Last updated: 14 July 2026

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

Running out of a specific resource halfway through crafting is one of the most frustrating early-game experiences in Subnautica 2. The ocean is full of materials, but knowing which ones matter first — and exactly where to find them quickly — turns frantic searching into deliberate farming. This guide covers every key resource you'll need in the first few hours, where each one spawns, and how to use the Scanner Room to automate finding them.

01Titanium — Your Most-Used Material

Titanium is the backbone of almost every crafting recipe in the early game — tools, habitat modules, storage lockers, and vehicle components all require it. You will never have enough Titanium in the first two hours, so always be collecting it.

Where to find it:

• Limestone Outcrops — the pale, rounded rock formations that dot the seafloor of the Safe Shallows and Kelp Forest. Break them with your bare hands (no tool required). Each outcrop yields either Titanium, Copper, or Gold.
• Metal Salvage — large pieces of crash debris scattered around the impact zone. Each one gives 2 Titanium when picked up.
• Titanium Ore deposits — larger grey vein-like formations found in deeper biomes (below 80 metres). Each yields 2–4 Titanium.
• Scanning wrecks — some wreck fragments you can scan and break give 1–2 Titanium.

What you'll need it for: Habitat Builder, Scanner, Knife, Fins, first base modules, Seaglide chassis, O₂ Tanks, storage lockers. Prioritise Metal Salvage in the first minutes — it costs no oxygen to collect from the surface.

02Copper Ore — Power and Electronics

Copper is the second-most-needed resource in the early game. It is used to make Wiring Kits and Batteries — the two components required for almost every powered tool.

Where to find it:

• Limestone Outcrops — same locations as Titanium. Outcrops randomly yield either Titanium or Copper, so farm as many as you can find.
• Copper deposits — richer vein formations in the Kelp Forest and lower sections of the Safe Shallows (30–60 metres). These yield 2–3 Copper per node.
• Sandstone Outcrops — slightly deeper than Limestone (25–50 metres), the sandstone-coloured lumpy formations. These primarily yield Silver and Gold but occasionally Copper.
• Old Habitat area — two Copper nodes here previously overlapped, causing only one to be collectable. The overlap was corrected in update 1.1; both nodes are now individually harvestable.

What you'll need it for: Batteries (Copper + Acid Mushrooms), Wiring Kits (Copper × 2), Computer Chip (Wiring Kit + Gold + Table Coral), Scanner Room, Power Cell Charger. Carry a stack of at least 6–10 Copper before building your first base.

03Quartz — Glass and Scanner Upgrades

Quartz is converted into Glass at the Fabricator and is required for tanks, scanner components, and several base windows. It is less common than Titanium and Copper but concentrated in specific spots.

Where to find it:

• Safe Shallows — clear, prismatic crystal formations rising from the sandy bottom, especially around coral outcroppings. They catch the light and are easy to spot.
• Kelp Forest edge — near the transition zone between the shallows and the Kelp Forest, Quartz appears in small clusters on rock shelves.
• Caves — even the smallest caves in the Safe Shallows often have Quartz veins lining the walls; these are faster to collect than surface spots.
• Coral Dome (Coral Gardens) — a Quartz Crystal node on the broken Coral Dome was previously unharvestable due to a placement bug; this was corrected in update 1.1 and the node is now fully accessible.

What you'll need it for: Glass (Quartz × 2) → High Capacity O₂ Tank, windows, Alien Containment. Grab Quartz every time you see it — you never have too much early on.

04Silver Ore and Gold — Mid-Tier Electronics

Silver and Gold are needed for more advanced crafting — computer chips, advanced wiring kits, and vehicle components. They don't appear in Limestone Outcrops but have their own reliable spawn locations.

Silver:

• Sandstone Outcrops (25–50 metres) — the primary source. The sandstone formations are slightly darker and lumpier than Limestone. Farm the Kelp Forest floor and the Mushroom Forest approach for dense Sandstone clusters.
• Cave shelves — inside medium caves in the Safe Shallows, Silver veins appear on walls at 30–50 metres.
• Coral Gardens — Silver deposits are distributed throughout this mid-game biome. Update 1.1 improved Silver distribution here and added an in-game hint dialogue that triggers when you are near Silver-rich areas in Coral Gardens.

Gold:

• Limestone Outcrops — rare but possible as a drop alongside Titanium and Copper.
• Sandstone Outcrops — more reliable Gold source than Limestone.
• Shale Outcrops (60–100 metres) — dark angular formations in deeper biomes. These yield Diamond, Lithium, and Gold.

What you'll need them for: Advanced Wiring Kit (Silver + Wiring Kit) → used in most vehicle and scanner upgrades. Computer Chip (Gold + Wiring Kit + Table Coral) → Habitat Builder, Scanner, vehicle HUDs.

05Organic Materials — Creepvine, Acid Mushrooms, Table Coral

Not all materials are minerals. Three organic resources are critical for early crafting and are easy to miss on your first dive.

Creepvine: The tall, dark green kelp that fills the Kelp Forest biome. Use your Knife to harvest Creepvine Sample (for Fiber Mesh, used in every wetsuit and O₂ tank) and Creepvine Seed Cluster (the yellow bulbs at the base — needed for Lubricant, which is required for the Seaglide). Always carry your Knife when entering the Kelp Forest.

Acid Mushrooms: Pale balloon-shaped mushrooms found in the Safe Shallows and the darker rocky areas near cave entrances. They are used to craft Batteries (Copper × 2 + Acid Mushroom × 2). Without Batteries you cannot craft any powered tool — farm a stack of 8–10 Acid Mushrooms early.

Table Coral: Flat, patterned coral formations growing on rocky seafloor surfaces in the Safe Shallows. They look like a round wafer and cannot be picked up — use your Knife to take a Table Coral Sample. Needed for the Computer Chip (Habitat Builder, Scanner) and several advanced recipes.

• Tip: Table Coral regenerates slowly after harvesting from the same formation — mark a productive patch and return on resource runs.
• Creepvine Seed Clusters only appear on the large stem base of the plant, not the trailing vines. Look at the bottom of each plant stalk.

06Using the Scanner Room to Find Resources

Once you've built a Scanner Room (mid-early game, after your first base is established), resource hunting becomes dramatically more efficient. The Scanner Room detects all resources within a radius, marks them as yellow diamonds on your HUD, and lets you select which resource you want it to actively scan for.

• Build the Scanner Room near the biome you're currently mining — its range is fixed, so placement matters.
• Craft two Scanner Room Range Upgrades to expand its detection radius. These are cheap (Copper + Glass) and roughly triple the usable range.
• Use it to locate Sandstone Outcrops for Silver/Gold and Shale Outcrops for Lithium/Diamond — both are harder to spot by eye in darker biomes.
• The Scanner Room also detects nearby creatures, giving you early warning of predators in the scan zone.

Before the Scanner Room is available, the best manual search strategy is to swim at 15–20 metres depth in a slow arc rather than diving straight down — this keeps you in the main resource band of the Safe Shallows where Limestone and Sandstone are densest.