Subterrain: Mines of Titan – Nano Abilities Guide

A helpful guide discussing the pros and cons of each Nano ability in great detail.

Guide to All Nano Abilities

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How to Unlock Nano Abilities

At the start of the game, Nano abilities will be unavailable. However, after a certain point in the beginning story you will automatically gain access to your Nano abilities. In order to gain levels in your Nanobot skill to improve your abilities or unlock new ones, you will need to repeatedly use your Nano abilities, therefore you must spend at least 1 Perk point to get anywhere with this skill.

A List of All Nano Abilities in Order of Unlock

Nano Recovery

• Unlocked immediately

A Nano ability that heals you over 10 turns. Its initial level is very weak, granting only 1 health per turn (+0.1 per Nanobots skill), effectively granting 10 health +1 per skill level over its entire duration. At level 2, the healing amount increases to 2.5 per turn (effectively granting 25 total healing over the duration, +1 per Nanobots skill level) and at level 3 the healing amount increases again to 5.0 per turn (resulting in a maximum of 50 health over the duration, +1 per Nanobots skill level).

It’s only at the last level that the ability outscales the easily available healing items in terms of total healing. This perk is honestly underwhelming and isn’t worth the investment of 3 perk points, considering how easy it is to carry lots of healing items.

Nano Push

• Unlocked immediately

A Nano ability that deals damage to ALL enemies standing in a tile, deals knockback damage to them (which is highly likely to push them away) and potentially stuns the enemies. While it does deal some damage, this effect is secondary to the knockback and the stun. Each time this ability is upgraded, the damage, knockback, and stun duration of this ability increases.

This ability is a must have power, and is vastly more useful than the other starting skill. It can be used without a target, allowing you to constantly spend your nano energy while running around camp to train your Nanobots skill.

Nano Mastery

• Unlocked at Nanobots 1

A Nano ability which passively increases your regeneration of nano energy. The amount gained at 1 point invested is somewhat small, at only 0.15 regeneration per turn (it takes 200 turns for it to pay for 1 use of Nano Push, for example). However, despite how little it gives, it is fully passive and stacks with the nano energy you gain from the Mutation attribute. The amount gained increases to 0.3 per turn at level 2 (requiring 100 turns to pay for a use of Nano Push), and to 0.5 per turn at level 1 (requiring 60 turns to pay for a use of Nano Push.

This ability is not a must-have, but if you favor the frequent use of Nano abilities this ability can allow you to use them more often.

Nano Missiles

• Unlocked at Nanobots 3

A Nano ability which deals guaranteed damage to a single target. The amount of damage dealt by the ability is unfortunately lower than advertised, because it is reduced by an enemy’s damage reduction against physical damage. As a result, this ability’s damage is relatively low, to the point that it barely deals more damage than a basic attack from your equipped weapon (without even using any active perks). Its damage does exponentially scale as you rank it up, not only gaining more damage but also gaining additional projectiles. At level 3, it fires 4 projectiles each dealing 80-115 physical damage (before damage reduction).

This ability is underwhelming, and doesn’t outperform simply attacking the enemy until you upgrade it all the way to level 3, at which point it is able to reliably delete a single target.

Nano Wall

• Unlocked at Nanobots 3

A Nano ability which creates a barrier on a targeted tile, blocking movement through the tile until its duration expires or it takes enough damage to break. As of the time of writing this guide, the duration of the wall is bugged and is lower than the listed value. Unlike practically every enemy in the game, the wall has no protection value and therefore is extremely fragile (at least at level 1), breaking in a single hit. Starting at level 2, the health of the wall increases to 250, enabling it to reliably survive a few hits. However, due to the duration bug it still does not last more than 3 turns.

As of the time of writing this guide, this ability is one to be avoided. There are better abilities available for keeping your distance from enemies. I will update this once a patch changes this ability.

Nano Drain

• Unlocked at Nanobots 4

A Nano ability which passively generates more nano energy when you kill an enemy. The amount generated is absolutely abysmal, at just 1 point of energy per kill (+0.05 per Nanobot skill level). The upgrades to this skill do not make it significantly better, turning it into 2 energy per kill at level 2. I didn’t go any further to see what level 3 grants.

This ability is one to be avoided, at least until it is updated to grant much larger chunk of nano energy at once (at level 1, this should honestly grant at least 5 energy per kill to be worth it).

Nano Fusion

• Unlocked at Nanobots 5

A Nano ability which passively increases your Nano Resistance and grants a small amount of recovery from Nano Infection over time. The Nano Resistance gain and the recovery are both very small, granting a minimal impact over a long period. As a passive trait, this is most useful to clear and/or prevent very small amounts of Nano Infection that are too low to be worth using a consumable on to recover from.

This ability scales with more perk points invested, but the benefits remain minor, requiring a long time to show their worth.

Nano Bomb

• Unlocked at Nanobots 6

A Nano ability which deals a large guaranteed amount of damage in a 3×3 area. This ability’s damage is deceptively higher than advertised, as it appears to not be affected by the enemy’s damage reduction (unlike Nano Missiles). It is a very useful ability which can can deal a large amount of damage to grouped up clusters of enemies. When upgraded, the damage scales up linearly, allowing it to keep with with enemy scaling and reliably deal around 1/2 of a common enemy’s health bar in damage no matter the stage of the game.

This ability is worth investing into as a way to handle crowds of enemies.

Nano Chameleon

• Unlocked at Nanobots 7

A Nano ability which makes you invisible to the enemy for 5 turns, or until you attack an enemy. This ability allows you to easily disengage from bad fights, or to simply buy time to heal, use consuables, reload, etc. It is a great ability to have no matter the build you are playing, and it only gets better when upgraded (its duration increases to 10 turns at level 2, and likely 15 turns at level 3). Unlike other Nano abilities, this one costs 2 perk points to acquire initially, but it is worth the investment.

This ability is worth investing into with ranged builds, or melee builds that like to spend turns buffing in combat.

Nano Domination

• Unlocked at Nanobots 9

A Nano ability which mind controls an enemy and makes them fight for you for 5 turns. It has a guaranteed chance of success (though bosses may be immune), and due to the way the enemy’s AI works it can completely swing a fight in your favor. Enemies will target the closes available character, meaning that they will swarm and dogpile onto your dominated enemy as long as you stay away from the fight. Because enemies are all rediculously durable, and their damage output is low by comparison, the dominated enemy will likely survive for the full duration of the ability. You cannot target your dominated ally with attacks. The ability’s duration scales to 10 seconds at level 2, and likely 15 at level 3.

This is the best Nano ability, and is a must have once it is available.