The Seamoth, Cyclops, and PRAWN are not at all necessary to finish the game: [UPDATED]
baronvonsatan
TX, USA Join Date: 2016-12-01 Member: 224415Members
TX, USA Join Date: 2016-12-01 Member: 224415Members
[Post 1.0 update: At the time I wrote this, "finishing" the game meant "deactivating the QEP" and the recipe for the rocket was not yet finalized. Suffice it to say that with the 1.0 you will *at least* have to build a Cyclops in order to build the Cyclops Shield Generator, because you can't finish the game without one of those. But now that one can get Kyanite without the use of a PRAWN drill arm or spawning it in, that may be the only vehicle necessary to complete the game. After having their values adjusted, Bulbo Trees are now an entirely adequate source of food as well as water (decay notwithstanding).
In any case I won't be uploading a run to Youtube any time soon; I waited too long and as of last Christmas GPU prices went from unreasonable to completely absurd (don't even get me started on that). Also, I'd like to give special thanks to the one person who read this admittedly long post when I made it, left a "Disagree," and didn't explain what they disagreed with. That feedback was invaluable.]
Building a vehicle beyond a Seaglide is 100% completely optional. There, I said it. (Here there be spoilers:)
Now, if you do things this way, you'll probably never even so much as hear a Reaper Leviathan, but you'll also miss many PDAs, wrecks, and huge chunks of the backstory. You'll likely miss the Mushroom Forests and Bulb Zones entirely. If you've never played the game before it would be a shame as well as a waste of money to ignore the tremendous amounts of work the devs have put into Subnautica (and to stunning effect, I might add).
The devs could prevent all this with a few tweaks, of course. For now, however, doing things this way is an option.
In any case I won't be uploading a run to Youtube any time soon; I waited too long and as of last Christmas GPU prices went from unreasonable to completely absurd (don't even get me started on that). Also, I'd like to give special thanks to the one person who read this admittedly long post when I made it, left a "Disagree," and didn't explain what they disagreed with. That feedback was invaluable.]
Building a vehicle beyond a Seaglide is 100% completely optional. There, I said it. (Here there be spoilers:)
The caveats, of course, are that, once 1.0 is finished, you have to be able to spawn in Kyanite, that the rocket require only two Ion Power Cells, and that the upcoming Ion Cube Matrix require only 5 Ion Crystals. But other than that? Nope.
Let me explain: I thought it would be a fun challenge to do a Seaglide-only run in Hardcore Mode. I'm testing out a Seaglide-only Survival Mode run, and you would not believe how non-stressful it is. I'm not doing it as a speedrun (you can do one in ~15 minutes with nothing more than a Seaglide) but following the major story points.
When I say "non-stressful," I mean I don't have to worry about a vehicle taking damage from anything. That sounds trivial, but until I experienced what it was like, I just assumed it wouldn't matter as much. Turns out the more advanced vehicles need recharging and periodic repairs, as well as time to hunt down fragments and databoxes, and not worrying about any of that means that you literally don't worry about any of that. The substantial investment in time and resources required to build a Cyclops and fully kit it out makes even coming close to losing one a giant pain in the butt (although you may have an interesting and dramatic story to tell later on). Warpers can zap you out of both your Seamoth and your PRAWN; if they do so in the vicinity of a Reaper Leviathan, though, you're in for at minimum an enormous metaphorical headache.
Frankly, you can outrun just about anything with a Seaglide (although you're much safer trapping the leviathan-class lifeforms in a stasis bubble first). Warpers can still be annoying, but only if you choose not to deal with them proactively. Now, while you do no longer have a portable source of oxygen generation, you do find the Modification Station early on, and once you've got 2 UHC O2 tanks and a Rebreather, the distance you can swim expands greatly. Once you've got a Thermoblade, you've also got cooked food on the fly. (Water's a different story, but I'll get to that.)
Inventory space is, of course, a problem, but only until you get to the Alien Thermal Plant. As long as you have a base on/near the Mountain Island, and a preliminary mini-base near said ATP, you can fill the former with things you'll need to expand the latter. Gathering resources near the surface is, of course, much easier than gathering them in even the Lost River, let alone deeper than that.
That said, you're going to need to build a few waystations to get from the Safe Shallows to the Alien Thermal Plant, and Beacons to help navigate toward them. I prefer sustainable, build-&-forget solutions to things like power management and sustenance, so these waystations are basically a Multipurpose Room with a battery charger, Fabricator, Medical Kit Fabricator, and Interior Growbed filled with Bulbo Trees, and powered by nothing more than a single Thermal Plant. But because you swim for kilometers without starving or becoming dehydrated, you can strategically build external growbeds filled with Brain Coral samples, and stop to refill your tank(s) there. (This will be particularly helpful if you'd prefer to swim past the Ghost Leviathan in the Lost River rather than kill it.)
Once you've built your ATP base, however, you will no longer need any of your waystations. You can make the ATP base a full-fledged base with WFMs and Containment Units if you so choose, and stock up on cured Reginalds and Large Filtered Water bottles for your trip to the Primary Containment Facility. You will take damage on the way there even with a Reinforced Dive Suit because it's just that hot, but the damage will be negligible. Just don't forget to take the appropriate keys.
Let me explain: I thought it would be a fun challenge to do a Seaglide-only run in Hardcore Mode. I'm testing out a Seaglide-only Survival Mode run, and you would not believe how non-stressful it is. I'm not doing it as a speedrun (you can do one in ~15 minutes with nothing more than a Seaglide) but following the major story points.
When I say "non-stressful," I mean I don't have to worry about a vehicle taking damage from anything. That sounds trivial, but until I experienced what it was like, I just assumed it wouldn't matter as much. Turns out the more advanced vehicles need recharging and periodic repairs, as well as time to hunt down fragments and databoxes, and not worrying about any of that means that you literally don't worry about any of that. The substantial investment in time and resources required to build a Cyclops and fully kit it out makes even coming close to losing one a giant pain in the butt (although you may have an interesting and dramatic story to tell later on). Warpers can zap you out of both your Seamoth and your PRAWN; if they do so in the vicinity of a Reaper Leviathan, though, you're in for at minimum an enormous metaphorical headache.
Frankly, you can outrun just about anything with a Seaglide (although you're much safer trapping the leviathan-class lifeforms in a stasis bubble first). Warpers can still be annoying, but only if you choose not to deal with them proactively. Now, while you do no longer have a portable source of oxygen generation, you do find the Modification Station early on, and once you've got 2 UHC O2 tanks and a Rebreather, the distance you can swim expands greatly. Once you've got a Thermoblade, you've also got cooked food on the fly. (Water's a different story, but I'll get to that.)
Inventory space is, of course, a problem, but only until you get to the Alien Thermal Plant. As long as you have a base on/near the Mountain Island, and a preliminary mini-base near said ATP, you can fill the former with things you'll need to expand the latter. Gathering resources near the surface is, of course, much easier than gathering them in even the Lost River, let alone deeper than that.
That said, you're going to need to build a few waystations to get from the Safe Shallows to the Alien Thermal Plant, and Beacons to help navigate toward them. I prefer sustainable, build-&-forget solutions to things like power management and sustenance, so these waystations are basically a Multipurpose Room with a battery charger, Fabricator, Medical Kit Fabricator, and Interior Growbed filled with Bulbo Trees, and powered by nothing more than a single Thermal Plant. But because you swim for kilometers without starving or becoming dehydrated, you can strategically build external growbeds filled with Brain Coral samples, and stop to refill your tank(s) there. (This will be particularly helpful if you'd prefer to swim past the Ghost Leviathan in the Lost River rather than kill it.)
Once you've built your ATP base, however, you will no longer need any of your waystations. You can make the ATP base a full-fledged base with WFMs and Containment Units if you so choose, and stock up on cured Reginalds and Large Filtered Water bottles for your trip to the Primary Containment Facility. You will take damage on the way there even with a Reinforced Dive Suit because it's just that hot, but the damage will be negligible. Just don't forget to take the appropriate keys.
Now, if you do things this way, you'll probably never even so much as hear a Reaper Leviathan, but you'll also miss many PDAs, wrecks, and huge chunks of the backstory. You'll likely miss the Mushroom Forests and Bulb Zones entirely. If you've never played the game before it would be a shame as well as a waste of money to ignore the tremendous amounts of work the devs have put into Subnautica (and to stunning effect, I might add).
The devs could prevent all this with a few tweaks, of course. For now, however, doing things this way is an option.
Comments
The player's stats are not finalized yet so enjoy doing that if it reaches 1.0 and if it does change then its your fault letting them know through this post lol
Second blue key? Oh, dangit. The last time I was in the PCF, I don't believe any artifacts beside purple were scannable. (I do a lot of testing of everything else.)
You can still spawn in Kyanite, though, or just spawn in a second blue key-- but that would feel much more like cheating than like playing the game.
Yeah, I know. I initially titled this, "This is going to be the stupidest post I have ever made," for that reason.
What do you think these tweaks might be?
Thank you for the compliment!
The first thing that comes to mind is making the rocket require far more Ion Crystals than can be found in all of the Precursor Caches and Alien Bases, so that you would have to get at least a Prawn Suit with a Drill Arm. Everything else would piss a lot of people off-- for instance:
- slowing down the Seaglide's top speed
- making the Seaglide much more power hungry (unless you're using Ion Batteries)
- making the Seaglide overheat from overuse, with a minimum cooldown period, and having it explode (and damage you) if you continue to use it while overheated
- having said overheating/cooldown depend on the ambient water temperature, which, without a vehicle, you could not reliably discern
- making the area between the ATP & PCF do way more high-temperature damage (which, to be fair, should already be the case)
- reverting the Modification Station's discovery to much later in the game than when you get the Lifepod 17 signal
- dramatically decrease the time to starvation/dehydration
As it is, the main reasons you would ever build a Seamoth and/or a Cyclops are because you are going to play the game as intended, because these are fairly significant achievements, and because your first time building them does involve a bit of a "wow" factor. Additionally, the importance of the extra inventory space cannot be overstated if you're going to play the game properly (as opposed to trying something that the devs probably didn't expect).
I'll say this, though-- I would gladly suffer through every one of those tweaks if I could just freaking kill Warpers. Hell, if I could merely disable them for an hour at a time, that'd be acceptable too.
Have you met my friend Mr. Propulsion Cannon, though?
(Yeah, there's a reason I stuck a battery charger in every outpost, and saved every battery I got from the Aurora.)
The Repulsion cannon is even worse. 4% per shot.