How to build rooms in Subnautica 2

Subnautica 2 rooms - Base entrance — (Image credit: Unknown Worlds)

Wondering why your first base in Subnautica 2 is all just corridors? Before you can build rooms in this submersive survival crafter, you'll need to unlock the room recipe, which can be a surprisingly big limitation early on. You're going to need space to fit your facilities, after all, not to mention anything larger like a Tadpole moonpool if you want a vehicle.

The 'Room' structure is surprisingly versatile, though. You can create bigger rooms by placing them next to each other, and even shave off little chunks to get the perfect size, assuming you've unlocked the Habitat Builder, that is.

How to unlock rooms in Subnautica 2

As far as I've found, there are two ways to unlock the basic 'Room' structure blueprint:

Scanning a Processor to unlock its blueprint
Acquiring the 'Room recipe data card'

Thankfully, there's a place you can do both, and even grab the High Capacity Air Tank recipe at the same time. This location is slightly deeper down, so I'd recommend crafting the Standard Air Tank, acquiring some Air Bladders, and maybe even crafting the Wavemaker so you can move faster down there.

As shown in the video above:

Go southwest from the Lifepod over the edge of the cliff and follow the right side crater wall until you pass some colony wreckage hanging over the edge
Straight ahead and below you, you'll see a colony ruin you swim down to and go inside
The 'Room recipe data card' is in the backroom, along with the Processor, which is just to your left as you enter

This location is a little deep, so it might be tricky if you don't have adequate O2. You could try scanning a Processor instead, in which case, there's one in the Old Habitat about 350 meters to the north of the Life Pod. NOA will actually send you here if you keep tracking down the black boxes for him, so it might be worth waiting until then.

There are other rooms you can unlock such as the very pretty "Half round room" which has a panoramic window on one site, so be sure to keep an eye out for recipe data cards when exploring colony ruins.

Sean's first PC games were Full Throttle and Total Annihilation and his taste has stayed much the same since. When not scouring games for secrets or bashing his head against puzzles, you'll find him revisiting old Total War campaigns, agonizing over his Destiny 2 fit, or still trying to finish the Horus Heresy. Sean has also written for EDGE, Eurogamer, PCGamesN, Wireframe, EGMNOW, and Inverse.