Subnautica 2 Walkthrough: Early Access Story in Order

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Subnautica 2 quests in order

Depths and coordinates are as listed on the official wiki.

If you lose the thread, check your PDA: the Signals tab holds story markers, the Logs tab replays voice messages, and NoA's Survival Guide suggests reviewing your databank and logs and consulting NoA.

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Steps 1 and 2: Sleep Bay 3 and the Welcome Center

You wake in Sleep Bay 3, about 580 m down. NoA opens the adaptation chamber, where touching an Angel Comb's core grants Pressure Tolerance; you can't leave without it. The Lifepod then carries you up to make a distress call and splashes down in the Shallows. The beginners guide covers this first setup in detail.

At the Welcome Center, about 75 m southeast of the Lifepod, a Basic Battery in the power terminal boots the NoA node. It plays base-building tips and a welcome message from Sophie Boucher, the colony surgeon, and Nahema Nakota, its ecologist, that tells you the Habitat is due north.

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Steps 3 to 5: follow NoA's blackbox signals

As you play, NoA activates blackbox signals one at a time. Anita's leads to the uninfected Angel Comb in the Shallows that grants Digestion, with her blackbox beneath it at 20 m. Chap's leads to Quaker's Meetinghouse, a bunker in the Dolerite Spires about 220 m southeast of the Lifepod. Quaker's leads to the Old Habitat, about 400 m north of the Lifepod on the edge of the Plateaus. Camp One, 270 m north-northeast of the Lifepod, is another early story signal.

The Old Habitat housed about 25 pioneers until a riot and explosion destroyed its Biobeds. Its NoA node activates Dr. Wu's blackbox in the viral lab and asks you to salvage blueprints, especially the Scanner Station. Scan the Sonic Resonators here and find Ganzo's log saying the survivors fled to the Tadpole Pens.

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Steps 6 and 7: Heat Tolerance and the Tadpole Pens

You need Heat Tolerance to approach the Tadpole Pens on the edge of the hot Graveyard. Craft a Sonic Resonator (2 Titanium Ingots, 2 Lead, 1 Wiring Kit, 1 Basic Battery) and destroy the Bloom Cankers on two Bloom Nodes, one beneath the Spider Dome at 80 m and one east-southeast of Hills Wreck 1 at 25 m. Then clear the cankers around the host Angel Comb in its cave and touch it. The adaptations guide covers all four Adaptations.

The Pens, a Tadpole base 675 m east of the Lifepod, hold a note from Sophie explaining why she locked the rest of the base, and the corridor stays shut until you have the Kurul Level Access Key. Ganzo's "Waypoint 2" log in the entry room says his group went southwest into the hot caves, where Zip died carrying a key to this lock.

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Step 8: how to get to Zip's blackbox in the Graveyard caves

If you're wondering how to get to the black box in Subnautica 2 that opens the Tadpole Pens, this is it. The Subnautica 2 Zip blackbox lies at the very bottom of the Graveyard caves, and picking it up adds the Kurul Level Access Key to your databank rather than your inventory. That key is the Tadpole Pens "code" people search for, and you don't type anything in; see the codes page.

1. Enter at the Tailings Village, an abandoned Axum Tailings settlement built around the cave mouth. An oversized Marrowbreach stalks the water above it, and Ganzo's "Waypoint 3" log sits on its north edge.
2. Head down to the Hot Cave Basecamp at 210 m. Its NoA node and logs explain what happened to Ganzo's group, and two Oxygen Tunics grow outside.
3. Continue past the cluster of pioneer blackboxes between roughly 220 and 260 m. Zip's "We can live here!" log sits above the entrance to the deepest section at 256 m.
4. Zip's blackbox is at the bottom, at -303399, 449728 @ 305m on the official wiki.

The caves average about 100 °C and vents reach nearly 200 °C. With Heat Tolerance you only take damage from about 126 °C instead of 75 °C, so keep away from vents. Below 200 m your oxygen drains at its fastest unless you wear a Rebreather, so bring your largest air tank.

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Step 9: open the Tadpole Pens and meet Sophie's ghost

Back at the Pens, the scanner in the corridor left of the main entrance now lets you through. Behind it are a Repair Tool fragment, an Axum supply closet with Sophie's log about the protected zone, and an observation deck where the NoA node sustains Sophie's ghost in a Biobed. Boot the terminal to talk to her; depending on your answers, she blames the World Tree for the Masefield syndrome, describes alien ruins to the east called Karakorum, and updates your objective: "To end Masefield, we have to destroy the tree." Build your Tadpole now; see the Tadpole guide.

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Steps 10 and 11: Karakorum and Axum Vision

Cross the Intermediary Basin, a deep trench patrolled by a Collector Leviathan, to the Overgrown Ruins. The Research Outpost has a dry room with a working Fabricator and Biobed, a Modification Station to scan, and a NoA node with three bearings to investigate: 165, 120 and 105 degrees. The nearby Axum Observatory stays sealed for now, and scanning the Rosetta Stone lets you translate Axum glyphs. Then gather Karakorum's tools:

• Tadpole Depth Module Mk. 1, which raises crush depth from 250 to 450 m, the best depth upgrade usable in Survival right now: its Recipe Data Card lies beside Ruby's wrecked Tadpole in the Needler Nest at 295 m; craft it at the Modification Station.
• Bioscanner: scan it in the EVA Prep wreck south of the power plant (Repair Tool needed).
• Feedback Resonator: two fragments, found in the Therapy Room wreck (Repair Tool needed) and around the Karakorum Metal Farms.

For Axum Vision, use the Feedback Resonator on the armored Bloom Cankers at three Bloom Nodes: in the Overgrown Ruins caves (200 m), on the power plant's outskirts (315 m) and beneath the Stairway to Heaven wreck (410 m). The cankers at the adult Angel Comb under the power plant then open; destroy them and take Axum Vision. Anita's second blackbox sits on a ledge overlooking this comb.

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Steps 12 and 13: restart the power plant and enter the Observatory

Bioscan the damaged Power Plant Turbine (the normal Scanner can't), then rebuild it with the Habitat Builder using 10 Titanium Ingots, 10 Strontium and 10 Axum Ingots. By the wiki's Processor recipes, that totals 20 Titanium Ingots, 20 Celestine, 10 Atacamite and 10 Troilite, the last two listed in the Karakorum Metal Farms.

With Axum Vision you can read the control screens. Use the Lower Control Room (400 m) to restart the Heat Pipe, then the Upper Control Room to restart the turbine and route power to the Observatory, where the antechamber's door device now works. Inside, an Orrery of the Eido-Thea system unfolds and the holographic display upstairs plays the message the Axum left for the Architects. Afterwards, speak with NoA for the "Distance from Earth" entry, which rules out rescue by a follow-up mission.

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What to do after the Observatory

Once you've seen the Observatory, round out the Subnautica 2 story progression by collecting the remaining logs: Sophie's "In pursuit of Nahema" just north of the Rosetta Stone (195 m), Nahema's "Why I did it" in a cave beneath the Observatory (170 m), Ganzo and Twinkle's "Exposure" in a silver mine between the two (224 m), and Zip's second blackbox in the Karakorum Metal Farms (about 470 m). The map and biomes guide covers the surrounding areas.

The World Tree, about 2,400 m north-northwest of the Lifepod, lies beyond the Early Access Barrier. Past that orange wall you can't build, and in Survival a Shiver Leviathan hunts you until you return. Xanadu, the Axum crypt beneath the tree, isn't in the game yet. Unknown Worlds' Early Access roadmap says the next big content drop will bring the next chapter of the story, and the October 15, 2026 dev vlog began the road to Early Access 2 without a release date.