If you're trying to get to the Aurora swim/seamoth to the side/back in a straight line without diving (Never had an encounter that way).

As far as the Reaper itself... man I was also scared shitless the first time. The first time I got near the Aurora I was chilling, heard a roar, got grabbed by it and eaten alive. All in a few seconds and I had no idea what a Reaper was. I jumped out of my frickin' chair...

You just gotta fight the fear really, but I'll give you some tips:

• The Seamoth makes you feel a lot safer, so use it at all reaper zones. They just grab and shake it and then let go. If you have the Perimeter Defense System and the Sonar, you can not only predict where they're coming from but you can also zap them and they'll run like the little bitches they are.

• Bring a Stasis rifle with you, exit the Seamoth and shoot that ugly fish. It'll become paralyzed and you can dance on its ugly head.

• Take the right headphone off your ear, like I used to do, so the roars don't creep up on your fragile soul...

Best advice ever... Don't be scared of the most easily avoidable creature in the game. Mr Smiles has the most horrifying noise of all the creatures and it's enough to make a noobie shit themselves, but as big and ugly as they are, they're easier to avoid than a Gasopod. Just use the Seamoth sonar and you can dodge every single one of them with extreme ease. lol

Well first off, death doesn’t do much. You might lose the vehicle you’re in if it breaks and you’ll lose any items you picked up since last leaving a base. Second, they have easily predictable patterns to their movement and the areas they patrol if you study them enough. So they can almost always be avoided

Think of them like normal animals; They only attack if they feel threatened by you and they warn you not to get too close as soon as they sense you.

It's a fact that they start roaring in the distance as soon as they can sense you and would do they if they were hunting you? Of course not, why would they give themselves away? It's a warning.

They and most other creatures in the game are designed to act like animals, not monsters, if you respect them they will respect you. If you have that approach to any animal in the game you might have an easier time. :)

So here's the big thing that changed the game for me. Reapers pretty much only populate zones near the edge of the map. This being a 3km map with the use of speedy vehicles, you can still run into them on the regular, but on my first playthrough, once I got a seamoth I went around exploring the areas I was certain were reaper-free. The red grass plateaus and the mushroom forests are good spots to progress to from the shallows.

Bring some beacons when you're exploring, and when you come to a biome edge, park your seamoth in a safe spot (nestle it in some mushroom branches or a shallow cave) and probe outwards just a little. Look for landmarks that you will remember, especially if it marks the edge of safe territory, and drop a beacon. I ended up basically creating a little network of beacons and knew that if I ventured beyond them I was potentially in reaper territory.

There are a ton of them on the east side of the Aurora. There are also two more that patrol near, but not always right next to, its northern and eastern points, and they swim a bit higher than other reapers. I dropped a beacon in the side of the ship where the hull breach can fit a seamoth through and I never venture far from that if I'm near the Aurora. The zone they inhabit is pretty big, and you will almost always run into it if you venture too far East. Far to the Northeast there are a lot of them, and there's a very large zone to the Northwest (large enough that it still runs along about half the whole western edge) there is a zone that has an absolute fuckton of Reapers.

To avoid them, you can make sure to stay as close to the surface as possible when traveling between points - the highest swimming reapers in the game, near the Aurora, are between 100 and 50 meters down, and it's very unlikely you're traveling through their territory even if you're coming from the Aurora (assuming you enter via the breach on the West side).

At the end of the day, it's just a game lol :) don't need to be so scared of reapers, they are just characters in a game ;) Once you realize that (and that fact that you can save your game prior to tackling one), you won't have to fear anything :D

Oh so you want to start killing all leviathans. Best things to not be scared. 1 they re only scary when there is a lot of fog and you can t see them well. For that you can try using a scanner room to track them or get a scanning upgrade on a seamoth. Then try to kill the ones near aurora first they re easier to track.

Work your way up to more dangerous fauna, stalker, sandsharks, etc. And in my opinion the ghost lavaithans are less scary so try killing some of them first

Two toothed Reaper visual: http://imgur.com/gallery/atznNaa Source: Thalasso hobbyer on youtube

Ahhh well hope it goes better for you, I rage quit and tried to get back on the old save and now my screen is literally just black, even tried to die and come back guess I have to start all over

You haven't seen one omg, I'm about 6 hours in and just was excited because I got the seamoth and ride it on over to the big ship with radiation and what I can only assume is a reaper leviathan tore my little ship up :(

Reapers use echolocation so they would absolutely see us as soon as we are in the range but I don't think they would swarm the player as we aren't a threat or a normal prey.

With them? I don't get what you mean by this.

Stasis rifle + thermo blade is all it took to conquer my reaper fear

I'm fairly certain that a reaper cannot one-shot destroy a seamoth that's at 100% health. Keep it at full health and you'll always have a chance to escape after it lets go.

Also, I won't spoil anything, but there's a very effective upgrade for the seamoth that helps you survive reaper attacks. Keep an eye out for it.

Same...same. Only I didn't jump out of my Seamoth, I was completely stunned and just watched until the Reaper ate me too.

Now I accidentally built a base where I can watch a Reaper swim back and forth about 80m away.

Getting in and out is very stressful.

“This is the reaping song. A song in which we’re reaped.”

• If Nick Cave played Subnautica

Jumping out of the seamoth was actually the worst move i can think of. But damn another slayer.

Today I built my 5th seamoth bc of this 🤣

Absolutely nothing. A 55 m large creature is going to be showing zero interest in me. Chasing me is a waste of energy for him.

He will go for the oceanic sharks, rays, dolphins and other similar creatures he has a taste for.

Would be a crime to harm him anyways. A 55 m larhe carnivore is practically impossible. There is not enough for the creature to appropriately sustain itself, so I am just going to be enjoying the sight until it eventually goes extinct.

At some point, a creature is soo large it invokes no fear at all.

Would you swim and chase something the size of a hornet if you were trying to survive? You’d probably look for bigger prey, the reaper would literally expend more energy hunting you down than it would get from eating 3 of you.

You just have to be more angry than it. If you somehow manage that, it'll respect you and go get a Ghost leviathan to get you.

Not in this instance. The reaper only hunts you because you are the player. The reaper is 55 metres long and the player is approximately 1.7 m. Ignoring width, the reaper has a ratio of just over 32:1 compared to a human. Animals that have that ratio compared to humans are small birds and rodents. Now, say you are in a forest where you know you can kill anything in there, with no great effort or danger to yourself. Why would you settle to waste time by killing something like a mouse for food when you know you could get a boar or something better to sustain yourself?

Hydrogen bomb versus coughing baby kind of situation tbh

That reaper stands no chance

Make it match the PDA, where it says they use echolocation, and if you can hear it, it knows where you are.

Their aggression range is really small considering their size, and you have to practically be in spitting distance before they give chase.

But if they were to lock onto you and hunt you when you can barely make them out in the distance, that would be nerve wracking

More agression, they give up too easy. I mean they do scare me sometimes but once they let go of you they are barley an annoyance, especially in late game

The best way to make the entire game scarier is to add migration patterns. For all the fish, especially Leviathans. Imagine you're chilling in the Grassy Plateaus and suddenly a Reaper comes to hunt, or in the LR Junction and a Ghostie comes to check on her eggs.

Also, make Leviathans able to attack seabases. Not frequently, but if your Hull Strength is too low and you're standing in a glass compartment, they should be able to see you.

There IS actually a mod that makes Reapers scarier...

All these other ideas pale in comparison to one simple one. Randomized. Spawns. They arent scary because you know where they are. But youll piss your pants if you hear that roar out in the red grass

Have it actually kill you, the player, through the screen. That would be pretty scary.

real

also 90% of the time the air bladder will move you fast enough to get the reaper to de-aggro if you don't have the stasis rifle

TIL you can make opening the PDA pause the game. This would have helped me a lot.

It feels just a bit cheaty but I’m already 40+ and my reflexes are not as great anymore. Plus on console it’s slower to select something from the inventory

I love how you gave Mabel a little love tap with your knife before scanning her and fleeing the scene via air bladder.

Why thank you

I mean. You trespassed into Mable's territory. Of course she'll want to talk to you about that.