Subnautica is a fantastic game that has you building, scavenging, and exploring a mysterious oceanic world. There’s a lot to do as you begin crafting basic tools, use those tools to gather better resources, and then begin constructing your base to allow you to create the biggest vehicles in the game.
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Regardless of whether you wish to primarily explore or create there are a number of mods that are considered must-haves by the fan base. Whether they’re quality of life upgrades, new vehicles, or improving the aesthetics, here are the mods you should consider downloading to improve an already great open-world game.
Updated on September 10, 2021 by Ben Baker: More and more mods are being added to the fantastic world of Subnautica. These mods can make the game feel completely fresh for long-time veterans, make the early game a bit easier for beginners, or smooth out the rougher parts into something more polished.
It's becoming apparent that the more popular mods revolve around making the player’s life more convenient. This list has been updated to include some of these mods. Players can now keep track of which Blueprint they’re gathering resources for, upgrade the Cyclops to new heights, and even decorate their habitats as they see fit. If it’s been a while since you’ve played you may want to consider installing a few of these on your next playthrough.
15 Blueprint Tracker
The Blueprint Tracker mod by RandyKnapp is a game-changer. In the vanilla version of the game, you were expected to keep track of the resources you had. This could be tedious as the only way to check was through the Blueprint back at the fabricator.
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With Blueprint Tracker, you can now pin blueprints to your HUD. These pinned blueprints will now have a visual display showing how many resources you have and what’s you still need. You can pin a total of six blueprints making your gameplay much more efficient.
14 Cyclops Laser Cannon
The Cyclops Laser Cannon mod by Senna turns the Cyclops into a terrifying weapon of war. After analyzing the Alien Rifle the player now has access to the laser’s module. It requires four components to be able to craft:
- 2 Ion Cubes
- 2 Advanced Wiring Kits
- 2 Computer Chips
- 2 Prawn Torpedo Arms
It’ll take some effort to unlock and then install the Laser Cannon into the Cyclops making it balanced in-game. But once installed you’ll have access to a powerful weapon that can carve enemies to pieces. Assuming of course your Cyclops has enough juice in the reactor.
13 Cyclops Nuclear Reactor
The Cyclops Nuclear Reactor mod by FCStudios – PrimeSonic is a godsend if you have a lot of Cyclops-based mods. Many mods add upgrades and capabilities to the Cyclops that introduce a scarcity of power. It can be hard to decide whether to have a more efficient engine or a powerful laser when the reactor can only support one of them.
The Cyclops Nuclear Reactor taps into the raw efficiency of nuclear power to keep the Cyclops going. Players craft and feed Reactor Rods into the Nuclear Reactor to provide a tremendous amount of energy. Now you can use any number of modifications without worrying about the energy cost.
12 Defabricator
The Defabricator mod by PVD MrPurple6411 is such a simple but effective addition to the game you’ll wonder why it wasn’t part of vanilla. This handy device allows you to take various items you’ve constructed and recycle them back to their basic components.
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This is a fantastic way to recycle unused tools to craft something more valuable or when those annoying crafting miss clicks happen. You can even watch as the item is slowly deconstructed on an atomic scale.
11 Decorations
The Decorations mod by OSubMarin is less about practicality and function and more about aesthetics. Over time the large habitats you construct can start to feel empty and spartan. This mod looks to change that by giving you plenty of things to populate those spaces with.
The Decorations mod introduces 118 new items, a new fabricator that can craft 56 new seeds, and 36 new buildables. Posters, plants, rocks, bottles, and many more items can now be used to decorate your living space.
10 Map
With such a vast world to explore it can get very easy to become lost or to find a valuable cache of resources or Cyclops parts only to be unable to find it again later. The Map mod simply adds a map to your Beacon Manager Tab on your PDA that automatically records the areas you explore with icons identifying what you found.
It’s a simple mod that seems like it should already be present in a game that has spaceships, automated systems, and other advanced technology. Whether you’re building or exploring this is a must-have.
9 Easy Craft
There are a lot of things you’ll be crafting over the course of this game to better survive and prepare to build big projects. At times it can get really annoying to compile raw materials into basic items to then craft the actual objects you want.
To streamline this process Easy Craft can be set to automatically craft items via a blueprint and will gather the materials it needs from containers nearby. It will save you a lot of time and frees you up to do other things while it’s crafting.
8 AutosortLockers
Another mod that improves the automation of your base is the AutosortLockers mod. It allows you to build lockers of different colors and assign them to hold certain items. You then craft a Standing Autosort Receptacle that will take deposited items and disperse them out to the assigned lockers.
This saves you a tremendous amount of time manually visiting each container and depositing the items you found in your exploration. A process that would normally take a minute or two is now a matter of seconds.
7 Resource Monitor
This mod is highly recommended if you have the AutosortLockers mod installed, though it takes some tweaking to make it compatible. It allows you to build a Resource Monitor in your habitat that will keep track of all the items stored in containers in your base and Cyclops.
In addition to saving you from counting up the items dispersed across the entirety of your base, you can also withdraw those items using the monitor. If you find yourself backtracking to containers prior to a trip or simply miscalculating how much stuff you have, you want this mod.
6 Fish Overflow Distributor
In your habitat, you can create an alien containment item that functions like an aquarium. The Fish Overflow Distributor mod is a feature that will take any newly bred fish and automatically feed them to the Bioreactor to power your habitat automatically. The original fish will be left untouched to continue breeding.
With enough alien containments, you can automatically power your habitat without having to dedicate any time to gathering materials to feed the reactor. This little bit of automation can be a huge time saver and doesn’t feel out of line with the technology found in the game.
5 Improved Alien Containment
An alternative to the Fish Overflow Distributor is the Improved Alien Containment mod. This allows you to craft alien containments that can house electrical creatures like Ampeels which will have some of their energy siphoned off to power your base without harming them. With enough containments and enough creatures, you can power your base automatically without grinding them up in bioreactors.
To balance out this incredible power each fish will require specific plants to be in the containment before they can live and breed in them. It will take a bit of time to set up each containment, but once they’re up and running you’ll be glad you put in the time.
4 Hard Mode Shader
If you’re finding the game is too easy or wish there was more of a survival element then one mode you can install is the Hard Mode Shader. It essentially makes the game’s underwater areas much darker without compromising the effectiveness of your lights. They simply won't reach as far or as wide as before.
It’s a subtle change, but one that can make exploring underwater caverns and dark places much more intimidating. It’s an eerie feeling wondering what’s swimming alongside you in the shadows of the ocean with this mod installed.
3 White Lights
A good mod to have with or without the Hard Mode Shader is the White Lights mod. It redesigns the light projected by your Seaglide, SeaMoth, and PrawnSuit to be a bit brighter and more clear. It looks much more realistic and makes exploring the darker parts of the ocean much more manageable or can offset Hard Mode Shader just a bit.
The other cool perk with this mod is that by using its config files you can change the lights of each of the vehicles to whatever color you want. A red light PrawnSuit can actually look intimidating outside and makes exploring the ocean depths much more interesting.
2 Base Clocks
This simple mod enables you to install two types of clocks in your habitat. One clock can tell you what time it is in-game and the other can tell you what time it is in real life, many fans love this as they feel it helps them track their playtime without taking away from the immersion at all.
You can choose to have the clocks in digital or analog and they’re both well designed and fit so well into the vanilla game you’ll forget they’re part of a mod.
1 Nitrox – Multiplayer Mod
The last mod recommended for players regardless of your playstyle is the Nitrox – Multiplayer Mod. It’s still in the early parts of development, but it is open source and there are some methods you can use already to give yourself limited multiplayer functionality.
Most players have used it to show off their worlds to friends and a few have managed to obtain some basic co-op gameplay. Even in its early stages, it’s fun to go hunting for underwater dragons or show off your elaborate underwater base with your friends.