User blog:OKHeike/A true Noob guide to Subnautica

I'm a veteran player of Minecraft and Creativerse, and I've tried Unturned (without much luck, I die really quick), but not much else, so here is a guide from the perspective of someone who isn't an experienced player.

The game begins with a movie of sorts. When you get control, there is a fire in front of you and a fire extinguisher rolling on the floor. The mouse changes your POV (point of view, you use it to look around or select objects). When your little circle with a cross inside it (hereafter arbitrarily called the target by me) is on the Fire Extinguisher, a little hand will appear and you can pick it up by clicking the primary (usually left) mouse button.

Putting out the fire is a bit tricky (and time-consuming) but at this point there are no consequences for dying so don't worry too much, just get past it. If you get too close to the fire, you burn up. If you're too far away, the fire doesn't extinguish. Try taking one step to the right and one step forwards ( d  = right, w = forward), point the fire extinguisher at the panel (not at the base of the fire like you would in real life) and hold down the secondary (usually right) mouse button. Eventually the fire goes out.

Now you're floating in an alien ocean in a damaged escape pod. The game will inform you about your PDA and show you how to open your inventory (pretty empty at this point) with the TAB key. Under the display panel that tells you main power is off, you'll see a red rectangle. That's a storage container. Approach it and put your target on it until it changes to a hand and says 'open storage.' Click the primary mouse button to open it. The stuff on the right side is what's in the storage container, anything on the left (like the fire extinguisher) is in your inventory. In my experience, there are usually a couple of food bars, 1 or 2 bottles of water, a couple of flares, and possibly other random items in the storage. Right-click on the fire extinguisher to put it in the storage (you won't need it again for a long time and it frees up inventory space), and right-click on items in the storage that you want to move to your inventory.

You can, of course, eat one of the nutrition bars and drink water right away, but be frugal if you can - getting food and water is somewhat difficult. Now look to the left of the display panel and you'll see a white box with a red cross on it. Open it just like you opened the storage, and pick up the med kit (restores 50 health) inside. This "med kit fabricator" will give you a new med kit every 30 minutes. On the right side is your fabricator - you won't be able to do anything with it until you have some raw materials.

Now you can either climb the ladder (when you target the ladder you get the hand and text that says "climb ladder" or target and click on the orange hatch in the floor between the ladder and the display panel to exit the escape pod. You are now in an area affectionately called the "safe shallows" (because typically nothing here tries to kill you) and close to the surface of the water. Look down and press w to descend, and note that as you go under the surface the  O2 indicator on the bottom left of the screen starts to go down. That's how much O2 you have in seconds. Every time you surface, it automatically refills. If you run out of O2 you drown and re-spawn inside the escape pod with 100% health. You will gather raw materials from the ocean and return to the escape pod to fabricate food and materials. Note that if you die, anything that you have picked up or caught since the last time you were in the escape pod will disappear. That's why, when you re-enter the pod, it says "inventory secured." You can only enter the pod from the bottom; target the hatch and you'll get the hand and text that says "board escape pod, " primary mouse button to enter.

If you left the pod via the hatch, move out from under it. Look around a little and watch your oxygen; when it gets low press the space bar to surface, and you will see the oxygen bar fill up. On the seabed around you you should see glowing mushrooms, coral formations, sand, and some fish swimming around. One of the first things you need to do is catch some fish, then find some salt deposits, Take a minute or two to get comfortable with movement, because right now the fish are faster than you are.

So, you're hungry and thirsty. Go catch some fish! Catching fish is just like picking up the fire extinguisher, except the fish try to get away. The blue/purple fish with a huge eye (Peepers) and the ones that look sort of like a pink heart with a head (Airsacks) are edible, and the airsacks provide filtered water too. When your target is on a fish and you're close enough, the cursor will change to a hand and you can click the primary mouse button to "pick up" (catch) the fish. Now you'll need to pick up some salt deposits, which are found on the seabed. (Elsewhere on the wikia are pictures of all these items so you'll know what to look for). Once you have some edible fish and some salt, head back to the escape pod and use the fabricator to cook them. If you get lost, look around; at some point you'll see a flashing white symbol in the silhouette of the escape pod - head straight for it and it will guide you to the pod.

With hunger and thirst (temporarily) satisified, you'll need titanium and glass to craft extra oxygen tanks, and rubber to make a set of fins so you can swim a little faster. Look for metal salvage and quartz crystals on the seabed; metal salvage makes 4 titanium (your basic building/crafting material) in the fabricator, and 2 quartz make 1 glass. With 2 titanium and one glass you can fabricate an oxygen tank, which lets you stay down longer. You can craft additional oxygen tanks, but each one takes up 4 inventory slots after the first one.

Past the safe shallows you'll see deeper areas with talll green plants (creepvine). Dive down into a group of creepvine and you'll see glowing yellow oblongs - these are the "creepvine seed pods"  you need to make rubber. You'll need 4 pods and they each take up 4 inventory slots, so make sure your inventory is mostly empty before going hunting for seed pods. In the creepvine "forests" you'll run across your first predator, the stalker.

One stalker bite takes 30% of your health; there are several strategies you can use to survive them and collect your seed pods. One is to carry a peeper in your hand (assign it to one of the 1 - 5 quickslots and then select the appropriate slot by pressing the number) - the stalkers will snatch the peeper from your hand instead of biting you (most of the time). If you have additional peepers in your inventory, the one taken from your hand will automatically be replaced by another one. Another strategy is to carry metal salvage in your inventory, and when you see a stalker approaching, open your inventory and drop (secondary mouse button) the metal. Most of the time the stalker will go after the metal instead of you. A third strategy is to carry several first aid kits and use one when you are bitten to restore your health. Once you've collected 4 seed pods, you can craft silicone rubber (under basic materials) in the fabricator, and then use the rubber to fabricate swim fins. Two more creepvine pods and a titanium (one rubber and one titanium) will allow you to make a surival knife.

Now that you have a knife, fins, and an extra oxygen tank, you're ready to start looking for limestone and standstone outcrops in rocky areas (sandstone outcrops are found in deeper areas and in some caves). Break these open (3  hits with hands, one hit with knife) to get copper ore, lead, and titanium from the limestone outcrops, and  silver ore and gold from the sandstone outcrops. You'll need copper (and acid mushrooms) to make batteries and copper wire, and silver and gold for wiring kits and computer chips. The next thing you should probably try to make is a scanner, which lets you scan "fragments" (most look like square boxes) to get additional blueprints for items like the seaglide (faster movement and a light) and solar panels to power the base you'll build. You can use your knife to cut creepvine samples, which are edible and also used to craft fiber mesh. Fiber mesh and lead are used to make a protective radiation suit so that you can get (closer) to the Aurora wreck without dying.

Start exploring and good luck!