The Beginning: Survival

Learn how to survive the initial moments of Subnautica. This guide covers essential crafting, resource management, and exploration tips for the early game.

Well, that started off well. Once you get your fire put out, take a moment to poke around your pod and familiarize yourself with it. Get yourself healed, fed, and watered, then make your way out of the pod through one of the two exits. Also note that as long as you are under 100 when you heal or eat, you can actually pass the 100 limit of the bar with these resources. Water will not let you do this. It's useful for preparing for longer trips away from the pod.

It doesn't necessarily have to be the first thing you do, but I suggest making the scanner tool as soon as you can. The battery requirement can seem intimidating at first, but batteries are pretty easy to make and scanning the local flora and fauna is the best way to familiarize yourself with their possible uses. It also lets you scan yourself (F with the tool selected), which has plot relevance as the story unfolds.

At first, forget about the concept of "progression". Your first job is to make sure you can survive well in this environment before you attempt to leave the safety of the shallows and explore the ocean. For this reason, I recommend you not leave the area immediately around your lifepod until you're in a better position to do so. If you go past the kelp forests, you've gone too far.

Things you should make an effort to do at this point:

1. Make at least an O2 Tank, if not a High Capacity one. The High Capacity tank can be crafted without leaving the shallows, but it depends on if you want to farm out and use up precious glass and silver this early, especially with silver being a bit more rare until you can move out into further biomes. The regular O2 Tank will take you from your lousy 45 seconds of oxygen to a more respectable 75. The High Capacity tank will bring you up to a whopping 135 seconds, which will put you in a very good position for a long while. You will need to craft an O2 tank first, both to unlock the recipe for the High Capacity O2 tank and because the O2 tank is used to make the HC tank.
2. Make a knife. The knife is what you will use to harvest plant life and even deter some of the smaller predators. Keep in mind that this is largely not a combat-oriented game, though you probably knew that coming into this. Still, do not go out trying to kill leviathans with your knife. It won't end well for anyone.
3. Make a Repair Tool. Getting the cave sulfur can be a bit dangerous (hint: check in nearby caves), but the result is worth it and necessary. The lifepod's secondary system's panel and radio both need fixing and fixing both will help toward progression. Once your radio is fixed, make sure to check it whenever you see the icon in the upper-right corner of your screen that looks like a little robot head. That lets you know there is a new message to listen to. Some are story-based, while others will lead you toward the wrecks of other lifepods. Lifepod wrecks mean new things to scan and new things to make. However, I don't recommend leaving the shallows yet to go check out the lifepods. Soon.
4. Make Fins. They are cheap to make and will make you swim faster.
5. Search for Wrecks and Boxes. There are boxes scattered around that will sometimes have fragments of an item inside that can teach you blueprints upon scanning them with your Scanner tool. If you're lucky, there may also be wreckages in the surrounding area that have fragments for things such as Gravtraps and Beacons. Boxes in the kelp forest often have Seaglide fragments. Scan two to learn the blueprint and make one as soon as you can. The Seaglide moves you faster through the water and has a built-in flashlight. Convenient! Just make sure to watch the battery level. Use your R key with a battery-powered tool selected to swap out batteries for fresh ones when your tools run out of juice.
6. Stock up on water and keep fed. Bladderfish and Peepers will quickly become your best friends. Until you have your own sustainable food source, fish are going to be your go-to for survival. Water is easy enough because you can stock up on it. For the sake of bag space, don't go crazy, but it's always good to have some water with you on long journeys. Cooked fish can sadly spoil, so you don't want to cook a bunch of fish to take with you. If you can spare the salt, you can cure fish, which will keep them fresh indefinitely, though keep in mind they will dehydrate you slightly when you eat them, so have water on hand. Disinfected water is also an alternative to bladderfish water, but keep in mind that it uses bleach, so it's a bit harder to make until you have a steady salt supply.

And here is a list of things that are a bit less important or may be up to personal tastes:

1. Make a Habitat Builder and start a base. This could be considered kind of early for some people, but I find that even a small base early on can have its uses, especially close enough to your lifepod to still be able to use your radio and fabricator instead of having to build new ones. The Habitat Builder has a bit of a steep building cost, but it is still entirely doable without leaving the shallows. Early on, the most you will likely be able to build is a tube with a hatch, a solar panel, and some wall-mounted lockers, but I personally find that preferable to making a bunch of floating lockers for the stuff that won't fit in my lifepod that I'll need to throw out later. But again, that's up to personal taste. Just don't try to go crazy if you start building a base early. One day, you can make the big, sprawling base of your dreams. But today is not that day.
2. Note: Early bases are a bit easier if you use the EasyCraft mod. It's still doable without it, just makes it easier. More info in my Recommended Mods section if you're interested.
3. Beacons. This largely depends on if you find beacon fragments close to the lifepod in your game. If not, they are usually in wrecks pretty close outside of the shallows. Ever notice how, when you get far eno