Grounded has just launched it’s first update this week adding new features, creatures and fixes.
Grounded is already a tough enough game to begin with, but with the new update bringing buffed spiders and birds, prepare to constantly be on your guard for threats.
Unlike most early access games, Obsidian Entertainment actually managed to release the update a day early, personally I don’t think I can ever remember an update actually coming earlier than the planned release date.
Grounded’s New Mutations:
Mutations are complete new system added to the game, which add a really cool perk style system to your tiny character’s abilities.
They can be obtained from exploring, fighting or doing daily quests to gain them as a reward.
As you can see above, once unlocked you need to go to your menu then status to activate a mutation, although pick wisely, you can only have 3 active mutations at any time.
If you are playing a multiplayer game, it’s worth spreading mutations out between players so you each have your own kind of roles, such as explorer, fighter and builder for example.
If you have completed the story so far, then you can go to BURG.L to buy the Meat Shield mutation, giving you a higher maximum health.
Considering this is the first Grounded update, I wasn’t expecting there to be a perk system such as this, pretty exciting stuff.
In total there are 13 new mutations to acquire.
Footprints:
This one has caused me some trouble, nothing major, I just need to build my base somewhere else, thankfully it was a second base and nowhere near completed anyway.
You can see from the image above, my base is now floating, it wasn’t before the update.
The weird thing is, most of the footprints I have seen have been human ones, but the one bellow my base doesn’t look human.
At first I thought this was a cat footprint, but on closer inspection it looks round? 360 degrees, so now I’m not sure?
I compared the circle in the middle and five pad looking holes to that of a cats paw print, let’s hope it isn’t, birds and spiders are hard enough to deal with let alone with giant felines running around the place.
I could be wrong, have you seen this mysterious base busting print? If not take a look near the baseball, just on the hill ahead of where you first spawn, I’m curious to see what others think this could be?
Birds:
If the ground didn’t have enough danger to watch out for, it’s now time to also watch out in the sky, as birds have come with the latest Grounded update.
It’s not all bad news though, they do leave feathers which will now allow you to unlock even more crafting items, including the feather arrow.
Currently the Crow is the only type of bird that can be found since the Grounded update, but I would anticipate more types being added soon.
At the moment, thankfully you can’t fight the Crows, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that changes soon.
So far I have been able to find Crows from tall perching locations such as the lasers and the bird bath, but I’m certain there will be other areas they spawn too.
New BURG.L Quests:
As well as having the new mutation mentioned above, BURG.L also has new daily quests that be can done now too.
The new quest types are as follows:
- Quest types: Artificer (crafting quests)
- Chipsleuth (quests asking you to locate BURG.L chips)
Personally I am really happy to see that there are now quests that will help us to get new BURG.L chips, as they seemed a nightmare to find before.
New Buildings:
Whilst they are only really cosmetic, it’s always nice to have more options to improve your base.
Yes, the fences might help keep bugs out, but nowhere near as much as a wall, but still, pretty cool if you wanted to make a fenced food area and keep it safe from ants.
- Fence buildings (Sprig and Acorn)
- Table buildings (Grass and Clover)
Whilst it may not be huge building updates, any new building parts added to a Grounded update is a huge bonus in my opinion, but then I do love my building and crafting.
Summary:
There are tons of other updates and bug fixes that have been added with this latest Grounded update, the full patch notes as can be found on the Obsidian website are listed below:
NEW FEATURES
- Bird! – Includes new crafting materials and recipes from bird feathers.
- Perk system with 13 unique perks to discover!
- New BURG.L Quest types: Artificer (crafting quests) and Chipsleuth (quests asking you to locate BURG.L chips).
- Added Fence buildings (Sprig and Acorn).
- Added Table buildings (Grass and Clover).
- Added Water Flea ambient insect to flooded biome.
CHANGES / TUNING
Combat
- Buffed damage on the Spider Fang Dagger so it’s on the higher end of tier 2 weapons.
- Buffed damage on Spike Traps significantly.
- Spiders learned a new set of attacks to choose from instead of just their basic bite.
- Added a brief forced delay between block start events, preventing the player from perfect-blocking by mashing the block button.
- Slightly reduced the bonus damage given by the Eyepatch.
- Adjusting larva blade poison proc so it’s consistent.
- Reducing the stun ratings of two-handed weapons.
- Slightly reducing amount of damage the mint mallet deals so it’s in line with tier progression.
- Tier 2 insects now have a cooldown after being stunned before they can be stunned again.
- Perfect Blocking no longer reduces armor durability.
Interface
- Updated Raw Science UI icons to be more consistent across the game.
- Adding shortcut for dropping items in the inventory screen (Drop Stack is in the context menu).
- Adding “Deposit/Receive Stack” button on storage UIs.
- Shift+clicking item stacks in the storage UIs will transfer the full stack clicked.
- Dragging an item stack onto the paper doll in the inventory screen will drop the item stack in the world.
- Crafting an item with a full inventory will now notify that the item was dropped in the world.
- Storage and Flag marker icons have been revised, regrouped, and their colors have shifted (Requires a one-time tour of the yard to set everything back / new trail markers will be blank by default).
- Slight revisions to a few SCA.B flavor schemes.
- Canteen slurps available are displayed in the equipped item HUD element
- Additional icon art
- Added a highlight effect that appears on interactable objects when the player looks at them. This feature is controlled by the “Highlight Objects” Accessibility setting.
World
- Revised clover cave layout and lighting, and moved entrance slightly.
- Revised flooded area layout in southeast corner of yard.
- Updated house electrical socket with final, non-blockout art
- Items left in the world (not in a container, etc.) for 48-72 in-game hours will eventually despawn once out of range of all players. Items loaded from a saved game from version 0.1.x, will have all item timers start at zero to give players a chance to react to this change.
- Players and critters now create ripples in the water while moving.
- Kids are starting to throw Archer Cookies over the fence, along with their Billy Hogs and Apples.
- Added a few footprints throughout the yard.
Buildings
- Base buildings will now be more reliably anchored when built on top of objects such as the Baseball
- Palisades will no longer immediately collapse when an attached building is removed.
- Water Containers can collect falling droplets.
- The player can now drink from Water Containers while holding weapons.
- Stairs may now be embedded in the ground like scaffolds and ramps.
- Walls that are sandwiched above by two floors will have their crenellations suppressed.
- The camera will slide to the correct position when interacting with a Weapon Wall Mount.
- Tweaked the placed position of the Weapon Wall Mount to be more centered.
Performance
- Better Windowed-Fullscreen performance in Windows versions of the game.
- Better UI/Inventory GPU performance.
- Significant load game time improvement for games with large bases.
- Better GPU performance during nighttime.
Other
- The Voice Chat Activation setting is now properly reapplied when entering a game.
- SCA.B flavor scheme collectibles now have a pulsing light and are slightly bigger to make them more noticeable.
- Hedge Berries now float in water.
- Prevented very large numbers of ants from being assigned the same task, such as killing a weevil.
- Reduced the camera near clip plane fixing the camera clipping into the player when using high a high field of view.
- Polished up spear movement and aiming animations for 1st person.
- You should now see grass extend to the furthest reaches of the yard.
- Ants now find and store lost Ice Caps.
- Soldier ants can now properly drop ant heads as loot.
- Tall woody weeds are now displayed as “Husky Weed.” Dandelions and husky weed both still supply weed stems. Husky weed now respawns.
- Ants will not be happy if you take their eggs.
- The Resource Analyzer now animates when analyzing.
- A couple of new smoothies can be whipped up at the smoothie station.
BUG FIXES – ALL PLATFORMS
Top Community Issues
- Incapacitated players are now saved instead of ignored when a save game is made or they exit the game. With this, players that reload an incapacitated character will have their backpack spawned where they died instead of them just spawning without their inventory in the world. NOT RETROACTIVE
- Items and insects will spawn under the world less. Cleaning up items/insects that have fallen through the level upon load. (This should help with insect population/egg spawning)
- Insects should no longer spawn inside of the large Pond rocks. Any insect currently in the rocks upon load should be snapped out. (This should help with insect population/egg spawning)
- Grass planks will no longer fall through the ground.
- Fixed Hedge Berries appearing in incorrect positions for clients, making them very difficult to harvest.
- Fixed torch sound effects.
- Insects should no longer “walk through walls” when not looking at them or when they are at your far away base.
- Fixed giant arrows sometimes spawning when shot into a large insect.
Major
- Multiplayer clients will no longer crash when despawning droplets containing items.
Game
- Optimized building collapsing so the game will no longer lock up when collapsing huge structures.
- The game will no longer crash when collapsing very long structures.
- Fixed issues where walls could get built in-between a wall snap spot messing up your wall grid
- Gnats will now need a little more delta-V than a Bounce Web can provide if they want to go to space.
- Fixed a problem where insects would not become appropriately hungry and sleepy after the players slept.
Items/Equipment/Resources
- Standalone buildings that are attached to walls and floors will collapse as well if the floor or wall they are on collapses.
- Large Rake Rock now has proper collision.
- Soda pop can now be dumped from a canteen.
- Fixed water droplets near sprinkler and oak tree that respawned immediately when you approached.
- Fixed gas arrows not being one-time use.
- Rotten Bee Armor can no longer be repaired for free.
- Workbench light will no longer be disabled after loading a save.
World
- Fixed wall crenellations appearing inconsistently on clients and the host.
- Fixed wall crenellations appearing incorrectly after loading a saved game.
- Fixed fingers moving on weapon hand during one handed movement animations.
- Restructured 3rd person body aiming for unarmed punching.
- Unfinished buildings no longer block the third person camera.
- Swapping armor after having collected Raw Science no longer displays the material of the previously equipped armor.
- Fixed issue with seeing fogless voids in the world after having emerged from a large body of water.
- Puddle drinking animation and camera improved to address clipping issues.
UI
- Fixed SCA.B Bugged scheme not appearing in list correctly.
- The resting UI updates properly upon bedtime.
- SCA.B won’t flash thirst and hunger danger if levels are good.
- Defrag button in Inventory can now be navigated using the Gamepad.
- Less explosive results when using the Drop Stack action.
- Fixed Clover Hood and Poncho description being the same as the Leggings.
BUG FIXES – WINDOWS 10 STORE VERSION
- Fixed issues with 4k fullscreen resolution failing to work properly.
- Fixed issues with Alt-Tab crashing the game.
BUG FIXES – XBOX ONE VERSION
- Reduced screen edge artifacts / flashing.
Let us know what you think of the Grounded update in the comments below.
