GAMING
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At the end of Session 04, we were stuck in Belly of the Beast, about 900 metres from Jenny, with loads of water and no food.
The plan for Session 05 was obvious. The long swim home.
We did not swim home.
We went down instead.
Somewhere between those two decisions, we ran out of oxygen, ran out of food, ran out of batteries and, in my case, ran out of pocket space.
Session 04 was mostly revision. Session 05 was the exam.
Session 05 started exactly where Session 04 stopped: inside BOTB, with the Collector Leviathan outside.
Before doing anything clever, we wanted to know one thing. If we went down the tunnel, would it come straight for us again?
So we went down the tunnel.
It is a long tunnel. Mr.Pendragon had forgotten quite how long. Somewhere along it, he declared it is so long you needed to bring a snack.
Then the Leviathan turned up, directly underneath us.
For a moment, I thought that was it. If it knew we were in there, we might have to take the whole tunnel away and start again somewhere it had never seen us.
Mr.Pendragon had a better question. Was it after us, or was it after the Tadpole?
At the end of Session 04, we had a theory with no way of proving it. The Collector Leviathan had ignored a whole tunnel with us in it and gone straight for our Tadpoles.
This time, we got to watch.
It came close. Its markings were not glowing purple, which Mr.Pendragon took to mean it was not in attack mode.
Then it turned.
And went straight for one of the Tadpoles DC lost previously.
So it is definitely the Tadpoles. My best guess is that it goes after the Tadpole first, and only realises we are there once it gets close. Bringing a Tadpole over to BOTB in Session 04 is probably what told it we had moved in.
Which is a slightly awkward thing to learn when the only ways home are a Tadpole or a 900-metre swim.
That left us two options.
We could swim all the way back to Jenny, build two more Tadpoles and drive them back over without being seen.
Or we could stay, make something that would let us breathe on the way down, and see how far into the canyon we could get without being killed.
We already own a Portable Oxygen Generator, courtesy of the clam that ate Mr.Pendragon in Session 03. The question was whether we could make another one out here as it is still back at Jenny.
After a short search, we found it in the build menu. It needs titanium and lithium. We had the lithium.
We went for the canyon.
Mr.Pendragon did point out that we were 160 metres down, so if anyone ran out of air, swimming up to the surface was not really an option. We agreed that we just had to remember oxygen.
You can probably see where this is going.
The Portable Oxygen Generator needs a battery. I queried if it neded one. Mr.Pendragon confirmed it did. He was right.
New batteries need those purple, brain-looking things, called Acidic Raion Pouches, and there were none anywhere near BOTB.
Mr.Pendragon's fix was simple. Take the battery out of a tool we did not need.
It was a really good idea. My scanner had a full battery, so the scanner went without.
If you are ever stuck without the materials for a battery, it is worth checking what you are already carrying. Something in your inventory probably has one it does not need in that moment.
We still needed some more titanium. Afterall, we kept using it up on the ridiculously long tunnel we were building, so this meant going outside to get some more first.
I found gold. I found what looked like a honeycomb wrapped around a piece of titanium, stuck to the side of a rock. The game told me it needed a sonic blast, so I gave it one, and the casing blew apart.
Then it went dark.
Night at 160 metres is properly dark. I could not see very well, so I headed back to the base.
We had taken the moonpool back out at the end of Session 04, so we needed a new way into the water.
We still had some quartz, which was enough for a basic moonpool. We also decided to add to the tunnel first, so we would be jumping in from a different spot to last time. The hope was that we would not die the moment we hit the water.
A basic moonpool needs a room to sit in, which cost a bit more. We had enough.
The Leviathan, meanwhile, was bumping around outside with our Tadpole.
We had to wait for daylight before going anywhere. My policy was simple: no lights on anything. If it caught us out there, it would never leave us alone.
While we waited, we looked out of the window.
We could see two Tadpoles.
Initially, I thought the one the Tadpole the Collector Leviathan had just been playing with was the one I lost to it. The other, further away, I thought was the one Mr.Pendragon lost at the red boundary wall in Session 04, when the Shiver Leviathan guarding that area came for him.
This was confusing, because I thought that one was somewhere behind us.
Mr.Pendragon had a theory. Perhaps it likes them. Perhaps it was trying to hoard them all up in one place.
I said, "I guess that is probably where it gets its name from" and Mr.Pendragon quipped, "did we just put that together by accident".
We hoped they keep it entertained.
Now, the error here is that both of those Tadpoles were mine. Lost to the Collector Leviathan. Mr.Pendragon's Tadpole was still behind us in the other direction, stuck in the out of bounds area. He lost that Tadpole twice and only recovered it once.
I am hoping we may recover the two I lost still.
As it started to get a bit lighter, Mr.Pendragon decided to just go in, letting me know that its easier to see under the water than it appears it would up top.
We went straight down.
He had gone down first with the Portable Oxygen Generator.
Down on a ledge off the canyon wall we found a big salt pile and an Acidic Raion Pouch, which, after how long salt took us to find, felt slightly unfair accompanied by the fact we thought we were so far from these materials without the help of our Tadpoles.
I tried to collect the Acidic Raion Pouches as we needed them for batteries, and hit the bit on top that fires out poison instead. This hit my health stat.
I then could not find Mr.Pendragon, because the game does not tell you where the other player is, other than a dot that is only visible if you are remotely looking in the correct direction.
He came over so I could find him and said oxygen was ready a little way off.
We decided to go down a bit deeper as I was sure I had noticed something in an earlier session when we first spotted the towering rock formations in this area.
Our oxygen at these depth's was going down really quickly.
Then, on the wall under a ledge, I found something stuck to the wall. It was Celestine which our scanner platform had picked up in Session 04.
We were now at around 290m down.
Mr.Pendragon came to find me. He had some oxygen for me to use.
Except he did not.
The generator had not made any.
Mr.Pendragon had 30 seconds of air left. I had none.
So we went up. Quickly.
On the way, the Leviathan came for us, chasing us all the way back up to the moonpool. As far as I could tell, I had zero oxygen the whole time.
We both made it back inside at exactly the same time, unscathed. I made a rather expressive sigh of relief.
So much for remembering oxygen. Below is a clip you can view on YouTube of the incident where not only did we once again run out of oxygen, but we almost got eaten after the chase back to base.
Back at the window, I spotted something: a big, loopy, thing. Mr.Pendragon said he didn't know but mentioned he spotted something earlier and jumped back in the moonool to show me.
My start was not ideal. I clicked the wrong button and used the dash perk which pushed me backwards, right where the Collector Leviathan could have spotted me.
We went for a proper look at what he had spotted earlier. I had forgotten to bring the Portable Oxygen Generator, so I went back for it quickly.
It turned out we did not need to go much deeper at all. What he spotted was not very far down. It was another loopy thing.
It looked like a portal. It was pulsating, and you could hear it making some kind of noise. Mr.Pendragon scanned it, and the game called it a Gateway Spire.
Mr.Pendragon then went to the generator for some air, and it told him there was not enough oxygen stored. He made a dash for the base.
There is a knack to it, it turns out. If you carry the generator and keep pressing, it will give you air. Just not very much of it.
By then Mr.Pendragon was going black, and I think the Leviathan had just spotted him.
When I got back I checked how much power the generator had left.
None. The battery was dead.
To be fair to Mr.Pendragon, he did remind us that the objective of this session was to make our way back to Jenny.
I was no longer sure we needed to.
His next question was whether we should just make BOTB a proper base. If we did, we would need to find the materials for new vehicles out here, and building Tadpoles here would mean a processor and the vehicle fabricator as well.
Mr.Pendragon also suggested an offshoot heading north, to get us out of the Leviathan's patrol between the spire and the base. This was a good idea.
I pointed out a large titanium outcrop on canyon wall out there. I asked whether he wanted to risk it. He did.
He got attacked by a little pink squid when he got near to the titanium. He raced back to the base.
I tld him to just blast it, but he said he didn't have any power in his Sonic Reasonator. He wouldn't have got the titanium even if he wasn't attacked.
I decided to jump in and get it, zapping the squid thing on my way past.
"High Fivesies" Mr.Pendragon exclaimed on my return.
By now, everything we owned was running out of power.
Mr.Pendragon's tools did not have enough battery left to harvest titanium. His solution was the same as before: take the battery out of his repair tool, because we were not repairing anything.
What we really needed was to make batteries, and something to charge them. Mr.Pendragon wished, out loud, that there was a search function in the blueprints.
A Basic Battery, it turns out, needs copper and one of those acid pouches. To recharge them, we needed a Battery Terminal, which needs titanium and a Copper Wire.
Copper was the problem. There was none around the base.
The copper was in a cave. This was the point where a Tadpole would have been useful, and we agreed we were not getting in there without one.
I went anyway.
I was hoping there would be an air bubble in there.
There was gold. Loads of it. How had we missed that before?
Mr.Pendragon said there were a couple of possible answers, and none of them made us look good.
The one bit of good news was food. Mr.Pendragon cooked, and it came out at two each. I put that down to the salt we found in Session 04.
Then the battery in my tool ran out, so I hid down low and swapped the battery round.
There were no bubbles in that tunnel. It was getting dark again, and it is not easy to find air when you cannot see.
"Oxygen," said Mr.Pendragon.
I did not know where the bubble was.
Then I saw one, and aimed for it.
I did not make it.
I watched the bubble drift past me, but I was already dead.
I nearly made it.
Mr.Pendragon offered to come and revive me.
If he could not reach me in time, I could reprint at BOTB. At least we had put the biobed there.
He was 100 metres away.
80 metres. I told him he was not going to make it in time.
60 metres. I told him he might.
30 metres.
He made it.
"Hey, thanks."
You can see how that unfolded in this short clip on YouTube.
Back on my feet, I found some lithium, and I thought I had enough copper for the Battery Terminal. Mr.Pendragon pointed out that it only needed one Copper Wire.
Then I checked my inventory. No copper.
My pockets had been full, so the copper I had just blown out of the rock had dropped onto the cave floor.
So I went back into the cave that had just killed me. The copper was on the floor where I had left it. We needed two. I came out with three.
Nothing stacks in this game, and apparently nothing waits for you to make room either.
By now I was starving as well, which meant we had managed all the problems in one session.
Oxygen. Starvation.
Mr.Pendragon predicted he would drown three feet from the base. He then wondered whether it technically counts as drowning if you just do not get enough oxygen.
Fortunately, there was food in the storage at BOTB. Mr.Pendragon pointed it out, and I found it.
While I was busy nearly dying, Mr.Pendragon found a notice saying we need a PDA to get into a room in the building next to ours. We have no idea where that PDA is.
With the copper finally in hand, I built the Battery Terminal. At one point my builder tool disappeared, which was weird. It seems you can throw them on the floor unintentionally.
We could now charge our batteries. Progress.
We also worked out a few things about the Portable Oxygen Generator. It does not make air very quickly. As far as I can tell, it uses the battery even when it is out of the water. And we are going to need a second one.
We have one spare battery, and it is empty. So we need more Acidic Raion Pouches.
Mr.Pendragon was still looking for the PDA when we called it a night.
A few things worth knowing if you are heading down there yourself.
The Collector Leviathan goes for Tadpoles, and seems to notice you once it is close to one. If you want it to leave your base alone, leave the Tadpole somewhere else.
No materials for a battery? Borrow one from a tool you are not using. My scanner did the job.
The Portable Oxygen Generator is slow and hungry. Check it has actually made some air before you rely on it, and to use it, carry it and keep pressing. Our battery did not last long.
Oxygen goes quickly at the bottom of the canyon, and at 270 metres the surface is not an option.
Watch your inventory. If your pockets are full, whatever you mine drops on the floor, and you might miss it.
For a session that was meant to be one long swim, Session 05 got a lot done.
We proved it is the Tadpoles the Collector Leviathan is after, built a Portable Oxygen Generator, extended the tunnel, added a moonpool, built a Battery Terminal, reached further down the canyon and found salt, Celestine, a Gateway Spire to investigate further and loads of gold and a locked room.
We also ran out of oxygen twice, ran out of food, ran out of batteries and needed Mr.Pendragon to swim 100 metres to revive me. And we are still about 900 metres from Jenny.
I'd call that a successful session. On balance.
You can watch the full session 05 video below.
Session 06 starts with a shopping list. More Acidic Raion Pouches for batteries, a second Portable Oxygen Generator and, somewhere nearby, hopefully a PDA that opens a locked room.
We also have to decide whether BOTB becomes home. If it does, that means a processor, a a vehicle fabricator and new Tadpoles.
Jenny is still about 900 metres away. The swim can wait.
Session 01 taught us OXYGEN.
Session 03 taught us FOOD.
Session 05 tested us on both, and then added a third word.
BATTERIES.
We go back to Jenny for two new Tadpoles, build a moonpool at BOTB Gateway, and explore a research outpost before revisiting the observatory. There are blueprints to scan, biomods to try, and a useful discovery: charging two vehicles leaves very little power for dinner.
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Session 06 rebuilds our tunnel to the previously discovered Gateway Spire. The game stole our titanium and throws DancingCoder into the path of the Collector Leviathan. We get lost in a hot cave & explore a new biome.
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Session 04 sends us out to build a base where we can watch the Collector Leviathan. We build it, name it Belly of the Beast, construct a long tunnel to try evade the Collector Leviathan but still lose all of our Tadpoles, and we end the night a very long swim from Jenny.
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Session 03 starts with Mr.Pendragon inside a giant clam and ends with a death by starvation. In between, we reach the Tadpole Pens, go down into the Graveyard Caves, fix Jenny's power, find a face in a rock and crash into our SEED logo for a second time.
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In Subnautica 2 Session 02, our room block idea from the previous session becomes something rather more ambitious: a giant floating SEED logo. Built beside our cliff-edge base, Jenny, the logo pays tribute to the game that inspired AnvilGaming. We also expand Jenny, add a viewing platform, move the moonpool, build two Tadpoles and attempt an underwater fly-by, with the usual amount of accidental crashing.
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In our first AnvilPlays session of Subnautica 2, we race through the early objectives, build our cliff edge base before reaching Camp One. There are resources to gather, alien creatures to investigate, a surprisingly effective face-chomping and several completely avoidable deaths caused by forgetting that oxygen is rather important underwater.
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