How To Gather Food And Water - Subnautica: Below Zero Guide - IGN

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New ChecklistAll ListsMy ChecklistsAllAll ListsMy ChecklistsHow creative can you get with your first free checklist?Create a free accountAll Interactive Maps and LocationsHow to Gather Food and WaterBy Abby Lee Hood, Miranda Sanchez, Jim McQ, +3 moreUpdated: Jun 17, 2021 8:33pm UTC

Welcome to IGN's How To Guide section of the Subnautica: Below Zero. This section will teach you easy ways to collect food and water in order to survive.

How to Gather Food and Water

Food and water can be collected in many ways and later, farmed. To learn more about farming resources in Exterior Grow Beds or Interior Grow Beds, visit the How to Farm Plants and Resources page.

This page covers a foraging style collection method require for survival. You can learn more about basic survival, including how to check your food and hydration levels, on the Tips and Tricks page.

Collecting Food

Nearly all of the small fish near your Drop Pod can be eaten. Collect Bladderfish, Hoop Fish, Boomerang Fish and Arctic Peeper by hand while swimming around the Drop Pod and in other areas. Return to the Drop Pod to use the Fabricator and turn them into cooked food.

You can eat fish raw, but it will dehydrate you. We recommend cooking them in the Fabricator, which increases both food and hydration levels. Whenever your calorie or water levels get too low, your PDA will warn you intake is recommended. If your food and hydration levels reach a critical point, your PDA will tell you to seek intake immediately.

Whether you're collecting fish for food or water, it's easier to build and deploy a Grav Trap, which will attract small fish items like outcroppings, making it much easier to harvest food.

You will also see speciality foods like Fevered Peppers as you explore various biomes. These food items will have unique properties—Fevered Pepper increases your body temperature, caloric intake and H20 levels.

Be careful though, as all cooked food and gathered food, like Bulleye Shrooms, decompose and rot quickly. These will harm you if consumed.

You can learn more about the various edible plants and usable corals, as well as edible fish, in the Important Flora and Fauna page.

Collecting Water

There are several ways to increase fluid levels in Subnautica. The easiest is by eating cooked fish, which will increase both calories and water level.

You can also:

• Use the Fabricator to turn Bladderfish into drinkable water.
• Combine a snowball gathered from land with a Purification Tablet.
• Collect water-rich food like Fevered Peppers or Bull Eye Shrooms.
• Collect Disinfected Water in cargo crates around the biomes.

And that's basically it! Water and food is easy to collect and important to stay on top of while playing Survival or Hardcore mode. In addition, you'll need to maintain your oxygen levels to survive.

Remember that you can store food, like cooked fish, in a storage container or locker for a short period of time.

Food goes bad very quickly, but water has no expiration date whether you found it or created it from a Bladderfish.

As you play, items like the High Capacity Oxygen Tank, Grav Trap and Thermal Survival Knife make foraging and food collection, as well as oxygenation, much easier. We recommend upgrading your equipment as often as possible to make game play easier.

Up Next: How to Craft Tools and Deployables

PreviousHow to Farm Plants and ResourcesNextHow to Craft Tools and Deployables

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Subnautica: Below ZeroUnknown Worlds EntertainmentInitial Release: May 13, 2021+2Learn moreGo to comments