DIVE or DIE - Children of Rain Guide | How to Survive

This guide helps you lean the basics on how to survive in Dive or Die - Children of Rain

Game Guide by Amaya on Sep 13, 2026

Surviving in DIVE or DIE - Children of Rain requires careful oxygen management, smart exploration, and knowing when to retreat. The deeper you venture, the more important it becomes to plan your movements and avoid unnecessary risks. You must survive 40 days to finish the game.

Manage Your Oxygen

Oxygen is your most important resource while underwater. Watch your remaining air on every dive, and don't wait until the last moment to return to safety.

Always leave yourself enough oxygen to make the trip back to the surface.

The blue bar is Oxygen, the red bar is Health, and the purple bar is Sanity. Also, keep track of your depth.

Dive or die children or rain how to survive managing oxygen insanity health

Know When to Retreat

One of the easiest ways to get into trouble is pushing forward when your situation is already dangerous. If your oxygen is running low or you encounter a difficult area, turn back rather than take unnecessary risks.

Survival should always come before exploration. Always watch your oxygen level and depth.

Plan Your Dive and Why You Are Diving

As much as you want to collect goods and resources for crafting and upgrades, your early priority will be keeping your people fed and sane. So, bring back enough mementos and canned food first. [music] In the case that you have filled your pack before you found something you really need,

Before diving into an unfamiliar area, consider where you need to go and how you will return. Learning the layout of each area makes longer dives much safer.

Try to remember safe paths and locations where you can recover or return to the surface.

Expand Your Camp

You'll need to expand your camp so more people can work on different structures, or for when Joe Saltman eventually dies or goes insane. You can get recruits in a few ways, but the two most common are sending people on autonomous expeditions, which yield better survivors.

The second way is for a new survivor to show up at the lighthouse every day. However, the ones that do arrive aren't always the best, as they might have a bad stat or negative traits.

You don't always need to accept recruits, so consider how badly you need a survivor, since they will also deplete your resources faster.

Dive or die children of rain beginners guide village screen

Avoid Hazards

During diving, pressure increases at certain thresholds, which depletes your oxygen faster. The first threshold is at 50 m; to counteract it, you can use a rebreather, but you'll need to find a blueprint and craft it first.

Pay attention to your surroundings as you explore. Obstacles and other dangers can slow you down or make it harder to escape when your oxygen is running low. Watch out for the killer algae.

Once you get a knife, you can slice it and kill it with one or two swipes. It might also give you some algae tissue, but beware: it regrows quickly, so keep that in mind.

In the toxic area, don't slice the red strands if you don't need the web resources, because it'll alert the crawler, which could kill you with a single attack. If you swim around the red strands, there is a much greater chance that it won't be alerted.

Listen to the Ocean

Listen to the ocean. Dive or Die has some incredible audio design, and the audio is the first clue. If something sounds off, if there is a slight change in the music, or if you hear a weird sound you haven't heard before, proceed with extreme caution, as something might be making its way towards you.

DIVE or DIE - Children of Rain Insanity Listen to the Ocean

Insanity

It might not be obvious how you go insane, but once you do, it will start to drain your oxygen at an incredibly dangerous rate, which could spell death depending on how far you're down when it happens.

When you get back to the surface, you'll need to be cured of negative traits like insanity at the infirmary. One of the worst ways to lose your sanity is from leeches, which can quickly accumulate, so be careful.

Final Thoughts

The key to surviving in DIVE or DIE - Children of Rain is preparation. Manage your oxygen, learn the environment, avoid unnecessary risks, and always have a way back to safety. Once you're familiar with the game's mechanics and routes, longer dives become much easier.