Subnautica 2 adaptations are genetic enhancements you take from the core of an Angel Comb (the later combs must first be cured of the Bloom), and unlike optional biomods they are required to progress. Only four of the six potential adaptations are obtainable in Early Access: Pressure Tolerance, Digestion, Heat Tolerance and Axum Vision. The term is often searched as "subnautica 2 adaptions", but adaptations is the in-game word.
This guide reflects Buddy System Hotfix 2 (October 6, 2026). Subnautica 2 is in Early Access, so comb locations, recipes and biomod balance can change, and the last two adaptations are not in the game yet. Locations, depths and X, Y coordinates are as listed on the official Subnautica 2 Wiki; nothing here was hands-on tested.
01
Subnautica 2 adaptations list
| Adaptation | What it does | Where and how you unlock it |
|---|---|---|
| Pressure Tolerance | Lets you survive deep-water pressure; until you have it you slowly take damage and cannot leave Sleep Bay 3 | Uninfected Angel Comb in Sleep Bay 3, in the room next to where you wake; no Bloom to clear |
| Digestion | Lets you eat alien lifeforms; without it, alien food, cooked or not, gives no food or water and costs health | Uninfected Angel Comb in the Shallows, right above Anita's blackbox, about 160 m from the Lifepod |
| Heat Tolerance | Raises the temperatures you can survive, opening the Graveyard; long stays next to vents can still hurt | Infected comb in a cave on the edge of the Shallows; clear two Bloom Nodes, then the comb's cankers, with a Sonic Resonator |
| Axum Vision | Reveals hidden Axum glyphs and lets you read the polarized screens in the Power Plant control rooms | Infected adult comb beneath the Karakorum Power Plant; clear three Bloom Nodes with a Feedback Resonator, then the comb's cankers |
| Two unknown slots | Not documented | Not in the game yet |
Heat Tolerance is the one with hard numbers. According to the wiki's Temperature page, the adaptation moves your PDA heat warning from 45°C to 105°C, the audio-visual effects from 65°C to 110°C and continuous damage from 75°C to 126°C. Above the damage line you lose 10 health every 3 seconds either way.
Axum Vision matters because the Axum, the sapient species native to Proteus, left glyphs and control screens that sit outside the human visual range. You need it to restart the Karakorum Power Plant; see the walkthrough for where that fits in the story.
02
Angel Comb and Bloom Node locations
These depths and coordinates come from the Bloom location table on the official wiki. The Axum Vision page lists slightly different node depths (190 m, 300 m and 300 m), so expect some variation; the map and biomes guide covers the surrounding biomes.
| Site | Adaptation | Depth | Coordinates |
|---|---|---|---|
| Angel Comb in Sleep Bay 3 | Pressure Tolerance | 580 m | -344728, 447584 |
| Angel Comb in the Shallows | Digestion | 10 m | -330748, 419041 |
| Angel Comb in a cave on the Shallows outskirts | Heat Tolerance | 60 m | -354080, 423806 |
| Bloom Node beneath the Spider Dome | Heat Tolerance | 80 m | -357719, 442231 |
| Bloom Node east-southeast of Hills Wreck 1 | Heat Tolerance | 25 m | -346111, 411597 |
| Angel Comb beneath the Karakorum Power Plant | Axum Vision | 430 m | -164507, 433034 |
| Bloom Node in the Overgrown Ruins caves | Axum Vision | 200 m | -221079, 428407 |
| Bloom Node on the Power Plant outskirts | Axum Vision | 315 m | -190122, 456711 |
| Bloom Node beneath the Stairway to Heaven wreck | Axum Vision | 410 m | -120254, 422841 |
For Heat Tolerance, the wiki places one node about 230 m west of the Lifepod under the Spider Dome and the other about 240 m north, next to a wreck on the Necrolei Hills border. For Axum Vision, the eastern node is reached through the Stairway to Heaven wreck: clear its Bloom Biofilm with a Sonic Resonator, swim down the elevator and break two cankers in the cave below.
03
How to clear the Bloom
An infected Angel Comb is called a Bloom Core, and the juvenile combs tied to it through the Titan Rockbore are Bloom Nodes. The core cannot be cured until every node is, so work outward first; following the infected Rockbore tendrils leads you between them, and a Scanner Station with the Bloom Infestation filter (from a screen in the Old Habitat) can show infestations within its 300 m range.
- Blast any Bloom Biofilm webs over cave or wreck entrances with a Sonic Resonator.
- Destroy every Bloom Canker on the node by hitting its glowing core with a Sonic Resonator. Armored cankers with purple cores close up when you approach, so shoot them from a distance with a Feedback Resonator, whose projectile has a 25 m effective range.
- Watch for Bloom Parasites, aggressive squid-like guards that bite hard; either resonator can kill them.
- When a node's last canker breaks, the PDA tells you and the water returns to its normal color.
- Back at the comb, its own cankers open only after the nodes are clean. Break them, and the comb opens to reveal the Gene Donor; interact with it to receive the adaptation.
The Sonic Resonator is a Fabricator recipe (2 Titanium Ingot, 2 Lead, 1 Wiring Kit, 1 Basic Battery) unlocked from two fragments, found at sites like the Old Habitat and the Spider Dome. The Feedback Resonator is a Modification Station upgrade: a Sonic Resonator plus 2 Enameled Glass, 2 Conduit Crystal and 2 Strontium, with fragments in the Therapy Room wreck and around the Karakorum Metal Farms. Enameled Glass is Glass plus Creature Enamel.
04
Subnautica 2 biomods: active and passive
Biomods are optional upgrades you equip at a Biolab. The Biolab's databank entry calls them "temporary and reversible", unlike adaptations. Active biomods fire when you trigger them; passive ones work automatically when their conditions are met.
| Biomod | Type | Effect (per the wiki) | How to unlock |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dash | Active | Burst of speed in any direction; 5-second cooldown | Unlocked by default |
| Pathfinder | Active | Glowing pheromone trail for about 30 seconds; no cooldown; not in the Tadpole | Unlocked by default |
| Chum Cloud | Active | Bait cloud that distracts predators; 20-second cooldown; ignored by the Shiver Leviathan | Bio scan Toxic Sponge and Houndgar |
| Electric Discharge | Active | 800-volt shock that makes nearby attackers back off without hurting them; 10-second cooldown | Bio scan Electric Geordie |
| Sonic Echo | Active | Sonar pulse that highlights nearby ore deposits; 10-second cooldown | Bio scan Collector Leviathan |
| Oxygen Control | Passive | While you stay still, oxygen drops 1 point every 3 seconds instead of every second | Unlocked by default |
| Sea Skimmer | Passive | Faster swimming near the seafloor or other surfaces, 5 m/s against a 3.5 m/s base | Unlocked by default |
| Bioluminescence | Passive | You glow in the dark | Bio scan Sandspear and Electric Geordie |
| Camouflage | Passive | Predators cannot detect you while you stay still; not in the Tadpole | Bio scan Bullethead |
| Dermal Garden | Passive | Grows an Algae Block worth +5 food every 3.5 minutes, up to +30 | Bio scan Needler Mango |
| Homing Sense | Passive | Detects nearby bases with electrical power | Bio scan Surge Jelly and Hammerhead |
| Slow Metabolism | Passive | Halves food drain, 1 point every 42 seconds instead of 21 | Bio scan Nibbler Mango |
| Threat Sense | Passive | Pings when a hostile creature is within 50 m | Bio scan Hoverthorn |
| Water Retention | Passive | Doubles water from drinking; Water gives +80 instead of +40 | Bio scan Coral Crab |
| Water Secretion | Passive | Fills a Filtered Water Packet with +5 water every 3.5 minutes, up to +30 | Bio scan Water Slug |
The wiki also lists several datamined biomods, such as Ferrokinesis and Oxygen Therapy, that are not implemented in the game.
05
Biolabs, the Bioscanner and passive slots
You start with one active and one passive slot. Extra passive slots unlock with your total number of bio scans, which a Biolab displays:
| Passive slot | Bio scans needed |
|---|---|
| 1 | 0 |
| 2 | 10 |
| 3 | 20 |
| 4 | 40 |
| 5 | 80 |
You can build a Biolab with the Habitat Builder (3 Titanium, 1 Copper Wire, 1 Mild Acid) after scanning one; the wiki lists them at the Welcome Center, Camp One, the Research Outpost and upside down in the EVA Prep wreck. The Bioscanner is a Modification Station upgrade (Scanner, 2 Enameled Glass, 3 Conduit Crystal) unlocked by scanning the one at the EVA Prep wreck entrance, -165682, 459403 @ 140m. First-time bio scans of the creatures in the table above unlock their biomods, and the wiki notes that Bloom Parasite, Bloom Biofilm and Bloom Canker scans become impossible once you clear every one from the map, so scan before you destroy.
The Adaptive Measures update (July 8, 2026) smoothed early biomod progression, added two Biolabs (one in the Coral Gardens, one in the Axum Ruins), raised the biomods you can unlock from Biolabs around the world from four to six, and added the scan-based passive slots; Creative now unlocks every biomod. The wiki's biomod table marks Dash, Pathfinder, Oxygen Control and Sea Skimmer as default, though its Biolab page names only Dash and Pathfinder, and which six count as Biolab unlocks is not documented.
06
Subnautica 2 Axum Bacterial Culture: what it is and where to find it
Axum Bacterial Culture is a raw material, a bred microbe colony used to kickstart Axum technology, and standard fabricators cannot make it. It grows as a clustered sphere inside a cage you must break first, in the glowing runoff pools of the Karakorum Metal Farms. The wiki says only five samples are known to spawn, and its databank entry calls the culture "precious, non-renewable".
| Coordinates and depth | Spot |
|---|---|
| -132444, 394970 @ 481m | Largest pool, west edge (high risk of glitching) |
| -130384, 394871 @ 481m | Largest pool, center |
| -126252, 395927 @ 480m | East pool, south side |
| -138333, 391552 @ 460m | Small puddle near the west wall |
| -142274, 387707 @ 438m | North-west side of the farm (high risk of glitching) |
Its documented use is the Metal Farm, built with the Habitat Builder from 1 Axum Ingot and 1 Axum Bacterial Culture after you scan the metal farm structures in the same biome. An Axum Ingot comes from the Processor (Titanium Ingot, Atacamite, Troilite). Since the Buddy System update (August 19, 2026) the culture itself is scannable. The wiki also documents a datamined, unimplemented item whose recipe uses two cultures; nothing official says it will ship. A Collector Leviathan patrols above the farms, but the wiki says it will not notice you deeper than 350 m, and all five spots are below that.
07
Biohacking Chambers: permanent upgrades
Biohacking Chambers are a type of Biobed that give a one-time permanent boost: three more inventory spaces or one extra quickslot. In multiplayer, each player can use each chamber once, and a Scanner Station with the Biohacking Chamber filter (found in the Lander Garage wreck) can locate them within 300 m. The wiki lists five inventory chambers (Anita's Garden, Quaker's Meetinghouse, Unauthorized NoA Modification, Sophie's Retreat and the Empty Hold wreck) and two quickslot chambers (Nahema's Lab and Salvage), all between 38 and 88 m deep. New to the game? Start with the beginner's guide.
08
Fixes from recent patches
- Early Access Hotfix 4 (July 14, 2026) fixed Angel Combs not opening for some players.
- Adaptive Measures made a lit Survival Flare get discarded instead of holstered when you use an Adaptation core.
- Buddy System fixed adaptations being obtainable without healing the Angel Comb, opened combs' cankers appearing closed after an update, and a co-op route past the Pressure Tolerance check. It also made the Feedback Resonator stun creatures instead of scaring them off.
- Buddy System Hotfix 2 fixed scanner display glitches with Bloom Biofilm.