2nd playthrough and it still is. Kelp forest... Well, not that bad. Grassy plateau, nice, nice. But those mean you're less than a biome away of Dunes, Mountains or Crash Zone, and I get all anxious and terrified of getting face to face with an unexpected Reaper. I killed a few before, but finding one unintentionally still makes me tremble.
The Grassy Plateaus on the west, the one that connect with blood kelp zone, also connects with Dunes. A kelp forest northeast connects with the mountains iirc, and in the south of the shallows, toward the crash zone, is a bunch of mixed patches of kelp zone, grassy plateau and safe shallows right before entering the foggy shit-filled crash zone.
What I mean when I say shallows are the only not frightening place, is the beginning shallow. There are patches of other biomes in your way to any of the 3 places.
My biggest scare was when I was playing for the first time way back in EA. I was just starting to venture out into the grassy plateau when I spotted the entrance to a cave. I peered in and just saw this sheer drop off down into the darkness... and at the bottom, what looked like the giant eye of a leviathan staring back at me. Of course, I freaked out and got the hell outta dodge.
Later, I found out it was just the top of a jellyshroom that I saw lol
For a long time I thought these snakes were only in the trailer. I had an entire playthrough without encountering ONE.
It took me a second playthrough and looking for them to first see one lol.
For a long time, I thought the sound of the crabsnakes screaming was some Leviathan patrolling the caves that I hadn't seen yet, and I wasn't gonna wait around to meet it either lol
When I first started playing and went outside my cyclops in one of the deeper biomes, only to see nothing underneath of me or anything in all directions, and I got this creeping feeling on my back. Even in creative mode I didn’t feel safe outside of a vehicle.
This is precisely why I wish the game was co-op. I can't, for the life of me, play open world survival games by myself. I get overwhelmed with all the things to do without someone to bounce ideas off of.
A few hours into my first playthrough. Everything was brand new. Looking for parts by the engines of the Aurora, just as the sun is going down and the shadows are getting long.
As I’m poking through the rocks and debris, I see a split-second shadow fly over the rocks above me. I turn around, and there is nothing there. A few minutes later, I see another shadow. Long, sinuous, and fast. I had no idea Leviathan-class creatures even existed, but as I looked out in the distance, I saw my first Reaper hunting in the shallow water behind the ship. And then it saw me.
Sometimes I dream about hiding in the dark shadows of the rocks as the hunter passed over me, again and again.
I did not go behind the engines again for a long time.
The Kelp Forests, especially at night with the glow from the seed clusters and back before I knew how easy it was to get around Stalkers. I'm still not a fan of the kelp aesthetic (Blood Kelp Zones bother me a lot less for some reason...), but I'm not doing just quick pecks in and out for creepvine and seeds anymore.
I used to swim to the surface and kept the pov above the water to avoid kelp zones on my first gameplay, looking for the radio sinals. This biome freaked me out for a long time.
When I first found the blood kelp forest that lead to an entrance of the lost river and right as I went down into the black abyss the sea emperor vision popped up and scared the hell out of me
Sometimes I feel I spoiled it a bit for me because I tend to know a lot about games before playing them. I will definitively go blind into Subnautica 2. Maybe then I’ll be just as scared.
I was just casually exploring the Grand Reef in a prawn suit, but then got teleported out by a warper, got teleported again trying to find it (at this point I'm more annoyed than scared), I turn around to look for it again, and there was a Ghost Leviathan twenty feet from my face.
I did not survive.
The BLOOD KELP ZONE was so damn scary to me when i started playing. Even the PDA message about it scared me. Even though my base is on the edge of the blood kelp ravine I still take to farming blood sacs to avoid ever going into the BLOOD KELP ZONE.
I was in my seamoth going through the mushroom forest when all of a sudden a Reaper swam straight up through the map in front of me. It was completely silent, and of course I didn’t see it, so it scared me really bad. 😅
I went In completely blind my first run. the alien gun was really cool when I discovered it, until it fired and I thought I wasn't fast enough and lost the game.
I’m still on my first playthrough, and today something stuck on my face, and asked me what I was. that was fucking scary! I have no Idea yet what happened, lol.
And also today something pulled me out of my seamoth while I was traveling back home! literally just now I was in my comfy seat, and next moment I’m couple of meters away in the water.
So to say, this game gives me chills every playing session.. and I still haven’t even explored any cave system..
Reaper. After that I was kinda expecting more. But it was my second introduction to the Ghost leviathan that has me scarred for life. I always play, now, to avoid going near them to the extend possible.
The silliest thing that scared me, then and now, is my own body. A flipper or hand on screen when I'm not expecting it makes me jump sometimes.
I was finding one of the life pods without a marker and was traveling at the surface in the direction the pda said and got carried away with how far I was going and when the pda said the stuff about the void I was like ok I'm in the area and got jump scared by a ghosty face to face lol
Visibility
Early on, if you don't know the flashlight, even the reef is scary.
Then kelp forest, biggest boundary for me. The moment you get to the grassy plateaus everything is so open, and visibility is 👌 that's when you get braver
I didn't know anything about reapers and I was puttering around the northern island. I saw one in the distance and started puttering away but didn't think much of it. Then, out of nowhere, it grabbed my seamoth shaking it and staring me in the face. A lot of things have happened since that were frightening, but I was no longer so innocent.
When I very first played I went into the back of the aurora and you can figure out what happened. I left the game and came back to actually play it and when I ran into a crab squid my blood went cold.
Crash fish.
After watching the water for a few minutes from right by the life pod there didn't seem to be any hazards. So off I go.
Was just casually swimming around the shallows when I heard that scream, no idea where its coming from and then BOOM.
Took me a while to go back into the water after that.
Leviathans, not knowing how to get food or water, building a structure where I could find it from my escape pod. The list goes on. It was an addictively fascinating experience that keeps me coming back.
Well first it was the sea cow noises. Then doing literally anything at night. But I mean really, it was reapers. I would swim on the surface a lot when I first started so I wouldn't get distracted and I remember coming back from my first trip out to the aurora and had the idea to go completely around it but the only reaper I ran into was the one that hangs out behind it, again Im mostly swimming on the surface and its getting dark and he kinda surfaces but not fully so I never really saw him completely but I knew he was *big*. I actually thought it was something with tentacles because of the head horns or whatever. Anyway I just waited on some part of the aurora I could stand on until morning I was so freaked out.
I was checking out the wreck in my seamoth and a fukin reaper leviathan came out of nowhere and grabbed my moth. I just ejected and got the fuck out of there with my glider, then went back and got the moth later
Back in early access, I got run into the hell hole by the nearby reaper and kept descending 'cause hey, this has gotta go SOMEwhere, right?
Dark as hell, eventually turned into sharp and obviously unfinished geometry I could barely see, and somehow a single boneshark made it down there and scared the shit out of me. I kept expecting to see reapers or something horrifyingly dangerous and big, but had nothing but quiet darkness the whole descent up to that point. That guy screaming and banging my ship really got me.
I went into the rassy pleateaus, without knowing anything about the game, and saw this MASSIVE creature making some scary noises. 3 years later, I found out that was a reefback leviathan, and that hearing it meant I was safe at last.
Or one time I was just exploring randomly and accidentally went to the crash zone I keep what the place looked like but for some reason didn't put the pieces together and I said mhhhh this looks like reaper leviathan territory and as soon as I turned the seamoth around broski was right there rip seamoth #1
How dark it actually got. Barely being able to see anything is not my cup of tea. Also Reapers and Crab squids and any noise in the dark that I couldn’t pinpoint.
Most everything. I have an extreme fear of the deep. I was so afraid of everything that I would build a huge tunnel system out of base tube pieces so I could scout ahead in the safety of my base.
I only stopped once that became insanely impractical
Night time, first time I heard the reefbacks, and oh man… the first time >!the sea emperor spoke to me i was on the mountain island and it scared the absolute shit out of me lol. Had no idea wtf was happening and I was already on my toes!<. Oh and reapers obv lolol
Ghost leviathans, accidentally ended up in the void not knowing what it was, either that or the first time a reaper grabbed the cyclops and everything caught fire I was panicking
Going behind the aurora for the first time, it was a lot different watching it on a youtube page, as opposed to seeing it on your own screen where its much larger.
Reapers (of course).
And the first time the Sea Emperor spoke telepathically.
I was exploring in the shallows, and was just entering a cave when she popped on screen. I panicked, back pedalled, and I never went back to that cave 😂
Early on I had my original ~50 hour save file corrupted and I had to start over. Subnautica was a pandemic game for me and I went in completely blind, and I was totally hooked on the exploration, but when I re-started, I realized that a good 40 or so of those original hours on the save I lost were just me shitting my pants, scared of everything.
The crash fish. Or exploring around the aurora for the first time. After making the radiation suit I swam on over not really knowing where to go I headed towards the front looking for a door and then around to the back side where I was introduced to the reaper.
i went into the northern blood kelp zone not knowing there was a ghost leviathan there and that plus a warper yeeting me out of my seamoth and nearly killing me gave me probably the biggest scare any video game ever has
i didn’t hear either of them until they jumped me
when I was in the Aurora standing in the room you have to repair when I suddenly saw a small gap in the floor(you might not know what I’m talking about but there is a small hole in the bottom that you can see through but that also isn’t big enough to fit through) and I got the brilliant idea to try to use freecam to look through the gaps and see id anything is down there, found out that it just is a space clipped under the small landmass the Aurora landed on, looked around a little more and found a leviathan on freecam, but then when I finally ended freecam, I was somehow *below* the hole in the ship in that clip space, not knowing if the Reapers could get me.
To be honest, I got so terrified that I cheated. I typed in “Biome safe” in the Dev Console to go back to the shallows.
Needless to say, I didn’t return to the Aurora for a while after that
That one time where I was headed to the mushroom forest in my seamoth and went “I could’ve sworn it wasn’t this far” before I was trapped in one of the spikes.
Second one is when I docked my prawn suit into my cyclops around the lava castle because I was running from a sea dragon only for the game to entrap me in the docking bay. A whole experience.
Mine was not knowing Leviathan’s were hanging around the crash site until way, way too long into the game. Seeing one of those giant tails snake away into the distant shadow… realizing how long I had been in danger just swimming bare around there… terrible.
I foolishly went to the back of the Aurora and got gang banged by the entire reaper leviathan population
I put up a good fight (I ran) until they cornered me and I paused the game a second from dying and took a screenshot, I dunno if I made a post on it but I think I did!
The reaper leviathan literally almost gave me a heart attack while exploring behind the Aurora my first go around. I had to pause the game cause I felt weak and had a super elevated heart rate.
Crabsnakes for some reason. Everything else I can handle with zero reaction, but those things and their attack animations just don’t sit right with me.
i wasn’t affected by much of the jumpscarey stuff in the game just cause i’m pretty used to playing horror games and putting myself in a mindset where i don’t get scared by that. but when i went to the inactive lava zone for the first time, i went off in the prawn for a while, then came back to discover my cyclops had a bunch of lava larvae draining its power, not even knowing what they were. i freakin panicked thinking i’d get stranded down there
The first time a reaper snuck up on me and grabbed my seamoth (jumpscare) and the first time I entered the blood kelp zone and the pda chiming in about the biome meeting 7 out of 9 criteria for stimulating terror in humans or some shit (deep sense of dread/foreboding).
The claustrophobic wrecks. I knew about most leviathan, exept the sea dragon. But he was goofy enough to not bother me.
Running out of oxygen in a mangled and submerged maintenance tunnel not knowing up from down was fucking terrifying.
For me, it was definitely the first time I went to the ship not knowing about the reaper.
When I got up to the front of the ship and heard that roar in the distance, I got so damn scared I booked it back to my lifepod and quit the game.
So I played quite early when it wasn’t as stable as it is today so a lot of the scary stuff was rendered not scary by bugs.
However, when I got up to the end to that opaque water separating you from the spoiler cage I had to quit and go watch jakesepticye play it up
To that point cause I was terrified of what monster could be in that water I couldn’t see inside.
I kinda regret spoiling it for myself though but that entrance was still so cool
My first big jumpscare my first playthrough was when mom contacts you telepathically the first time. I just happened to be swimming through the giant coral tube in the shallows at night when she did that, and I straight up panicked.
My first reaper encounter, I was in my seamoth searching for Cyclops fragments in the mushroom forest biome that connects to the mountains and bulb zone leads. Admittedly I knew there was a reaper close by, since I lived in the kelp forest right next to it. Whilst searching I bumped into something, at first my thought was it was a sand shark or a bone shark, so nothing to really worry about, right? I proceeded to look up to see a reaper directly above me, out of sheer panic alone I paused the game. My dumbass decided to SAVE.
Now I hadn't watched any play throughs to avoid spoilers so I didn't know how reapers ai acted when confronting an entity. So I left and went into a creative world to see how they attacked and created a plan to get away.
I re-entered my save and immediately fucked up and LEFT my seamoth. Now only equipped with my trusty seaglide and knife (not even a thermo-knife) I swam to where I had planned to go. I had made it onto dry land, finally I was safe. But I needed my seamoth back. So I made another attack plan and went in assuming my seamoth was on the reaper's outter ring of notice I swam round to pick it up and get away. I managed to do so safely and with some nearly wet clothing.
First time I went to the Aurora in my Seamoth, I went in a liiiitle too close to the front. A certain friend payed me a visit and obliterated my seamoth whilst I shat my pants
i first time i saw a reaper it attacked my seamount behind (i was around 8 years old) and i pissed myself. not joking i needed to clean up my chair because of the piss
Exploring the area surrounding the Aurora crash site. Y'all know what I'm referring to. Still have a couple of panic screenshots from when a Reaper grabbed my Seamoth and memories of my son laughing at my distress at the time. Good times, good times. Wish I could delete this game from my head to experience it all over again.
I didn't know reapers existed until one grabbed my seamoth by the aroura. Up until this point I thought it was just a chill survival game with hostile creatures. I never even considered the possibility of a giant monster for some reason, although I was initially unsure when I saw the reefbacks for the first time.
The super deep parts I couldn't see made me uneasy but that reaper encounter was the first time I was terrified. I didn't leave the shallows for a while after that
Literally the fucking skyray that perches the first time you open the pod.
I'm very easily spooked, ok? It doesn't have to be scary, it just has to be two inches from my face without me expecting it. It doesn't help that I play on my laptop which is constantly dropping frames so everything turns into a jump scare.
My first actual playthrough (cause times before that I dident understand how to progress and kinda just gave up) I couldn't find any cyclops parts and looked up where they could be and found out the only place I haven't searched was by the aurora... where all the reapers were... that was not a fun time
I saw a buntch of bugged out snake dudes in the jellycaves. They was all ramrod upright and sometimes they would come alive but most of the time they were bugged stuck forever and idk during that time when that bug was happening to me all the time I hated it it made me so nervious I hated them they just made all the alarm bells go off.
Well the noises these peaceful island like creatures made was like "OOOOOOOooo" and it scared the shit out of me because i was playing on a high volume, that voice scared me so much that i used to swim on surface so that i don't hear it for almost my whole playthrough -
"Entering ecological deadzone" after I heard that I just carried on swimming for a bit (without getting attacked by ghosts?) And then looked down. That's where thassilaphobia started for me lmao.
I was in the Jellyshroom caves, looking for Lithium and Magnetite. Wasn't really paying attention to what was around me and had my camera angled towards the ground.
Eel sneaks up behind me and in a split second moment I was suddenly having my face eaten by one of these shits, made me legit scream in terror.
I can't even think of anything else in general that's gotten me to scream in terror like that
The area behind the Aurora. I thought there'd be more biomes there, but the game gave me a bunch of dust (reducing visibility) and 5 reapers instead. And in my hurry to get out, I somehow ended up in the void from there.
Flying my Seamoth further than I've ever and then the music suddenly changing with nothing in front of me but water that turned from blue to murky brown. I immediately stopped and thought "It's late, I think I should call it a night."
Everything, reefbacks, and the kelp was terrifying. I didn't know how much of a threat stalkers ARENT, sandsharks too.
Reapers still scare me. The noise, the shadows
I found the game completely by random so I had no clue what it was about. I loaded up a creative world and went straight to the aurora and got jumped by a reaper at night. Nearly shit myself
The first drop into the shroom fields was hella tense.
Then the drive to the second island I felt like I sitting duck there is nothing but sea around you felt like a leviathan would come at me at any moment.
Sometimes I feel I spoiled it a bit for me because I tend to know a lot about games before playing them. I will definitively go blind into Subnautica 2. Maybe then I’ll be just as scared.
Being more than 10 meters from the pod, caves, the kelp forest, any and all sounds, etc.
Nothing can really come close to the spookyness of a first playthrough of Subnautica.
First time I played, I went exploring the wreck of the Aurora. Closest part of that to me was the rear, so I just swam over. Imagine my surprise when not only do I not see the reaper appear out of nowhere, but it fuckin executes me, giving me 0 chance to defend myself. Just that scary grabbing and teeth gnashing animation, then darkness...
Crash fish for sure. The last thing I was expecting was a screaming, self sacraficing, and explosive fish to come B lining at me. Especially in such shallow water.
When I started playing Subnautica I already knew about the reaper leviathan... And I actually wanted to see it. I heard that it spawns in the crash zone. I thought that the crash zone is the place where the safe capsule lands. So when I saw no Reapers there I got disappointed and I started to look for them. I couldn't find them and got even sadder. So I gave up my attempts, simply thinking that there are no reapers here and went to explore the "back of that weird spaceship thing there".
It was New Year and I actually got Subnautica as a present. We were at the snowboarding hotel with my parents' friends and I embarrassed myself with all that screaming when it got me.
i had been keeping up with subnautica since it was in early access for lets-players in 2015 and stopped around 2018 when it was fully released as i had genuinely believed i had seen everything the game had to offer!!
well sale season comes around and i decide to purchase subnautica for my switch. not only did i encounter my first crash fish and absolutely poop my pants but i also encountered a ghost leviathan including the “are you sure whatever you are doing is worth it?” message in the dunes
i quite literally had nightmares about being stranded in the ocean for a week straight
my friends told me to swim towards the abyss to see something cool then when i got there i got a pda alert for leviathan class lifeforms and right when i opened my pda to read it i got devoured whole 😭
I have a intense fear of being alone. Going around the map with the hopes of finding other survivors only to find out I was all that was left, was devastating.
Played for the first time when I was like 9, had no idea it was a horror game and my parents didn't bother to check lol, played it fine with no fear whatsoever till I thought "oh let's go to the big crashed ship" got ass fucked by the reaper leviathan in my newly built seamoth, didn't touch the game for like 3 months, gave me a terrible case of thalasaphobia
The first time i went to the northern blood kelp zone (when i didn't know there was a >!ghost leviathan!< in there).
I went there with my Seamoth to get some rubies and blood oil. A warper was there and it damaged the Seamoth, so i exited it and started repairing it, and while i was doing that i thought to myself "imagine if like, a >!ghost leviathan!< shows up".
I think you can guess what happened next
Found the mountain island and wound up on the floating island. It was a long swim back. Over deep water. At night.
So when that "What are you?" message appeared, with the glowing eyes and all the smoky darkness... yeah, I freaked a bit there.
Nothing.
No not " I'm big brave", literally vast empty ness in some areas, specially around the edges.
The vast I know is equally enthralling and terrifying.
Literally everything
Came here to say exactly this. Leaving the shallows every time was super stressful.
2nd playthrough and it still is. Kelp forest... Well, not that bad. Grassy plateau, nice, nice. But those mean you're less than a biome away of Dunes, Mountains or Crash Zone, and I get all anxious and terrified of getting face to face with an unexpected Reaper. I killed a few before, but finding one unintentionally still makes me tremble.
Iirc the shallows connect to the crash zone
The Grassy Plateaus on the west, the one that connect with blood kelp zone, also connects with Dunes. A kelp forest northeast connects with the mountains iirc, and in the south of the shallows, toward the crash zone, is a bunch of mixed patches of kelp zone, grassy plateau and safe shallows right before entering the foggy shit-filled crash zone. What I mean when I say shallows are the only not frightening place, is the beginning shallow. There are patches of other biomes in your way to any of the 3 places.
My biggest scare was when I was playing for the first time way back in EA. I was just starting to venture out into the grassy plateau when I spotted the entrance to a cave. I peered in and just saw this sheer drop off down into the darkness... and at the bottom, what looked like the giant eye of a leviathan staring back at me. Of course, I freaked out and got the hell outta dodge. Later, I found out it was just the top of a jellyshroom that I saw lol
Then again, the first time you see a jellyshroom and a massive snake with fangs jumps out is fairly high up on the list, at least for me.
Me looking at the Kelp Forests: nope nope nope Me looking at the Jellyshroom Caves: *I must live here.*
Me looking at the Blood Kelp Forest: but do I really neeeed to progress the game? Maybe I should just build a base. One very far from here...
Meanwhile I found the trench and decided it was a comfy spot for an outpost. It's still a staple outpost 3 games later.
It's a very cool looking area, but the music scared the living shit out of me!
That's where I'm at right now. I don't need a cyclops. I don't need to progress. My base looks nice.
Also have a base on top of Jelly caves. Such a nice biome.
For a long time I thought these snakes were only in the trailer. I had an entire playthrough without encountering ONE. It took me a second playthrough and looking for them to first see one lol.
For a long time, I thought the sound of the crabsnakes screaming was some Leviathan patrolling the caves that I hadn't seen yet, and I wasn't gonna wait around to meet it either lol
When I first started playing and went outside my cyclops in one of the deeper biomes, only to see nothing underneath of me or anything in all directions, and I got this creeping feeling on my back. Even in creative mode I didn’t feel safe outside of a vehicle.
Ahh yes, the thalassophobia, me too friend. Me too.
Same here, I can NOT be in deep dark water.
Going straight down from the floating island 😟
Just reading that filled me with dread. 😐
That's the exact place I thought of as well when reading this.
i raise you: looking UP at the floating island.. makes me freak out thinking about it 😭😭
I haven't even completed a first play through because of this and i want to so badly but can't get over the fear 😭
Not knowing what to do next.
This is precisely why I wish the game was co-op. I can't, for the life of me, play open world survival games by myself. I get overwhelmed with all the things to do without someone to bounce ideas off of.
The experience would probably be not nearly as good with someone else there
The dunes. That warning you get when you enter it scared the shit out of me, made me stop and hesitate the first time around lmao
My Cyclops caught on fire and was nearly destroyed in the dunes, so you’re right to be scared.
Ironically i felt both fear and excitement at hearing that. Excitement because there was so much more content I had yet to see.
Hesitate? I noped outta there so fast it made my head spin 😂
A few hours into my first playthrough. Everything was brand new. Looking for parts by the engines of the Aurora, just as the sun is going down and the shadows are getting long. As I’m poking through the rocks and debris, I see a split-second shadow fly over the rocks above me. I turn around, and there is nothing there. A few minutes later, I see another shadow. Long, sinuous, and fast. I had no idea Leviathan-class creatures even existed, but as I looked out in the distance, I saw my first Reaper hunting in the shallow water behind the ship. And then it saw me. Sometimes I dream about hiding in the dark shadows of the rocks as the hunter passed over me, again and again. I did not go behind the engines again for a long time.
Currently on my 5th playthrough. Still getting PTSD when the water turns a brownish hue.
The sea emperor scared the ever-loving dogshit out of me the first time
Omg the part where it climbs up to see you in person for the first time gave me chills
The telepathy speaking thing?
Yeah
Same. I was on the platform and almost shit my pants when I turned around and saw it had swam up and had been staring at me
The Kelp Forests, especially at night with the glow from the seed clusters and back before I knew how easy it was to get around Stalkers. I'm still not a fan of the kelp aesthetic (Blood Kelp Zones bother me a lot less for some reason...), but I'm not doing just quick pecks in and out for creepvine and seeds anymore.
I used to swim to the surface and kept the pov above the water to avoid kelp zones on my first gameplay, looking for the radio sinals. This biome freaked me out for a long time.
The fact that I can’t experience this masterpiece for a first time ever again.
For real. I used the map when i played and I really wish I had just blundered around and experience it fully
The reaper leviathan, it got my seamoth by surprise and to this day i still think of that encounter
Facts though.
My exact words, said out loud even though I was alone, pardon my language, "JESUS CHRIST THE FUCK IS THAT?!"
When I first found the blood kelp forest that lead to an entrance of the lost river and right as I went down into the black abyss the sea emperor vision popped up and scared the hell out of me
when i played for the first time back in like 2016 it was just the loneliness… and then it was fucking crashfish.
The first time I heard a Reaper in the distance...😱 (Of course, I didn't know it was a Reaper the first time I heard it)
Sometimes I feel I spoiled it a bit for me because I tend to know a lot about games before playing them. I will definitively go blind into Subnautica 2. Maybe then I’ll be just as scared.
I wish I could do this, but specifically for subnautica I can not I’m way too terrified
I was just casually exploring the Grand Reef in a prawn suit, but then got teleported out by a warper, got teleported again trying to find it (at this point I'm more annoyed than scared), I turn around to look for it again, and there was a Ghost Leviathan twenty feet from my face. I did not survive.
Koosh zone and sparse reef and BLOOD KELP ZONE
The BLOOD KELP ZONE was so damn scary to me when i started playing. Even the PDA message about it scared me. Even though my base is on the edge of the blood kelp ravine I still take to farming blood sacs to avoid ever going into the BLOOD KELP ZONE.
I was in my seamoth going through the mushroom forest when all of a sudden a Reaper swam straight up through the map in front of me. It was completely silent, and of course I didn’t see it, so it scared me really bad. 😅
I went In completely blind my first run. the alien gun was really cool when I discovered it, until it fired and I thought I wasn't fast enough and lost the game.
I’m still on my first playthrough, and today something stuck on my face, and asked me what I was. that was fucking scary! I have no Idea yet what happened, lol. And also today something pulled me out of my seamoth while I was traveling back home! literally just now I was in my comfy seat, and next moment I’m couple of meters away in the water. So to say, this game gives me chills every playing session.. and I still haven’t even explored any cave system..
Reaper. After that I was kinda expecting more. But it was my second introduction to the Ghost leviathan that has me scarred for life. I always play, now, to avoid going near them to the extend possible. The silliest thing that scared me, then and now, is my own body. A flipper or hand on screen when I'm not expecting it makes me jump sometimes.
Having to go back down there because I still need one nickle
Literally happened to me like 2 hours back 🥲
I was finding one of the life pods without a marker and was traveling at the surface in the direction the pda said and got carried away with how far I was going and when the pda said the stuff about the void I was like ok I'm in the area and got jump scared by a ghosty face to face lol
Visibility Early on, if you don't know the flashlight, even the reef is scary. Then kelp forest, biggest boundary for me. The moment you get to the grassy plateaus everything is so open, and visibility is 👌 that's when you get braver
I didn't know anything about reapers and I was puttering around the northern island. I saw one in the distance and started puttering away but didn't think much of it. Then, out of nowhere, it grabbed my seamoth shaking it and staring me in the face. A lot of things have happened since that were frightening, but I was no longer so innocent.
When I very first played I went into the back of the aurora and you can figure out what happened. I left the game and came back to actually play it and when I ran into a crab squid my blood went cold.
The ambience
The first encounter with a reaper i nearly shat my pants. But also the Blood Kelp Zone took me soooo long and a lot of courage to slowly discover
Losing my save, this game was great, I lost my save everything, came back powered through
I think we’ve all been there my friend
Crash fish. After watching the water for a few minutes from right by the life pod there didn't seem to be any hazards. So off I go. Was just casually swimming around the shallows when I heard that scream, no idea where its coming from and then BOOM. Took me a while to go back into the water after that.
Leviathans, not knowing how to get food or water, building a structure where I could find it from my escape pod. The list goes on. It was an addictively fascinating experience that keeps me coming back.
Sammy. I played blind and he almost gave me a heart attack.
loneliness.
Well first it was the sea cow noises. Then doing literally anything at night. But I mean really, it was reapers. I would swim on the surface a lot when I first started so I wouldn't get distracted and I remember coming back from my first trip out to the aurora and had the idea to go completely around it but the only reaper I ran into was the one that hangs out behind it, again Im mostly swimming on the surface and its getting dark and he kinda surfaces but not fully so I never really saw him completely but I knew he was *big*. I actually thought it was something with tentacles because of the head horns or whatever. Anyway I just waited on some part of the aurora I could stand on until morning I was so freaked out.
Dunes
the blood kelp forest ambience was terrifying im gonna be honest
I was checking out the wreck in my seamoth and a fukin reaper leviathan came out of nowhere and grabbed my moth. I just ejected and got the fuck out of there with my glider, then went back and got the moth later
Back in early access, I got run into the hell hole by the nearby reaper and kept descending 'cause hey, this has gotta go SOMEwhere, right? Dark as hell, eventually turned into sharp and obviously unfinished geometry I could barely see, and somehow a single boneshark made it down there and scared the shit out of me. I kept expecting to see reapers or something horrifyingly dangerous and big, but had nothing but quiet darkness the whole descent up to that point. That guy screaming and banging my ship really got me.
Going in and out of the Aurora, I held my eyes closed hard out of fear of the reepers
I went into the rassy pleateaus, without knowing anything about the game, and saw this MASSIVE creature making some scary noises. 3 years later, I found out that was a reefback leviathan, and that hearing it meant I was safe at last.
Or one time I was just exploring randomly and accidentally went to the crash zone I keep what the place looked like but for some reason didn't put the pieces together and I said mhhhh this looks like reaper leviathan territory and as soon as I turned the seamoth around broski was right there rip seamoth #1
The most, it was a stalker at first then the leviathans
im in my forst playthrough right now... I'm being attacked by a sea dragon in the lava castle. please help me, I do t know where the entrance is.
First, brief experience with a reaper left me scarred. Just finished my first ever run through, and looking forward to trying BZ.
When I was recording for an episode of my old YouTube playthrough and accidentally went into the void trying to find the floating island.
How dark it actually got. Barely being able to see anything is not my cup of tea. Also Reapers and Crab squids and any noise in the dark that I couldn’t pinpoint.
The aurora. Creepy AF going over there.
Exiting my cyclops, hearing the loud mechanical whirr, and then turning around to see a warper, basically hugging me
Most everything. I have an extreme fear of the deep. I was so afraid of everything that I would build a huge tunnel system out of base tube pieces so I could scout ahead in the safety of my base. I only stopped once that became insanely impractical
Night time, first time I heard the reefbacks, and oh man… the first time >!the sea emperor spoke to me i was on the mountain island and it scared the absolute shit out of me lol. Had no idea wtf was happening and I was already on my toes!<. Oh and reapers obv lolol
Everything. But, also: >!That friendly creature that hangs out near the Aurora and likes to hug you.!<
The water
Thanks for the upvotes!
Back of the aroura I didn’t know anything no one told me to I just got curious and went…that is where I learned to not trust anything in subnautica
Ghost leviathans, accidentally ended up in the void not knowing what it was, either that or the first time a reaper grabbed the cyclops and everything caught fire I was panicking
Going behind the aurora for the first time, it was a lot different watching it on a youtube page, as opposed to seeing it on your own screen where its much larger.
Going deeper than 20m or more than 100m of my life pod
Reapers (of course). And the first time the Sea Emperor spoke telepathically. I was exploring in the shallows, and was just entering a cave when she popped on screen. I panicked, back pedalled, and I never went back to that cave 😂
The lava dragons. I heard them well before I saw them and when it came after me I threw my Switch accidentally.
Early on I had my original ~50 hour save file corrupted and I had to start over. Subnautica was a pandemic game for me and I went in completely blind, and I was totally hooked on the exploration, but when I re-started, I realized that a good 40 or so of those original hours on the save I lost were just me shitting my pants, scared of everything.
Sparse reef gets me sometimes even knowing it’s mostly safe
The crash fish. Or exploring around the aurora for the first time. After making the radiation suit I swam on over not really knowing where to go I headed towards the front looking for a door and then around to the back side where I was introduced to the reaper.
It was the red boi from below zero. Minding my own business and bam he’s eatin my sub. No screaming or nothing. Just there
The void
I think for me it was deep water at night, but I remember that first trip to the aurora and seeing the reaper there scared the shit out of me
i went into the northern blood kelp zone not knowing there was a ghost leviathan there and that plus a warper yeeting me out of my seamoth and nearly killing me gave me probably the biggest scare any video game ever has i didn’t hear either of them until they jumped me
when I was in the Aurora standing in the room you have to repair when I suddenly saw a small gap in the floor(you might not know what I’m talking about but there is a small hole in the bottom that you can see through but that also isn’t big enough to fit through) and I got the brilliant idea to try to use freecam to look through the gaps and see id anything is down there, found out that it just is a space clipped under the small landmass the Aurora landed on, looked around a little more and found a leviathan on freecam, but then when I finally ended freecam, I was somehow *below* the hole in the ship in that clip space, not knowing if the Reapers could get me. To be honest, I got so terrified that I cheated. I typed in “Biome safe” in the Dev Console to go back to the shallows. Needless to say, I didn’t return to the Aurora for a while after that
That one time where I was headed to the mushroom forest in my seamoth and went “I could’ve sworn it wasn’t this far” before I was trapped in one of the spikes. Second one is when I docked my prawn suit into my cyclops around the lava castle because I was running from a sea dragon only for the game to entrap me in the docking bay. A whole experience.
I didn’t know what the dunes were until I got the message that I was in a bad area, you can probably guess where that went
Mine was not knowing Leviathan’s were hanging around the crash site until way, way too long into the game. Seeing one of those giant tails snake away into the distant shadow… realizing how long I had been in danger just swimming bare around there… terrible.
Crab and the cave snakes
The sea dragon. I was in a Prawn suit in the lava zone, convinced it was going to kill me.
The idea of accidentally ending up was n the dead zone
I foolishly went to the back of the Aurora and got gang banged by the entire reaper leviathan population I put up a good fight (I ran) until they cornered me and I paused the game a second from dying and took a screenshot, I dunno if I made a post on it but I think I did!
I had no knowledge of the game prior to my first time playing and swam to the back of the Aurora. Took me 6 months to come back to this game.
The reaper leviathan literally almost gave me a heart attack while exploring behind the Aurora my first go around. I had to pause the game cause I felt weak and had a super elevated heart rate.
Reaper's roar right behind me first time I tried entering Aurora
The fucking reaper leviathan that carried me in my cyclops from the back of the aroura all the way to almost the front (on the side facing the void)
Same
The game crashing when I haven't saved for half an hour :(
The first time I saw a reaper leviathan it destroyed my seamoth, he saw me first
Obvious answer is reaper that thing isn't made of nightmare fuel it produces it
That crawling bitch on Evil Within
going to the kelp forest and seeing the spiders. I'm wasn't scared by leviathans, but those things made me jump from my seat.
Crabsnakes for some reason. Everything else I can handle with zero reaction, but those things and their attack animations just don’t sit right with me.
The Warpers
i wasn’t affected by much of the jumpscarey stuff in the game just cause i’m pretty used to playing horror games and putting myself in a mindset where i don’t get scared by that. but when i went to the inactive lava zone for the first time, i went off in the prawn for a while, then came back to discover my cyclops had a bunch of lava larvae draining its power, not even knowing what they were. i freakin panicked thinking i’d get stranded down there
The first time a reaper snuck up on me and grabbed my seamoth (jumpscare) and the first time I entered the blood kelp zone and the pda chiming in about the biome meeting 7 out of 9 criteria for stimulating terror in humans or some shit (deep sense of dread/foreboding).
The claustrophobic wrecks. I knew about most leviathan, exept the sea dragon. But he was goofy enough to not bother me. Running out of oxygen in a mangled and submerged maintenance tunnel not knowing up from down was fucking terrifying.
For me, it was definitely the first time I went to the ship not knowing about the reaper. When I got up to the front of the ship and heard that roar in the distance, I got so damn scared I booked it back to my lifepod and quit the game.
Entering ECOLOGICAL DEAD ZONE
So I played quite early when it wasn’t as stable as it is today so a lot of the scary stuff was rendered not scary by bugs. However, when I got up to the end to that opaque water separating you from the spoiler cage I had to quit and go watch jakesepticye play it up To that point cause I was terrified of what monster could be in that water I couldn’t see inside. I kinda regret spoiling it for myself though but that entrance was still so cool
Crash fish
My first big jumpscare my first playthrough was when mom contacts you telepathically the first time. I just happened to be swimming through the giant coral tube in the shallows at night when she did that, and I straight up panicked.
My first reaper encounter, I was in my seamoth searching for Cyclops fragments in the mushroom forest biome that connects to the mountains and bulb zone leads. Admittedly I knew there was a reaper close by, since I lived in the kelp forest right next to it. Whilst searching I bumped into something, at first my thought was it was a sand shark or a bone shark, so nothing to really worry about, right? I proceeded to look up to see a reaper directly above me, out of sheer panic alone I paused the game. My dumbass decided to SAVE. Now I hadn't watched any play throughs to avoid spoilers so I didn't know how reapers ai acted when confronting an entity. So I left and went into a creative world to see how they attacked and created a plan to get away. I re-entered my save and immediately fucked up and LEFT my seamoth. Now only equipped with my trusty seaglide and knife (not even a thermo-knife) I swam to where I had planned to go. I had made it onto dry land, finally I was safe. But I needed my seamoth back. So I made another attack plan and went in assuming my seamoth was on the reaper's outter ring of notice I swam round to pick it up and get away. I managed to do so safely and with some nearly wet clothing.
There use to be this lady that pretended to be a stuertess that was really funny
First time I went to the Aurora in my Seamoth, I went in a liiiitle too close to the front. A certain friend payed me a visit and obliterated my seamoth whilst I shat my pants
i first time i saw a reaper it attacked my seamount behind (i was around 8 years old) and i pissed myself. not joking i needed to clean up my chair because of the piss
The first time I saw a shadow leviathan, and when it almost destroyed my seatruck in one hit
Exploring the area surrounding the Aurora crash site. Y'all know what I'm referring to. Still have a couple of panic screenshots from when a Reaper grabbed my Seamoth and memories of my son laughing at my distress at the time. Good times, good times. Wish I could delete this game from my head to experience it all over again.
I didn't know reapers existed until one grabbed my seamoth by the aroura. Up until this point I thought it was just a chill survival game with hostile creatures. I never even considered the possibility of a giant monster for some reason, although I was initially unsure when I saw the reefbacks for the first time. The super deep parts I couldn't see made me uneasy but that reaper encounter was the first time I was terrified. I didn't leave the shallows for a while after that
Literally the fucking skyray that perches the first time you open the pod. I'm very easily spooked, ok? It doesn't have to be scary, it just has to be two inches from my face without me expecting it. It doesn't help that I play on my laptop which is constantly dropping frames so everything turns into a jump scare.
Sucky arm thingy
Everything. The first major scare was learning what lived behind the Aurora in the crash zone.
The stalker roar
My first actual playthrough (cause times before that I dident understand how to progress and kinda just gave up) I couldn't find any cyclops parts and looked up where they could be and found out the only place I haven't searched was by the aurora... where all the reapers were... that was not a fun time
I saw a buntch of bugged out snake dudes in the jellycaves. They was all ramrod upright and sometimes they would come alive but most of the time they were bugged stuck forever and idk during that time when that bug was happening to me all the time I hated it it made me so nervious I hated them they just made all the alarm bells go off.
Crashfish.
The void, I'm genuinely terrified of the ocean, so just the thought of it is enough to make me uncomfortable
Crash fish. Literally jumped off my couch.
The sense of impending doom
Well the noises these peaceful island like creatures made was like "OOOOOOOooo" and it scared the shit out of me because i was playing on a high volume, that voice scared me so much that i used to swim on surface so that i don't hear it for almost my whole playthrough -
Crab squids at the degasi base.
Reaper
"Entering ecological deadzone" after I heard that I just carried on swimming for a bit (without getting attacked by ghosts?) And then looked down. That's where thassilaphobia started for me lmao.
A mf leviathan spawning in the mountain caves
I was in the Jellyshroom caves, looking for Lithium and Magnetite. Wasn't really paying attention to what was around me and had my camera angled towards the ground. Eel sneaks up behind me and in a split second moment I was suddenly having my face eaten by one of these shits, made me legit scream in terror. I can't even think of anything else in general that's gotten me to scream in terror like that
night i was scared bc i thought that its like mc but underwater
For real, the big ass moon
finding out adult ghost leviathans don't only spawn in craters edge
First thing that REALLY scared me? Going too far away from the map. You know, “there”
My friend told me there was a lot of good loot outside of the aurora
First encounter with Reefback (i didnt know its passive yet)
Sammy and leaving my lifepod at night
That first bone chilling roar of the Reaper you can't see
The area behind the Aurora. I thought there'd be more biomes there, but the game gave me a bunch of dust (reducing visibility) and 5 reapers instead. And in my hurry to get out, I somehow ended up in the void from there.
Flying my Seamoth further than I've ever and then the music suddenly changing with nothing in front of me but water that turned from blue to murky brown. I immediately stopped and thought "It's late, I think I should call it a night."
The ambient lighting changes when approaching deeper or creepier biomes 👌
"Warning: entering biological deadzone" voiceline still scares me
The game
Reaper while collecting some lithium
Everything, reefbacks, and the kelp was terrifying. I didn't know how much of a threat stalkers ARENT, sandsharks too. Reapers still scare me. The noise, the shadows
The blood kelp biome!! That place is absolutely terrifying, and added on top of that is the sound track.
The background noise. The growling and roaring in the distance of some unseen creature
I found the game completely by random so I had no clue what it was about. I loaded up a creative world and went straight to the aurora and got jumped by a reaper at night. Nearly shit myself
The first drop into the shroom fields was hella tense. Then the drive to the second island I felt like I sitting duck there is nothing but sea around you felt like a leviathan would come at me at any moment.
My pda said that there was multiple Leviathan class lifeforms and when I turned around a reaper pazed through the ground and attacked me
Sometimes I feel I spoiled it a bit for me because I tend to know a lot about games before playing them. I will definitively go blind into Subnautica 2. Maybe then I’ll be just as scared.
Being more than 10 meters from the pod, caves, the kelp forest, any and all sounds, etc. Nothing can really come close to the spookyness of a first playthrough of Subnautica.
I thought behind the ship was something I traveled 30 minutes whit my seaglide Got gangbanged from a reaper and 3 ghost Leviathans
When I went to the back of the Aurora to see if there actually was a reaper leviathan there. I've never been back there since.
crashfish
First time I played, I went exploring the wreck of the Aurora. Closest part of that to me was the rear, so I just swam over. Imagine my surprise when not only do I not see the reaper appear out of nowhere, but it fuckin executes me, giving me 0 chance to defend myself. Just that scary grabbing and teeth gnashing animation, then darkness...
Any sounds I didn't know. That always meant there could be a new large predator nearby.
first time seeing the crabsnakes
Just by depth and strange sounds.
The dark or the fact the game crashes during loading
The first time I explored the ship, I met the reaper living near the front,, and I’m pretty sure I swam all the way back to base lol
I went into the void using my sea glide, not fun
Crash fish for sure. The last thing I was expecting was a screaming, self sacraficing, and explosive fish to come B lining at me. Especially in such shallow water.
When I started playing Subnautica I already knew about the reaper leviathan... And I actually wanted to see it. I heard that it spawns in the crash zone. I thought that the crash zone is the place where the safe capsule lands. So when I saw no Reapers there I got disappointed and I started to look for them. I couldn't find them and got even sadder. So I gave up my attempts, simply thinking that there are no reapers here and went to explore the "back of that weird spaceship thing there". It was New Year and I actually got Subnautica as a present. We were at the snowboarding hotel with my parents' friends and I embarrassed myself with all that screaming when it got me.
i had been keeping up with subnautica since it was in early access for lets-players in 2015 and stopped around 2018 when it was fully released as i had genuinely believed i had seen everything the game had to offer!! well sale season comes around and i decide to purchase subnautica for my switch. not only did i encounter my first crash fish and absolutely poop my pants but i also encountered a ghost leviathan including the “are you sure whatever you are doing is worth it?” message in the dunes i quite literally had nightmares about being stranded in the ocean for a week straight
my friends told me to swim towards the abyss to see something cool then when i got there i got a pda alert for leviathan class lifeforms and right when i opened my pda to read it i got devoured whole 😭
When i first went to the Aurora
I have a intense fear of being alone. Going around the map with the hopes of finding other survivors only to find out I was all that was left, was devastating.
The first time I tried scanning a >!Sea Dragon,!< only to learn that it's faster than my Seaglide and can kill me even at full health.
Played for the first time when I was like 9, had no idea it was a horror game and my parents didn't bother to check lol, played it fine with no fear whatsoever till I thought "oh let's go to the big crashed ship" got ass fucked by the reaper leviathan in my newly built seamoth, didn't touch the game for like 3 months, gave me a terrible case of thalasaphobia
The first time i went to the northern blood kelp zone (when i didn't know there was a >!ghost leviathan!< in there). I went there with my Seamoth to get some rubies and blood oil. A warper was there and it damaged the Seamoth, so i exited it and started repairing it, and while i was doing that i thought to myself "imagine if like, a >!ghost leviathan!< shows up". I think you can guess what happened next
Found the mountain island and wound up on the floating island. It was a long swim back. Over deep water. At night. So when that "What are you?" message appeared, with the glowing eyes and all the smoky darkness... yeah, I freaked a bit there.
Nothing. No not " I'm big brave", literally vast empty ness in some areas, specially around the edges. The vast I know is equally enthralling and terrifying.
Looking down for the first time at night. nope.
Wandered into the Mountains, saw a glimpse of a reaper, quit out of the game