Starting your underwater adventure in Subnautica can be daunting, but establishing a base early on can significantly enhance your gameplay. While not strictly mandatory, a well-placed base offers crucial advantages, acting as your underwater sanctuary. This guide will walk you through the essentials of base building in Subnautica, ensuring you get set up efficiently and effectively.
Why Build a Base Right Away?
A base in Subnautica serves multiple vital purposes:
- Expanded Storage: Initially, your inventory is limited. A base provides ample storage space to stash resources, crafting materials, and collected items, preventing you from constantly returning to the surface or your lifepod.
- Oxygen Refueling: Exploring the depths requires managing your oxygen levels. A base acts as a safe haven where you can replenish your oxygen supply, extending your underwater excursions.
- Safe Haven and Crafting Hub: The deeper you explore, the more dangerous the environment becomes. Your base provides a secure location to escape predators, craft essential tools and equipment, and plan your next dive.
While you might consider alternatives like floating storage, they are not as practical or sustainable in the long run. Let’s focus on building a functional and efficient first base.
Your First Essential Base: Compartment, Hatch, Solar Panel
When you first access the Habitat Builder, the PDA hints at using “Compartments.” These pipe-like structures are the foundation of your early bases. Initially, it might be unclear how to enter these compartments, but the key is to add a Hatch.
Here’s the simplest and most effective starter base blueprint:
- X-Compartment: This compartment provides a bit more interior space compared to the standard I-Compartment, giving you room to mount essential equipment on the walls.
- Hatch: This is your entryway and exit point. Attach it to the end of the X-Compartment to gain access to your base.
- Solar Panel: The most straightforward early power source. Attach it to the exterior of your compartment, and it will magically provide power to your base, enabling oxygen generation.
Image showing a simple Subnautica base with an X-Compartment, Hatch for entry, and a Solar Panel for power generation.
This minimal base setup is incredibly resource-efficient and provides all the basic functionalities you need at the beginning of Subnautica. Remember, anything you build in these early bases can be deconstructed and reclaimed later, so don’t hesitate to experiment and refine your designs as you progress.
Powering Your Base: The Simplicity of Solar Panels
Subnautica simplifies solar power. Unlike real-world physics, solar panels in the game don’t need to be directly facing the sun to generate power. As long as they are placed outside your base, they will produce energy. Aesthetically, you can orient them as you prefer.
Solar panels even function underwater, although their effectiveness might subtly decrease with depth. While sunlight penetration realistically diminishes significantly beyond 200 meters, in Subnautica, you can still utilize solar power effectively down to around 150 meters, and even deeper in some cases.
Keep in mind that solar power operates on a day/night cycle, generating power only during daylight hours. However, they also work in shaded environments, including caves, offering flexibility in base placement.
Oxygen and Power: Automatic Base Functions
Forget about complicated pumps and pipes for oxygen generation in your base. In Subnautica, any base module with a positive power supply automatically generates oxygen. This oxygen generation doesn’t drain your base’s power reserves, making it incredibly efficient.
The power system in Subnautica works on a battery charge model. Power generators charge an internal battery with a maximum capacity, and this charge is then used to power base functions and devices. This consistent power and oxygen supply system simplifies base management, allowing you to focus on exploration and progression.
Expanding Your Horizons: The Multi-Purpose Room
As you delve deeper into Subnautica’s storyline, following radio messages and exploring, you’ll unlock the blueprint for the Multi-Purpose Room. This module is the cornerstone of more elaborate base building.
Image showcasing the spacious interior of a Subnautica Multi-Purpose Room, ideal for crafting stations and customization.
Multi-Purpose Rooms offer significantly more interior space, allowing you to house fabricators, modification stations, storage units, and even furniture for added comfort and functionality. These rooms can be connected using Compartments, expanding your base network horizontally or vertically. Obtaining the Multi-Purpose Room blueprint is a significant step in enhancing your base building capabilities and overall gameplay.
Hint for Blueprint Location: Explore the Floating Island. Look towards fog banks on the horizon from your lifepod. The Floating Island is a source of several base building blueprints, including the invaluable Multi-Purpose Room.
Items to Avoid Initially: Floating Storage and Air Pumps
While Subnautica offers various base-building components, some are less practical, especially for beginners:
- Floating Storage: While seemingly convenient for early storage, floating storage containers cannot be recycled, making them a resource dead-end. A small base offers much better long-term storage solutions.
- Air Pumps and Pipes: These items are complex to set up and offer limited benefits. They are intended to pipe oxygen to deeper depths, but they are clunky, non-recyclable, and have depth limitations. A well-placed base is a far more efficient oxygen solution.
With a possible single exception of using a floating storage for fishing as a temporary measure, it’s generally recommended to skip these items and focus on building a proper base with compartments and hatches.
Furniture: Comfort and Utility
Don’t underestimate the value of furniture in your base. If you discover blueprints for chairs or beds (scan fragments to unlock), building them offers practical advantages.
- Sitting (Chairs): Sitting in a chair pauses your food and water depletion rates, useful for conserving resources when you’re spending time crafting or organizing your base.
- Sleeping (Beds): Beds allow you to skip the night cycle, advancing time forward. This can be helpful if you prefer daytime exploration or want to quickly progress to daylight hours for solar power generation.
By focusing on essential components and understanding the mechanics of base building in Subnautica, you can create efficient and functional underwater homes that enhance your exploration and survival experience. Start small, prioritize compartments, hatches, and solar panels, and expand strategically as you progress through the game.
