Guides & Walkthroughs
Survival tips, crafting references, codes and secrets, and progression guides. Written to answer the questions players actually ask.
How These Guides Are Organized
Subnautica 2 doesn't explain itself much. That's part of the appeal — but it also means there are consistent points where players get stuck, lose progress, or spend hours searching for something that has a specific answer.
The guides here are built around the actual search intent behind the game's most common questions. Codes & Secrets covers Tadpole Pens keycodes, locked containers, and puzzle solutions — high-frequency searches because the game hides these answers in the environment rather than telling you. Crafting guides address the specific recipe chains that confuse players (especially Enameled Glass, Titanium Ingots, and the Sonic Resonator chain). Progressionguides focus on depth module upgrades and the material gates that control how far into the ocean you can reach.
If you're brand new, start with the Beginner guide. It covers the first 30 minutes and the five most important decisions you'll make in that window. If you're stuck on a specific system, the category filters below will get you to the right guide quickly.
5 Mistakes New Players Make
And how to avoid each one.
Scan every piece of debris within 200m of your lifepod before moving further out. Repair Tool, Seaglide, and Habitat Builder fragments are all close by — players who skip them spend hours making do without essential tools.
A single I-Corridor with a Fabricator and two storage lockers at 30m depth changes the game. You stop losing progress on death, you can store bulk materials, and you have a crafting point that isn't a swim away.
The default 45-second tank is not enough for anything interesting. Craft the High Capacity Tank at the Fabricator, then the Ultra High Capacity at the Modification Station, before pushing past 100m regularly.
You will lose. Leviathans are not combat encounters — they are navigation puzzles. Learn their patrol routes and go around. A Cyclops with Silent Running is the right tool, not weapons.
The Bioscanner shows you exactly where Necrolei Cyst nodes are before you get within aggro range. Without it, you're guessing — which usually means triggering the creature before you're in position to harvest.