‘Grounded’ beginner’s guide: combat, crafting, and survival tips you need to know

Grounded is a sandbox survival simulator located in your own backyard. Because a scientific experiment went wrong, you are reduced to the size of a small insect and you have to survive in a hostile environment full of deadly spiders, poisonous mites and hungry larvae.

However, grounding can be quite difficult, with an emphasis on survival play and tough battles with angry creatures.

Food and drink are paramount to survival in Grounded, given the time spent and certain actions deplete the hunger and thirst gauges, which can lead to loss of health and even death. You should try to keep your character’s needs to the fullest at all times if possible, and even seek transportation supplies for longer excursions outside of your main base. Here are some general tips for staying healthy.

• There are essentially two types of water: clean and dirty. Clean water is safe to drink, and dirty water will drain your hunger meter when you drink it.
• You can drink dirty water from dirt pools in a pinch, but make sure you have a food supply to regenerate your food meter afterwards.
• The most abundant source of clean water is dew, which can be found shining on top of grass blades in the morning. Throw a stone at them to dislodge them, then go interact with them to suck on them.
• Additional sources of clean water include juice found near discarded juice cans or boxes, or aphid molasses, which aphids sometimes leave behind.
• Analyze the grub parts to unlock the recipe for a skin of water. This allows you to carry two sources of water with you.
• A dew collector is a build you can place on your base that generates dew sources every few hours in the game. They require quartzite found in underground tunnels, and spider webs that you can loot from a dead spider-type mob.

• Most of the smaller mobs in the game drop meat, such as mosquitoes, weevils, and aphids. You can cook them on a cooking fire and take them with you as a source of nutrition. However, they will rot after a day, so you cannot keep them for too long.
• However, you can use rotten food to make mushroom growing pits, providing a constant supply of food. They are built and researched from acorn tops, which you can get from acorns near the big tree you can see in the distance.
• In a rush, you can often find mushrooms all over the place that can provide you with some livelihood, but meat provides a much greater advantage.

Grounded Preparation, construction and construction of bases.

Crafting recipes are the bread and butter at the core of the game, as you upgrade to better facilities, better armor, and better weapons. Creation works similarly to other games in Grounded, but there are a couple of key things that aren’t obvious unless you follow the story missions and tutorials very strictly.

• Most of their crafting recipes come from resource analysis. You can do this using one of the resource analysis stations found throughout the game. The one closest to the start is left after leaving the start cave.
• Using the analyzer, you can scan virtually any new material or item you get, producing crafting ideas from the other end. Every time you remove a new bug or loot a new resource, head over to a parser to learn new recipes.

• Without spoiling, Grounded also has a system for learning more advanced patterns through a quest infrastructure. Complete the main objectives of the story to discover more information about this. This is how the most important “floor” pattern is obtained, to make multi-storey buildings, otherwise you can use clay foundation as floor until then. Clay is a red stone substance found near water sources and requires a shovel to recover.
• Many manufacturing patterns require the use of woven plant fibers (basically ropes). It will use hundreds of them, so be sure to loot every bit of vegetable fiber you can find. They usually recover from small plant growths in the ground, but sometimes cutting blades of grass with an ax can also produce them.
• When selecting an area to build, be sure not to build your base in known bug territory. In real life, ants explore places for several days or weeks to ensure safety before moving in with your nest, you should do the same. If you set up camp on the hunting grounds of a wolf spider, for example, it may destroy itself fairly quickly.
• Consider building your base high above or over water, or over another feature to keep yourself safe from insects. The game is pretty generous with where and how you can build, so be sure to experiment and build close to the relevant resources you want.
• Swarms of larvae appear to hunt bases that have edible items inside storage containers. Consider not storing food or placing it in a separate area high above the ground near its main base.

Grounded Combat tips

Combat in Grounded is quite medieval in style. No weapon shrank from you, which means you have to make your own instruments of destruction from materials you find in the field. Here is an overview of how to get started with ground combat.

• Ground combat works on a combination of ranged and melee weapons, with gear that can customize your playstyle to some degree.
• The team is divided into tiers, with tier 1 being the weakest, tier 2 being the strongest, and so on.
• The most powerful enemies are much more difficult to tackle with basic weapons and armor. You must aim to build a nail stick first, which is quite possibly the best weapon you can get without facing stronger mobs.
• The strongest armor you can make without killing stronger monsters is the acorn plate gear. Smash acorns with a hammer near the big tree (you can see it in the distance looking up) to get the materials.
• With a spike stick and acorn armor, you can take on stronger monsters like ladybugs and orb-weaving spiders. Soldier ants and larva swarms also drop jaws that can also be used to make even more powerful weapons.
• Melee combat is aimed at blocking and preserving endurance. You can see in the video above how the spider telegraphs its attacks before attacking. Timely blocks negate almost all damage. However, constant blocking is not feasible and will cause your weapons to be damaged and resistance to drain.
• Most enemies don’t turn after telegraphing their attack, so you can attack from the side to avoid being bitten if you don’t want to block. Bigger enemies with bigger hitboxes make this strategy a bit more complicated.
• Hitting enemies in the head repeatedly will stun them, giving you an opener to heal or deal more damage. Weapons with a higher stun rating naturally stun more easily.

Grounded General advice

Grounded is a ton of systems to get familiar with, but after a few hours you will be a true garden hunter.

• Use markers to set waypoints to help you get your bearings. I usually put one on my base, and near any specific resource nearby that I want to find. You can make them from parts of clover, which grow near water sources.
• Be sure to follow the first parts of the story as it will set the context for the game and give you access to the game’s search system.
• If you are trying to find something specific, look to the horizon. Look for dandelion heads if you need grass stalks for crafts, for example, and use the large oak tree to orient yourself towards the ground. If you need to create arrows, try to find a thistle plant. Finding a high point can help you inspect the area.
• Bugs in the game seem to stay in specific territories, but some wander a little further. Try to build your base in a safe place, otherwise bad things could happen to you (and you).
• Be careful where you put your spawn point for that effect. If you put a spawn point inside a wolf spider’s lair, it may be difficult for you to get out.
• Each error seems to have a different pattern of behavior. Study their movements and attacks to discover the best way to deal with them.

Grounded and the future

Grounded is in early access right now, but Obsidian has a great content roadmap planned. It’s obvious to see Grounded’s gross potential, with an infinite range of new bugs, creation opportunities, and locations they could add. Grounded’s environment is totally under-explored in the genre, and the way the game seems to capture the imagination of the community certainly speaks to that.

Do you have any advice for Grounded, or any questions? Click on the comments and we will include them.