Subnautica 2 Guide: How to Recharge Batteries and Tools
Tossing a perfectly good scanner in the trash just because the battery died is a terrible way to survive on an alien planet.
Every gadget you fabricate comes with a fully charged battery pre-installed. Whether you are using your Wakemaker, your Habitat Builder, or your Sonic Resonator, that initial charge will eventually run dry. If you keep burning through raw copper to craft brand new tools every time the lights go out, you will empty the safe shallows of resources in a matter of hours. You can actually swap, unload, and recharge your power cells, but the game hides the necessary base modules inside some mid-game ruins. I mapped out exactly how to keep your electronics running without bankrupting your storage lockers.
Managing Your Power Supply
Before you even worry about base chargers, you need to master hot-swapping batteries in the field.
How to Swap and Steal Charge
If you run out of juice for a critical tool while exploring a deep cave, you can rob power from your other gadgets. Equip the dead tool on your hotbar and hit "R" on your keyboard (or press Up on your D-pad) to bring up the reload menu. From here, press the on-screen hotkey for "Unload" (X on an Xbox controller). The dead battery pops straight into your inventory.
Now, equip a tool you do not currently need, like your Flashlight, and repeat the process to steal its charged battery. Swap back to your empty tool, open the reload menu again, and select the loaded battery to slam it into place.
Finding the Battery Terminal
Swapping dead batteries around only delays the inevitable. To actually refill them, you need to build a Battery Terminal inside your powered base.
Fragment Locations
You have to scan two broken fragments to unlock the Battery Terminal blueprint. Conveniently, both pieces are sitting right next to each other inside the Old Habitat ruins. Start at your Lifepod and swim exactly 220 meters Southeast.
Once you reach the Old Habitat, check the wall directly underneath the main signal waypoint to find the first fragment. For the second piece, head up to the second floor of the ruins. You will find it bolted to the wall right near the Quaker Blackbox. Scan both, and your PDA will log the recipe.
Crafting and Charging
With the blueprint secured, you can mount the charger on your base wall and start cycling your dead cells.
Constructing the Battery Terminal requires two pieces of Titanium, two pieces of Quartz, and one Copper Wire. You place it directly on an interior wall using your Habitat Builder.
The terminal holds up to six Basic Batteries at once. Simply click on the charger to open its inventory and drop your dead cells inside. A Basic Battery charges incredibly fast, taking less than a minute to hit maximum capacity. You can also craft a larger Power Cell Charger later for your vehicle batteries, but those take a full ten minutes to refill.
Be warned: there is a small, round button at the very top of the battery storage model that turns the entire machine on and off. It is incredibly easy to accidentally click this button while trying to access your batteries. If you drop your cells in and the lights do not turn on, you probably bumped the power switch.
Power Draw and Recipes
Your base needs to actually support the energy cost of recharging. The Battery Terminal pulls exactly one unit of energy per second for each battery currently seated in the machine. If you fill all six slots, it drains six energy per second from your grid. Make sure you have enough Solar Panels or a Bioreactor running to handle the load.
If you somehow lost all your batteries and need to start fresh, here is the exact shopping list to build new power sources from scratch.
Still struggling to survive on Proteus? Check out my complete Subnautica 2 Guide Hub for base building tips, resource maps, and more.
