Last updated: 10 November 2026

Subnautica 2 Best Early Resources — Where to Find What You Need

Titanium and Copper run out first in Subnautica 2: break ordinary Resource Nodes by hand in almost any biome, pick up loose Metal Salvage near wrecks for the Fabricator to turn into Titanium, and look for Copper on cave walls. Quartz clusters inside the Coral Domes of the Shallows, Silver sits in caves north of the Lifepod and near Anita's Black Box, and Gold only grows in the volcanic vent region to the east, which needs the Heat Tolerance adaptation.

01Subnautica 2's Current Status

Subnautica 2 entered Steam Early Access on May 14, 2026. Unknown Worlds has shipped two content updates since: Early Access 1.1 "Adaptive Measures" (July 8, 2026) and Early Access 1.2 "Buddy System" (August 19, 2026), which expanded co-op with proximity voice chat and player revives. Buddy System Hotfix 2 (October 6, 2026) fixed the Scanner Station not finding resources accurately.

The next content update is due in December 2026: Unknown Worlds' "Voyage to Early Access 2" devlogs promise new and returning creatures and a Frog chassis. Resource locations below are for the current 1.2 build.

02Titanium — Your Most-Used Material

Titanium is the most common raw material in the game and goes into a huge share of early crafting recipes. You will never have enough Titanium in the first two hours, so always be collecting it.

Where to find it:

• Small Resource Nodes — ordinary rock and mineral clusters scattered across nearly every biome. Break them with your bare hands or any tool.
• Large Resource Deposits — tougher formations that need the Sonic Resonator to break, yielding noticeably more Titanium per break than a small node. You won't have a Sonic Resonator in your first hour (it needs 2 Titanium Ingots, 2 Lead, 1 Basic Battery, and a Wiring Kit to craft), so these are more of a mid-game top-up.
• Metal Salvage — loose wreckage debris found around the Shallows and scattered near wrecks. Picking it up doesn't give you Titanium directly — carry it to a Fabricator and process it there, where 1 Metal Salvage converts into 4 Titanium.
• Loose individual Titanium pieces also turn up occasionally on the seabed and give Titanium when picked up by hand.

What you'll need it for: Titanium underpins a large share of early Habitat Builder modules and tool recipes — the Scanner, Flashlight, Survival Multitool, Habitat Builder and Standard Air Tank all need it. Prioritise Metal Salvage and ordinary Resource Nodes in your first minutes — neither requires a special tool.

03Copper — Wiring and Batteries

Copper is the second resource you'll be chasing constantly. It's the base ingredient for Copper Wire, which feeds into the Wiring Kit used by most powered tools and base modules.

Where to find it:

• Copper is mainly a cave resource — look on the walls, ceilings, and cliff faces of underwater cave systems rather than the open seafloor. Small nodes there can be picked up by hand; larger breakable formations can be smashed with any tool and give three or more Copper each.
• Early spots include the cave directly below the Lifepod and a Coral Dome cave roughly 30 metres east of it. More Copper turns up further out, roughly 300–400 metres north toward the Old Habitat area.
• Copper nodes respawn over time, so a known cave is worth revisiting rather than exploring further each time.

What you'll need it for: Copper Wire, the Wiring Kit (1 Silver + 1 Copper Wire — needed for most powered tools and the Scanner Station), and the Basic Battery (2 Copper + 1 Acidic Raion Pouch). Carry a healthy stack of Copper before building your first base.

04Quartz — Electronics and Base Components

Quartz feeds into several mid-tier electronics recipes, including the System Chip used by the Scanner Station and other equipment. It's concentrated in a few very reliable spots rather than spread evenly.

Where to find it:

• It's highly abundant in and around the Coral Domes in the Shallows — small nodes on the pearlescent interior walls and ceilings can be harvested by hand, with no tool needed.
• Larger Quartz deposits turn up in caves and trenches further out and need the Sonic Resonator.
• A Scanner Station, once built, can track nearby Quartz deposits within its scan radius.

What you'll need it for: the System Chip (1 Wiring Kit + 2 Quartz), which unlocks several important tools and the Scanner Station. Grab Quartz whenever you pass a Coral Dome — you'll need it for mid-game electronics sooner than you'd expect.

05Silver and Gold — Mid-Tier Electronics

Silver and Gold sit a tier above Titanium, Copper, and Quartz — you need them for the Wiring Kit chain and other electronics, but neither spawns as densely near the Lifepod.

Silver:

• Found inside caves rather than on the open seafloor. Small nodes can be picked up by hand; larger deposits need the Sonic Resonator.
• Early spots include a cave roughly 240 metres north-northeast of the Lifepod and a cave near a point of interest called Anita's Black Box. Larger deposits turn up further out, on the outskirts of the volcanic vent region to the east.

Gold:

• Found only in the volcanic vent region east of the Lifepod, where gold ore veins cover lava coral structures near a wreck site. You need the Heat Tolerance adaptation (unlocked through main story progression) to farm this area safely, since it's otherwise lethally hot.
• The Sonic Resonator is the practical way to harvest it there; a single farming run can turn up several dozen Gold.

What you'll need them for: Silver is a direct ingredient in the Wiring Kit. Gold's main early use is in higher-tier electronics (Gold Ingot, Advanced Wiring Kit) rather than your first-hour crafting — don't go out of your way for it, or into the volcanic vents without Heat Tolerance, until you've got the basics covered.

06Fiber and Acidic Raion Pouch — Key Non-Ore Materials

Two non-mineral materials are easy to overlook but block basic crafting if you run out.

Fiber: crafted from 2 Fibrous Pulp at the Fabricator; the recipe unlocks the first time you pick up Fibrous Pulp. Two Fiber plus 1 Strong Acid make Fiber Mesh, which goes into the Rebreather (2 Fiber Mesh + 1 System Chip) and Improved Fins.

Acidic Raion Pouch: a gelatinous pouch of acid gathered from Acid Raion plants. It is the second ingredient of the Basic Battery (2 Copper + 1 pouch) and of Mild Acid (2 pouches + 1 Copper). The Scanner, Flashlight, Habitat Builder and Sonic Resonator all need a Basic Battery, so pick pouches up whenever you pass them.

07Using the Scanner Station to Find Resources

Once you've built a Scanner Station (a base module, not the handheld Scanner tool), resource hunting gets a lot more efficient. It reveals resources, wrecks, and anomalies within a fixed radius and displays them as a holographic map inside the station.

• Crafting it requires 1 System Chip, 3 Titanium, and 1 Wiring Kit, placed through the Habitat Builder — realistically a mid-early rather than first-hour goal, since the System Chip itself needs Silver, Copper, and Quartz.
• Its scan radius is about 300 metres.
• You can select which resource type it actively highlights, and a detected signal disappears once you've harvested that node.

Before you have a Scanner Station, the most reliable manual approach is still to sweep a biome systematically — the Shallows first, since it's the most Copper- and Titanium-dense area near the Lifepod — rather than diving at random.