Grounded has been out for a year now, and a lot has changed since its release. With the recent update adding some much-wanted features, like the game’s very first boss fight and tameable pets, we’re putting together a list of tips for what new players should do first.
The premise of Grounded is a simple one: you’ve been shrunken down to the size of an ant and are now tasked with surviving in someone’s back yard, either by yourself with a group of friends. Spiders, Aphids, Water Droplets, and much, much more wait for you between the blades of grass. Here’s what you need to know to get started.
7 Pick Up…EVERYTHING
The world of Grounded is full of collectible resources and materials. When you first start you might as well pick up everything you see. Whenever you collect resources you get a bunch of Blueprints unlocked that correlate with those items. Punch the Mites to death, pull sprigs out of the ground, and collect all the Mushrooms you see.
Mushrooms in particular are very useful at the start of the game, before you’ve got a cooking spit set up or some other way to get food. These will be your primary food source for the first few in-game days, so collect as many as you can.
6 Get Your Hands On Some Water
Loaded up with mushrooms already? Water is the other thing you’ll need, and plenty of it. There are water droplets to be found all over the place (on grass stems, mostly) which will replenish your thirst bar.
Don’t drink the dirty water in the puddles. It’s literally called “Nasty Water” in the game, and will make you lose HP, something that isn’t too easy to replenish in the very early game. You won’t have any way to store water at the beginning, so keep an eye out for water droplets while you explore.
Later, crafting a Canteen is not too resource intensive: you just need some grub hide and rope.
5 Craft An Early Weapon
It’s not recommended to start messing with the more dangerous denizens of the backyard until you’re a bit more geared up, but an early weapon doesn’t hurt. A Pebblet Spear is easy to craft:
You can use this to kill some of the smaller, less dangerous creatures in the garden, but whatever you do, don’t mess with the spiders. Not yet, anyway. You’ll need one of the more powerful weapons before you can tackle the most powerful creepy crawlies.
4 Time To Build A Base
You’ve got some rudimentary tools, a backpack full of random materials, and now you just need somewhere to call home. There are two things to remember about an early base: a spot near a Field Station isn’t a bad idea (you can start analzying stuff right away), and you probably want to build higher up.
Analyzing materials via the Field Station will help you unlock new crafting materials and start to build up a small stockpile of science points. Ideally, you also want to build your base a bit higher up. Swarms of insects, particularly angry ants, can literally destroy your game. They’ll camp you out and kill you repeatedly. Building higher up at least gives you somewhere safe to stay, craft, cook, and whatever else.
3 Practice Combat
Combat has been reworked and tweaked several times in Grounded’s one-year history, most recently in the May content update. You don’t just hit things in Grounded, oh no, there’s a fully-fleshed out combat system with dodging, parrying, and movement.
It’s a good idea to practice with the combat. Once you have some rudimentary gear — like a Spear, and Acorn Armor (crafted from the bits of Acorn near the large Oak tree) you can try taking on some of the larger bugs in the game. Practicing will prepare you for the bigger, scarier enemies, like the new Broodmother boss.
2 Find A More Reliable Food Source
A key part of Grounded is staying healthy, and that means managing your food and water sources. With a canteen crafted water becomes less of a problem, but you’ll also need to prepare food.
To do this you’ll need to craft a Roasting Spit. All you need is:
Easy. The crafting recipe is unlocked pretty much right from the start, as soon as you pick up a Sprig. You can use the Roasting Spit to cook raw meat into more tasty and hunger-replenishing cooked meat.
Make sure that you’re just hunting smaller creature though - those ants might look tasty, but if you’re not careful they’ll come after you in serious numbers. Not something you can deal with at the start of the game.
Once you’ve got a small base set up, some armor and a decent weapon, you can head over to the Grassland biomes to hunt for Bombardier Beetles. You’ll need parts of their body to craft a Jerky Rack, a crafting station that helps you preserve food for longevity.
1 Research For Beginners
Research is the way you unlock new crafting recipes. All research is carried out at the resource analyzer, found inside Field Stations dotted around the garden.
You should start by analzying the simple things, like Pebblets, and then move onto the next. Resource analyzing has a cooldown, so you want to make sure you’re returning regularly to select a new item to research.
The Resource Anaylzer can only be used three times before it needs to recharge. You can reset the charges by sleeping at nighttime, otherwise it takes one in-game hour to refill a single charge.
NEXT: Grounded: The Map Locations Worthy Of Exploring, Ranked
