Alright if you are reading this you are either searching for tips, information or walkthrough. All is here, and sections will guide you. Below I will quickly list all settings that are relevant and on which this guide is based. Some of them will get additional explanation, if there is no explanation then mod does good enough job to explain this setting.

Some of these settings are on Kharaa which is harder than Deathrun setting. You can lower then for easier game if you want, there are only few exceptions that I will talk about later.

Personal Crush Depth - Deathrun
Damage Taken - Kharaa [Even on this settings reaper leviathans will not one shot your character, but they WILL one shot your seamoth. Just remember to be very wary of all and any enemies.]
Nitrogen and the Bends - Deathrun
Surface Air Poisoning - Deathrun [Just carry air pump and few pipes, works fine]
Alien Structures lower Nitrogen - OFF
Enable Special Air Tanks - ON [Does not affect your score]
Start Location - I will talk about it in depth later.
Sink Lifepod - ON [Contrary to what you might think, this settings makes game easier]
Topple Lifepod - OFF [Does not affect your score]
Creature Aggression - Kharaa [Reaper seems to aggro on you as soon as you hear him roar, be very cautious around mountains on Aurora, even on lower settings here]
Water Murkiness - Normal
Explosion Depth - Deathrun
Time to Explosion - Short
Radiation - Kharaa
Radiation FX if immune - Chernobyl [similiar to water murkiness setting, higher raises your score but makes you almost blind in Aurora.]

All settings from Tool and Building Costs to Power Loss on vehicle exit set to Kharaa.
Contrary to what common sense says, Kharaa difficulty on vehicle costs makes game much easier. I do not recommend lowering difficulty there.

Challenges All of them does not affect your score! I do not recommend playing with any of them unless you really strive for more challenge. I personally do and so I am inflicting more pain upon myself.:

Challenges active and explained in this guide:
- Challenge Island Food (Edible after fixing reactor)
- Challenge Filter Pump (Deathrun)

All of these should set your score modifier to 5.7x and provide with very hard game. Let's get to information how to actually succeed now!

Let's talk about starting locations. Map below:



Descriptions made above were created by RatioAcrobatic9890 on Reddit.

I have two recommendations. Either Kelpy or Land Ahoy.

Kelpy is a very safe pick, you are on a small bit of kelp forest near a lot of resources and nested between Red grass and safe shallows. Wrecks are around and you should prioritize searching them before explosion if you are playing with Filter Pump Challenge.

Land Ahoy is more of base builder rush start. Location is very isolated from safe shallows but is very close to magnetite, gelsack and mountain island. Your goal in this start is to get base builder and quickly rush making a house. Beware reaper as he can sometimes sense you through textures and swim towards you from far away.

You cannot hope to conquer Deathrun without some essential knowledge.

- Bends and Nitrogen buildup is cleared when you use medkit.
- Always carry at least 2 medkits, 3 bladderfish (eat to gain oxygen) and one backup air tank. At game start getting medkits can be tricky, dont worry too much about this.
- Swimming without anything in your hand makes you faster.
- Use flares for light source. You get two at the start of the game, flashlight is too expensive. You can hold them in your inventory and hand, no need to throw them.
- Being well fed and hydrated slowly heals you.
- Holding fish in your hand might make enemy bite it instead of you.
- DO NOT underestimate biters. They will quickly form a swarms of 5 and with increased damage they can quickly kill you. (without any suits equipped each bite deals you 21 dmg)
- Eat Kelp to preserve power in fabricator.
- Enable pause in PDA. It saves life, and gives you time to think.
- Disable Filmic Color Grading. It makes game super pretty but makes it much harder to see.
- PLAY SAFE, dont rush and make sure to have escape route. Descending is much faster than ascending.
- If you are unsure about something, test it in creative gamemode in fresh save first!
- Regularly use online map and wiki sources to help orient yourself and find stuff. F1 shows your coordinates and biome.
- Look for time capsules. They sometimes drop junk, but sometimes give you broken items. There are around 40-50 in a savefile. Below I am attaching a map with all spawnpoints.

To help with blueprints I will list down all the wrecks that require your attention. For more details head to wiki, I will outline what is most important about them from my perspective.

I am also assuming that you are exploring all or most wrecks from safe shallows, kelp forest and grassy plateaus. These below are wrecks from outside starting biomes.

Wreck 7 - Cyclops Shield Generator, Cyclops Hull and Bridge, One prawn suit fragment, Nuclear Generator fragments.

Wreck 20 - Reinforced Dive Suit, Vehicle Upgrade Console, Moonpool fragments, Power Cell charger fragments.

Wreck 4 - Cyclops Engine fragments, Creature Decoy, Swim Charge Fins, Prawn suit grapple and drill arm along with one prawn suit fragment, stasis rifle fragments.

Wreck 5 - Cyclops Engine framgments, Nuclear reactor fragments and one Prawn suit fragment.

Wreck 10 - Moonpool fragments, Prawn drill and grapple arms, Thermal plant fragments.

First 45 minutes before explosion are most important moments. Your lifepod starts with full energy, you get enough food in your locker to survive until explosion and your medkit fabricator will produce a new medkit each 10 minutes. You need to have at least 1 medkit when explosion happens, preferably 2.

First thing you should do is exit your lifepod and get 3 titanium for first oxygen tank. If you cannot get 3 titanium, get 2 acid shrooms and 1 copper OR 1 copper and 1 titanium. As soon as you get any of these combinations, return asap and craft Oxygen tank, scanner or battery. Then continue exploration. This is done to spend lifepod power asap, as its main chokepoint in your production capabilities. Below I am making a list of things you should prioritize making:

- Oxygen tank
- Scanner
- Battery
- Repair Tool
- Fins
- Upgraded Oxygen tank
- Pump and Pipes (15 pipes should be good for some time)
- Second battery as soon as first one starts to slowly run dry.

After this just progress naturally. You need to spend your time well gathering necessary resources and scanning blueprints. Spend your time finding a spot that is below 100m, preferably a spot 110m deep so you can survive explosion when it happens.

As soon as timer to explosion starts, you need to ensure that you have 30 power at lifepod, 2 lead and 2 fiber mesh. These are necessary things that you need to create rad suit. Radiation is deadly and as soon as explosion finishes you need to create that suit.

Monitor for how long you are playing, sometimes UI bugs out and does not show you timer till explosion (it usually starts around 8-10 minutes before actual explosion, then you get additional 10 second timer as last warning.) Exiting savefile and logging back fixes UI bug.

If you survive explosion and get rad suit, well done. All other stuff such as scanning and crafting more things in lifepod are optional, the more you accomplish the better, but as long as you are alive that is all that matters.

You survived explosion. That is great! But now everything up to 200 meters down is irradiated. You need to either build a base somewhere deep or repair aurora. Fortunately building base is not something very hard to do, and magnetite requried for base builder is already necessary to repair Aurora so it is completely possible to accomplish while following steps to repair Aurora.

To survive Aurora you will require these tools:

- Seaglide
- Repair Tool
- Laser Cutter
- Gravity Gun
- Fire Extingusher (preferably take one from Lifepod)

Aurora is important for progression because of few things it provides you:

- Immense amount of Lithium Batteries. These are very expensive and Aurora will give you plenty to work with.
- Five PRAWN fragments necessary to progress further.
- Modules to upgrade vehicles, most notably Seamoth storage and depth modules. Make sure to grab them all.
- Blueprint for Neptune and Integrated Air Filtration chip.

This guide assumes that you are making only one trip to Aurora. Make sure to write down codes to all doors from wiki so you can explore everything in one go without searching through PDA's. This also means that you might not have space for decorative items. Good news is that gravity gun becomes obsolete after clearing way into Aurora (parkour around furniture is too time consuming and could lead to fatal injuries, gravity gun is safe option.)

If you are playing with Filter Pump setting on Deathrun, you will be on a clock. Assuming you are using seaglide and rushing towards Engine room you will need 4 upgraded oxygen tanks (or 2 ultra capacity ones) and some bladderfish to be safe. Otherwise just bring a pump and few pipes and you should be good with only 2 tanks.


Overall I will note that, acquiring 2 ultra capacity tanks will most likely be a good thing to do. The additional air time they provide is very helpful now and in the future. Assume that I am always operating on two of these from this point onwards.

Aurora main threats are lack of air until you repair the leaks, fire and crabs. These threats are not big and you find plenty of medkits on aurora. Problem is a Reaper Leviathan that swims around Aurora entrance.

This reaper will not catch you when swimming into Aurora as long as you are hugging Aurora closely and taking shortest route. But it will almost always catch you on the way back. It cannot one shot you if you are full health and have rad suit. If he bites you, open PDA (assuming you have pause on) and eat 2 medkits. Continue seagliding home, while hugging seafloor and Aurora wall. Reaper should lose interest soon.

Because of extreme threat that Reaper poses to Seamoth in this mod, I do not recommend changing your route in such a way to create it before repairing Aurora. It will most likely be destroyed and you will be left sad.

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Magnetite

Okay you most likely noticed that for grav gun and base buillder you will need magnetite. Magnetite that as you might know spawns in jellyshroom caves, lost river and mountains. Two of these locations are deadly trips, lost river is too deep and Mountains features army of reapers. Jellyshroom is deep but doable. YET there is a trick, most likely an oversight left by devs that we can exploit.


For some reasons you can exit mountain alien base here and quickly swim to these small rock formation where usually you can find around 5 magnetite. Also gelsack spawns nearby, which you can snatch to make farm later.

And yes, there are reapers nearby - BUT for some reason they will not aggro onto you. You might hear them roar, and there are warpers nearby, but its relatively safe. Reapers if somehow locks onto you will not enter the alien base, warpers will though. Also do not rush this location. Warpers can one shot you if you dont have radiation suit. (You instantly enter stage 3 of infection when entering quarantine enforcement platform)

I am focusing on steps necessary for finishing the mod but please remember that you actually need good infrastructure. This is the moment when I really recommend building a proper base in not-irradiated place if you didn't do it already. Make sure to get a steady power flow and maybe plant some lantern fruits from island so you are safe on food.

Your next step after securing base will be making acquiring blueprints for seamoth and mobile vehicle bay if you still dont have them. I recommend to then create Seamoth for faster movement, just be wary that exiting seamoth basically drains all of its power if you are not on surface. I greatly recommend checking out wreck 7 and 20. They not only provide you with a lot of good fragments and blueprints, but they also lead you to probably easiest source of Deep Shrooms.




This screenshot is made near wreck 7. It will provide you with shrooms at a safe depth inside that cave. You might even find magnetite around that place too. Below I am placing a screenshot of another cave where at 300 meters is an alien cache requiring purple tablet, it will lead you to 6 ion cubes. That trip might be dangerous depending on what equipment you have, and these cubes are not necessary for progression - but I thought that some people playstyle differs, so I left it there just in case anyway.










Acquiring blood oil is easiest in Blood Zone Trench. Its a relatively safe trip, especially if you use pipes. Just look out for enemies, grab one or two and grow rest in the base, similiar to shrooms that you can just plant.

Now onto the vehicles.

There are exactly 8 PRAWN fragments in whole game: five in Aurora, one in wreck 5, one in wreck 20 and one in wreck 4. Wreck five is in mountains near reaper leviathan, go there with reinforced diving suit, plenty of oxygen as backup and medkits. You need to use your wits to survive that, practice in creative world before trying this segment. I discourage use of seamoth around reapers as I said before.

Cyclops hull and bridge are easily found in wrecks 20 and 7. If they are not enough, check Mushroom forest. Bonesharks are deadly to your seamoth, they will kill it in 2 or 3 bites and they attack in swarms, try to use pipe network and bring knife. You will find engine fragments around wreck 5, yes there is reaper around. You can do it, fear is the mind killer. Let it pass over you and prevail. One last tip is that creature decoys do seem to distract reapers, and holding a fish sometimes make them eat it instead of biting you. Fish in hand won't stop instakill animation if you are below 60hp.

Now comes the hardest part. You will need to reach Lost River and acquire nickel and sulfur in order to create and upgrade your vehicles. Going back to the base topic, I recommend a spot near Blood Kelp Trench. I believe it's the easiest entrance down and at this point (as we are trying to reach good time as faster playthru means more points) its the best place to be around. Reaching other places should be trivial as with base up you have battery chargers and moonpool with seamoth. You can also make a small outpost at the border between blood zone trench and lost river, just a small stop to refuel your air tank.



As soon as you get 3 nickel and 3 sulfur, you can craft Prawn and finally conquer Lost River (well, at least venture down there in a vehicle)

Also remember to hit River Prowlers once or twice to get his scales (2) as it will be needed for suit upgrade. After you go down there in Prawn, just collect as many nickel and sulfur as you need. Building a scanner base could be beneficial, but it's not required.

Aside from the resource gathering, I recommend looking up the map of Lost River on the net, with ghost leviathan spots marked. They can really fck you up if you take a bad route.

I am assuming that you have created a PRAWN and can reliably acquire nickel and sulfur. Yet while nickel and sulfur allowed you to make a new shiny suit - it certainly does not allow you to venture below 900m in that armour.

As you once ventured alone deep into the Lost River, you now need to repeat this and find 2 Kyanite in the Lava Zone. I would say that most valid strategy is to bring your PRAWN as far as you can, sacrificing it to crush depth to launch yourself as fast as you can towards Alien Thermal Plant. It will provide you with oxygen and Ion battery blueprint, although at this point game is basically finished so Ion batteries might not be that important aside for necessary Neptune blueprint.

Make sure to bring two purple tablets to the thermal plant! It speeds up everything.

Alternatively I believe you can make it to the lava castle without destruction of PRAWN, but It is much safer and faster to sacrifice it, than to leave it somewhere so you need to go back to it.

Make sure to get 2 Lava Lizard scales from slicing Lava Lizards! You need it for reinforced suit upgrade.

Gather kyanite found inside caves of lava castle and venture back through portal to the surface. Use your resources to craft yourself a second blue tablet, and upgrade your suit to survive max depth. Now all you need to do is swim towards final alien base, do your necessary story bits and create a cure. Remember to bring two blue tablets!

At this point all that was hard is behind you, get cured, disable gun, create neptune. Congratulations, you have won!

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I will say that Deathrun becomes easier as time passes, if you truly do not care about time you can really trivialize most of it by just gathering resources and crafting a lot of outposts. Probably most crucial place to build a base is Lost River, one in your preferred entrance and other at preferred exit to lava zone.

If you have any questions, ask them in comments and I will put both question and answer here, so everyone can benefit from more knowledge.