Subnautica Guide: 9 Tips to Survive Planet 4546B

Your First Hour in Lifepod 5: Air, Water, Food

Survival on Planet 4546B runs on three meters — oxygen, food and water — and oxygen is always the urgent one. You start with a small oxygen supply, so keep early dives short, surface often, and treat the warning at 30 seconds of air left as a hard turn-around alarm, not a suggestion.

Use the Fabricator in your lifepod right away. Catch Bladderfish and craft them into Filtered Water, cook Peepers and other edible fish for food, and gather Acid Mushrooms and Copper Ore to make your first Batteries. Craft Fins from Silicone Rubber as soon as you can — swimming faster means every dive covers more ground on the same breath.

• Craft the Scanner early and scan everything safe: fragments unlock blueprints, and creature scans tell you what is harmless before it gets close.
• Make a Survival Knife to harvest samples like Creepvine, which becomes Silicone Rubber and Lubricant for your first tools.
• Upgrade to a High Capacity O2 Tank as soon as the blueprint and materials allow — it is the single biggest early-game upgrade.

Resources Worth Grabbing on Every Dive

Almost everything you build starts with a handful of shallow-water materials. Learn where they live and no dive ever comes back empty.

Resource	Where You Find It	First Uses
Titanium	Metal Salvage and Limestone Outcrops in the Safe Shallows	Tools, Habitat Builder, your first base rooms
Copper Ore	Limestone Outcrops	Batteries and Copper Wire for electronics
Quartz	White crystals on the seabed, common at night	Glass for windows, enameled glass and storage
Acid Mushrooms	Purple mushrooms across the Safe Shallows	Batteries — grab four on your first swim
Creepvine Sample	Cut the tall kelp in the Creepvine Forest with a knife	Silicone Rubber, Fins and Lubricant
Silver Ore	Sandstone Outcrops in the Creepvine Forest and caves	Wiring Kits and the Habitat Builder itself

New to the dive entirely? Subnautica turns simple gathering runs into one of the most memorable survival stories in gaming — one deeper wreck at a time.

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Build a Base Before You Chase the Deep

Once you have the Habitat Builder, plant a small base in or near the Safe Shallows: a Multipurpose Room, a Fabricator, storage lockers and Solar Panels for power while you are still near the surface. A Scanner Room with range upgrades then turns resource hunting from guesswork into a map full of honest markers.

Grow your own safety net next. Indoor Growbeds with Marblemelons give you renewable food and water in one crop, a Moonpool lets you dock and upgrade your vehicles under cover, and a Water Filtration Machine ends the Bladderfish commute for good. Power deeper bases with a Bioreactor fed by plants, or a Thermal Plant near volcanic heat.

• Build with Hull Integrity in mind — foundations, reinforcements and bulkheads keep a deep base from springing leaks.
• Park a locker by the hatch for a dive kit: spare Battery, First Aid Kit, water and a flare.
• Drop a Beacon at every base and wreck you care about. The ocean all looks alike at 200 meters down.

Love the gather-build-survive loop? Our Minecraft first-night guide and Terraria beginner guide build the same habit on dry land.

Vehicles: Your Oxygen, Armor and Courage

The Seaglide comes first — a handheld scooter with a light and a topographic display that stretches every free dive. The Seamoth is the true game-changer: a one-person submersible with its own oxygen, storage upgrades and depth modules that protect it from crush depth as you push toward the Grand Reef and beyond.

Later, the Prawn Suit walks the seabed with drill and grappling arms for mining large resource deposits, and the Cyclops becomes a mobile base with its own fabricator, storage and silent-running mode. Respect every vehicle's crush depth — the hull warnings are honest, and an imploded Seamoth takes your stored loot down with it.

Playing on a Nintendo Switch in handheld mode or steering with an Xbox Wireless Controller on PC, map your ascend and descend controls somewhere comfortable — precise depth control is what keeps a curious diver out of a Leviathan's turning circle. Prefer your survival bases with four-legged workers instead of propellers? Our Palworld beginner guide builds a self-feeding base step by step.

Leviathan Safety: Listen First, Swim Second

The ocean's giants announce themselves. A Reaper Leviathan near the Aurora roars long before you see it — when you hear that roar, change course, kill your lights if you are in a vehicle at night, and put distance and terrain between you and the sound. You cannot out-fight a Reaper early, and you do not need to: everything it guards can wait for better gear.

• Crashfish beep and charge from their pods in Safe Shallows caves — swim away from the blast, never toward it.
• The Seamoth Perimeter Defense System discharges an electric pulse that persuades almost anything to let go.
• Warpers teleport and pull you out of vehicles — keep moving, heal fast, and never linger in their patrol water.
• Follow the radio messages to other lifepods and explore the Aurora only with a Radiation Suit, a Repair Tool and a Fire Extinguisher in hand.

Finished your rescue and hungry for colder water? Subnautica: Below Zero sends the same survival loop onto the ice. And for survival tension in a very different wreck, our Dead Space survival guide trades the open ocean for a haunted starship.

Your First-Week Planet 4546B Checklist

• Craft Fins, a Scanner, a Survival Knife and a High Capacity O2 Tank in your first sessions.
• Stock Titanium, Copper, Quartz and Silver on every dive — future you says thanks.
• Build a powered Safe Shallows base with storage, a Scanner Room and Marblemelon Growbeds.
• Assemble the Seaglide, then the Seamoth, and add depth modules before exploring deeper biomes.
• Follow every radio message, scan every fragment, and drop Beacons at wrecks and bases.
• Hear a Leviathan roar? Turn away, go quiet, and live to dive deeper tomorrow.

Which moment in the deep scared you most — your first Reaper roar, or the first time your oxygen warning sang at 200 meters down?

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