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Back then, 2 Reapers could spawn on the left side of the Aurora, which made a Journey to the Entrance quite hard. Luckily there was a shortcut into the Aurora too
@@Jerrythecloaker it was removed there use to be a hole in the side of the ship that led right to the reactor and I think you can still see evidence of where it use to be still today
In one of the PDA entries it says that Aurora blocked the hole sea dragons used to get up to hunt the reapers. It would be cool if the aurora actually block the hole, and you could swim all the way from the lava zone to Aurora (if the PDA entry referes to that hole)
Should be a mod to rip open the lower hull and make the hole open. A dangerous shortcut swarmed by reapers, and a sea dragon down below. You'd need a prawn suit with grapple hook to make it in and out alive.
@@maximus4765 If you were ballsy enough to risk hanging around the reapers you could probably build foundations to land on to make it a little bit easier. As someone who loves building bases everywhere, I'd love this feature
I love the idea of an underwater game where the upper areas are all lovely and organic, but the deeper you go the more stark and the geometry becomes more sharp angles. Would make a fascinating horror setting.
When I saw the title, I didn't know what this "hell hole" was but as soon as you started going down below the Aurora it popped into my brain that it was the old removed Lava Zone entrance, it's hard to find footage of it so thanks for showing us! Very ominous, I'd love to build a base there
Definitely feels like the "Canon" explanation for Reaper Skeletons existing despite the lack of the giant openings to and from the lava zone for Dragons is just... the Aurora Crashing closing that specific main entrance. We basically are left with auxiliary entrances. Almost like a monumental cave-in due to the Aurora having absolutely impeccable aim.
Idk if you were told yet but there was suppose to be an animation for the sea dragon coming up and dragging a reaper into the hole but it was scrapped bc it made going to the lava zone easy
if you want to give those 'big old fish out there in the water' a taste of realism, check out the 'migrate' mod. it's basically diel migration, which is when smaller creatures near the bottom of the food chain migrate up from the deep dark below to feed on the abundance of life taking advantage of the sunlight near the surface to grow. it's both funny and scary to see a reaper stick his head out of the water.
My anxiety level was slowly increasing as you went down into the Hell Hole. Swimming down into deep water when you can't see the bottom is a big fat no for me, even in a video game
Theres something so interesting about early access versions of games, it’s like being allowed to play something cursed Specially open world games like this, minecraft scared the heck out of me back in the day
This brings back a lot of old memories. I wonder if the "hell hole" was meant to be like the opening in a normal volcano, since it was said that the entire map is the top of a large volcano. It really attests to the size of the Aurora if it really did just cover the entire crater of such a large volcano.
Blocking volcano entrances with spaceships that are nuclear does seem to be a good idea if you want to send millions of tons of radioactive material Into the upper atmosphere with a volcano eruption
@@Blackholebirb Those cube structures are just how the devs made the entire map. They start by drawing a rough shape of the area using simple shapes like cubes, spheres, and triangles. Then they go over it several more times and sculpt it down. It was the easiest way to do large terrains like that in Unity at the time besides procedural generation. In very large areas like the Lava Zone, they actually DID use procedural generation to begin with just to get many of the strange structures we see down there, but the final result is still mostly hand-crafted.
I think in the canon the Aurora blocked off the Hell hole which also explains why the Sea Dragons are going extinct cuz they can't hunt Reapers anymore. small sidenote I was looking all over RU-vid for a good look at the hell hole since I couldn't play the early access for Subnautica. This video was great and I kinda even wished the Hell hole was still in the game as a small secret for those going behind the Aurora maybe? It definetly coulda been a great scare for the explorers out there.
@@DGneoseeker1 I mean to be fair when you actually reach the Lava zone you've been there for more than a couple weeks and the sheer size of them means they need to eat a lot and in the lava zone ain't enough to sustain them long term that's why the PDA says they may go extinct as far as I am aware, though I'm sure there's a videp explaining that theory even better.
Aw man this brought back a bunch of memories of when I played the game a ton in early access. Because I started playing like after August of 2015 and remember finding the early on lava zone after going through the ultra early on lost river that I found by chance, it was a lot brighter green and a lot more narrow back then. And some time later, I think shortly after the sea dragon was added to the experimental build, I went through the lava zone in the cyclops and went out through the hell hole. It was so creepy and confusing. Thanks for uploading this and sending me on a nostalgia trip!
Once you went to the front of the Aurora I immediately remembered it. It was so freaky going down there with the Cyclops, not only was super claustrophobic but with the dark lava rock it was hard to see anything
The deeper you got the herder i went "NOPE". You've got some huge balls going into that hole without knowing what was in there. Like, a leviathan? Maybe. It's not like there could have been anything more than a reaper at this point in development, but Christ in a crust just watching you descend was enough to make things tense. Also this was around the time when i was most exposed to subnautica development, so when years later i went in to play the final game, i was petrified to even get NEAR the aurora because of how many reapers spawned there in older builds.
well, the implications would obviously make a big difference. a reaper? they're already huge, not much to fear there other than the reaper itself. a peeper the size of a reaper? JESUS CHRIST THAT'S LIKE AT LEAST THE SECOND SMALLEST CREATURE NORMALLY I DO N O T WANT TO SEE WHAT ELSE IS DOWN HERE
This is actually really fricking incredible, I wish they kept this stuff in the game, that entire descent was fascinating and when you popped out of that cave and saw that lava castle it was incredibly fascinating, it felt like exploring Subnautica for the first time again
Honestly seeing the old versions of Subnautica is... nostalgic and interesting when you compare it to the versions we have now. I remember when Subnautica was just getting its footing on RU-vid, and I'd watch old youtubers like ThinkNoodles and Markiplier play it for hours, exploring places that have never been seen on RU-vid, exploring the caves nobody else wanted to, making a story, recording the changes, etc. Subnautica was one of the best games, and it still holds that title today. I mean I can replay it 20 times and still not get bored.
I'm super happy you're exploring these old versions for their oddities. people obviously played these but never explored the weird things in it like this hole or the original prawn suit (exosuit). I've been around this game for a long time so I'm happy that others are getting to experience the game the way it was when I started playing
I remember in an early access build, there was a glass observatory that you could build that was just a free-floating glass box that you could climb inside of. You could build the observatory above a really deep hole, jump in, and let it sink to the bottom. Finding a hole in the map geometry and slowly sinking 8km under the ocean is... terrifying.
Makes me think of the whole 'nuclear spike field' concept for deterring future civilisations from exploring radioactive waste dumps. like just hear me out for a second could you imagine some kind of like precursor waste dump full of spikes, containing high-risk high-reward loot or something god that'd be so cool
I have a suggestion for an early access thing to explore, the old grand reef. Information I've seen is scarce, but it has some pretty interesting terrain. To my knowledge, it was removed on July 10 2015, so try to find a version released slightly before that. It would be cool to see a more in depth exploration of this heavily modified area. Also, could you give an explanation of how you obtained this build?
@@TheLastBacon One more thing. I'm not sure, but I believe there used to be an ILZ corridor in the grand reef during this time, might want to make a note to look for that.
I think they made eventually just said that the crash closed the tunnel, making it so the sea dragons couldn't get up to the surface to drag the reapers down anymore. It's been several weeks since I played Subnautica, though, so... now I want to play it again...
So if the player kills the sea dragons, be it the vanilla stasis + knife, or gas pods, or heck mods even, they are doing the sea dragons a favor of ending there suffering?
I don't know why, but exploring empty, undeveloped areas with nothing in them is honestly scarier than an actual finished area with monsters to chase you. I guess I get so immersed in these worlds, that a glimpse in a blank void outside the map or hitting unnaturally geometric walls just spooks me like an NPC realizing their worlds is fake and a mere façade.
Wow, no way! Back around the time I first started playing (I think about 8 years ago, not sure but it was a long time in my young lifetime) I tried to find the fabled Lava Zone I'd heard about online and ended up here. I was about 11 at the time and had little experience with the game so I thought I had found it, but I didn't understand why there was nothing there. I just remember the endless barren land with little lava flecks, and it just kept going deeper. I swear I was at about 3,000m when I gave up, and for the longest time I was like "the Subnautica map is at least 3K meters deep, pretty wild right". I only found out I was wrong when it was fully released and I completed the story, realizing it never went that deep. I've been so confused and now, thanks to this video, I know where tf child-me ended up lmao thank you, Bacon.
Dude, I literally camped out in that hole for a hot minute during my original play through cuz I was terrified of going out to where the sea dragons were. I would swim out to try and find my way into the castle, but couldn’t and would swim back to the hole as soon as the dragon got near me. It’s crazy to think that just a couple years prior, that hole would have led all the way up to the crash zone!
I love coming back to Subnautica after not playing or watching anything for months, it holds a very special place in my heart and seeing old features like this surfacing on the internet again really makes me happy, Great vid :)
As someone who has played since the beginning of the Alpha, I would kill to see you find the patch where the Warpers were introduced. Their pathing wasn't dialed in yet, so the first time I ever saw one, it was floating through the darkened interior of Gun Island. Then there was another, and another, and another... I firmly believe that the reason I love Subnautica so much is that these early builds were just a grab bag of wtf-ery. While the final game was thrilling in its own right, the Alpha was something special.
My friend at school came up with a “Hoverfish leviathan” that camouflages itself as a creep vine by hugging on the vine and changing color to blend in, And lifts up its scales to act as leaves.
I started playing this game on june 10th exactly and i saw people talking about the hellhole and i wanted to see it for myself but i found out it was removed
With there not being any roof above the lava castle in this, it (At least to me) resembles the concept art they released for it way back way, much more than the final version
I fondly remember watching videos on a lot of the beginning builds of the game before it got more of the larger scale changes, one of them was an AwesomeCrunch video where he explores the ILZ and discusses what the devs plan to do with the area and it was pitch black with no light source to show the geometry of the lava zone, AC then discussed and spawned in the earlier version of the sea dragon where it’s model was static and about 5x smaller than its later size (those of you who remember the smaller sea dragon / sea emperor models get a cookie). The thing that this video made me remember it of was when he was talking about the ALZ and went to see where it would be when implemented, it was just a very large black box under the ILZ; interesting to see where the devs set up in advance what would be the original size of areas of the map.
it kind of reminds me of the minecraft "farlands" or the minecraft bedrock edition "stripe lands" the deeper you go the more distorted everything gets. very cool and kind of strange
I remember getting the game on May 10th 2015 and my PC couldn't run it due to not meeting the minimum 4gb Ram, and after upgrading it to 8gb and finally playing the game, I loved it from the start. Weird seeing a slightly newer build than what I first played on and seeing how bad it is in comparison. I did really love the slow updates and the experience on the experimental version previewing stuff early, spawning in unfinished items and creatures. Good times.
oh wow I remember that side entrance to the reactor that they removed! And also all those Reapers being on the side of the Aurora that used to freak me out and keep me away, it felt a lot safer once they removed those Reapers from the side.
I remember when I was a kid trying to explore behind the aroura and I barely even made it to the top part of the he’ll hole before I got too scared. After seeing this I am so glad I didn’t keep going because I would have been terrified.
I remember some time ago, there was a hole under Aurora that was under the Circle thing on the ship, if u had entered that hole, u will had entered a huge tunnel that will get you to Lava zone, not sure if it was true or just some edit
While I'm not 100% sure on how reliable this info is, I recall finding that the original lost river plan had another unused entrance somewhere in the crash zone (along with another entrance to the inactive lava zone not too far afterwards), maybe this hell hole was part of that plan coming into shape before it was changed. Either way, the sea dragon's hunting method as you had mentioned in the video perfectly makes sense with the positioning and wide shape of the descent!
YES, THE CUBE ZONE. I found this zone years and years ago but could never find evidence online and i honestly started thinking i'd made up it. You dont know how long ive been searching for someone who had video of it
I somehow remember that I downloaded an early access and found the void and dove down around 7685 meters down. It may sound like an exaggeration, but I do remember that exact number. The UI/ HUD was similar, if not the same as this one build. I wanted to see if there was a bottom to it, and it didn't had one, I just got trapped in a long spike structure, but it did go even further beyond.
nice job getting a sponsor :D I remember back when you used to joke about never getting one lol. I genuinely wish they kept the hellhole in to some degree. even just as an easter egg. the horror you feel down there is something magnificent. I deeply want more of this series now! Best of luck to you, friend :D
@@TheLastBacon honestly, that wasn't that long ago. I'm so happy to see you get the attention you deserve. it gives me hope for my own youtube career, if I can ever get the courage to start it lol
10:00 Oh man! I went into the void once and hugged the wall of it all the way down and found a spot that let me go through. I ended up in that area, I explored it for hours and it was so damn creepy
The giant stone blocks do still exist in the finished game. If you go down from the edge of the crash zone into the void to the point the cliffside stops, and swim back towards the center of the map, you will see those same blocks of stone.
omg! This is actually close to the build I requested to see a while back! Cause I do know it was a 2015 build. This is so exciting :) (my comment is in the farlands video about 5 months ago from now.)
Hey Bacon! Great to see you're back at it with the early access!! Always gets my exploration (and fight or flight) instincts going! Keep up the amazing videos!
10:00 this area actually exists still. I was messing around in subnautica and found it, there's one like near the lava tunnel that leads to the ghost tree from the lava zone
I remember this place, yes. It's got the texture that I think mostly remains unchanged to this day for the Lava Zones, although it's a rather jarring transition between it and the stuff around the entrance. You can see that it's currently just a template, with the shapes being spheres removed from or places back into the map, and that depth is about level with where some of the Lava Zone is today. The ambient sounds are molten lava and magma bursting to the surface and hissing in contact with the water, and rock shifting with the heat and seismic activity of the place. By this point I think the volcano was the plan, since the walls were long gone. I'm not sure if the chamber in the center of the lava castle is the same way, always planned to be what it would become, because I think at the beginning that formation was intended to be essentially a miniature volcano itself, with its own little internal lava basin. You can see that, in this specific build, it was very incomplete, made with the same sphere tool on a smaller scale as the tunnel. Honestly, it might be more realistic to have been there before the base - the base was, after all, built like that in the lore, too. 10:03 Yeah, that speaks Subnautica to me. I recognize it, in fact! That's the original 'excavation' of sorts that would become the Primary Containment Facility. I don't know if the interior layout changed during development - it almost certainly did, but there's no knowing how - but it was theorized by the community that the location would be for the Sea Emperor, even back then! Certainly, the empty, undetailed, cubical space is rather alien in a different way. I don't know what the layout was like, but you might be able to check it out more if you turned off the fog. I don't know if the command works the same way, but I think it needed an input of either 0 and 1 to work at some point, and then at another was a simple toggle? Or needed to be specified to 'off' or 'on'. It might stack if either is the case, should you repeatedly tell it 'on' or '1'. One thing I'd still like you to check out is the iterations of the void. Some variants had a bit of a lip to the bottom of the map, where it was once seemingly intended to stretch off forever in procedural generation, something like five kilometers down. That has since been removed, along with a good distance of the bottom of the map if I do recall correctly, and it continues to hover in the endless ocean with the always-present ominous perfectly flat rock face on the bottom of it. Unsettling place to be.
when you were talking about the sea voyager mod for the sponsor, theres a glitch where if you take any structure and put it near the ladder it goes tens of thousands of meters into the sky if you get it right edit: it needs to be on top of the boat not the bottom
if you haven't already, check out the lava challenge. the lava has grown bored with being in the crater and has decided to see what the surface is like, and follows riley. how long can you last before the lava rises too high and kills you?
I once made my way to the bottom of the world. The land was above me, and darkness below me. It was terrifying down there. This was before they put the leviathans out there to stop you.
This would actually be sick though, not only for the lore(thought currently it's very heavily implied that the sea dragons take the route of the long lost river corridor, due to the fact that you can also find reaper skeletons there and it leads into their territory) but anyways, can you imagine being lost in the lava zone and finally a sending, only to be greeted by reapers at the top?
I wonder, was it perhaps some early conceptual planned idea for another way down into the lava zone? A sort of 'extra hard' route that skips the lost river and just dives straight down into the lava zone at the cost of it being much much harder to traverse, what with the aurora originally haveibg MUCH more reapers then in the final build. Afterall we do know that canonically there WAS an entrance to the lava zone where the aurora fell, it had just be blocked off, so maybe the original plan was to instead leave a portion of that hole open, but at great risk to the player
3:40 this hole kind of reminds me of the Jellyshroom Caves minus the Jellyshrooms, or maybe I only think that because in the current version that's where pretty much all the random holes in the Plateaus lead to.
