Another month, another Subnautica 2 update! Last month's focus was on changing creature behaviours to make it a bit less frustrating for those of you that just wanted to go on a killing spree. This month puts the focus on your friends, with the 1.2 update being titled "Buddy System," adding in some neat new features that'll mean you'll have a smoother time playing with your pals.<\/p>\n
For starters, the promised arrival of proximity chat is here. This works as you expect it to; while playing in multiplayer, friends sound louder when closer to you, and quieter when further away. What is quite a cute detail is the fact that the further away your friend gets, the more it sounds like it's coming over a radio signal that's losing reception. It's the small things!<\/p>\n
On top of this there's a few other convenient bits related to multiplayer being added in. There'll now be player emotes, which are currently limited to thumbs upping or downing, clapping, raising your fists and clapping (you're encourage to use that one sarcastically when your friends biff it). Inventory sharing is a thing now too, just walk up to a friend and you can open up a menu that lets you directly move items between the two of you instead of having to drop things and pick them up.<\/p>\n
Perhaps most usefully, if you or your friend gets downed for whatever reason, you'll have a short while to be able to swim up to them and share your oxygen to bring them back. And for customisation options, there's two new avatars to choose from to play as, and a couple more suit colours to choose from.<\/p>\n
Some smaller additions include the arrival of a tracking tag that you can throw out into the environment to, well, track things. Alternatively you could pop one in a portable locker to make them easier to find if you have to leave it behind somewhere. If you have one on your person when you die, it'll also increase the range of your blackbox signal.<\/p>\n
HUD icons will now be a lot smaller if you're not looking in their general direction, increasing in size if you are to make them easier to distinguish. Pinned recipes are seeing an improvement too, and the base builder tool should make it clearer when you can or can't place something. There'll be a range of bug fixes too, and the whole update is coming soon: tomorrow, August 19th. Happy subbing or whatever!<\/p>\n