1. The game right now requires prior knowledge to be accessible. Can you reach greater depths than your seamoth can go? Yes. Of course. You load an extra O2 tank or two, your rebreather, and your sea glide and your good to go, or you grab a bunch of pipes, or visit the floating island, scan the exterior growbread and plant some brain coral. How is a new player supposed to know any of this. First thing they notice about O2 tanks is how much it slows them down, so they don't build a lot of them figuring they don't want to go slower. Does the idea even occur to them that the sea glide goes just as fast regardless? That isn't even intuitive. The pipes require extra farming and are a mess to use. The island is barely hinted at if they keep their relay around and might be a lucky loot drop for them if the reaper doesn't eat them on the way to the aurora that they can't access yet anyway. This is a huge wall to climb, a crazy spike in difficulty and calling people whiny crybabies isn't going to encourage effort at all. Spawning fragment that players need to make the sea moth go deeper in places the sea moth can't reach is counterintuitive design that is going to leave new players frustrated and discouraged. It's easy if you know how, but if you haven't already played and don't know, then your just shit outta luck by these standards. Conventional exploration is not enough to find these fragments. You have to know where they are and know how to reach them or your stuck. This is a survival game, but it's also an exploration game. It can do both without alienating players.
2. There are two easy fixed for this. Only two signals would make the game more accessible without breaking the difficulty curb. One signal to the mushroom wreck for the propulsion fragments leads to opening up the aurora which leads to a single seamoth depth upgrade that opens up most of the ocean for conventional exploration. One signal by the sea treaders leads players without the prawn to place to easily gather silver among other early game materials for building nice habitats and heavy machinery. The aurora also leads to mountains island with diamonds for cutter and wreck for vehicle mod station. Late game starts to open up.
3. Yes this is early access but that is why these problems need to be addressed and they are problems. Gating something to a point that you realize you don't actually need it if you know exactly what you are doing and how to make it work ahead of time isn't good game design, no matter how much "harder" you think it is making. All it does is reveal how pointless the process is in the first place. Finding the vehicle mod station is no problem if you just don't bother, after all. Who really needs a seamoth when you can use a sea glide and pipes to find everything you need to survive, if even that. Glider handles better anyway. Just build a battery charger in a corridor with some solar panels and you can survive indefinitely.
People need to stop thinking of this as a survival game when it is an exlloration, survival, crafting game. You want to grind for nothing in a randomly generated, boring, "hard" underwater game, just go play stranded deep. This game is better and should be held to higher standards.
MouseThe Lighter Side of PessimismJoin Date: 2002-03-02Member: 263Members, NS1 Playtester, Forum Moderators, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow
On a related note: At the moment it's easier to collect the 9 fragments to create a Cyclops - as they're all above 200m - than it is to explore the wreck we've been talking about and collect the Moon Pool fragments.
This seems odd to me. I'd consider the Seamoth, it's upgrades and the Moon Pool elements of the early and mid game, with the Cyclops and it's upgrades elements of the mid and late game. By having the Cyclops more accessible than the Moon Pool, upgrading the Seamoth starts becoming pointless.
1. The game right now requires prior knowledge to be accessible.
I've actually been saying this about Stalkers for months now. How can you possibly scan one to get the hints about how to overcome them without a Stasis Rifle? No new player is going to willingly risk 30% health per bite just to scan the damned things. But if you don't have that hint, they seem like an unstoppable wall between you and everything you need for all the basic tools except the Scanner. If that's the only hint that your'e supposed to scan them (without any means of making that survivable - remember you don't even have FINS at this point), lots of new players will give up and demand refunds, even if they eventually discover the secret. Some people feel that a game which requires Wiki research to play is annoying.
There's no reason a lot of this knowledge can't be put into the existing PDA hints, etc. Maybe drop a stalker carcass near the pod (there always seems to be a Kelp Forest nearby) so there's something you can actually scan to get started. That kind of thing.
How can you possibly scan one to get the hints about how to overcome them without a Stasis Rifle?
1. Get Fins (4x Creepvine Seed = 2x Silicon Rubber)
2. When you hear a Stalker's roar, turn to face it, then swim backwards circling; he'll follow you for a bit with open mouth but then he'll lose interest and swim away. Or...
3. Catch some fish of the same type (Bladderfish, Reginald, Peepers) then select one via hotkey so you hold it in your hand. Now you'll feed the Stalkers instead of them biting you! If you feed them enough they might leave you a present of... titanium... proportions!
1. The game right now requires prior knowledge to be accessible.
People need to stop thinking of this as a survival game when it is an ex(p)loration, survival, crafting game.
>Claims meta-gaming is necessary.
>Wants beacons places for guidance and hand-holding.
>Acknowledges exploration element.
You understand how paradoxical this is, yes?
If exploration is the main focus, then we should have no beacons, no guides, no help other than maybe, maybe, the tutorial that is in place now. "Swim to surface before you die"... "Break stone"... "Cut creepvine with knife you just made". These 3 instructions are already invasive enough, but they may be needed for a complete noob who's never played a game before, so we can indulge them.
My idea of exploration is not being told "go here for what you need."
That's the opposite of exploration. That's guiding.
I've actually been saying this about Stalkers for months now. How can you possibly scan one to get the hints about how to overcome them without a Stasis Rifle? No new player is going to willingly risk 30% health per bite just to scan the damned things.
1. The game right now requires prior knowledge to be accessible.
I disagree. Prior knowledge makes things easier, to be sure, but the implication that you cannot succeed without it is false. A new player might flail around a bit more when he/she don't know exactly what to do, or where to go, and may die a few times because they didn't realize how dangerous something was or didn't plan well enough for food/water... but there's nothing wrong with that. Also I have found Moonpool fragments in places like that first wreck they put in the grassy plateau, so you most certainly do NOT need to dive deeper than the seamoth can reach to increase the seamoth's dive reach.
Not everything messed up, but I agree with needing a lot of prior knowledge for a lot of things to get really helpful avoiding getting killed often.
A veteran player like me almost never dies because of knowing all places and tricks and even with massive changes I have almost no problems. But I think the other players will die often or have a hard time at begin.
Suggestions:
Early infos from signals and data transmissions or PDA's found that add some kind of 'knowledge'.
Example of resource support: Find a Degasi PDA and open tab to immediately read how they found lots of silver.
Example of location support: Find an early Lifepod PDA about a signal leading to the floating island.
If the scanner gets more essential, than we need an important radio/AI message to force building it early.
PDA survival journals: "The right tools to swim around sharks", "Deep sea diving tricks", "How to explore dark tunnels underwater", etc.
Sandstone is indeed scarcer than before. It is now like quartz used to be about a year ago. The devs removed sandstone from the kelp forest floors and replaced it with more limestone. Now it seems the sandstone is only inside caves. Thus it is less abundant and harder to find than before. I am finding enough, but it is taking more outings specifically looking for it before I can progress. Not complaining, because this is an exploration game, but the availability of silver has indeed changed.
Also, I cannot find a second propulsion cannon fragment. I found the first one in the Aurora, but have yet to find another. I now have a Seamoth, Cyclops, Moonpool, modification station, PRAWN with propulsion cannon arm and torpedo arm, and all the seabase tech minus the scanner room, but still no propulsion cannon. Somebody above mentioned it's in the mushroom wreck (is that the Mushroom Tree wreck?) which I haven't found yet on this save. I was sortof expecting to find another fragment in/around the Aurora since most fragments can be found in multiples, and for a space ship that wasn't planning on making planet-fall, a general utility tool like the propulsion cannon should be more common onboard than the overabundance of specialized ocean exploration equipment you find in its place.
Finally, population density of predators is too great for a functioning ecosystem. I don't have a problem with the aggressiveness of the various predators, but there are simply too many of them. I'm fine with having to figure out a way to outsmart them while trying to break into a wreck section or scan debris, but the sheer multitude of predators is frustrating and breaks my willing suspension of disbelief.
In general, we should do less complaining, and telling other people they're wrong, and more stating our own observations and wishes to the devs. I expect the balance to shift all over the place while the devs figure things out. They have a plan, and must implement it in stages. Some things they get working before others. They have continuously tweaked the availability of different items to guide the progression of a new player, and continuously show that they are listening to us (lights on the Cyclops cameras, anyone?). Give them feedback, and they will find the balance between their vision and our wishes.
Prawn last unlock? Wtf oO
Had mine before the Seamoth and still didn`t build the cyclops after being in the lava caverns for the diving upgrade.
You just need the propulsion gun (or some skills in jumping), the laser cutter and welder to explore the Aurora in order to get it, and a fire extinguisher wich can be found on the Aurora or fabricated. ^^ Of course a seaglider would shorten your traveling time much, so build it too.
The prawn is the last unlock. You need silver and copper for early game stuff.
All these large nodes to drill do nothing for a beginner. They can't even reach the sea treaders if they don't find a way to cheat into the depths to find the vehicle mod station so they can build a pressure compensater.
What the game needs now is a portable drill tool that works like the drill arm but doesn't require an exosuit to use.
Nope! Don`t forget, this plays in the future and we have drones. So why can`t those things configurated to gather resources?
That was my intention indeed, thank you @MrRoarke , to state my observations I didn't really complain, but some things are messed up. I can get used to it, no problem. I adapted already. I have 300 hours in the game, I'm not a noob I'm on my second playthroutgh after the last update now, cause the first one has the bugged cyclops. Let's hope it'll not happen again, as I am about to unlock the cyclops.
The prawn is the last unlock. You need silver and copper for early game stuff.
All these large nodes to drill do nothing for a beginner. They can't even reach the sea treaders if they don't find a way to cheat into the depths to find the vehicle mod station so they can build a pressure compensater.
hate to poke a dead horse here but i would have to admit i used the exploit of jumping over the "Debris" infront of the cargobay (4/3?) door and repaired the Core (then proceeded to get the seamoth parts and here unlocking the tech) and somehow i ended up with the co-ords to the mountain island where i got diamond, went back to the damaged door and cut it open and scanned all the parts in the prawn bay for my prawn. constructing said prawn took a while but wasn't that hard.
now, so far with the prawn suit i have;
rode 4 leivathans (pardon my english) into the ground and killed them with the drill and grappling hook. (getting out periodically and welding my suit then grappling them again)
climbed the Auroa (grappling hook. ETA 1 hour)
and last but not least literly made a leviathan exit atmosphere for no reason and i am very sad to say i can't repeat it. it was quite funny seeing it just suddenly lunge upwards on a fish near the surface and then keep gaining speed until it was nothing but a spek on my screen.
so in all due fairness the game is a bit rough around the edges but i would have to admit. it's still a good diamond in my eyes.
I've actually been saying this about Stalkers for months now. How can you possibly scan one to get the hints about how to overcome them without a Stasis Rifle?
1) Acquire a Stalker egg.
2) Build alien containment.
3) Hatch baby Stalker in fish tank.
4) Scan completely harmless baby Stalker from inside the fish tank.
5) Toss the little turd into a Bioreactor when done.
Note: Also works for Gasopods, Sandsharks, Bonesharks, AmpEels and Crabsnakes. Doesn't work on Stalkers or Crabsquids, however, as they don't have eggs.
Note: Also works for Gasopods, Sandsharks, Bonesharks, AmpEels and Crabsnakes. Doesn't work on Stalkers Reapers or Crabsquids, however, as they don't have eggs.
How can you possibly scan one to get the hints about how to overcome them without a Stasis Rifle?
1. Get Fins (4x Creepvine Seed = 2x Silicon Rubber)
2. When you hear a Stalker's roar, turn to face it, then swim backwards circling; he'll follow you for a bit with open mouth but then he'll lose interest and swim away. Or...
3. Catch some fish of the same type (Bladderfish, Reginald, Peepers) then select one via hotkey so you hold it in your hand. Now you'll feed the Stalkers instead of them biting you! If you feed them enough they might leave you a present of... titanium... proportions!
I'm quite experienced, but the stalker aggression and damage forced me into the "avoid at all costs" option in early gameplay. And probably all beginners go through this cycle. Only a few tend to discover the not so obvious "feeding" approach. And it's far more easy to avoid the stalkers than discover feeding them.
This awesome feeding is like a secret that doesn't unfold to beginners. Even if you'd scan a stalker you still might not read all the info. It would be best to hear a voiced PDA dialog from an early survivor who is amazed that those stalkers can be tamed. Maybe found in a wrecked Seamoth from the Degasi found at the Safe shallows near your lifepod, together with mentioning a "floating island".
EDIT:
And how much of value is a warning after scanning a tiger plant that you should avoid approaching it. Maybe this game needs a 2 level scanning. A far range scan and a deep close scan. The scanner could get upgradable with far and deep scan modules.
I've actually been saying this about Stalkers for months now. How can you possibly scan one to get the hints about how to overcome them without a Stasis Rifle?
1) Acquire a Stalker egg.
2) Build alien containment.
3) Hatch baby Stalker in fish tank.
4) Scan completely harmless baby Stalker from inside the fish tank.
5) Toss the little turd into a Bioreactor when done.
Note: Also works for Gasopods, Sandsharks, Bonesharks, AmpEels and Crabsnakes. Doesn't work on Stalkers or Crabsquids, however, as they don't have eggs.
On the off chance you didn't understand, I'm talking about Day 0, trying to get your very first creepvine seeds for your fins and knife handle. Most spawns put you in a place where getting eaten by multiple Stalkers near every single Creepvine seed is at least an 80% likelihood. That's how early I'm talking about.
Besides, even late game, I have zero Alien Containment fragments. They just aren't there. At all. In any wreck. Apparently that's about to become such a big advantage that we're not allowed to have it without cheating.
So here is my experience with a freshly started newgame after the prawnupdate:
I start d the game as usual. Gathering the simplestuff for crafting useful tools of the bat.
(Got lucky, my escapepod landed kinda 50m away of the geysir in safe shallows xD)
So i did some nervwrecking geysirdiving obtaining enough silver for my needs.
With the Habitatbuilder starting its work, a first, small, tubebased base was born. 4 x-sections with 4 solarpanels work perfectly fine in regards of storagespace, so i placed it near my escapepod.
So far i found the fragments of the seaglide and the solarpanels (obviously)
After building the glide and a few sparebatteries, i started with exploring the messaged escapepodcoordinates. Hey, one eaarned me a lovely radiationsuit. Nice.. So no probs within the radiationzone.
Slowly exploring the escapepods i stumbled upon seamothfragments, mobilewhatevervehiclespawnbay, bioreactor and a few cosmetic stuff like plantpots, shelves and... Uh... A few desks i think. Oh, and the batterycharger. Veeeery useful thing with the batterygulpimg seaglide!
Soooo
Back to my lair and pondering how to build the moth.
Silver can be found easily in the kelps. Dived there a bit with the glide and went home with 10 or so in my backpack.
So gathering the stuff for the moth and back home building it. After that it got a bit wild, scooting around in my lil ODDBALL 1, scavenging a few materials and so on.
While doing so i stumbled upon a wreck in... 180m(?) depth with some wonderful stuff inside. Propulsionfragments, Stasisfragments and some Prawnstuff. Not enough for the walking knight in shiny platings, but oh well... Back home and building the Propgun. Stasisrifle? Honestly, never found a use for that thing. I dont kill preds, i avoid them or play with them. Sandsharks are easy, stalkers are damn easy, biters annoying aaaand reapers... If not in a moth... Avoid them or hastily search for stones and wrecks to hide, sending them back circling for the next attack.
So equipped with the Prop i started exploring the Aurora, scooping up the place, as far as possible. With a few new places as markers i scuffled back to ODDBALL 1 after i hit a deadend needing a lasercutter. So, more exploring for me to do. outside the aurora i found coordinates for the kooshbiome, the underwaterisles and some other stuff. Sooo, giddy up lil ODDBALL 1, we're riding out.
Returning from the long distance fieldtrips with lithium, a threetimes welded ODDBALL 1, surviving some serious chewimgtoylove from reapers and with... 5%(?) life after playing chewimgtoy for biters, bonesharks and whatever found me delicous till my medkits ran out, i turned home with a few diamonds, a bit of lithium, the powercellcharger blueprint and the powerrod. (Not really making sense without the thermalreactor but whatever...) and a few cyclops parts. I stumbled upon the shroomwoods and found even more cyclopsparts. Alot of cyclops parts... But.. Still missing one engine fragment after finding two in the auroras belly. (Maybe a bug? Or wanted?)
So... Lasertime. Btw, anyone noticed the energyfree flashlight aka lasercutter?^^ works well in dark places, if they are narrow.
Aaaand back to aurora, sniffing out every nook and cranny so far. Hey, i said i wanted plushies, and look what i found. A plushie! Ingame but better than nothing, eh?
Some pda updates, one or two new coordinates and a bit of stuff later im back home again.
The pressureupdate for the moth is working fine, but where to go now?
Aaand thats where it hits me. Where the fuck are the coordinates for the jellyshroomcaves?
Honestly last update we got send down there as first thing possible, this time i simply didnt get them.
Yes, as a player from the update before prawn, i know wher to find them, but im playing as never seen subnautica before, strictly exploring randomly and following given coordinates.
So that means: after all this playing, scavenging and snooping around i still miss the essential moonpoolblueprint and modatation blueprint. Didnt got coords for a wreck with it and no luck stumbling over one while getting from a to b.
So atm i have a 300M seamoth, a PRAWN Knight with a Drillywillyarm i cant build and a lot of oceanfloor to explore.
Ok. Moth is fast, PRAWN is not. But.. Its safer than the moth. So, what to do, what to do. right! Im waaaalking in the raaiiin... Uh... Well, lets just say the ocean is a big puddle of tears.
And thus, loading the PRAWN with the storage odule and pressureupdate i found, and the extended cargo of it with titanium, quartz and glass, i ventured out, building another tubecastle right infront of the shroomwood. PRAWN dont likes long ways home, PRAWN lazy..
With the long lasting and mostly pretty secure exo i found the one missing enginepart for the cyclops. Wohey, i got a sub!
Checking my storages back home, i find enough gold, lubricant and titaniumingots for the plasteeli gots, and the other two needed parts. But.. Surprise, teeth are missing. So back to the kelps, harassing some stalkers in my moth (hrhrhr).
Back home, with roundabout 15 teeth, its subtime.
And this brings me to the TL;DR:
With playing the game as a newb, only following coordinates and scooping around randomly, i found the moth, the prawn aaand the cyclops, build them, got the lasercutter, explored the whole aurora and some scary places.
I didnt find the modstation and the moonpool, but powercell/batterychargers, the vehiclemodstation and alot of other stuff.
Silver is still fairly easy to get, but do we disagree it is inexplicably rare/difficult to find relative to other resources and the need for computer chips, which has roughly doubled and is bound to increase further? The silver actually isn't a problem to me so much as I find computer chips the most tedious portion of the gameplay. Not unfair in terms of effort, but tedious.
Silver is still fairly easy to get, but do we disagree it is inexplicably rare/difficult to find relative to other resources and the need for computer chips, which has roughly doubled and is bound to increase further? The silver actually isn't a problem to me so much as I find computer chips the most tedious portion of the gameplay. Not unfair in terms of effort, but tedious.
It's the Table Coral that makes computer chips tedious. You have to actually go out there and harvest them where they grow and you can't grow them yourself where you need them.
It's the Table Coral that makes computer chips tedious. You have to actually go out there and harvest them where they grow and you can't grow them yourself where you need them.
I usually make my base in the safe shallows, so getting the table coral typically means "going outside and looking down". It's pretty abundant there. But yeah, if you built your base anywhere else it could be a pain.
It's a combination of quartz being a basic resource needed for much (although this save file there seems to be more than I am used to, so the numbers are good), table coral being a part of the environment I like to keep pretty so I spend ages looking for what places won't be hit hard by the loss (does it regrow by now? I got the impression but am not certain), and non-drillable silver not being spottable from a distance. You need all these three ingredients to create computer chips - like, you can have a large supply of table coral and silver, without quartz to spare they're not going to be of use. If memory serves me, only polyaniline, power cells, and reactor rods are other resources based on a three-ingredient recipe and your need for those and their components is limited (with power cells being found near the Aurora).
I'd probably already be happier if we could get something like an "advanced computer chip" with a slightly different recipe to break up the repetition.
If the Scanner room fragments would be found early it would allow beginners without experience to locate sandstones while still needing to fetch them out of the Kelp forest. Not to forget that this is also the best use of the Scanner room. It's mainly good for the stalker infested Kelp forest and Safe shallow crush caves.
The Scanner room range upgrades could make it useful again for late game if they really extend massive range (1000m+) and should need hard to get recipes found at the Precursor bases.
Right now we can find the Scanner room fragments mid to late game when we can already find everything without scanning or have the Prawn and being able to drill.
MouseThe Lighter Side of PessimismJoin Date: 2002-03-02Member: 263Members, NS1 Playtester, Forum Moderators, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow
Another point of note with the scanner room is that the more you use it or the later you build it the less useful it becomes. After a while there won't be anything left around your base for the scanner to find.
Another point of note with the scanner room is that the more you use it or the later you build it the less useful it becomes. After a while there won't be anything left around your base for the scanner to find.
That limit makes the scanner room perfect for early Safe Shallows and Blood Kelp together with a fast solar panel setup. A lot of targets in range and hidden through caves, but not too far apart. With only a solar panel and hatch you could relocate it quickly. And it was probably tested mainly in this environment.
My own tests later in open wide area or deeper environments showed the scanner room utterly failing in range and purpose. No easy power setup, the range much too short and the resources simply lying openly around: The Grand, Deep and Sparse reefs, Blood Kelp, Mushroom Forest, Jelly Shroom Cave, etc.
My late gameplay tests with a short range scanner room on the Safe Shallows and Kelp forest showed its uselessness due to the fact that I already could outswim stalkers with UG fins and plasteel tanks or simply walk around with the Prawn getting me everything the easy way. So once the modification station or Prawn gets available, the range limited scanner room ceases to be useful. It's a pain to realize that you find the scanner room artifacts much too late where the room is no longer needed.
But if the upgrades of the scanner room would be locked tech recipes to be found hard, but with new powerful ranges (1k+) and use, it could make the scanner room usefule for early AND late game play. We could find the scanner room immediately after game start, but the powerful upgrades only through precursor tech.
I admit that I must be seeing something different from other players, since the predators in my file never got OVERLY aggressive. Well Sandsharks do chase but I always have my Seaglide on the ready and dart away.
And the Stalkers... Honestly? Stalkers I'm wary of, but I'm not afraid of them. They seem to have a shorter aggro range than the Sandsharks, and in my experience they don't chase as long as Sandsharks.
Honestly, the fish that earns all of my hate are the freaking BITERS. Little assholes come in and start swarming, smashing into my Seamoth or PRAWN. FUCK the biteyfish.
... Honestly, the fish that earns all of my hate are the freaking BITERS. Little assholes come in and start swarming, smashing into my Seamoth or PRAWN. FUCK the biteyfish.
They should allow us to pick up the dead biters and give us a "fried biter sticks" fish recipe. Yummy and tasty, while you get your revenge on those bastards.
Hell, they should allow us to get meat out of all dead predators and allow recipes for them:
Fried Biter sticks
Reaper rips
Sandshark soup
...
And then there was this Prawn standing in the volcano and pulling down the Reaper with his grappling hook until that bastard got cooked alive. Finally drilled and turned to Reaper sushi.
Comments
1. The game right now requires prior knowledge to be accessible. Can you reach greater depths than your seamoth can go? Yes. Of course. You load an extra O2 tank or two, your rebreather, and your sea glide and your good to go, or you grab a bunch of pipes, or visit the floating island, scan the exterior growbread and plant some brain coral. How is a new player supposed to know any of this. First thing they notice about O2 tanks is how much it slows them down, so they don't build a lot of them figuring they don't want to go slower. Does the idea even occur to them that the sea glide goes just as fast regardless? That isn't even intuitive. The pipes require extra farming and are a mess to use. The island is barely hinted at if they keep their relay around and might be a lucky loot drop for them if the reaper doesn't eat them on the way to the aurora that they can't access yet anyway. This is a huge wall to climb, a crazy spike in difficulty and calling people whiny crybabies isn't going to encourage effort at all. Spawning fragment that players need to make the sea moth go deeper in places the sea moth can't reach is counterintuitive design that is going to leave new players frustrated and discouraged. It's easy if you know how, but if you haven't already played and don't know, then your just shit outta luck by these standards. Conventional exploration is not enough to find these fragments. You have to know where they are and know how to reach them or your stuck. This is a survival game, but it's also an exploration game. It can do both without alienating players.
2. There are two easy fixed for this. Only two signals would make the game more accessible without breaking the difficulty curb. One signal to the mushroom wreck for the propulsion fragments leads to opening up the aurora which leads to a single seamoth depth upgrade that opens up most of the ocean for conventional exploration. One signal by the sea treaders leads players without the prawn to place to easily gather silver among other early game materials for building nice habitats and heavy machinery. The aurora also leads to mountains island with diamonds for cutter and wreck for vehicle mod station. Late game starts to open up.
3. Yes this is early access but that is why these problems need to be addressed and they are problems. Gating something to a point that you realize you don't actually need it if you know exactly what you are doing and how to make it work ahead of time isn't good game design, no matter how much "harder" you think it is making. All it does is reveal how pointless the process is in the first place. Finding the vehicle mod station is no problem if you just don't bother, after all. Who really needs a seamoth when you can use a sea glide and pipes to find everything you need to survive, if even that. Glider handles better anyway. Just build a battery charger in a corridor with some solar panels and you can survive indefinitely.
People need to stop thinking of this as a survival game when it is an exlloration, survival, crafting game. You want to grind for nothing in a randomly generated, boring, "hard" underwater game, just go play stranded deep. This game is better and should be held to higher standards.
This seems odd to me. I'd consider the Seamoth, it's upgrades and the Moon Pool elements of the early and mid game, with the Cyclops and it's upgrades elements of the mid and late game. By having the Cyclops more accessible than the Moon Pool, upgrading the Seamoth starts becoming pointless.
I've actually been saying this about Stalkers for months now. How can you possibly scan one to get the hints about how to overcome them without a Stasis Rifle? No new player is going to willingly risk 30% health per bite just to scan the damned things. But if you don't have that hint, they seem like an unstoppable wall between you and everything you need for all the basic tools except the Scanner. If that's the only hint that your'e supposed to scan them (without any means of making that survivable - remember you don't even have FINS at this point), lots of new players will give up and demand refunds, even if they eventually discover the secret. Some people feel that a game which requires Wiki research to play is annoying.
There's no reason a lot of this knowledge can't be put into the existing PDA hints, etc. Maybe drop a stalker carcass near the pod (there always seems to be a Kelp Forest nearby) so there's something you can actually scan to get started. That kind of thing.
1. Get Fins (4x Creepvine Seed = 2x Silicon Rubber)
2. When you hear a Stalker's roar, turn to face it, then swim backwards circling; he'll follow you for a bit with open mouth but then he'll lose interest and swim away. Or...
3. Catch some fish of the same type (Bladderfish, Reginald, Peepers) then select one via hotkey so you hold it in your hand. Now you'll feed the Stalkers instead of them biting you! If you feed them enough they might leave you a present of... titanium... proportions!
>Claims meta-gaming is necessary.
>Wants beacons places for guidance and hand-holding.
>Acknowledges exploration element.
You understand how paradoxical this is, yes?
If exploration is the main focus, then we should have no beacons, no guides, no help other than maybe, maybe, the tutorial that is in place now. "Swim to surface before you die"... "Break stone"... "Cut creepvine with knife you just made". These 3 instructions are already invasive enough, but they may be needed for a complete noob who's never played a game before, so we can indulge them.
My idea of exploration is not being told "go here for what you need."
That's the opposite of exploration. That's guiding.
Are you serious?
I disagree. Prior knowledge makes things easier, to be sure, but the implication that you cannot succeed without it is false. A new player might flail around a bit more when he/she don't know exactly what to do, or where to go, and may die a few times because they didn't realize how dangerous something was or didn't plan well enough for food/water... but there's nothing wrong with that. Also I have found Moonpool fragments in places like that first wreck they put in the grassy plateau, so you most certainly do NOT need to dive deeper than the seamoth can reach to increase the seamoth's dive reach.
A veteran player like me almost never dies because of knowing all places and tricks and even with massive changes I have almost no problems. But I think the other players will die often or have a hard time at begin.
Suggestions:
Sandstone is indeed scarcer than before. It is now like quartz used to be about a year ago. The devs removed sandstone from the kelp forest floors and replaced it with more limestone. Now it seems the sandstone is only inside caves. Thus it is less abundant and harder to find than before. I am finding enough, but it is taking more outings specifically looking for it before I can progress. Not complaining, because this is an exploration game, but the availability of silver has indeed changed.
Also, I cannot find a second propulsion cannon fragment. I found the first one in the Aurora, but have yet to find another. I now have a Seamoth, Cyclops, Moonpool, modification station, PRAWN with propulsion cannon arm and torpedo arm, and all the seabase tech minus the scanner room, but still no propulsion cannon. Somebody above mentioned it's in the mushroom wreck (is that the Mushroom Tree wreck?) which I haven't found yet on this save. I was sortof expecting to find another fragment in/around the Aurora since most fragments can be found in multiples, and for a space ship that wasn't planning on making planet-fall, a general utility tool like the propulsion cannon should be more common onboard than the overabundance of specialized ocean exploration equipment you find in its place.
Finally, population density of predators is too great for a functioning ecosystem. I don't have a problem with the aggressiveness of the various predators, but there are simply too many of them. I'm fine with having to figure out a way to outsmart them while trying to break into a wreck section or scan debris, but the sheer multitude of predators is frustrating and breaks my willing suspension of disbelief.
In general, we should do less complaining, and telling other people they're wrong, and more stating our own observations and wishes to the devs. I expect the balance to shift all over the place while the devs figure things out. They have a plan, and must implement it in stages. Some things they get working before others. They have continuously tweaked the availability of different items to guide the progression of a new player, and continuously show that they are listening to us (lights on the Cyclops cameras, anyone?). Give them feedback, and they will find the balance between their vision and our wishes.
Had mine before the Seamoth and still didn`t build the cyclops after being in the lava caverns for the diving upgrade.
You just need the propulsion gun (or some skills in jumping), the laser cutter and welder to explore the Aurora in order to get it, and a fire extinguisher wich can be found on the Aurora or fabricated. ^^ Of course a seaglider would shorten your traveling time much, so build it too.
Nope! Don`t forget, this plays in the future and we have drones. So why can`t those things configurated to gather resources?
hate to poke a dead horse here but i would have to admit i used the exploit of jumping over the "Debris" infront of the cargobay (4/3?) door and repaired the Core (then proceeded to get the seamoth parts and here unlocking the tech) and somehow i ended up with the co-ords to the mountain island where i got diamond, went back to the damaged door and cut it open and scanned all the parts in the prawn bay for my prawn. constructing said prawn took a while but wasn't that hard.
now, so far with the prawn suit i have;
rode 4 leivathans (pardon my english) into the ground and killed them with the drill and grappling hook. (getting out periodically and welding my suit then grappling them again)
climbed the Auroa (grappling hook. ETA 1 hour)
and last but not least literly made a leviathan exit atmosphere for no reason and i am very sad to say i can't repeat it. it was quite funny seeing it just suddenly lunge upwards on a fish near the surface and then keep gaining speed until it was nothing but a spek on my screen.
so in all due fairness the game is a bit rough around the edges but i would have to admit. it's still a good diamond in my eyes.
Look in the Floating Islands biome
1) Acquire a Stalker egg.
2) Build alien containment.
3) Hatch baby Stalker in fish tank.
4) Scan completely harmless baby Stalker from inside the fish tank.
5) Toss the little turd into a Bioreactor when done.
Note: Also works for Gasopods, Sandsharks, Bonesharks, AmpEels and Crabsnakes. Doesn't work on Stalkers or Crabsquids, however, as they don't have eggs.
I'm quite experienced, but the stalker aggression and damage forced me into the "avoid at all costs" option in early gameplay. And probably all beginners go through this cycle. Only a few tend to discover the not so obvious "feeding" approach. And it's far more easy to avoid the stalkers than discover feeding them.
This awesome feeding is like a secret that doesn't unfold to beginners. Even if you'd scan a stalker you still might not read all the info. It would be best to hear a voiced PDA dialog from an early survivor who is amazed that those stalkers can be tamed. Maybe found in a wrecked Seamoth from the Degasi found at the Safe shallows near your lifepod, together with mentioning a "floating island".
EDIT:
And how much of value is a warning after scanning a tiger plant that you should avoid approaching it. Maybe this game needs a 2 level scanning. A far range scan and a deep close scan. The scanner could get upgradable with far and deep scan modules.
On the off chance you didn't understand, I'm talking about Day 0, trying to get your very first creepvine seeds for your fins and knife handle. Most spawns put you in a place where getting eaten by multiple Stalkers near every single Creepvine seed is at least an 80% likelihood. That's how early I'm talking about.
Besides, even late game, I have zero Alien Containment fragments. They just aren't there. At all. In any wreck. Apparently that's about to become such a big advantage that we're not allowed to have it without cheating.
I start d the game as usual. Gathering the simplestuff for crafting useful tools of the bat.
(Got lucky, my escapepod landed kinda 50m away of the geysir in safe shallows xD)
So i did some nervwrecking geysirdiving obtaining enough silver for my needs.
With the Habitatbuilder starting its work, a first, small, tubebased base was born. 4 x-sections with 4 solarpanels work perfectly fine in regards of storagespace, so i placed it near my escapepod.
So far i found the fragments of the seaglide and the solarpanels (obviously)
After building the glide and a few sparebatteries, i started with exploring the messaged escapepodcoordinates. Hey, one eaarned me a lovely radiationsuit. Nice.. So no probs within the radiationzone.
Slowly exploring the escapepods i stumbled upon seamothfragments, mobilewhatevervehiclespawnbay, bioreactor and a few cosmetic stuff like plantpots, shelves and... Uh... A few desks i think. Oh, and the batterycharger. Veeeery useful thing with the batterygulpimg seaglide!
Soooo
Back to my lair and pondering how to build the moth.
Silver can be found easily in the kelps. Dived there a bit with the glide and went home with 10 or so in my backpack.
So gathering the stuff for the moth and back home building it. After that it got a bit wild, scooting around in my lil ODDBALL 1, scavenging a few materials and so on.
While doing so i stumbled upon a wreck in... 180m(?) depth with some wonderful stuff inside. Propulsionfragments, Stasisfragments and some Prawnstuff. Not enough for the walking knight in shiny platings, but oh well... Back home and building the Propgun. Stasisrifle? Honestly, never found a use for that thing. I dont kill preds, i avoid them or play with them. Sandsharks are easy, stalkers are damn easy, biters annoying aaaand reapers... If not in a moth... Avoid them or hastily search for stones and wrecks to hide, sending them back circling for the next attack.
So equipped with the Prop i started exploring the Aurora, scooping up the place, as far as possible. With a few new places as markers i scuffled back to ODDBALL 1 after i hit a deadend needing a lasercutter. So, more exploring for me to do. outside the aurora i found coordinates for the kooshbiome, the underwaterisles and some other stuff. Sooo, giddy up lil ODDBALL 1, we're riding out.
Returning from the long distance fieldtrips with lithium, a threetimes welded ODDBALL 1, surviving some serious chewimgtoylove from reapers and with... 5%(?) life after playing chewimgtoy for biters, bonesharks and whatever found me delicous till my medkits ran out, i turned home with a few diamonds, a bit of lithium, the powercellcharger blueprint and the powerrod. (Not really making sense without the thermalreactor but whatever...) and a few cyclops parts. I stumbled upon the shroomwoods and found even more cyclopsparts. Alot of cyclops parts... But.. Still missing one engine fragment after finding two in the auroras belly. (Maybe a bug? Or wanted?)
So... Lasertime. Btw, anyone noticed the energyfree flashlight aka lasercutter?^^ works well in dark places, if they are narrow.
Aaaand back to aurora, sniffing out every nook and cranny so far. Hey, i said i wanted plushies, and look what i found. A plushie! Ingame but better than nothing, eh?
Some pda updates, one or two new coordinates and a bit of stuff later im back home again.
The pressureupdate for the moth is working fine, but where to go now?
Aaand thats where it hits me. Where the fuck are the coordinates for the jellyshroomcaves?
Honestly last update we got send down there as first thing possible, this time i simply didnt get them.
Yes, as a player from the update before prawn, i know wher to find them, but im playing as never seen subnautica before, strictly exploring randomly and following given coordinates.
So that means: after all this playing, scavenging and snooping around i still miss the essential moonpoolblueprint and modatation blueprint. Didnt got coords for a wreck with it and no luck stumbling over one while getting from a to b.
So atm i have a 300M seamoth, a PRAWN Knight with a Drillywillyarm i cant build and a lot of oceanfloor to explore.
Ok. Moth is fast, PRAWN is not. But.. Its safer than the moth. So, what to do, what to do. right! Im waaaalking in the raaiiin... Uh... Well, lets just say the ocean is a big puddle of tears.
And thus, loading the PRAWN with the storage odule and pressureupdate i found, and the extended cargo of it with titanium, quartz and glass, i ventured out, building another tubecastle right infront of the shroomwood. PRAWN dont likes long ways home, PRAWN lazy..
With the long lasting and mostly pretty secure exo i found the one missing enginepart for the cyclops. Wohey, i got a sub!
Checking my storages back home, i find enough gold, lubricant and titaniumingots for the plasteeli gots, and the other two needed parts. But.. Surprise, teeth are missing. So back to the kelps, harassing some stalkers in my moth (hrhrhr).
Back home, with roundabout 15 teeth, its subtime.
And this brings me to the TL;DR:
With playing the game as a newb, only following coordinates and scooping around randomly, i found the moth, the prawn aaand the cyclops, build them, got the lasercutter, explored the whole aurora and some scary places.
I didnt find the modstation and the moonpool, but powercell/batterychargers, the vehiclemodstation and alot of other stuff.
No problem with the update so far.
I usually make my base in the safe shallows, so getting the table coral typically means "going outside and looking down". It's pretty abundant there. But yeah, if you built your base anywhere else it could be a pain.
I'd probably already be happier if we could get something like an "advanced computer chip" with a slightly different recipe to break up the repetition.
The Scanner room range upgrades could make it useful again for late game if they really extend massive range (1000m+) and should need hard to get recipes found at the Precursor bases.
Right now we can find the Scanner room fragments mid to late game when we can already find everything without scanning or have the Prawn and being able to drill.
That limit makes the scanner room perfect for early Safe Shallows and Blood Kelp together with a fast solar panel setup. A lot of targets in range and hidden through caves, but not too far apart. With only a solar panel and hatch you could relocate it quickly. And it was probably tested mainly in this environment.
My own tests later in open wide area or deeper environments showed the scanner room utterly failing in range and purpose. No easy power setup, the range much too short and the resources simply lying openly around: The Grand, Deep and Sparse reefs, Blood Kelp, Mushroom Forest, Jelly Shroom Cave, etc.
My late gameplay tests with a short range scanner room on the Safe Shallows and Kelp forest showed its uselessness due to the fact that I already could outswim stalkers with UG fins and plasteel tanks or simply walk around with the Prawn getting me everything the easy way. So once the modification station or Prawn gets available, the range limited scanner room ceases to be useful. It's a pain to realize that you find the scanner room artifacts much too late where the room is no longer needed.
But if the upgrades of the scanner room would be locked tech recipes to be found hard, but with new powerful ranges (1k+) and use, it could make the scanner room usefule for early AND late game play. We could find the scanner room immediately after game start, but the powerful upgrades only through precursor tech.
Hey, good on you!
I admit that I must be seeing something different from other players, since the predators in my file never got OVERLY aggressive. Well Sandsharks do chase but I always have my Seaglide on the ready and dart away.
And the Stalkers... Honestly? Stalkers I'm wary of, but I'm not afraid of them. They seem to have a shorter aggro range than the Sandsharks, and in my experience they don't chase as long as Sandsharks.
Honestly, the fish that earns all of my hate are the freaking BITERS. Little assholes come in and start swarming, smashing into my Seamoth or PRAWN. FUCK the biteyfish.
They should allow us to pick up the dead biters and give us a "fried biter sticks" fish recipe. Yummy and tasty, while you get your revenge on those bastards.
Hell, they should allow us to get meat out of all dead predators and allow recipes for them:
And then there was this Prawn standing in the volcano and pulling down the Reaper with his grappling hook until that bastard got cooked alive. Finally drilled and turned to Reaper sushi.