Rak's Subnautica playthrough (moved from the what are you playing thread)

[Rakaydos]

so the big sticking point for an eastern alternate route, is that there's only one rebreather in the game, right outside ALAN's cave. The eastern cave opens up by the east edge of twisty bridges, so it's not too hard to pick up the hab builder, table coral and seatruck components on the way over to the rebreather and ALAN. Audio cue delays get a bit annoying from a speedrun perspective- if you dont surface after first entering twisty bridges (easy enough if you're confident in the o2 plants) then you dont get the "that sounds like a distress signal" until you top off on air, already inside ALAN's cave. Then you can get the "passing 200m" message, before the ALAN plot dialog starts, which road blocks progress until it plays out no matter how fast you reach the terminal. You cant even scan the cube until "It will have to do."

Still, even with an extensive deep bridges dive (getting the seatruck modules and stumbling over the artefact, not just the basic diamond-and-lithium) I'm getting back to the pod and getting crafted in under 45 minutes from game start.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

Got the upgraded O2 tank, rebreather, and finally got the Seatruck, scooting around the purple vents area presently hoping to find a laser cutter to scan and maybe diamonds for the first depth upgrade. I found the SOS cave entrance in Twisty Bridges but just marked it with a beacon for now.

I also swapped my tiny tube base for a giant block base. And I’m seriously considering moving it; turns out building it in the middle of the Eye Jelly territory was unwise as the things keep crowding the entrance.

[Rakaydos]

Got a VR setup for Xmas. But my computer doesnt have the right ports for it.

Hopefully I'll be able to afford a gaming desktop in a few months.

[Destro_Yersul]

Speaking of Christmas, I got Below Zero from a friend. So I'll need to give it a go now, and see how things are shaping up. From following this, it at least sounds like it's a lot more complete than in many of the early videos I've seen.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

Below Zero plot spoilers ahoy.

Spoiler: Read at your own risk

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I think I shot myself in the foot breaking sequence - I avoided Delta Station because that was a frequent crash zone before I turned the settings down to the point that that stopped happening, but that ended with me finding the infected Leviathan and Sam's cure long before encountering Maguerit and going to Omega Lab in the Lily Pad zone. As it is I don't know what I'm supposed to do other than put AL-AN into a new body, so I hope either that's it for the Alterra branch or I find some hints while I scan for Ion Cubes.

[Destro_Yersul]

Been trying it out. So far I have notifications for a few story things, but only a beacon for Delta Station. Found the hab builder, seatruck, mobile vehicle bay, and a bunch of other useful equipment... but not the materials to make any of it. I don't know where to collect silver or gold, which is proving to be my biggest issue right now. Maybe there'll be some near Delta.

[Rakaydos]

Been trying it out. So far I have notifications for a few story things, but only a beacon for Delta Station. Found the hab builder, seatruck, mobile vehicle bay, and a bunch of other useful equipment... but not the materials to make any of it. I don't know where to collect silver or gold, which is proving to be my biggest issue right now. Maybe there'll be some near Delta.

Rocks that look like Sandstone from the first game give Titanium or Gold, and rocks that look like Shale in the first game give Titanium or Silver. There's a new dark rock that gives Titanium or Lead, too.
You can find them in the kelp forest caves, or in other biomes.

[Destro_Yersul]

I found some now. Diamonds were an issue, until I discovered how far down the twisty bridges actually go. I feel like this game puts greater expectation on you of exploring without vehicles than the original does, and I'm not having it. They will pry my seatruck from my cold dead hands.

[Rakaydos]

Made a tweak to my early game routing- once you have the rebreather for the deep twisty bridges, there's an artifact if you explore generally southward.

That lets me get a quantum locker before leaving the pod, and the recyclotron by Delta island. Which allows for much better early packing before leaving the pod.

[Destro_Yersul]

Once again struck by the difference in our playstyles. I found ruby, made aerogel, and set up a couple water filtration plants. Made a seatruck depth module, went after Margeurite. Had some trouble finding her, but I did find the other half of the wrecked ship. Spent somet ime exploring that, got a bunch of useful blueprints. Found margeurite, got some more useful blueprints. Went back to base, stowed all my stuff, and now I'm planning a bunch of expeditions for resources so I can do some serious base expansion. I need titanium. Lots of titanium.

[Rakaydos]

Spoiler: Musings on shopping lists with the early extra storage and defab

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To get the "full exploration package" (Seatruck, fab and storage modules, and Depth 1), after reaching Delta island and setting up a fab and charger at least, I need:

Lead x11
Advanced wiring kit
Ingot x2
lube
Chip x2
Wiring kit
Plasteel x2
Glass x2
Depth module

This can be stored as:
Advanced wiring kit x2
Chip
Ingot x3
lube
Depth module
spare depth module x2 (plasteel x2, 4xglass, 4xdiamond, 4xlead)
Lead x5
Ion cube

A depth module 2 takes a synthetic fiber, +2 ruby, and +2 enamaled glass (as well as the modification station).
The ruby and synthetic fiber are local resources to that base, but the enamaled glass brings the total Lead count up to 13 and the required Lithium from the deep bridges to 8 (and diamond to 10)

Edit: Note for future attempts. Depth module 2 BEFORE fabricator module, or bring 6 chips.

[Rakaydos]

Currently I'm experimenting routing in the land-based component, after the quantum locker, before traveling to the mines and delta station. It's easy enough to get enough gel sacks from the deep twisty briges for the hydrolic fluid, and there's plenty of edible stuff on land.

Crossing Ice worm territory on foot is a bit risky. I've made it there but not back. On the other hand, there's plenty of free silver and copper, which might simplify early packing if prepared for. There's a teleport gate directly to Phi station which is probably the best way out- that will get me Large Room scans, which is on my list for lategame "requirements", a large room being an easier way to build a Bioreactor than a multipurpose. (fabrication of depth module 3 at depth)

I've never actually tracked down the location of the cure, so the mechanical pengling is probably required too.

[Rakaydos]

So I hit an almost-jackpot. Near the plot cave, there's a chest with a power cell, letting me build the seatruck without hitting the sunken ship.

Almost, because even with the bridge artefact, I'm still one short of the defabricator, which means that all my ingots and glass and lead are compresed into Depth Module 1s.

It's possible to route in the SECOND seamonkey cave artefact, say, after ALAN and the rebreather, before the hab builder and deep twisty bridges.

I also need to figure out where I found the gateway before- it was 5xx meters from Phi station, but I didnt get a direction, and the Phi station beacon isnt going to be active, so I need Delta Station direction and distance. (I'm not getting close to delta station, either, but the beacon comes on automatically at the 1 hour mark, it seems)

There's a vein of Magnatite inside the Phi robotics cave, under the hab. plenty for final component construction. there's plenty of lube on land, and the plot cave has a full advanced wiring kit and a synthetic fiber- Depth module 2 will require Ruby from the mine, but not a trip inside the vent garden.

[Rakaydos]

So I've firmed up the route for the land-based section:

Build a hab at the base of the ramp up to the bridge.
Scan the hydralic fluid and the artefact, pick up loose titanium on the way back
Craft hydralif fluid, build a locker, dump everything you dont need (seaglide counts as flashlight, so keep), including rations, in the locker.
Cross bridge, collect at least 6 silver, 2 copper, make it past the hostile fauna, scan the archetect part, grab ion cube.
Follow right wall to the spicy plants/frozen river
Follow left wall coming out of frozen river
Once through the cave, the gateway is on an upper level, 800m directly north (so looking south at the beacon) of Phi robotics. Ion cube and go.
Loot Phi robotics: Lube, 4 magnatite, spypengling, glacer map, medkits, food, water, water tablets.
Back to hab, turning tablets into water on the way. craft spy pengling and remote. Dump resources and collected rations.
Ramp above Phi robotics, ladder on the right. Follow path down to the water, through the underwater cave, and to the tree area.
Cut south through the tree area toward the platform with all the boxes. Get the power cell.
East. Jump off the frozen waterfall, use medkit. if you can see running water to the east, look for a pengling beacon to the south. Get Cure.
Navigate caves back to the tree area, and up to the plot cave. Advanced wire kit, copper wire, 3 types of cloth, and there's even hydrocloric acid by the prawn suit. Cure the leviathan.
Head back to the hab. If you run into a dead end after getting out of the water, go back in the water and follow the left wall. (from the dead end)
Craft MVB, seatruck, and storage module. Pack your rations and essential materials, try to get out of there before the jellyeyes do too much damage. Destination: Mine site.

That's as far as I got- turns out, the file I did this on only found 4 lead, and I wasnt able to pack very many of my supplies at all without the storage bin. Ideally I would have 8 lead, for truck/storage/depth, but I can pick up a spare around the mining area/delta station.

For the endgame, you need Polyanaline (gold+hydrocloric acid), Aerogel (gel sack + ruby), Synthetic fiber (the one we just picked up is claimed by Depth 2, so you need another Ruby+spiral plant) 3 magnatite, 3 nickle, and 3 kyanite, plus a deconstructed plasteel ingot and a cube. To get there, you need the truck, *Storage, Depth module, Depth 2 (+2 Ruby), and Depth 3 (+2 kyanite, +3 nickle)

*(Storage not actually nessisary, but I suspect it's faster)

[Destro_Yersul]

I wonder if the speedrun for this will be less centralised. The old one is a lot of resource drops, but most of them happen in and around the safe shallows starting area. In this, they seem to be more spread out.

[Rakaydos]

I wonder if the speedrun for this will be less centralised. The old one is a lot of resource drops, but most of them happen in and around the safe shallows starting area. In this, they seem to be more spread out.

Not only that, the plot involves widely spread out locations that must be visited, and there's no super seaglide glitch in this game. Travel time alone is going to extend run times, and there's probably going to be resource gathering en route.

I suspect Ore veins are going to be huge. Guarnteed resources is the reason the speedruns in 1 were loops of guaranteed Sandstone deposits in the safe shallows.

I think I've got a good route, I just need 6+ lead before heading to land. Lead is NOT in any veins, and lead bearing rocks are pretty rare in the starting area. They're more common in the lillypad area, you just have to find them, dark rock against dark rock, in a biome pretty far from the pod.

The actual speedrun, of course, will probably skip the seatruck entirely. if you dont need Depth module 2, the synthetic fiber at the plot cave fills your endgame requirement, so no Vent Garden required. HCA coveres the endgame polyanaline, and nickle is in all the endgame areas. So probably enough air tanks and an airbase to get back from the deep facility back to the surface by seaglide, and that airbase is the central hub.

[Destro_Yersul]

I expect that carrying the materials to make an airbase along with you will be a thing. There's no super seaglide, but the map is a lot smaller overall.

[Rakaydos]

I expect that carrying the materials to make an airbase along with you will be a thing. There's no super seaglide, but the map is a lot smaller overall.

I think the last patch doubled to time to de-build hab parts, enough that I'm noticing it now.

[Destro_Yersul]

That's entirely possible. The question will simply be whether or not it's faster to construct and deconstruct a small base, or to travel back and forth. It will almost certainly be faster to do the deconstruction. But we'll see.

In other news, I have discovered the Shadow Leviathan. I went nope, and left. Then I explored some other more reasonable places instead.

[Rakaydos]

That's entirely possible. The question will simply be whether or not it's faster to construct and deconstruct a small base, or to travel back and forth. It will almost certainly be faster to do the deconstruction. But we'll see.

In other news, I have discovered the Shadow Leviathan. I went nope, and left. Then I explored some other more reasonable places instead.

Basic airbase would be a Large room, hatch, bioreactor, and feed the bioreactor, for a total of 12 inventory space, including the fish and the hab builder. Air doesnt turn off until the bioreactor is completely removed, so call it 2 seconds to get out the hatch and 8 seconds to defab the hatch and room. Constuction is more a matter of finding enough space, 2 seconds for the room and 3 for the hatch, entering, and build the bioreactor in 7 seconds, and feeding it a fish in 2 more seconds.

If you bring a fabricator, that's another 6 materials. Endgame items is +19. Seaglide is 4, and you need a scanner at least as far as the last component. Resource scanner is going to be an amazing tool. This might be manageable, barely.

[Rakaydos]

So the shopping lists:
-Before ALAN-
Scanner, fins seaglide, compass, (6 copper, 2 creepseeds, initial vein with at least 2 gold, 5 silver)
-ALAN run-
2 table coral, 4? ribbon plants, 2 copper, Hab builder, bigger air tank scan, ALAN
-To land-
Scan the resource scanner fragment at the cache, scan the bridge artefact. X tube segements, plus 2 hatches, and possibly a ladder, to cross the bridge (significant amounts of titanium, plus 2 quartz)
-on land-
Pick up 5 7 copper and 2 silver from veins, Scan the first component, gate to Robotics base.
Scan Large room, get Lube, cloth, 3 magnatite, spy pengling. Build tube base +solar panel+fab, with battery charger for seaglide battery(s), build spy pengling.
Cure the disease, aquire A-wire kit, lube, acid copper wire, glass sillicone, synthetic and cloth. Go back to tube base, build rebreather, basic Air tank, better air tank, resource scanner, and turn gold+acid into polyanaline. deconstruct tube base. (note: no knife, so these two cloth and 1 synthetic are the only cloth in the game)

Delta station artefact, plus nuts. Need 6 lithium. Tube base, Build quantum locker, turn wreckage into 2 plasteel. Deep lillypad component.

Then it's just a matter of getting past the multiple shadow leviathans without running out of air. Both down, and back up. 1000m, but it's pretty twisty, and I DONT have that route figured out yet.

Edit: ok, 2 problems. No knife means no table coral means no hab builder. And no seatruck scans and no O2 tank means no Computer chip blueprint, meaning no hab builder.
Two creepsamples for the O2 tank (while looking for seaglide fragments) is probably easiest, and the extra cloth later can just be turned into a medkit.

Edit 2: miscounted the copper needed, and for the life of me I dont know where the wiki is hiding a cloth in the robotics facility. Good thing the plan is for an extra cloth earlier.

[Destro_Yersul]

Basic airbase would be a Large room, hatch, bioreactor, and feed the bioreactor, for a total of 12 inventory space, including the fish and the hab builder. Air doesnt turn off until the bioreactor is completely removed, so call it 2 seconds to get out the hatch and 8 seconds to defab the hatch and room. Constuction is more a matter of finding enough space, 2 seconds for the room and 3 for the hatch, entering, and build the bioreactor in 7 seconds, and feeding it a fish in 2 more seconds.

If you bring a fabricator, that's another 6 materials. Endgame items is +19. Seaglide is 4, and you need a scanner at least as far as the last component. Resource scanner is going to be an amazing tool. This might be manageable, barely.

I doubt they'd actually worry about that. They'd build a moonpool, climb into it, die from not enough oxygen, respawn in the moonpool, deconstruct it and move on. Assuming that respawns still work the same way, anyways. I haven't actually died yet, so I don't know.

[Rakaydos]

Made a run as far as the Quantum Locker. Unfortunately I was split between the Moonpool and Large Room approaches, and neither scanned the large room at Robotics, nor went into the mining site for the moonpool, so I dont have Ingot or Plasteel blueprints when I'm collecting titanium wreckage.

The file might still be salvagable, though. inventory will just be a bit tight for a bit.

[Rakaydos]

So my attempt to salvage the large room/moonpool strat at Maida's base ran into a problem- by the time you get the ability to craft Ingots/plasteel, you're too deep to power a fab to make ingots/plasteel.

On the other hand, if you dont need to fabricate or charge anything ever, suffocating in a tube works fine. I grabbed the lillypad component, returned to "base" to craft aerogel and polyanaline, and entered the crystal caves past Margruite's base. Got 3 kyanite and outran a shadow leviathan before I pushed my luck on tube setup and suffocated.

Turns out that if you deconstruct the base you're "saved" at and die, you respawn at the CRASH SITE, not the pod. This is interesting for what it means for getting out after building alan a body., as the crash site is consistantly close to Sector zero, unlike the variably located Pod.

[Rakaydos]

So, with a not terribly optimized Crystal Caverns (mostly flailing around to find the ruby/fabricator caverns, which are apparently in the east), I was able to make the dive in only 3-4 suicide-respawn tubes, plus topping off my air at the 3rd component. By setting a respawn at the entrance to the fabricator caverns, then deconstructing it completely, you can do the endgame fabrication, then take off your air tank, suicide, and respawn at the lifepod, which is relatively near Sector Zero.

Assuming the game doesnt require the maida plot that's supposed to lead to the Cure, my time is just over an hour and a half.

[Destro_Yersul]

I was able to find stuff in the crystal caverns without too much difficulty once I set up a sensor room at the deep purple entryway. The cure is, as far as I can tell, entirely optional. Once the game's done there'll probably end up being different speedrun categories for cure vs no cure. There will probably also be Cure%, where you end up just doing that without worrying about Alan.

[Rakaydos]

I was able to find stuff in the crystal caverns without too much difficulty once I set up a sensor room at the deep purple entryway. The cure is, as far as I can tell, entirely optional. Once the game's done there'll probably end up being different speedrun categories for cure vs no cure. There will probably also be Cure%, where you end up just doing that without worrying about Alan.

That's like claiming the first game will have Rocket% and Cure%. There's no ending to Below Zero yet, but all indications are that ALAN is going home... once the accidental release of Karrah is no longer an issue. Like launching the rocket in the first game, I suspect that both will need to be done before ALAN will actually leave. We may need to actually scan and fabricate Enzyme 42 for him, too.

[Destro_Yersul]

It's assuming the cure is optional. In the case it's not, obviously the categories will end up different.

Given it's theoretically possible to get through the game without Alan learning the Kharaa is still around, it would be a bit odd to have his ending dependant on fixing it. The first game had more of a singular plotline (go home), and everything stemmed from that. Below Zero has two concurrent stories.

[Rakaydos]

It's assuming the cure is optional. In the case it's not, obviously the categories will end up different.

Given it's theoretically possible to get through the game without Alan learning the Kharaa is still around, it would be a bit odd to have his ending dependant on fixing it. The first game had more of a singular plotline (go home), and everything stemmed from that. Below Zero has two concurrent stories.

I think it's when you pick up the skeleton, when ALAN remarks that it can withstand interstellar travel, and Robyn interjects with "If no infection is present, right?"

If Robyn gets invited to the alien homeworld (how else is she getting off this rock?), Robyn may refuse to go until she gets "Closure" for her sister, leading the big discussion after curing the leviathan.

[Destro_Yersul]

Certainly possible. Right now, though, there's not much tying the two plotlines together, and if they want the cure to be non-optional I'd really hope it ends up signposted a little bit better, Right now the only thing telling you it's there is a red circle on an unspecific map.