Join The Club
You've just splashed down in Subnautica 2 and your first order of business after finding the Habitat Builder is to begin constructing your undersea base. But where should you build it? There's mystery and danger in every direction, so you might need some help zeroing in on the best Subnautica 2 base locations.
Ideally, you'll want to be close to harvestable resources like titanium and quartz—you're gonna need plenty of both to build your base, after all—but also useful materials like copper, silver, and lead. Powering your base is also a concern, because solar power will only keep the lights and oxygen on during the day, so being close to a strong ocean current to generate electricity with a turbine is important.
Starter area base location 1: Under the lifepod
For your first base, I recommend doing what I and pretty much everyone else at PC Gamer did: build right under or next to your lifepod. While you're scrimping to stretch your meagre resources, the pod will serve as an extra room with storage and a fabricator, and since it's above the surface of the water, it'll supply you with endless oxygen. It's also got NoA, your AI, and a respawn point: why spend the resources to rebuild those immediately if you don't need to?
Plus, when you start building you'll only have solar power to draw from, which means your underwater base will be dark and without air as soon as night falls. You're gonna need to spend time inside your lifepod for a while, so you may as well stick close to it.
And, if you swim about 60 meters east of your pod, you'll find a strong current that goes right up to the ocean's surface, perfect for plunking down a couple hydro electric turbines so you can power your base at nighttime once you unlock that tech.
Starter area base location 2: Old Habitat
300 meters directly north of the lifepod, look for these interesting rock structures with a couple enormous jelly-things (BFJs) draped over them. You'll get a PDA notification of "Old Habitat" when you're close, and you'll see the remains of a crumbling base.
One warning: there are plenty of hostile fish interested in headbutting you patrolling this area, but descend into the caves directly under the rock structures and you'll find oodles of copper, silver and titanium deposits—and those jerk fish won't follow you down there.
You'll also find a small colonist's bunker hidden at the bottom of the cave containing a few goodies—the bunker makes a nice place to grab a quick lungful of oxygen while you're gathering resources down there. You'll find a strong natural current at the seafloor running between the two rock structures, perfect for powering your base around the clock.
Starter area base location 3: Cicada Wreck
400 meters directly northeast of the lifepod, look for a huge piece of wreckage. It's called the "Cicada Wreck (Lander Garage)" and when you get close you'll get a journal entry for it.
This isn't the most picturesque place to build a base: the water is murky and the wreck doesn't make for great scenery. But it's a primo spot for easy access to loads of resources. There's tons and tons of lead, more than I've seen anywhere else on the map, plus some sizable quartz and copper deposits and even a small amount of titanium, all scattered below and around the wreck. There's also a nice long current running right next to the wreck for your turbine power needs.
The hidden benefit of the Cicada Wreck is that it's also in the direction the game will eventually move you toward, northeast, so it's a handy spot and will save you some of the laborious back-and-forth you'll be doing as the story takes you deeper into the world.
Starter zone: what about south and west?
I wouldn't bother looking for a place to build in the south or west of the starter zone: Subnautica 2's early access map pretty much ends to the west after 300 meters. There's no brick wall or anything, but you'll cross a barrier, get an in-game warning that the game is in early access and the map isn't finished yet, and you'll see nothing past it but water and featureless rock.
Also, a giant thing may appear and try to eat you. Seems like a bad place to build.
Heat Caves: should you build there?
As you proceed northeast, you'll head into much warmer waters, and once you've figured out how to survive them you'll see a lot of thermal vents, which can eventually serve as yet another power source for your base. It may be tempting to build a new base around some of these vents, but honestly, I'd hold off building anything sizable near the heat caves. The story will pretty quickly send you even further east, past the heat, into a prime spot for a second base.
I won't spoil anything about what you'll find there—it's story related—but you'll know when to start building another base because the game will essentially tell you to do so. I haven't found any usable currents—there are some small currents but they won't spin a turbine—or any thermal vents in this new area yet, so you may want to consider unlocking bioreactors before you start building there so you can power your habitat at night.
That's my best advice for base locations so far, but I'll be back to update this list once I've made a bit more progress in the game. And if you stumble across and primo base locations in Subnautica 2, be sure to let me know in the comments.
