Just started this...now what?

Forgot about Subnautica for a while and saw the other one on sale so this reminded me to try this out. I fired it up and....what the hell am I supposed to do? Lol. There doesn't seem to be any objective or any tutorial telling you where to start. I can barely stay underwater before running out of air. The PDA doesn't seem real helpful or am I just completely missing a mechanic somewhere?

It does start out pretty open and directionless, but direction will emerge. Don’t want to be too specific because that’s a pretty great part of the game. You want to be exploring, collecting and making things with your fabricator to start. The “Personal” menu is a good place to aim for, that will give you upgrades and devices to help you explore and interact with the world. Equipment>Standard O2 Tank will give you more oxygen to explore further. Don’t want to mislead though, it will always be about exploring and getting to places you thought you couldn’t before, not so much a narrative focus or direct goals.

@raynorshine: Cool, thanks for the direction and not spoiling. Do I need to worry about the crashed ship exploding and ending the game or something? It keeps warning me and everything is starting to smoke around escape pod too.

Subnautica is one of my favorite games ever so of course I'm going to sit here and tell you that it's absolutely worth it.

It's also not a game that holds your hand or gives you waypoints or explicit directions. I mean, it does those things occasionally, but for the most part you need to figure out where to go. You have three primary goals right now

1. In your PDA, there's a tab that will show you a few recipes. Look for the ingredients for those recipes. The first thing you should be building is a Scanner, use it to scan everything. You can also build a larger oxygen tank and faster swimming fins right off the bat. (EDIT: Not a scanner room, just in case you find the plans for those. The handheld scanner).
2. See if you can make it to the crashed lifepods that your PDA keeps giving you directions to. These won't pop up until you repair the radio that's in the lifepod. You cannot make it to all of these at the beginning of the game, but most of the ones you can't make it to aren't revealed until much later anyway.
3. Your first major goal is to board and explore the wreckage of the Aurora, the spaceship you came in on. You can't do that right now and won't be able to for quite a while, but if you need to know what you're working towards - that's the first thing.

At some point you will find the plans for a vehicle called a Seamoth and you won't have to worry about surfacing much anymore because you'll have a vehicle that you can return to instead, plus you get larger and larger oxygen tanks as time goes on. There are two other vehicles as the game goes on, both of which serve very different purposes.

Subnautica, at its core, is an exploration and crafting game - the entire game revolves around finding new resources, items, recipes, locations, and story bits and pieces to put together. It's an amazing experience, as far as I'm concerned, but not every game is for everyone.

@justin258: Thanks for your help. Ok I wasn't sure if I was supposed to be going to the ship right away or not. I'm paranoid about swimming too far from escape pod but I guess that's what I'm supposed to do. Also everything is smoking more now, which I also assume is supposed to happen?

Just an update on this but I've played this a few hours and this game is effing brutal. Not sure how much longer I'm going to bang my head against this. I've crafted the standard tank and knife but I can't find enough of anything to progress on top of dying over and over from oxygen deprivation. Might just switch to creative mode and disable all of that as long as I can see story through in that mode.

For crafting, just use a wiki so you know what to look for. For progress, once you craft a swimming aid, you can get to several spots, not just the ship. For difficulty, most things can and will eat you, and you will never really be able to fight back, so just know it’s more about avoidance than confrontation.

If you don’t like rock and stick games, you might just not like it. However, the sequel is a bit more directed, a hell of a lot less scary, and with a faster progression.

If you do continue, be ready to have several nightmares realized, especially if don’t like creepy crawlies.

You can craft an air bladder. When you're running out of air, switch to it and use it to launch yourself all the way to the surface. Make sure it refills with air while you're surfaced. This, obviously, does not work when you're deeper.

For now, worry mostly about scanning new objects in the safe shallows and making new tools. Pretty soon you should get a hold of something called a Seaglide, which will allow you to swim much much faster.

What, thus far, have you crafted?

I played this game with a guide after awhile and used the console command to make resources as I just really enjoyed the look and feel of the game but normally hate crafting/survival games. So, you should ask yourself what your tolerance for this stuff is. The early parts of the game are pretty easy, from finding materials to crafting the better upgrades and building a little base. After awhile you will be tasked with much further exploration in order to find the materials you ultimately need to get to the endgame. This will be a major chore if you're not into that kind of stuff. I still had a fantastic experience but you may not prefer expediting the whole process of getting through it. If you're willing to go the distance I do believe the game is good enough at pointing you in the right direction while leaving you plenty of room to explore, which you really do need to do to make progress, along with scouring for materials, which is something I don't enjoy, personally. An old roommate of mine was initially enamored with this game for several hours until he realized what the game was truly asking of him. Hope this helps you as someone who had their own struggles with this game.

@justin258: I've crafted the knife, standard o2 tank, fins and drinking water. I wish this game was more like No Man's Sky, every resource in that game shows the material that it breaks down in to but this game does not do that so I do not know what I need to pick up. I cannot scan anything because I can't find the materials to build the scanner. Where do I find a battery? Lol

@spacemanspiff00: Not finding the early parts easy here. I've caught all the bladderfish around the escape pod but they do not seem to be reappearing. Does this mean this area has been fished permanently and I need to go elsewhere to find water because I've been now dying over and over again from lack of water.

@superslidetail: You can purify water with bleach, which you can make from harvested coral which is infinitely abundant, if I recall correctly (it's been some years.) It's a much better source of water than the bladder fish. And I do believe the fist repopulate over time, but if they have been your only source of water, then it may be some time before you notice more in the shallows because it's rather gradual, I think.

Also, I'm gonna be frank. There is a big chance that if you don't enjoy this by now, you maybe ain't gonna. I really do think the sequel Below Zero is much better for an onboarding for the series.

If you enjoy No Man's Sky this should be plain sailing, i found that game impenetrable.

I will say that my first time playing I either missed something to tell me where to find it or what not, but Cave Sulfur to make a repair tool was eluding me until I looked it up. You can find it in the little pods the "explody" crashfish come out of. If you haven't made it already, using the repair tool to fix the radio in your pod will let you start getting various messages that can help guide you to places of interest to explore.

Batteries SHOULD be something you have the recipe at the start under Resources>Electronics. If not, you probably have to pick up some components to make them acid mushrooms & copper ore.

And yeah, scanning for vehicle parts also helps expand your ability to explore and get to the next tiers of resources.

Ok making some progress with everyone's help. Crafted the air bladder and scanner tool finally. Still having trouble finding cave sulfur and other mineral stuff(I've seen them but can't remember where) but at least I finally feel like I'm moving in a direction.

Cave sulphur is in the nests that the exploding fish come out of.

You mean like this?

@justin258: haha yes, I did finally find that. Crafted the bigger O2 tank, repair tool and seaglide so I think I'm in business now.