35 Best Underwater Survival Tips and Tricks for Subnautica 2 – Beginner and Advanced Guide

After playing roughly 35 hours of Subnautica 2 and finishing the early access, there are certainly several things I wish I had learned sooner that would’ve saved so much time or made challenging things much more trivial.

Here are all the best tips and tricks you should learn in Subnautica 2.

Best Tips and Tricks for Subnautica 2

• You can attach a Portable Locker to your Tadpole vehicle at the back for some extra storage.
• Fully depleting your hunger or thirst will not instantly kill you, but you’ll take damage (health points) until you are dead.
• Running out of oxygen will kill you in roughly 2-3 seconds unless you get oxygen.
• The Air Bladder tools give you some oxygen, but you can also use them to ascend to the surface to save some time.
• If you have an empty Air Bladder and you pick up an oxygen bubble from an oxygen bloom, it’ll give you oxygen and refill your Air Bladder at the same time.
• You can use your Air Bladder to ascend to the surface, and with some momentum, you can catapult yourself up like a dolphin. Nothing really important. It was just fun to do.
• When picking up Lucifer Rotsacs, you can use a Survival Multitool to destroy the root and also get some Fibrous Pulp while you are at it.
• There is an unstuck feature when you open the main menu.
• You can refund based on the main menu. You’ll get a storage container that spawns below you with all the materials refunded from the base.
• Wall Lockers hold fewer storage slots than Floor Lockers, but you can stack two Wall Lockers on one wall (block), while a Floor Locker can only fit one. It is still a preference thing since you can basically place Floor Lockers anywhere.
• You can expand Rooms and Moonpools just by pointing your Habitat Builder and expanding it. It’ll use fractions of the cost, depending on the size of the expansion.
• Expand your Room and Moonpool to build your Vehicle Fabricator. The regular or default size will not be enough to fit the structure.
• Items stored inside the base will automatically be used and accounted for when opening up crafting menus.
• You need to snap or clip the Power Transmitter to apply power to your base. If you just place it near or even on top of your base (but without the snap), it won’t give you power.
• There are tool upgrades available in the Modification Station, such as upgrading the Scanner to a Bioscanner or a Sonic Resonator to a Feedback Resonator.
• The Bioscanner lets you unlock all the other biomods, including the one from the big Collector Leviathan.
• Always check for alternative recipes in the Processor. For example, if you built a base near the Alien Ruins and you suddenly need Strong Acid, you don’t need Necrolei Cysts to craft it. You can also use Sulfur and Gold to craft it if you scroll down further in the Processor’s crafting menu.
• Never ever think you have enough of a resource to not pick them up. I’m looking at you, Titanium, Quartz, and Copper.
• If you scan a known blueprint, it’ll still give you some resources.
• Angel Combs only become available if you clear the Juvenile Combs around them. You can usually just follow the corrupted roots to find them.
• Food and water are kind of hard to sustain, and you can also starve yourself if you are just inside the base anyway.
• Batteries are rechargeable in the game. Place them inside a Battery Terminal and always have some spares to cycle them more easily.
• Upgrading to the Feedback Resonator helps immensely. You can break resources from a distance and automatically grab the resources even if you are far away.
• A Scanner Station should be a priority when you first unlock the blueprint. It can scan resources for you.
• Scanner Stations only have a signal radius of 300 meters. It is best to build several bases (even small bases) just to help you scan more resources.
• Tadpoles have upgrade module slots on the top.
• You can only equip one type of Chassis for each Tadpole.
• Smacking fish with the Survival Multitool does nothing.
• Shooting a Sonic Resonator distorts some of the fish, making it somewhat useful for fending off aggressive sea creatures. Just don’t try it on the Collector Leviathan or any massive boss-like creatures.
• If you get lost or forget some locations, you can reactivate some of the signals by opening the in-game menu and going to the Signal tab. Select some of the signals to activate their waypoints again. This is great for farming resources you remember you saw at certain locations, for example, Lithium in Blackbox – Zip.
• If you dive deep enough with your Tadpole, you’ll eventually see and hear a notification about the altitude being too deep, and your Tadpole can’t handle it. There’s an upgrade for this, but sometimes, you miss that your Tadpole is getting damaged fast because of going too deep, so watch out for that.
• Try to explore Cicada Wreckages and Alterra Bases as much as possible. Bring your scanner and get as many blueprints as possible.
• There are also some wreckages and sites around bases, so don’t just look and explore the big one. Some of the small sites have important scannable blueprints/parts.
• If you are struggling to find different parts of a blueprint, remember that they are scattered around bases, wreckages, and Blackbox points. There are usually more scannable objects of the same blueprint than the limit required to unlock it. For example, you need to scan two Feedback Resonators to unlock it, but there are at least three locations for it in the Alien Ruins already.
• Don’t forget to interact with the Noa Terminal to find out if you have a way to progress, especially for those who like to skip dialogues.