Getting Started in Grounded - Grounded Guide - IGN (2024)

Getting started in Grounded is a bit disorienting, as you suddenly find yourself shrunk down to the size of an aphid and set adrift in your backyard, which suddenly wants to send you back to nature - permanently. This Grounded guide covers the first steps in your new journey, including how to get water and food, and is updated to reflect the full Grounded release.

Grounded Characters

When you begin the game in Grounded, you’ll first need to choose your character. Max, Willow, Pete, and Hoops are all available, and each of them function the exact same way. The only differences you’ll encounter are their personalities in the way they talk to themselves, and how you’ll see other players if playing online.

There is no difference in abilities or stamina between the characters, so just choose whoever you like best!

Investigate Your Surroundings

You begin your adventure in a ditch, in front of a large case with several indentations for people to fit in. If you want to get to the bottom of this shrunken mystery, you’ll first need to figure out where you are.

The case holds nothing of interest for now, so take a few moments to wander around and familiarize yourself with Grounded's controls instead.

Think of the giant baseball as a landmark of sorts. Getting lost in the grass forest is easy, but keeping landmarks such as this in mind makes it easier to divide the map into small sections and explore without fear of losing your way.

At this point, various bugs may skitter past you, including aphids, mites, and even ants. These insects won’t attack you - so long as you don’t hit them first. That said, you can take the mites and aphids with a few punches if you want to test out combat. Ants are another story. Leave them alone until you have weapons and some bandages.

You can - and should! - also start looking around on the ground to find things to pick up: small stones called Pebblets, and little bits of plants called sprigs and plant fiber.

There's an important difference between sprigs and fibers. Small plant stalks will give you sprigs, but fibers only come from the (even smaller) plants that grow close to the ground, shown above.

Simply by picking up materials like these, your character will get ideas for new crafting recipes, including healing items, food, weapons, and more. Be sure to grab every new thing you see.

Track the Strange Signal

The HUD icon in your screen's bottom left corner is your SCA.B. This bracelet tracks many things, including your thirst and hunger (the water and food icons in the center), as well as your stamina and health (the blue and red bars on the sides, respectively).

As you move to the left of the giant baseball, a new icon will appear on the top of the SCA.B hub - with a little purple icon and green lights on the side. This means you are closing in on the location of a field station, and the more lights that blink on the side, the closer you’re getting. Travel down the small wet ditch past the baseball, under a large red leaf, and look for a tent-like object among the grass.

Inside is a computer station and some scientific equipment used for analyzing objects and other purposes. Only one item is usable at this point: the microscope-like object on the right. interact with it to analyze any available material in your inventory.

One new element in the final release is Raw Science. You earn Raw Science points every time you analyze a new item, and accumulating enough points raises your science rank. Each new rank gained unlocks new recipes, so make it a point to come back and analyze everything you find.

Each of these Field Stations can analyze 3 items, and will gain a new charge after roughly 40 minutes pass in the game, which translates to about 45 seconds in real-life time.

Find Water and Food

By this point, your hunger and thirst levels have dropped enough for Grounded to recommend you find some food and water.

A Small Slurp

There are two types of water. One is the common, dirty groundwater that can stave off thirst in a pinch, but will also rapidly increase your hunger and briefly poison you. Dirty water is hardly ideal, but if you can't find a dewdrop fast enough and there are no enemies around, it's a viable option.

To get clean water, you’ll need to get it straight from the dew of the tall grass around you. Pick up a Pebblet and wander around looking up until you spot an orb of water sticking to the top of the grass above you. Then, equip your Pebblet and toss it straight up to send the dew falling down, where it will roll down to flat terrain, allowing you to slurp it up with no ill effects.

You may also encounter dew on the ground, or small and large quantities of honeydew from insects like Aphids, which can also be used to quench thirst.

A Small Snack

Maintaining your hunger levels is a different affair. You have few resources to help you at this stage, so for now, look for the tall red-capped mushrooms in the area.

Small, white mushrooms sprout around the base of these, usually in large quantities, and while they only fill you up by a small amount, you can usually find enough in one day to stave off deadly hunger.

Later, you can cook and eat bug meat to fill yourself up more efficiently. Our guide for how to cook food has more details.

As you continue exploring, be sure to look along thin branches like the one resting against the nearby baseball to find sap. This crafting resource is vital for further crafting, and you'll need it in the next set of challenges that await you.

For the next step, you'll need to investigate The Mysterious Machine and put your crafting skills to good use..