Subnautica 2 Guide: How to Find Lithium and Craft Plasteel Ingots
Getting crushed inside a giant living mouth is a humiliating way to lose your inventory.
You will hit a massive progression wall the second you try to upgrade your standard air capacity. The High Capacity Air Tank requires Plasteel Ingots, and that means you have to track down lithium. This rare metal does not spawn in the safe shallows. The game forces you to either risk your life inside a literal biological trap or brave the boiling volcanic vents to get your hands on it. Before you throw away your hard earned gear on a suicide run, I mapped out the safest ways to extract this material.
The Great Jaw Extraction
If you want lithium early in your playthrough, you have to steal it from an apex predator plant.
Preparing for the Heist
You absolutely cannot do this barehanded. You need the Sonic Resonator to shatter the raw deposits. Since your oxygen is going to drain rapidly inside the jaw structure, bring a few Air Bladders as a backup. You also need serious speed to escape the trap. Equip your Wakemaker, strap on some Basic Fins, and make sure you have the Dash ability equipped. If you have not powered up your Welcome Center to access those genetic upgrades, my Subnautica 2 Biomod guide walks you through the exact steps.
Springing the Trap
Start at your Lifepod and swim southwest, right over the major drop off on the ocean floor. Keep the crater wall on your right side until you spot a ruined colony building below you. Stop outside this building first. There is a single free piece of lithium sitting on a table in a coral fragment, and it actually respawns over time. Head inside the ruin to scan the High Capacity Dive Tank recipe if you missed it.
From the ruin, push a short distance southeast until you see The Great Jaw. It looks like a massive pod with a purple tonsil hanging in the center. Top off your oxygen at the blue Oxygen Tunics scattered around the outside. The lithium is locked inside that purple tonsil. The catch is that the jaw snaps shut the second you trip the purple strands. Swim in, hit the deposit with a charged Sonic Resonator blast, grab your ore, and dash out before the teeth close.
Farming the Volcanic Vents
Once you progress a bit further, you never have to deal with The Great Jaw again. You can farm the hot caves instead.
Surviving the Heat
You can only use this route after you secure the Heat Tolerance adaptation from the Angel Comb near Wander's blackbox. Once your DNA is modified to handle extreme temperatures, start at your Lifepod and face between South and Southeast. Swim straight for about 250 meters. Your HUD temperature gauge will spike, letting you know you hit the lava biome.
Finding the Safe Caves
Look for cave entrances sitting around 125 meters deep. You will know you are in the right spot when you see glowing green grass and strange mushrooms with thick cyan stems and brown heads. The lithium nodes here are massive deposits, so you still need your Sonic Resonator to break them. Be prepared for a meager haul. Unlike copper or titanium nodes that drop five pieces, these large lithium deposits only yield one or two chunks of ore.
Processing Plasteel Ingots
Raw lithium does absolutely nothing for you until you refine it in your base.
You must throw the raw ore into a Processor to create the advanced materials needed for your tank upgrades. If you have not set up your smelting room yet, my Subnautica 2 Processor and Titanium Ingot guide shows you exactly where to find the blueprints and manage the power drain.
The recipe unlocks automatically the second you pick up your first piece of lithium. Here is exactly what you need to load into the machine to get your upgrades rolling.
Still struggling to survive on Proteus? Check out my complete Subnautica 2 Guide Hub for base building tips, resource maps, and more.
