Subnautica 2 biomes: every region named in official update notes
There is no official Subnautica 2 biome list, but there are official biome names: Unknown Worlds names regions in its own patch notes whenever it changes something in them. Across the Early Access 1.1 "Adaptive Measures" and 1.2 "Buddy System" notes, the studio has referred to the Shallows, Coral Gardens, Axum Ruins, Metal Farms, Overgrown Ruins, Heat Zones, Blight Zone, Root Canyon, Tufa Zone, Sparse Plains, Anemone Hills and the Graveyard, among others. That is real, citable evidence, and it is still not a complete map of the world, for the reason set out below.
Regions named in official Subnautica 2 update notes
These names come from patch notes Unknown Worlds published itself. They are grouped by the update they appeared in, because that is the only provenance that means anything for an Early Access game.
Early Access 1.1, "Adaptive Measures" (8 July 2026): Shallows, Coral Gardens, Axum Ruins, Metal Farms, Overgrown Ruins, Heat Zones, Blight Zone.
Early Access 1.2, "Buddy System" (19 August 2026): Graveyard, Tufa Zone, Root Canyon, North Coral Gardens, Axum Metal Farms, Sparse Plains, Anemone Hills, plus the Shallows and Blight Zone again.
Two things are worth noticing in that second list. "North Coral Gardens" and "Axum Metal Farms" read as subdivisions of regions named in the first update, which is how a studio talks about a place it has since split or extended. And a region can appear in notes for a bug fix rather than for new content, so an absence from this list means nothing about whether a place exists.
Why there is still no official biome count
The Subnautica 2 Steam listing describes the Early Access build as containing "several biomes", and that is as precise as the studio has been. It has never published a numbered list, a biome map or a definition of where one region ends and the next begins.
There is a good reason not to expect one soon. The published Early Access roadmap commits to larger updates that expand the world, biomes, creatures, resources, tools and vehicles, over a period the studio estimates at about two to three years. A biome count published in September 2026 would be a fact with a short shelf life, and the studio has no reason to nail one down while it is still adding to the world.
That leaves a gap between "names that appear in official notes" and "the biomes of Subnautica 2". This page fills the first and refuses to guess at the second.
What a biome decides for you in this game
A biome here is a named stretch of ocean with its own terrain, lighting, creatures and resource mix, and it is the primary way the world communicates difficulty: bright and shallow near the surface, darker and more hostile as you descend.
Three consequences follow, and they are the reason a biome layer is worth building before almost anything else:
- Region predicts loot. Knowing which region you are in tells you what is worth searching for. When "Adaptive Measures" added silver spawns to Coral Gardens, it changed where a silver run should go, not how silver works.
- Depth and biome correlate but do not match. One region can span a depth band, and different regions can overlap in depth, so a depth reading alone does not tell you where you are.
- Region recognition is navigation. Underwater there are almost no long sightlines, so knowing the region does the work that a road network does on a land map.
That is also why a biome name filed wrong is expensive: every marker filed under it inherits the mistake.
How this hub files biomes
The rules the biome layer on this hub follows, in order of how often they matter:
- A region is named exactly as the game names it. Where a place has no name in official material, the hub uses a descriptive label and marks it as unofficial rather than inventing one that sounds plausible.
- Boundaries come from surveyed markers, not from tracing a shape over a screenshot. A boundary drawn by hand is a guess with a confident edge on it.
- Every biome carries a build stamp, so a region that was split, renamed or reshaped in a patch shows up as a change rather than as a silent edit.
- No datamined regions. If a place has not been reached in play or named in official material, it does not go on the map, however widely it is being discussed.
- A page per biome with its depth band, the materials recorded in it and the hazards logged there, added as survey data reaches each one rather than all at once.
Where a region below is thin, it is thin because nobody has surveyed it yet. Contributor access is open if you are playing and want to change that.
Frequently asked questions
- How many biomes does Subnautica 2 have?
- Unknown Worlds has not published a count. The Steam listing says the Early Access build has "several biomes", and more are promised through Early Access, so any number circulating now describes one build rather than the game.
- Which Subnautica 2 biomes have been named officially?
- Patch notes for updates 1.1 and 1.2 name the Shallows, Coral Gardens, Axum Ruins, Metal Farms, Overgrown Ruins, Heat Zones, Blight Zone, Graveyard, Tufa Zone, Root Canyon, Sparse Plains and Anemone Hills, among others.
- Do the biomes from the first Subnautica return?
- None of the regions named so far carries a name from the earlier games, and Subnautica 2 is set on a different planet. Lists that show Safe Shallows or Grand Reef for this game are describing the original Subnautica.
- Is there an official Subnautica 2 biome map?
- No. Unknown Worlds has published region names in its patch notes but no map showing where those regions are or where one ends. That gap is why community maps exist for this series at all.