The day has come! Almost, anyway, that day being Subnautica 2’s first update that isn’t just a hotfix, bringing in a small bounty of those previously promised improvements that’ll hopefully make you a bit less mad about the fact you can’t kill any of those alien fishies.

So, let’s get started! The early game will be receiving a lot more biolabs for you to come across so that you’ll have more options when it comes to finding and swapping out Biomods. For those that have unlocked a particular new tool (that creative director Anthony Gallegos avoided naming out of fear of spoilers and I can’t name out of not having played the game), you’ll also be able to scan creatures, letting you unlock more passive biomod slots.

Probably the biggest part of the update is related to creatures, at least in the effect it’ll have on you. For starters, creature flinches have been improved, meaning that if you give ’em a good ole whack with your survival multi-tool, you can see how they react and understand the impact you’re making before they run off. Creatures now have stunned states when you use the sonic resonator on them too, with these changes made to help make it feel like you’re having an impact on creature mitigation. Relatedly, when encountering blight creatures, the moment they go from passive to aggressive should have a better transition so minimise your surprise.

There’s some smaller bits coming too. Wrecks have seen some general improvements like a tiny bit more puzzle solving, some vague gameplay additions, and overall stronger cohesion. The PDA should be a bit clearer to use, with changes to categorisation and UI, and the addition of being able to playback audio logs. Voice over prioritisation is also in place so that more important lines will take over rather than there being a long queue of them. And there’s also going to be a new buildable personal storage option, amongst other minor fixes and features that’ll be detailed in the full patch notes. Which, by the way, should be coming when the update drops tomorrow, July 8th.