All the best. It's a beautiful game. Complete it, if you ever feel like i'm done with everything now, and find yourself asked what now? Answers lie deeper.

The #1 tip for new players is to explore the back area of the Aurora - you'll find a variety of blueprints there! The best part? No dangerous creatures lurking around...

They did announce before releasing it.

As for tips ... Just explore, find new recipes. 

I'm playing on the phone too, the simplest advice I would give is to make the control view simple from the settings. It removes the line around the buttons. You see the screen more easily.

Put the cuddle fishes in the bio reactor. They give the best fuel

Don't rush. Let the story happen as a result of your exploration, rather than the other way around.

Prioritise upgrading your tank if possible - it's a lot less stressful once you're not restricted to such a short dive time.

Don't overfarm bladderfish - they're your best source of water early game.

Play the way that you enjoy most - this is more of an experience than a set narrative, although the story is good and has a satisfying progression.

Story is optional, not like ridiculously hard but if you don’t wanna find out the story you won’t, it has to do with a lot of reading and hearing and listening to audio logs also cave sulphur is in the black things in caves that the crash bug that explodes comes out of, im pretty sure everyone googled where to get that when they started.

When your PDA tells you what your primary directive is, do it. It's very important.

You're also gonna want to craft an air tank. You won't get far without an air tank.

You can carry two air tanks and hot-swap.

Okay. Try to avoid spoilers, although it's okay to use the internet to try and find a basic material if you don't know how to find it. Build a vehicle as soon as possible. Explore wrecks as much as you can. They contain databoxes and blueprints you can use to build new vehicles and tools. Don't get near the Aurora right now. Also if you want to get inside go to the front of the ship, because there're dangerous monsters near the engines but some great loot as well.

This one is one of my worst mistakes so far: To get water you can get "Bladderfish" (Purple fish) that once made into a water bottle will restore 20 water out of 100.

I was using this for 26 hours until I found out that if you cut a giant coral (Big coral pipes found everywhere) with a knife and and combine it with salt you get bleach which you can use to make 2 water bottles that each restore 30. Enjoy! :)

I really wish I hadn't spoiled myself. The game is way better when you know absolutely nothing, especially at the start. So my biggest piece of advice would be to stay away from here and the wiki. Seriously, you will see so many unmarked spoilers all over the place, best thing to do would be to never even look.

Other than that, scan everything! If you even see a scanner icon pop up in your bottom-right corner (you'll know what I mean when you see it), scan it. Doesn't matter if it's some random plant, or another fish, or a piece of rock, always scan everything.

And when you find yourself not knowing what to do, which at some point you probably will, go deeper. When things don't seem to be progressing and you don't know where to go next, go somewhere new. Pick a direction and go there. You'll be surprised what you can find down there...

I'm currently setting up a base in the Lost River. Wouldn't have had water without knowing this lol.

Or just grow plants inside the Cyclops. Even easier ... No need to get and craft anything. Funnily, farming removes the need for farming.

There is no autosave function.

And what others have said, stay away from this sub/wiki if possible :-)

They are trolling you about the crash fish don't go near them and if you hear them swim as fast as possible they love and caves and if they do find you and then blow up go back to where they came out of and collect the "good stuff" if you think IM trolling you you will just pay for it later please listen to me for your sake

Well, it's also used for hydrochloric acid, and important end-game resource.

to be clear they are referring to small red fish in the spawn area which make noise and then pop. they leave behind cave sulfur.

(they actually hide a progression critical resource in their nests so you will need to face them)

Once you can build a scanner room and a HUD chip for it your life will become much easier. Build it near as many biomes as possible.

Learn what a reefback sounds like. If you hear something in the distance that isn't a reefback it's probably bad. In time you'll know what I mean by this.

Most useful plants will produce one or more seeds if hit by a knife. There are pots and gardens for crops you will eventually be able to build. Grow acid mushrooms, deep shrooms, and gel sacks.

Marble melons and Bulbo trees are the best food sources. When you find marble melons, those are the only ones you'll see in the game. Make sure you get seeds from them.

Most predators are attracted to lights. Once you get a prawn suit you can turn those off by removing the left power cell. Everything else has a switch for that.

Creepvine and its seed pods rot quickly. Turn them into lubricant, rubber, and fiber mesh ASAP.

Most predators won't kill you if you're holding a peeper in your hand. You'd be surprised how well this works.

BUILD BASE ASAP. easier to hold materials

look for seaglide fragments

Go deeper. Headphones! Have fun

Never scan yourself.

If you're in an overhead environment (like a cave), remember your rule of thirds

1/3 of your tank to go in, 1/3 of your tank coming out, and 1/3 for when you eventually get lost and need to find the exit before you drown

You can carry more than one oxygen tank

Your primary directive is NEVER to swim closer to that beautiful creature...

Beacons!

Brain corals release bubbles that give extra oxygen. That was a lifesaver for me one time I got stuck in a cave system

Yeah man. Totally normal. There's a huge element of resource management to the game. A scanning room will help immensely.

Most people have several bases. Usually with some way to eat and drink at each of you're playing survival. I usually have one main base where I keep a resource cache and my main stuff.

I would suggest reading the pda and scan EVERYTHING. Go in as blind as you can. It'll be worth it.

It is normal to set up several bases. That was one of my favorite parts of the game, personally, so I tended to get quite absorbed in making sure I was never too far from a base where I could get water, food, first aid, or use a scanner.

Scanner rooms are a really good way to streamline resource gathering. Get the upgrade that links the scanner data to your interface so you can track down vital resources easily, and later upgrade the scanner range. You can even build scanner rooms by themselves (just with power generation) if you don't want to build a base to go with it. I did that in the Dunes, which is a very dangerous region...the scanner room even lets you track leviathans!

I ran into a minor point of stagnation where it was getting harder to find resources too. The key to fixing it was the PRAWN Suit and its drill arm, which can break apart and harvest the large deposits of resources. Just visiting one or two such deposits will fill a locker with whatever you could desire. You won't have to keep searching for the increasingly rare outcrops to roll the dice on getting what you want. The best part is that many of these large deposits are in areas you have likely already cleaned out of outcrops too.

From what I recall, there is a YouTuber named Landis that has very short but detailed videos if you need help with a specific and non spoilery thing like finding a specific item. And he doesn’t launch into a 20 minute rant just to find the one relevant thing.

Chemical apes

>Are there any youtubers that you guys would suggest that go over the basics?

I used to answer a ton of questions on the subnautica Discord (which is still pretty active, too, if you need some quick help with something). I noticed I was answering a lot of the same questions, so I actually did a complete walkthrough a couple years ago, if you want to check it out, plus a handful of more specific videos. (I also started on a reboot of the walkthrough with a slightly better system, but it kinda tanked when a technical issue broke my save, and I haven't continued it, but the first 3H might be worth a glance).

>I feel like im at this point where im spending a lot of time schlepping all over in my sea moth for rarer and rarer substances. Is it normal for people to set up a few "home bases?".

As far as bases, go, your strategy can be as static or as flexible as you like. I usually have one primary home base in a central location (usually the shallows, just by that geyser at the NE end, good combination of available resources, thermal energy, etc), and then a)outfit my cyclops as a mobile base for the later phases of the game and b)sometimes build a stopover base in one of the late-game locations (>!the blue tree cove in lost river!<), for charging power cells and maybe making a couple of modules so I don't have to go back to my surface base... but that part's optional.

You're in for an incredible ride so no matter what happens, how lost or stuck you feel in the game progress, NEVER EVER LOOK UP WHAT YOU SHOULD DO NEXT ON THE INTERNET, you will ruin (or at least degrade) one of the best experiences you're about to have! If you ever feel stuck, or don't know what to do next, just keep exploring.

One spoiler-free tip: beacons are your friend, make plenty of them as required and use them to navigate around so you don't feel like you've been circling the same places.

I played it like in between, because I was watching a subnautica let's play as a kid and I only got to the episode where the guy went to the Aurora, and after many years later, when I finally got to play it myself, I thought that the game ends after you go there

I'm very glad I was wrong

I am the same and I shitted myself everytime I got to a new biome but I kept on pushing.

The loop of being afraid of a new biome and conquering it by learning its dangers and how to avoid them once got me into a more than 24h game session.

I never finished my first attempt. Going for round 2 now and only times I've gone online are just "I don't want to spend hours searching for X to speed up the process" some examples were cyclops hull locations and lost river entrance spots.

Read the PDA, follow the radio signals, when in doubt go deeper, get off this sub, as the game is best played blind.

>You'll never progress without knowing what you're gonna walk into.

I don't have a fear of oceans, so my first gameplay went fairly fast, because I went in blind thinking it's beautiful relaxing game, not knowing what terrors awaited me..

for my subsequest plays, though, I had hard time progressing BECAUSE I knew exactly what I was gonna walk into...
Yea, I'm a coward :D

Don't touch any reddit or other social media related to the game, don't be scared to explore, and keep going deeper.

well said, friend. i got distracted from my sub-zero playthrough, but i didn't really dislike it at any point. you'll definitely run into some sections that aren't as fun, but i think that sub-zero is an overall fun and respectable successor

Below zero is a great sequal. In my opinion, below zero has the most interesting biomes and wildlife. People complain about the sequel because it's not as big or bigger than the first one when it comes to size. But the quality is just the same. I think you'll enjoy it alot.

My advice for below zero is wait a bit to play it. I went right from the first one to it and I think a lot of people do this and it contributes to how it’s viewed. Let Subnautica stew a little in your head and play something else and soon you will get the urge to play again and THEN play Below Zero. I think you will get more enjoyment from it this way.