You can only get so far in Subnautica by sticking with your life pod. The life pod will do in the early game, but you’ll need something bigger once you start outstripping that pod’s limited storage. When you’ve got the necessary blueprints, you should start building a seabase where you can store many items, grow food, and utilize new and useful interior modules. Here are some Subnautica tips for building seabases that will assist your survival.
Read also: 8 Subnautica Tips for Survival
Maintain Your Seabase’s Hull Integrity
Subnautica provides little to no in-game explanation about seabase hull integrity. So, it shocks some players when they return to flooded seabases caused by hull breaches. Hull breaches occur when your seabase’s hull integrity value drops below zero. You’ll see the hull integrity value of your base briefly appear when you add or remove modules to or from it.
Most modules added will decrease your base’s hull integrity. Thus, it’s important to note what your base’s hull integrity is when adding new parts to it. To avoid hull breach flooding, you must add reinforcement, foundation, or bulkhead modules that increase its hull integrity value. Adding reinforcement modules is the best way to ensure your base doesn’t get flooded, as one of those increases hull integrity value by +7.
A hull reinforcement module
Add a Battery Recharger and Chair to Your Seabase
A battery recharger and chair are two of the best things you can add to a seabase. The battery recharger will enable you to recharge your depleted batteries, which will save you from fabricating new ones. A chair stops your food and water bars from depleting in Survival Mode when sat on, which is useful when you need to have a good look through your PDA. So, make sure you add both of those modules to your seabase.
A battery recharger
Keep an Eye on Your Seabase’s Power Level
Your seabase’s power level is another thing you need to keep an eye on. Adding new modules will increase your base’s energy consumption. If your base’s energy consumption greatly outstrips its generators, its power level will start dropping fast and the lights will eventually go off.
So, keep your base adequately powered as you expand it. If its power level starts dropping quite quickly after adding modules, you’ll need to counterbalance that by adding more solar panels or thermal plants. If you add a nuclear or bioreactor to your base, you will sometimes need to inject fresh reactor rods or plants to keep it generating enough energy.
A bioreactor
Don’t Build Seabases Too Deep
Building seabases in the deep sea is a bad idea for two reasons. Firstly, a depth multiplier applies to your seabase’s hull integrity. This means your base’s hull integrity decreases more at deeper depths. A maximum depth multiplier of x 3.94 applies to bases built 3,000 meters down.
Secondly, building seabases too deep reduces the effectiveness of solar panels as an energy source for your base. A solar panel 200 meters deep will generate far less energy than one on a seabase 50 meters down. Solar panels are useless at depths greater than 250 meters.
A seabase that isn’t too deep
So, don’t build your seabase much deeper than the 100-meter mark. Building a seabase in shallower water will make it easier to maintain hull integrity and a decent power supply with solar panels.
Construct a Moonpool
The Moonpool is something you should add to your seabase at some point. This module is like a multipurpose room with a docking and charging station for the Seamoth and Prawn Suit. A Moonpool also has lots of wall space to stick loads of interior modules. Plus, there’s enough floor space to add chairs, tables, and a Modification Station. One Moonpool with a few solar panels on top is enough to be a small seabase.
A Moonpool
Thoroughly Scan for Seabase Blueprints on Floating Island
You can’t build a decent seabase when you’re short on blueprint modules. Your radio messages will lead you to Floating Island, which includes the ruins of a Degasi base. There you can find many blueprints for seabase building. So, scan everywhere around the main base and observatories on Floating Island to obtain all the base blueprints there.
Build Your Seabase in a Large Room
Large Room is a relatively new seabase module added to Subnautica with a 2022 update. The Large Room is very big and all you need to establish a seabase. Thus, building your seabase in a large room is a good idea because it simplifies base building. It’s somewhat easier to build a base in one big room than stick small multipurpose rooms together with tubular compartments.
A Large Room seabase module
Get a Cyclops Seabase
The Cyclops is quite a big submarine you can construct later in the game after obtaining all its required blueprints. It has lots of wall space where you can stick many base modules. Plus, it’s also got enough floor space to fit a bed, chairs, and tables. Therefore, constructing a Cyclops will give you a secondary, mobile seabase to explore the ocean. So, get yourself a Cyclops if you want an additional seabase.
A Cyclops seabase
Activate the No-Cost Cheat
Finding all the materials required to add new base modules can get tedious sometimes. You can eliminate all resource costs for base modules by activating the no-cost cheat. To do so, press the Shift + Enter hotkey and input the nocost command within the developer console. Then you won’t need to collect resources to add new seabase modules.
Building seabases in Subnautica can be fun, and a good base to operate from is essential to completing the game. Now you can establish a better base by sticking to those Subnautica tips for building seabases.
