Subnautica is a game filled with options and is notable as a survival game where almost no creature ever has to be fought or killed if the player chooses not to. However, there are ways to take on the giant creatures that inhabit the oceans of the alien planet the player crash lands onto.
While it is nearly (but not quite) impossible to take down a sea dragon, the smaller ghost leviathans and reaper leviathans can be killed by the player using only the limited weapons they are allowed to craft in-game. From the obvious to the entirely insane, the methods to tackle and end a reaper are many.
5 Prawn Suit Drill/Grapple Arms
While the prawn suit is something of a safety net against the giant creatures that roam the world of Subnautica, it can only take two or three hits from a reaper before being destroyed. Fortunately, during reaper fights the creature will usually attack and then wander off for a while, giving players the opportunity to repair the suit between charges. There are many possible attachments for the prawn suit, but the most common pairing for fighting will be one drill arm and one grapple arm.
This combination allows players to latch onto a reaper leviathan and not let it get away, providing the opportunity to kill it much more quickly than in an elongated battle involving many charges from the reaper. The drill arm is a hugely useful tool for inflicting damage on these huge creatures. Drilling constantly into the creature while latched on with the grappling arm is a hugely effective technique and will provide results, quickly eliminating reapers and even the bigger leviathan class beings as well.
4 Stasis Rifle/Thermo-Blade
This method appears at first glance to be the most insane of all ways to fight a reaper. However, it is actually one of the safer and more assured ways to end one. The stasis rifle is a weapon that can freeze objects in the game into place for up to thirty seconds, and the thermo-blade is one of the few items that can actually inflict damage on an opponent.
While there is very little safety involved in the process, using the stasis rifle on a charging reaper leviathan can hold the creature in place while the player goes beneath and attacks with the thermo-blade. Slashing away at the underbelly may not feel as effective as attacking in a prawn suit, but it is easy once the player has the technique down to hold the reaper in place indefinitely.
When the bubble of the stasis rifle shot starts to flicker, it is time to stop slashing and throw another shot with the rifle to continue holding the reaper in place. If using a normal knife to slash, it will be a slow process, but with a thermo-blade, the reaper will be dead in just a few minutes of slashing at it. An important note with this technique is to bring medical kits since it takes a reaper two hits to kill the player even unprotected, and to go up at some point for air or to have another way to breathe at hand.
3 Prawn Suit Torpedoes
Prawn suits have other attachments that provide other means of fighting and killing a reaper. However, it can be dangerous and messier than using grappling and drill arms. Subnautica doesn’t provide traditional missiles or torpedoes but does give players the option to create gas torpedoes. These will explode on impact and release powerful gas fumes that can kill even a reaper leviathan. However, each arm in a prawn suit can hold a payload of six gas torpedoes, and even at maximum damage, each torpedo can hit a target for around 500-550 damage.
This means players will probably need to make both arm attachments on their prawn suit into torpedo arms and fill both with gas torpedoes. Even then, reapers are infamous for their lack of staying still unless hit with a stasis rifle blast. Players can try to let a reaper get close and then stasis rifle it before getting back into their prawn suit to fire all of their torpedoes before the reaper escapes the rifle blast. This could definitely kill a reaper, which has 5000 health and could be eliminated by taking the full damage from 10 torpedo clouds. With 12 total torpedoes in the payload, it is likely it would die, but unlikely if the reaper is allowed to move during the attack.
2 Seamoth Torpedoes
If players want a real challenge, it is possible to kill a reaper with a Seamoth. The fast vehicles seem great at speedy underwater travel, but it is still difficult to avoid a charging reaper in one and a Seamoth cannot take more than a couple of reaper strikes before exploding. Fortunately, players can also attach a torpedo system to the Seamoth which will damage a reaper.
However, the Seamoth torpedo system maxes out at 6 torpedoes. It is possible to make all four Seamoth attachments into torpedo systems for a total of 24 torpedoes, but this makes the Seamoth hugely vulnerable to attack. If quickly fired at the right time, this large set of torpedoes can kill a reaper, but the Seamoth is definitely a vulnerable tool to rely on in such a fight.
1 The Cyclops Shove
And then there is the downright insane method. The Cyclops is usually more of a big target for reapers to attack than a tool for their destruction. Decoys to escape reapers replace the opportunity to fire missiles at them, but the Cyclops can kill a reaper.
The Cyclops causes damage in Subnautica when it hits creatures in the water. This can result in smaller creatures being accidentally killed when they are caught in the path of such a large vehicle. However, a reaper will also take a chunk of damage when the Cyclops hits it. Usually, this doesn’t matter because the Cyclops will take much more damage, but with a shield generator on the Cyclops, activated just before the reaper hits, the reaper will still take damage, but the Cyclops will not.
Shields take a huge amount of energy and so for this method to succeed, it is almost necessary to use ion power cells over regular ones. Even so, players will need to turn the shield off between reaper charges to find success. Going at high speed into a reaper like this for several minutes can kill it, but the method is hugely dangerous since a Cyclops is difficult to replace.