Get your questions answered with our guide on the dangerous jungle that is the Grounded universe. The Table of Contents below is clickable for each question you may have. Before jumping in, know that the only question with minor spoilers is the “What is Weakening the Laser” bit.
How to Invite Friends in Grounded
If you’re not sure how to invite friends to your online server in Grounded, it’s not too difficult. Unfortunately, at this time, there’s no in-game way to invite others to your server aside from having them join you instead. The process to play with friends after hosting an online server is to make sure you’re both added as friends on your platform of choice.
Then, the person trying to join will need to go from the Main Menu to the Multiplayer tab to “Join Online Game”. Servers hosted by friends will appear here. The server browser currently states that upcoming features include game invites, global game search, and session settings. This will likely make it easier to play with others and have even more customization.
How Many Players Can Play Together
Up to four players can play together in a Grounded server. I’d be surprised if this gets increased at a later time, but it is currently in Early Access/Game preview and anything can happen.
How to Get Your First Axe
Before you can craft your first axe, you’ll need to gather Sprigs and Pebblets, then analyze a Pebblet at the nearby Field Station. There will be one near the beginning with a landmark telling you where it is. If you’ve lost track of it, you can use the map to find it again. Once you’ve analyzed a Pebblet, you’ll get the Pebblet Axe recipe.
Then, you can craft it using a Sprig, Pebblet, and Crude Rope. Before you can get Crude Rope, you’ll want to read the next tip below. This was originally named Woven Fiber.
How to Get Woven Fiber/Crude Rope
A Grounded update changed the Woven Fiber recipe to Crude Rope. You can still craft it the same way by using the Analyzer to scan Plant Fiber. This reveals the Crude Rope recipe which requires Plant Fiber to craft.
Two great ways to gather Plant Fiber include gathering it off the floor and chopping the grass blade stems. This is the short part sticking out of the ground after cutting a blade of grass. However, this will prevent the blade of grass from coming back.
What is Weakening the Laser?
The first story mission you’ll run into in Grounded is The Mysterious Machine. Once you turn it on, there are two lasers not making it to the machine for some odd reason. This is for you to find out by following the laser to see what’s not right. If you’re still not sure, here are the two fixes for each laser.
First Blocked Laser
As shown in the screenshot above, the first laser you’ll want to fix is the one nearby blocked by a blade of grass. Simply craft an axe and chop down that blade of grass so the laser is no longer blocked.
Second Weakened Laser
For the second weakened laser, you’ll have to wander over to it and kill a bunch of Lawn Mites chewing on the wires. There will be a few Lawn Mites above the surface and many underneath. You might want to make a torch since it’s dark in the narrow cavern underneath.
If you get to the end of the cavern and have to break a wall, don’t worry, there aren’t any Lawn Mites back there chewing on the wire/cable. If you’re still curious about how to break through that wall, head over to our tip on How to Break Rocks/Quartzite.
How to Make a Workbench
As you may have learned from previous tips in this article, you can use the analyzer to find new recipes like the Workbench. In order to make a Workbench in Grounded, you’ll need to chop a blade of grass to get Grass Planks and then analyze that at the Analyzer. As shown in the screenshot above, as long as you’re holding the Grass Plank when you use the Analyzer, it will show under the Hauling area. Click this and analyze it to gain the Workbench recipe.
Workbench Recipe – 3 Grass Planks, 4 Sprigs, and 2 Sap.
How to Get Sap
Sap is extremely important because it’s used in many early recipes as well as for making Fiber Bandages to heal yourself. If you’re struggling to find Sap, there are two main ways to get it with one method being more common. You’ll want to keep an eye out for fallen twigs or branches that have drops of sap on them. A twig will often have a few drops of sap that you can collect.
The other method for getting Sap is to use a hammer on a Sap Clump that you can find hanging low in certain areas. You probably won’t come across Sap Clumps in the starting area. And fair warning, if you find one, you might be near danger.
How to Get Water
Getting water in Grounded should be one of your first goals as you definitely don’t want to die of thirst. Fortunately, the game quickly will give you a tip directing you to droplets of water you can drink. However, they’re often on a blade of grass high above you and you can’t always reach them. There’s a neat trick where you can hit the grass blade with your fists or an axe and it will drop to the ground. Just be careful, they’re slippery and will bounce around.
If the water droplet bounces into any nearby source of water, you’ll lose that droplet. At that point, you might be better off slurping from dirty water and unfortunately, taking a small loss on your hunger. Drinking from dirty water can make you lose give or take, one-fourth of your hunger meter.
How to Break Rocks/Quartzite
Before you can break rocks also known as Quartz for materials, you’ll need a Pebblet Hammer. If you already know how to make a Pebblet Axe, you should be able to make a hammer. Otherwise, make sure to analyze a Pebblet to learn the recipe. Once you’ve made a hammer, simply equip it in your hotkey bar and whack away at a Quartz rock if it gives you the prompt to do so. Eventually, it will break into a bunch of Quartz pebbles for you to grab.
Pebblet Hammer Recipe – 3 Sprig, 4 Pebblet, 1 Woven Fiber
How Fast is Time in Grounded
Time moves quickly in the world of Grounded which is important to know because you’ll lose daylight for exploring and also it contributes to the Analyzer battery. Take a look below for an idea of how quickly time passes.
| Real Time | 10 Seconds | 60 Seconds | 2 Minutes | 48 Minutes |
| Grounded Time | 5 Minutes | 30 Minutes | 1 Hour | 24 Hours |
How to Get Spider Silk
If you need Spider Silk for a recipe, you can get it from two different ways. First, you can gather it from spider webs by attacking them with an axe or your hands. Just be careful of spiders nearby as they’re extremely tough and one-hit you if you’re not wearing armor.
Try not to get too close to a web as you’ll get stuck in it. The only way to get out seems to be breaking with. Your other option for getting Spider Silk is going right to the source and killing spiders. With that said, most recipes now require Spider Rope. You can make this by refining Spider Silk at a Spinning Wheel.
How to Get Weed Stems
You can get Weed Stems by chopping down a Dandelion with your axe. It will drop several Weed Stems similar to how blades of grass drop a few Grass Planks. You’ll have to haul them in your hands instead of carrying them in your inventory. By default, players can carry up to five Weed Stems unless they have the set bonus from ant armor which allows carrying up to eight.
If you have tier 2 tools, you can chop Husky Weeds for even more. This is definitely the better option, but not everyone will have a tier 2 axe yet. Especially if you’re trying to make a Spinning Wheel.
How to Get Grub Hides
If you’re trying to get Grub Hides in Grounded, you’ll need to keep an eye out for grubs tunneling beneath your feet. They’ll kick up some dirt creating a moving trail while they’re moving about. You can get them out of the ground by hitting their trail with an Acorn Shovel.
They won’t attack you after popping up, but you’ll still have to kill them to get the Grub Hides. I haven’t found a good source of them yet after exploring for a while searching. If you do, be sure to let me know in the comments below, because I’d love to know too!
If you have any additional questions related to Grounded, feel free to ask in the comments below. And if you have any tips for others, also be sure to share them in the comments! Otherwise, we’ll add more questions to this over time and probably make a tips and tricks list too.
Can You Kill the Bird/Crow?
The August content update for Grounded introduced a massive bird/crow that some players are wondering if you can kill. Unfortunately at this time, there’s no way to kill the bird even if you manage to hit it up close. The bird did however arrive with feathers and some new recipes in the August update. The patch notes for Update 0.2.0 are available here.
Can You Kill the Koi Fish?
The Koi Pond update added a whole new underwater region for Grounded where there’s a giant Koi Fish boss. If you’re wondering whether or not you can kill the Koi Fish, it doesn’t appear so right now. This will likely change, but as of right now, the Koi Fish doesn’t have a health bar when attacked. If it turns out there’s a way to kill it, be sure to let us and others know in the comments below. We’ll update our answer here if this ever changes.
Grounded is available in Early Access/Xbox Game Preview as of July 28, on Xbox One and PC. It’s also on the Xbox Game Pass at the time of publishing this article for both Xbox One and PC. Eventually Grounded will be available on the Xbox Series X too.
Jeff is a journalist with over 10 years of experience writing, streaming, and making content about video games. With an associate degree in journalism, he’s a sucker for RPGs, survival games, roguelikes, and more.
60 responses to “Grounded – Commonly Asked Questions Answered”
how to I not get invade by a army of larva.
I recommend making a base if you haven’t already. For the most part, they’ll stay outside the walls and not attack unless you’re close to them. Usually they’ll glitch/clip through the wall slightly so you can still shoot them with a bow. I haven’t tried using Spike Strip traps yet, but those may work well too. The recipe requires 3 Weed Stems, 3 Thistle Needles, 1 Sap, and 2 Woven Fiber. Lure Arrows might distract them as well, but I haven’t gotten to test those on anything except ants yet.
No they don’t. I went to my base at night to go to sleep, and there were 8 Larvae inside my base. Good thing I had my Incest Bow, and a crap ton of Venom Arrows.
I’m surprised they’re attacking in such large amounts to be honest, especially in the early days of the game. Another comment mentioned getting hit by 20-25 of them. I can’t imagine that’s intentional, but I appreciate you letting me know sleeping didn’t help. That makes me think sleeping just speeds up time instead of skipping ahead without including the time in-between.
THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENS.
I just got attacked by an army of Larvae and then to top it off a giant spider tarantula thing. I was defending my base but the larvae just kept coming. Then the spider came and I noped out of there.
I keep getting huge parades of larva coming in and destroying my whole base and killing me repeatedly fairly early in the game too. No food in storage, only one piece of cooked meat on my person.No insect parts in storage either, only building materials. It’s got to be a bug.
My base is on the other side of the pond, nothing comes over here and I have a grass bridge so it just makes life easy. Just don’t lead anything over the bridge and you’re good
Larva bad too many at one like waves of 20-25 how do I stop this
That could be a bug, no pun intended. I’ve stumbled across a hive of them once underground where a buttload of them were sleeping. But I haven’t had that many up top yet. They seem to be more active at night and more likely to attack your base during that time as well.
You can try sleeping in a Lean-To at night to prevent them from swarming you. If you have an issue with them destroying your base, I recently learned they will only attack it if you’re near it. Had this issue with a bunch of spiders, unfortunately.
I’m starting to question if the difficulty scales extremely hard too quickly.
im not too sure what day im on but i just woke up to a horde of no less than 32 larvae swarming my base and i believe there to be more.
There are two theories going around that they may be attracted to food in containers and/or bug parts. I can’t confirm them yet, but I could see the food one being true. However, it seems to be a common issue that people are getting swarmed by larvae. Hopefully the developer makes a patch or something since that’s simply insane.
I’ll test around a little with the food and bug parts idea.
I was getting swarmed even without food or bug parts in containers. What seemed to stop it was having a clay foundation with completed spike traps surrounding. For some reason they seemed to stop spawning after that. Soon as I started expanding, they start parading through again.
I was able to pick up 6 pieces of weeds and now I can only pick up 5 again. Is there a reason? Maybe I died and lost it? Helppp lol
If you’re talking about Weed Stems, the game should only let you haul five at a time. It’s possible it bugged and let you hold six at one point. The amount you’re holding and the maximum shows at the bottom right corner while you’re hauling them.
Get the Full Ant Armor set and you can carry up to 8 pieces at a time.
Good to know Scorpion, I’ll update that in the article as well!
You can increase your hauling capacity with ant armor
ant armor makes you strong like ant. The more ant armor you have equipped the more you can carry. Full ant armor lets you carry 8 leaves or sticks total.
Dedicated servers please?
Has anyone had problems with the lasers not activating? We have cleared the grass on the first laser and removed all mites from the second. The second one however is still sparking. We cannot see lasers and game will not progress to next step. Any suggestions?
If you can’t see any lasers, is it possible you didn’t turn the device on yet? So long as you’re not on creative mode, one of the buttons above the device will be flashing orange to press it. I can’t remember offhand if it was Target or Activate, but it should be one of those.
How does the lure trap work as it doesn’t appear to be attracting anything?!
I found a lot of grubs by the base of the oak tree
Good to know, I saw a lot there when I first started playing, but later couldn’t find any.
why do larva keep appearing out of nowhere and attacking my base
Something I recommended to someone else is avoiding having food in your containers. I haven’t been able to confirm yet if this attracts them or not though. Some people say to keep your containers high if you have food in them as well.
So far, I’ve had a lot of success using the Tier 2 Ant Club weapon on them. It either stuns them in one strong attack or a few normal hits.
Does grass regrow after you cut it down and if so then how long does it take
From what I’ve heard, grass regrows within two in-game days, but it won’t regrow near your base.
Ok thanks man I appreciate it
How do I stop the grass from growing in my base. We’ve taken out all the stems but no matter what after we sleep it grows back
From what I’ve heard, you may have to leave the stems to prevent them from growing back. Some people have suggested building foundations on top them, but I don’t think that makes a difference.
There seems to be a very small build no grow radius created by foundation. Walls have it even smaller. A foundation will stop growth but ud you have an open area in a base grass will grow.
I like the idea of leaving the stems. Ill try that.
what is the symbol above the ant head sometimes? it looks like glasses with quotations. I had 3 of them all with the same symbol by my base.
I was trying to figure this out recently as well. I think it means they’re taking stuff from a container of yours. If this is the case, you’ll see your items pop out above the container they’re looting. I have a bug where the items are often ridiculously large when they come out of the container as well.
awww that makes some scenes. one day the ant was pulling items out of its mouth and dropping them. I got 2 granola bars from one ant. I think it was glitched out lol
I experienced a raid of ants due to this sunglasses things. It seems that there is an anthill somewhere. When ants find some of your stuff and arrived in the anthill. They organized raids to your chests to steal more. I saw a queue of almost 30 ants walking towards the same direction. First I didn’t bother much but when 10 sunglasses symbol were marked i instantly went to my base to see that 10+ ants were stealing my stuff. So be careful
Well, small update : kill any ant with the sunglasses logo. It appears that a large amount of those ants come to my base raiding it. At early game it could be very punishing to let those ants come back to their anthill. With ladybug stuff it was easy but there is still one ant with sunglasses left in the poison area
how can you carry 8 grass planks????
you have to make ant armor to carry more
I pushed the target button then cut the grass and killed some mites but not all of them. When i came back with a torch and kill the last of them it didn’t clear the quest. Stuck with all lawn mites killed but the mission isn’t clear
I believe some are hidden in the back of the cave behind a wall of quartzite (3 pieces) you have to follow the cable all the way back. It should update your objectives after you squash the last mite.
There’s no hidden mite behind the quartzite :/
How do you repair things? I’ve gotten the repair tool, but with it equipped there doesn’t seem to be any prompts to repair my broken walls or defenses.
When you have the repair tool equipped, simply whack at whatever you’re trying to repair. When you’re close to a wall or structure, there will be a small health bar that appears. If it’s red, it’s damaged. Once the bar is blue, it’s completely repaired. I hope that helps 👍
It must be bugged out, because I tried that many times and all it does is whiff at it, no matter what distance I am from the item to repair, wall, roof, spike trap, workbench. Everything.
Yeah, that’s my guess that it’s bugged Jeanne. This is what it looks like for me on PC. The health bar of the wall shows near the hotkey bar on the right side.
Yeah, health bar for the structure shows up no matter what tool you have in hand, but that repair tool just kept whiffing for me for some reason.
I tried throwing the repair tool and it literally goes through structures where as an axe will stick into it. The tool is bugged.
Update yesterday seems to have fixed the repair problem at least. Though my water catcher stopped working after repairing.
I’m glad your repair issue is fixed! Hopefully the Dew Collector fixes on its own. I’m assuming it’s not collecting water?
Does grass and/or weeds grow back over time?
It sounds like if you leave the grass stumps left behind after cutting a blade of grass, it won’t regrow. So you have to dig that stump up as well. Originally I thought it would regrow on its own, but with further research, it seems you have to get rid of the stump.
Do weed plants grow back ? (Not the dandelions, the other weed step plants)
I haven’t tested it personally, but it seems so long as you break the stems/stumps left behind, they will regrow. I know several grass stumps near my base haven’t regrown, so I assume that’s the same case for weeds.
Its wont let me repair my walls so I had to remake walls and it’s annoying because sometimes a spider come to the first field station (where my base is) and I have to remake EVERY wall it attacks and I hate going back and forth getting weed stems or grass planks
I also think it’s a bug because it was a WOLF spider and I can kill it with my larva dagger and ant club I also have ladybug armor but I keep having to hit it with my bow for it to go away.
It keeps only happening during night too. (Yes I’m scared of losing my stuff but I know I can just pick it up again)
Also my audio was broken because of a bug so I hope that gets fixed too.