idea of how to use, you’re probably doing it wrong.
Base building is entirely optional; the idea is you’re a castaway, survivor of a shipwreck who is waiting to be rescued, you’re not moving in. To quote the game itself, “Treat this space as your home, but never forget that it is not.”
That’s the point of the game - it doesn’t tell you where to go and what to do because you’re meant to explore the environment yourself. And the debris you scan, the screenshots you take, and the thrills that you get - are the real reward here, and not some goal that game artificially imposes on you. So I think you were just playing it wrong.
Look, I genuinely get your point, and I was tracking with you until you said this. Fuck off. Fuck for with this stupid bullshit. I was not playing wrong. I was playing it the same way everyone else does. I was exploring. I was collecting. I was finding new things. It was getting very clear that the distances the game expected me to travel were meant to be done much faster than what I was capable of. I was getting multiple upgrades for things that I couldn’t use because I didn’t have the thing that lets me install them. It’s been ages since I’ve played and I’m not psychic so I’ll never know what the actual devs’ intent was, but something was off. I’d definitely missed something. What’s more annoying is that I was finding multiple blueprints I already had or something? I don’t remember the context. Like you needed 3 fragments or something. And I’d find more like “ah surely this is the third for the thing I need” only to get the 5th of something I already had. It was give years ago when I played, at least, so I’m probably explaining wrong.
But don’t fucking say I was playing wrong. That’s such a condescending, brain dead thing to say to someone who is critiquing a game.
“Hey, based on what’s going on and getting tons of upgrades and not unlocking the thing to install the upgrades, I think I’ve missed something and I have no idea where to find it. It would be nice if there was a way to unlock this without scouring every inch of the ocean I’ve been through multiple times and without looking it up online.” No, you’re just playing wrong! It’s a game about exploration and discovery!
You’re not alone. As much as I love that game, the absolute lack of direction is one of my biggest gripes with it, right along with the atrocious inventory system.
You’d think someone who manages to build a fricking atomic submarine and a mech suit would be able to pinpoint relevant tech on the go somehow but no. Also you get a scanning room that can pinpoint little pebbles a kilometre away but is it helpful? Nope. Just another half-baked gameplay element that was never developed beyond the initial concept.
So yeah, your concerns are absolutely valid. Anyone who played this game would agree. But maybe that’s why I personally love the game. Clunky and beautiful, frustrating but once you find that thing you’ve been looking for, a bit rewarding too.
Yeah, I think people look at that criticism and think I mean I want super explicit bright glowing objects with a Skyrim style HUD that points me directly to where I need to go to get blue prints. Nah. Some ideas:
Some way to tell if there aren’t any more in an area so you don’t waste time looking when there isn’t anything.
Some sort of device that tells you how close some are, but not where they are. Like the classic “beep … beep … beep beep beep BEEPBEEPBEEPBPBPBBPBP” thing that gets more frequent as you approach. But make the max range relatively small.
I think they were called life pods? Like the other crashed emergency escape pods. For things you’re expected to get like the sea bike (I don’t remember the name), sea moth, and moon well maybe always put some blue print fragments on life pods you find later. This way you can’t miss them (unless you’re really really not paying attention). You can still make it so you get them earlier on, but this way in case you missed some somehow you can always “catch up” to where the devs expect you to be. Like if they expect you to get them ~10% in, then make it so the life pods you find ~25% in give you what you are missing for the sea moth.
A bit of a map system. This one is controversial, so I’m putting it last. A huge appeal of the game is not having a map. But even just a blank screen showing you all your way points, but not showing you where you are or what biomes are around would be useful. Then do something like show where blueprints are in an area. Maybe something like once you get two of three it shows you the general area where the remaining ones are, but doesn’t put a marker on the HUD.
Because with games like this where progression isn’t gated behind actually having some of these items, you can get in weird states where you get further in and didn’t get them. But maybe >95% of players did. The other <5% just missed something somehow. And then there’s no real clue on where to.go to back track to get it. And you can get in these annoying situations where it seems like you should have it but you aren’t sure, and you don’t want spoilers so you don’t look it up. Then when you look it up maybe you see a spoiler and it turns out you shouldn’t have it yet, that’s common. Other times you missed something super obvious in some very random area you only needed to go to once and never checked again because it seemed empty.
But it’s just so infuriating when people say things like “you’re not playing right” like, I’m getting frustrated because I’m playing right! If I wasn’t checking everywhere I could miss things. So I have to check everywhere to make sure I don’t. But then you can still miss things because there’s no real way to guarantee if you actually checked everything.
Tbh I’m against the full on map idea since it would ruin and demystify/trivialise the aspect of exploration, but maybe they could have made it so that the scanner room HUD chip UI was actually useful and displayed any kind of distance indicator. Often times I’d be scanning for limestone chunks for example. Now my HUD is full of circles that all have the exact same radius and no indication of distance, just a vague direction, and it’s so frustrating to work with that.
They could have added some sort of compass as well. They chose not to.
I wish they implemented something like No Man’s Sky’s non-intrusive HUD, which conveys both heading and distance at the same time in a super nice way.
I will support this by continuing to be apathetic toward (and in fact ignorant of) the game known as Subnautica 2.
I’m not ignorant of it, just uninterested. I’ve watched gameplay footage of the first one, and it didn’t look like my kind of game.
First one was a cool premise but really annoying in some ways. The game sort of assumes you get certain fragments of blue prints by certain points but doesn’t actually make them easy to find nor really give you any hints to find them.
For people who’ve played it was for the sea moth and and later the moon well.
Fragments of the Seamoth can be found around wrecks in the red grass plateaus, there’s a guaranteed one near Lifepod 17 aka “Ozzy from the cafeteria WHAT THE HELL GUYS?” The game hints that you can find Seamoth parts around there by the line “Our pod was almost crushed by the Seamoth bay on the way down.” You can also find several guaranteed Seamoth parts in the Aurora, I think enough to outright complete the blueprint.
Moonpool parts can be found just about anywhere you’ll find Cyclops hull fragments; I tend to find them either in the Mushroom Forest or around wrecks in the Sparse/Grand Reef.
The Scanner Room you can add to a seabase can detect scannable fragments, and you can display them on the HUD with a craftable upgrade.
I don’t think I had scanner room blue print.
Also found in great abundance around the red grass plateaus especially near wrecks.
You’ll get radio messages from Lifepod 17, 6 and 7.
Lifepod 17 will give you a HUD marker that takes you straight to it, depending on where your lifepod spawned you’ll likely pass a small wreck and a scatter, and there is a large wreck within sight of it. I would actually be surprised if you couldn’t complete the Seamoth, scanner room and bioreactor right there.
Lifepod 6 and 7 are both “coordinates corrupted” quests; it won’t give you a HUD marker but a picture and a hint as to their location (lifepod 4 is similar). 6 is similarly within sight of a large wreck and a scatter, going to Lifepod 7 will take you past a large scatter and a small wreck.
All three of these are fully explorable with a seaglide, high capacity air tank, and repair tool. I recommend a rebreather and an air bladder. You can find scanner room, bioreactor and seaglide parts in addition to scrap titanium outside the wrecks, and laser cutter, propulsion cannon, mobile vehicle bay, modification station, battery chargers, plus several useful databoxes including the vehicle upgrade console, and a strong chance of +30 bottles of water in supply crates.
It can be a bit of a bother for new players telling scannable fragments from the background scenery of the wrecks; act a bit like a bloodhound, drag your nose around looking for the scanner icon to pop up in the corner of the screen.
I’ll give an oblique hint for further in the game: there may come a point where you say to yourself, “Well now what?” And the game doesn’t seem to give you somewhere to go like it has been. go deeper.
I don’t need hints because I’m not playing the game and I’m not planning on continuing. I’d gotten further than you think. But for context I’d already begun to explore the deeper areas when I ran into this conundrum. I built a stupidly long oxygen tube to get down there. I think the game expects you to have the sea moth first. That was one of the first moments I thought something was wrong. Then I think once I got it I couldn’t take it down there without an upgrade because I also didn’t have the moon pool unlocked. You’re talking about life pods, I never had a problem finding life pods. Those were easy and fun. It was going deeper without the sea moth and upgrades that was troublesome.
Yeah, it sounds like you didn’t explore the wrecks or their surroundings, because all the blueprints you say you need can be found above 250m fairly easily. There are Seamoth parts and a free depth upgrade for the Seamoth available right at sea level in the Aurora. I’ve finished the game several times without building a seabase at all.
I explored around the wrecks.
Heh. Moon Well. Warcraft 3 player.
Yeah, I just had to search for this because I thought, I missed that too!
I just really don’t like crafting mechanics in games, and the game seemed very collecting and crafting heavy.
It was weirdly a little light on crafting in some ways. But extremely heavy in others. I tried playing it like Minecraft and stockpiling stuff but that’s not really the way. I found it slightly more enjoyable to gather things only when I needed them.
Also the game has no map and I’m REALLY bad with directions. Like REALLY bad.
Yep, it loops between exploration and basebuilding / crafting.
The exploration part is what usually gets people hooked because the alien underwater setting is amazing. The other stuff is more to give you a reason to stick around for longer, and pace your exploration since need to unlock things at certain points.
Then maybe I’ll try it sometime. I don’t like base building (feels like crafting), but exploration can be fun. But it’s pretty far down my list.
Very, very light spoilers:
This is a survival game, gathering resources from the environment to craft tools, vehicles, food and water are core mechanics, as is finding and scanning fragments of technology to unlock blueprints. You actually don’t need to craft very much, I have done a run of this game where I built no seabases, only one of the three submarines, crafted no food or water surviving only on what you can scavenge, and only made seven tools.
A common complaint I see people make with this game is that the inventory doesn’t stack, so where do I put my 900 titanium? Frankly they’re playing it like Minecraft, and it’s not Minecraft. You don’t need to hoard treasure chests worth of everything, most common materials are relatively easy to find and with the possible exception of Lithium, if you have more than five of basically any raw material on hand that you don’t have an immediate idea of how to use, you’re probably doing it wrong.
Base building is entirely optional; the idea is you’re a castaway, survivor of a shipwreck who is waiting to be rescued, you’re not moving in. To quote the game itself, “Treat this space as your home, but never forget that it is not.”
That’s the point of the game - it doesn’t tell you where to go and what to do because you’re meant to explore the environment yourself. And the debris you scan, the screenshots you take, and the thrills that you get - are the real reward here, and not some goal that game artificially imposes on you. So I think you were just playing it wrong.
Look, I genuinely get your point, and I was tracking with you until you said this. Fuck off. Fuck for with this stupid bullshit. I was not playing wrong. I was playing it the same way everyone else does. I was exploring. I was collecting. I was finding new things. It was getting very clear that the distances the game expected me to travel were meant to be done much faster than what I was capable of. I was getting multiple upgrades for things that I couldn’t use because I didn’t have the thing that lets me install them. It’s been ages since I’ve played and I’m not psychic so I’ll never know what the actual devs’ intent was, but something was off. I’d definitely missed something. What’s more annoying is that I was finding multiple blueprints I already had or something? I don’t remember the context. Like you needed 3 fragments or something. And I’d find more like “ah surely this is the third for the thing I need” only to get the 5th of something I already had. It was give years ago when I played, at least, so I’m probably explaining wrong.
But don’t fucking say I was playing wrong. That’s such a condescending, brain dead thing to say to someone who is critiquing a game.
“Hey, based on what’s going on and getting tons of upgrades and not unlocking the thing to install the upgrades, I think I’ve missed something and I have no idea where to find it. It would be nice if there was a way to unlock this without scouring every inch of the ocean I’ve been through multiple times and without looking it up online.” No, you’re just playing wrong! It’s a game about exploration and discovery!
🙄
You’re not alone. As much as I love that game, the absolute lack of direction is one of my biggest gripes with it, right along with the atrocious inventory system.
You’d think someone who manages to build a fricking atomic submarine and a mech suit would be able to pinpoint relevant tech on the go somehow but no. Also you get a scanning room that can pinpoint little pebbles a kilometre away but is it helpful? Nope. Just another half-baked gameplay element that was never developed beyond the initial concept.
So yeah, your concerns are absolutely valid. Anyone who played this game would agree. But maybe that’s why I personally love the game. Clunky and beautiful, frustrating but once you find that thing you’ve been looking for, a bit rewarding too.
Yeah, I think people look at that criticism and think I mean I want super explicit bright glowing objects with a Skyrim style HUD that points me directly to where I need to go to get blue prints. Nah. Some ideas:
Because with games like this where progression isn’t gated behind actually having some of these items, you can get in weird states where you get further in and didn’t get them. But maybe >95% of players did. The other <5% just missed something somehow. And then there’s no real clue on where to.go to back track to get it. And you can get in these annoying situations where it seems like you should have it but you aren’t sure, and you don’t want spoilers so you don’t look it up. Then when you look it up maybe you see a spoiler and it turns out you shouldn’t have it yet, that’s common. Other times you missed something super obvious in some very random area you only needed to go to once and never checked again because it seemed empty.
But it’s just so infuriating when people say things like “you’re not playing right” like, I’m getting frustrated because I’m playing right! If I wasn’t checking everywhere I could miss things. So I have to check everywhere to make sure I don’t. But then you can still miss things because there’s no real way to guarantee if you actually checked everything.
Tbh I’m against the full on map idea since it would ruin and demystify/trivialise the aspect of exploration, but maybe they could have made it so that the scanner room HUD chip UI was actually useful and displayed any kind of distance indicator. Often times I’d be scanning for limestone chunks for example. Now my HUD is full of circles that all have the exact same radius and no indication of distance, just a vague direction, and it’s so frustrating to work with that.
They could have added some sort of compass as well. They chose not to.
I wish they implemented something like No Man’s Sky’s non-intrusive HUD, which conveys both heading and distance at the same time in a super nice way.