The Subnautica Iceberg Explained

Original iceberg by u/ImmortalGodWizard:

Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction
01:02 Sky Above Iceberg
03:15 Iceberg Surface
05:57 Shallow Water
08:21 Iceberg Middle
11:28 Lower Iceberg
14:55 Iceberg Bottom
17:28 Upper Abyss
20:19 Lower Abyss

Today I'll be taking a look at the iceberg of Subnautica theories and conspiracies. We'll be going down the list with me explaining every entry, all the way from the surface into the deep dark abyss below. Ready for the deep dive? Well then put your tinfoil hat on and let's go!

Thank you for watching, come back again!

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[TheLastBacon]

Shoutout to our epic discord community :)
If you guys haven't join yet, you should really consider! We do giveaways, events and you can just directly talk to me!

[zacharyclark]

Subnautica's planet rests on the backs of four Sea Treaders, standing on the back of a Giant Reefback, swimming through the universe.

[LeoCat]

Imagine you’re swimming on an unknown water planet then you hear “China” randomly

[fxrdo]

A peeper leviathan would be so awesome. Imagine just swimming through a dark cave and an eye the size of your cyclops just opens and stares at you. It would be kinda like a giant squid or octopus but even larger.

[argatar]

The single cell biome concept sounds terrifying and also like something i'd love to experience in game

[max-lnyr]

“something huge lies in the ecological dead zone”

subnautica modders: *hold my disinfected water*

[htwdpw]

“Peeper leviathan”

And that’s when I took it personally

[MinistryOfMagic_DoM]

I always find it amusing no one remembers that the Degasi was shot down as well. It's one of many ships crashed on the planet and it's actually quite likely that some of the more far flung pieces of crashed ships you find aren't from the Aurora at all, but from the Degasi and other ships that got shot down by the containment weapon.

[JustMeKruck]

Feeding fish to stalkers isn't only used for stopping attacks temporarily. If you feed them enough fish in a row you will 'tame' them and they start bringing you scrap metal pieces. Pretty useful overall when trying to stock up on titanium or teeth quickly. You can even drop a grav trap nearby to collect more fish for you to give the stalkers. They might eat some of the fish caught in the grav trap before you pick them up, but it only counts for taming if you hand feed them.

[PeanutCalledYou]

"Peeper Leviathan"
*I dont need sleep, I need answers*

[veeer]

"Peeper Leviathan"
[Softly]
*don't*

[natyb_art]

It's really impressive that someone actually made the entire philogenetic tree of Subnautica. I'm speachless.

[nightwing]

I think I know why there is no crush depth in the Emperor's tank. Despite being the biggest leviathan and much too big to fit in most parts of the map, the hatching enzymes are from relatively shallow water plants, which suggests that the emperor is more accustomed to shallow water than the deep sea.

So because an emperor is used to shallow waters and not the crushing depths of the lava zones, the Precursors engineered her tank to have a less crushing impact on the last chance of survival.

[nateimnotgonnasaythat]

Sea Dragons eat reapers in a pressure cooker, while in a pressure cooker.

[mr.nameno]

“You’re the best captain on the planet, I’m not even squidding”
Meanwhile: Driving cyclops into the crash zone to hear the sweet sound track

[Despon]

A few things you and the iceberg itself have missed out on:

•There was originally an option to dig sand in the game’s earliest first versions, it’s purpose was to uncover outcrops, fragments and even some supply crates that were buried under the sand, this was soon removed likely for the same reasons as the terraformer not being craftable in the game.

•The PDA’s voice isn’t a singular voice actor, the voice of the PDA and every other robotic voice we hear in the game (excluding the warpers) were made from stock text-to-speech voices (I presume Microsoft’s generic text-to-speech voices they have) and were mixed through audio editing software (presumably something like Audacity) to make them sound the way they are currently.

•At one point in the game there was a cut tool that was meant to be able to pick out DNA from other fish and grant you a temporary buff when you injected the DNA into yourself, it even came with its own buildable fabricator which let you mix multiple dna samples together but was scrapped from the game mid-development, despite the fully modelled and animated tool and fabricator. I unfortunately don’t think its still able to be acquired via console commands like the terraformer.

•A lot of the models and their textures were changed through development of the game but the most notable one was the mobile vehicle bay that was just a square object when it was crafted, the relevance of this stems from the fact that it was the longest thing in the game without a proper model and icon, I can’t fully remember if it was even textured or not but considering that it was earlier on in development then it possibly wasn’t. This entry isn’t as interesting to include but I found it strange nonetheless.

•Take this one with a grain of salt, but there was originally a bugged / misplaced reaper spawn somewhere in the edges of the safe shallows, it had a very small chance of happening but it was still able to happen, this might have stemmed the other entry that reapers can come into the safe shallows if you are chased by them for long enough.

•The game at one point had bad language in it; a while ago before the game’s launch, awesomecrunch live streamed an interview with one of the game’s developers and asked if the game was meant to have bad language in it at all and the developer answered that it wasn’t intended but the voice actor for Marguerite swore in her voice lines once and of course re-did the lines as the game wasn’t meant to have bad language. This also ties in with the sunbeam having it’s voice acting redone in a different tone, there wasn’t any mistakes in the voice acting, they just felt that the tone of the sunbeam personally should be less aggressive.

•There was originally another entrance to the active lava zone which lead from directly under the front of the Aurora (many may remember this as it was removed late development due to it’s existence nullifying the need to go through to the lost river, the entire tunnel was patched up and cannot be entered unless you were to make it yourself with the terraformer). This change does unfortunately complicate the idea of sea dragons going up to the surface to drag down reaper leviathans for their dinner and adds a small plot hole. Another thing I would like to add is that a third entrance to the jelly-shroom cave was also present in earlier versions of the game in the grassy plateau but as well suffered the same fate by being patched up mid development.

•In it’s earliest versions, the game had very very strange tall pillars of terrain that surrounded the map that had a very eerie ambience that played when they loaded in, these could be found when you swam out to the void, just outside of the game’s playable area. I personally would assume these pillars were put there to possibly mark how big they were gonna expand the map and what the limit was going to be, but the music that was seemingly specifically scripted to play when they were loaded in makes me think otherwise.

[nuyabuisness]

With the reapers in the lava zone I would have loved an event where you hear roaring of a reaper getting hunted in game.

[Nova_Avali]

I loved how I would be absolutely terrified and constantly looking on my shoulder just for trump to say "china". It always pulled me out of the moment

[rexon]

For a second I thought there was a secret iceberg in the game and you were explaining what it was haha

[jpeg-gaming]

I've been very interested with some of the things that were "lost in development" like the Hell Hole which leads to the Inactive Lava Zone, cut biomes like the single cell landscape, and other awesome stuff which were scrapped and never implemented, but oh well, maybe they will add them to the third game then (if there will be one eventually).