So you’ve just purchased Subnautica: Below Zero, the sequel to the incredible underwater survival horror game and you’ve gotten stuck. Maybe you can’t find diamond, magnetite, looking for more alien artifacts? This Subnautica Below Zero Ultimate Beginners guide will give you all the crucial locations and important items you need to plunder and see everything the game has to offer. That being said, please do try to experience the joy of trial and error discovery for yourself before coming here, but no shame if you need a helping hand like I did.
Contents
Locations
Firstly, you need to know where everything is. Here is the map you’ll eventually be able to find and scan in-game at the Delta outpost, giving you a much easier reference without having to refer to the internet every ten minutes.
Outposts
There are several outposts for you to discover on this map, but reaching them can be a little tricky to the uninitiated.
Delta Island
Delta Island is right in the middle of the map, leave the safe starting area and head towards the twisty spires. Keep going through here until reach a sudden drop off that then leads into the thermal vents, which are surrounding that island.
Koppa Mining Site
The Koppa mining site is located to the southwest of Delta island, at a depth of around 140m in an open pit. Inside is loads of goodies but make sure you have a full tank and a seaglide as the seatruck can’t fit inside the door (easily, not worth the risk of getting it stuck) to make quick trips down into the mines until you get the prawn suit later on.
Outpost Zero
From the starting base, stay underwater and follow the ice wall along to the east. Eventually you’ll come to a cave that you enter, and will allow you to surface on the other side and explore outpost zero.
Delta Labs
Make sure you have a sturdy vehicle before making this journey as there will be several dangerous creatures along the way. By this point Marguerit will have made her appearance, and so you can work your way over to her ‘last known location’ beacon. Failing that, from delta islands east shore start heading in a east-southeast direction. You’ll likely pass the purple vents and reach the lilly pad islands, you’re looking for the largest floating island a few entrances on its sides at its midsection on the outside. Head inside and you’ll have found Delta labs.
Phi Robotics Center
Phi Robotics centre is found by heading in a westerly direction from the twisty spires and staying near the surface, until you find the dock allowing you to get up onto the surface. There’ll be some jellyfish along the way but they’re virtually harmless, then once on land head away from the bridge and move through the caves to reach Phi Robotics.
Alien Components/Facilities
There are numerous alien facilities throughout the game and most of the time AL-AN will, occasionally, drop a beacon to guide you to them. This doesn’t always work though so it’s best to keep exploring, but here are the most important ones to help you get through it in double time.
AL-AN Skeleton
For this you’ll need a vehicle that can dive to 650+ meters, or some serious bravery to swim down there on limited oxygen. I’d recommend taking your seatruck with an upgraded depth module, and heading down to the Margeurit beacon. Once there progress forward through the lilly island ravines until you hit the large floating island that has the Delta Labs inside. From here, hop out of your Seatruck and venture downwards rather than up until you find the Deep Lillypads Caves. Keep heading down, being sure to avoid the spikey traps and the squid shark, until you find the alien building housing the skeleton.
AL-AN Tissue
The next component requires you to repair the bridge, by creating a new hydraulic fluid canister. To do this head to the bridge, scan the broken canister and then construct a new one. Once over the bridge, the best thing to do would be to bring a hoverbike, a few medkits and a repair tool, no need for thumpers if you’re as risky as I was. You’ll get knocked off your bike a few times, but repair it immediately after and hop back on, the ice worms are unlikely to kill you or destroy the bike. Make your way as quickly as possible to the northern part of the ice spires until you find a ravine into another alien facility.
AL-AN Organs
The organs are the hardest piece to acquire. I would not recommend this until you have a decently upgraded prawn suit as you’ll be encountering shadow leviathans and the prawn suit reduces all dangerous encounters to minor annoyances, so long as you repair it when you can. From Delta Island, make your way to the purple vents by heading east. If you stay within this biome and keep moving down, you’ll eventually discover a long drop downwards. If you reach the lilly pad islands and the enviroment turns green you’ve gone too far east. Once here you’ll be in the crystal caves, avoid the shadow leviathans as best you can and look for a ring of purple crystals that let you drop into a hole. Explore further, and you’ll find the facility.
Fabricator facility
The fabricator facility is where you take all the necessary components you’ll need to assemble AL-AN’s body. By this point you’ll have already explored the crystal caves, so head back there and instead of venturing into the purple crystal hole, keep trying to head deeper down in the main environment. You’ll eventually notice that the environment has changed from purple crystals to red ones, and once you reach the maximum depth you’ll see a huge almost square red crystal with a green shield door at its base. Head inside, and you’ve found the facility.
Alien Teleporter
The final thing to do with AL-AN is to meet him at the teleporter to travel with him and escape the planet, finishing the game. The game warns you but I’ll say it here, once you step through the game is finished. The Teleporter is located in a cave to the right of the main building in Outpost Zero, if you explored correctly you should still remember it.
Other Locations
There are a few other areas in the game that you’ll need to know about in order to see everything that needs to be seen, here’s where to find them all.
Marguerit’s base
Once the beacon for Marguerit’s last known location is active, head there and you’ll be on the edge of the Lillypad islands. Keep low and move East to enter the ravines on the ocean floor, turn around and go deeper into the caves heading in a westerly direction. If done right, you’ll get a radio message from Marguerit and the base is a little bit further.
Radio Tower
Marguerit will ask you to disable the radio tower, which is located on Delta Island, you can’t miss it.
Marguerit’s Greenhouse
Once deactivated, you’ll be able to access this greenhouse with Marguerit inside waiting for you. Head for the icebergs located East of Delta island and North of the Lillypad islands. Looking at the map, you’ll see one furthest east with a teardrop shaped outcrop, this outcrop is where Marguerit’s greenhouse is located.
Frozen Leviathan
The frozen leviathan can be entirely ignored in a playthrough of Below Zero if you’re not exploring properly. Once you get to Phi Robotics and get a snowfox, explore the surface until you reach the area full of frost Acacia trees (refer to the below map if you get a bit lost, area with purple leaf tree illustration). There you’ll find a broadcast tower near a cave entrance, head inside to get to the frozen leviathan.
Kharaa Cure
In order to find the cure you’ll need to have crafted a Pengling spy drone. Take it to the Pengling exploration spot circled in red in the map below and you’ll find the cure to put into the frozen leviathan, you’ll know you’ve found it when you find the miniature transmitter towers that mark Pengling explorer areas.
Sunken Ship parts
There are a total of three main sunken ship parts to be found, and they’re necessary for some key components we’ll detail later on. Here you want to make sure you’ve got a laser cutter before exploring these wrecks, as progressing certain story missions will be impossible without it. The shipwrecks can be found by exploring the border between the purple vents and lillypad islands biomes.
Technology/Blueprints
This wont be a full Comprehensive guide on where to find every piece of technology you’ll want, but here are some good general rules you’re going to want to consider when searching for new tech.
- If it’s a piece of handleheld/wearable equipment like a laser cutter or breathing tanks, sea monkey nests are your best bet. You can find the early ones in the kelp forests near the starting area and going into the caves, later ones will be by the lillypad forests.
- The mineral detector tool that lets you find raw resources introduced in this game also has a fragments option, so try swimming around an area with that on for a while if you have a hunch.
- Tech is almost always located in one distinct spot you just need to access.
Other that those tips, we’ll show you where to find crucial tech you’re going to need.
Vehicles
There are very limited vehicle options present in Below Zero, namely the Seatruck, and the prawn suit for the water, and the Snowfox for the land. The Seatruck can be greatly expanded upon with numerous upgrades and options but they’re convenient at best and make using the Seatruck cumbersome at worst if you turn it into a train with every commodity available. Use what you like, but the Seatruck extras will be left off this list as they’re not really that useful.
Seatruck
Seatruck components are fairly obvious to find, but for anyone struggling head to the twisty spires, take a deep breath and head to the ocean floor there. A few minutes of swimming around and you should find all the components you’ll need.
Prawn suit
Prawn suit fragments are found in several places in Below Zero, but the best way to acquire it is to head to the main shipwreck near lillypad islands. Easiest way is to head to the Marguerit last location beacon, then from there turn around to face delta island, look slightly south west, and start moving forward. You should find the wreck fairly easily, and once inside there will be several prawn suit fragments.
Prawn suit drill arm/grapple arm
Any fan of the original will know there are two crucial upgrades for the prawn suit. The drill arm for mining ore and the grapple arm which will allow you to move/ascend at lightning speed. Drill arm fragments are located at the Koppa mining site, and the Grapple arm fragments are located in sea monkey nests within the ravines at the base of Lillypad islands.
Snowfox/Snowfox pad
Once at the Phi Robotics centre head inside and you’ll find the first piece of the puzzle, several snowfox construction pad fragments, which you’ll need to construct a snowfox. Afterwards, head to the Phi Robotics beacon and then head south. As you explore you’ll find several of the snowfox pieces you need, but you’ll also encounter stalkers. Take a flare with you, have it equipped and they wont bother you, just be quick on the scanning as you’ll put the flare away.
Base Components
Truthfully, there are dozens of base components and to list them all would be ridiculous, especially when it can be reduced down into one simple premise: Once you find a new outpost/structure, scan everything. The key ones to scan are:
- Outpost Zero
- Delta Islands
- Delta Labs
- Phi Robotics
- Marguerit’s base
- Marguerit’s greenhouse
- Sunken shipwrecks.
Equipment/Components
There are several key pieces of equipment you’re going to need throughout your time with Below Zero, and most get unlocked once you craft a standard O2 tank. Here we’ll quickly summarise the ones you need to scan:
- Laser Cutter: Found in the sea monkey nests under the kelp forests around the starting areas. You’ll need this to get into important areas.
- Mineral Detector: Found either on Delta Island, or at the emergency supply cache located west of the starting area under some ice shelves.
- Propulsion cannon: Again found in the sea monkeys nest in the caves below the kelp forest.
- Rebreather: Absolutely essential piece of equipment that will vastly improve your playthrough, can be found in a databox in the twisty bridges thats located on a Alterra platform with a crane arm.
- Cold suit: Scan the fragments in the phi robotics center. To fabricate it deserves its own mention as well, for this you’re going to need to be a bit brave. Take your snowfox and your flare, and head out to the area beyond phi robotics again. Look for a large cave with multiple snowstalker pups and a one snow stalker. Inside you’ll find multiple snow stalker furs on rocky platforms, make sure to grab at least four for the full suit.
- Parallel processing unit: This is essentially a one time use item, which you’ll need to find by entering the shipwrecks littered around the lillypad islands/Purple vents. Once inside, look for panels with a cutting prompt for the laser cutter, which then open to let you scan them. You’ll need to scan three parallel processing units to unlock the blueprint, which can then be used in Marguerit’s storyline.
- Pengling spy drone: In case you missed it, there’s one just outside of phi robotics for you to scan. You’ll need to construct both the drone and the remote control and carry both to use it.
- Hydraulic fluid: A broken cannister is in the ground just next to the missing slot on the bridge near Phi Robotics, scan that for the blueprint.
Resources
If you’ve come to this guide for anything, it’s likely this. I hit several roadblocks in my time with Below Zero so hopefully this will be a helping hand to get you moving again. Again, I’ll only be listing the more obscure/later game resources.
Minerals
- Crystalline Sulphur: Replaces regular Suplhur from the original games, can be found in various locations but the easiest is in Crashfish hiding pods early game.
- Diamond: This is a crucial resource you will not be able to do without, and having it early game is a lifersaver. Make sure you have a seaglide, a seatruck and a rebreather crafted before doing this method. In Twisty spires, you’re looking for a gap in the floor that leads further down to the deep twisty spires. Take the seatruck as far down as it will go, then hop out with your seaglide and go straight down, dodging the sharksquids you might run into. Once at the bottom, look around and you should find all the diamond you need, making sure to get back to the seatruck before you run out of air.
- Lithium: Can be found around Delta Island, or the purple vents to the east of the island.
- Magnetite: Can be found primarily in the deep lillypad caves, but if you explore the spy pengling spots marked on the surface map you can find a few pieces in there as well.
- Nickel ore: Found quite deep in the lillypad caves, but also in the lillypad islands and crystal caves.
- Ruby: Lots of rubies can found in the Koppa Mining site
Organic
- Table coral: For abundant table coral supplies you’ll want to go to the seafloor in the Twisty spires (don’t go further into the deep twisty spires, no table coral to be found there)
- Flowering spore: Located in the deep lillypad caves, you can’t miss them.
- Young cotton Anenome: Again, located in the deep lillypad caves.
- Root Globule: For an item only really needed in AL-AN’s component construction, you’d think it’d be a late game item. Not true at all, as you can find them attached to twisting vines in the caves under the Kelp Forests where the early sea monkey nests are.
- Spiral plant clipping: Probably the single most ridiculous thing to find, for me at least. Head South of Delta Island until you discover the fully grown Seagarden leviathan over one of the vents. Swim under it to find the opening that lets you swim inside the vent garden, where you’ll be able to slash away at the spiral plants growing inside for the clippings.
- Gel sacks: Like the diamonds, this resource can be found at the bottom of the deep twisty spires.
And there you have it, a condensed guide to subnautica telling you where to find everything you’ll need to beat the game. This list is hardly extensive but the truth is you don’t need even half the things you did in the first game to get around safely. And one last thing, there is no stasis rifle in this game, so if you’re going to be scanning those bigger leviathans, good luck buddy you’re braver than me.
If you’re still stuck or just want some extra specific advice, why not join the discord, ping Fracter and I’ll answer any questions you might have.
