Life is tough in Grounded 2, inevitably, since you’re smaller than a toothpick. While everything might seem overwhelming when you’re just getting started, the right tips and best practices make survival less of a chore and more like fun, whether it’s having a steady stream of relevant respawn points or being fearless enough to take on the spiders patrolling the starting area.
Below, we’ve listed a backpack full of Grounded 2 beginner tips we wish we’d known to help make your park recreation safer and more enjoyable.
1. The little white mushrooms dotted around the park’s opening areas are your best and easiest source of food. Use them for a quick snack if you don’t have any weevil roasts on hand.
2. You can slurp nasty groundwater if you like being poisoned, but you shouldn’t. Look for dewdrops hanging on tall grass blades (especially first-thing in the morning) and knock them down to get safe drinking water.
3. Build new shelters, and keep up with assigning them as your respawn points as you start to explore further afield. A simple lean-to and a habit of making it your new respawn spot each time cuts out a lot of backtracking if you get knocked unconscious.
4. Just make sure it’s a safe place, first. If you see a line of ants or a bunch of spider webs, find a spot where you’re less likely to get turned into a snack.
5. This’ll be like muscle memory if you played the first Grounded, but pass any new materials you get through the resource analyzer to get Raw Science and, more importantly, new crafting recipes.
6. Complete the optional objectives. Killing gnats and roasting a few weevils might not seem very exciting, but it gets you useful materials (like food) and Raw Science, the latter of which you’ll need a lot of.
7. The bigger objectices, such as building a hatchery, are like your auxiliary main story quests and help prepare you for reaching progress milestones.
8. Yes, the stat buffs from most early-game equipment look negligible, but these upgrades are still worth your time and materials. Every little bit of defense helps.
9. If you’re gathering materials to craft something, but don’t have them all yet, place the blueprint on the ground and start building to remove the ingredients you do have and free up precious inventory space.
10. Unlike the axes and hammers in the first Grounded, your Omni-Tool can’t break, so smash, hack, and dig to your heart’s content.
11. Play with the audio on, if you can. The music changes when a threat approaches, and the urgency and intensity of it indicates how serious of a threat it is.
12. Run away if things look dire. You usually have enough stamina to outrun whatever’s pursuing you, and if you can duck into a research lab, so much the better.
13. That said, it’s a good idea to test your limits and see what threats you can feasibly deal with, so you know how to plan your expeditions.
14. If you die, retrieve your backpack to get all your items and materials back!
15. You start Grounded 2 with decent combat capabilities, unlike in the first game. A three-hit combo or charged attack with a hammer or spear will typically stun a foe and let you finish them off.
16. Guarding is essential for survival, so when you see an enemy about to attack, hold that guard button down.
17. For the early game, you can take on small enemies up to larva and Orb Weaver Jr using the pebblet warhammer and carefully timed blocking. Don’t let spiders keep you from exploring!
18. If you do use the bow and arrows, make sure to collect arrows after firing, so you don’t run out and have to get more thistle thorns. You can retrieve used arrows even from defeated enemies.
19. Violence isn’t always the answer, though. Many of the park’s inhabitants are peaceful, and if you don’t have to antagonize them — then don’t.
20. Pay attention to the environment, not just to find useful materials like acorn shells, but to get a heads-up on potential threats. If you see spider webs, for example, there’s definitely a spider nearby.
21. Get in the habit of using Peep Mode to take a snapshot of bugs so you can learn their weaknesses. It’ll come in handy as you make it further in the park.
22. You’ll unlock base-building materials early in the game, but you don’t have to build a single room if you don’t want to. It’s entirely optional.
23. There’s no time limit, so play at your own pace, whether it’s blazing through every quest or spending a whole in-game week just getting used to the park first.
