Grounded is a game about damage types wearing the costume of a survival game. Every bug in the yard resists some kinds of damage and folds to others, and a player swinging the wrong weapon at an Orb Weaver will conclude the game is unfairly hard when they are simply using the wrong tool.
Four physical types: chopping, slashing, stabbing, busting. Bring at least two.
The weakness chart is the build
Most of what looks like difficulty in Grounded is a mismatch.
- Busting breaks armoured things. Roly Polies, ant soldiers, anything with a shell. The Insect Axe and hammers live here.
- Slashing handles soft, fast targets. Spiders in particular.
- Stabbing is the spear line, good against most flying insects and excellent when you want reach.
- Chopping is mostly a harvesting type, and it doubles as a weapon against certain plant-adjacent enemies.
On top of that sit the elemental types. Fresh, Spicy, Salty and Sour each have their own resistances, and a Salty weapon against a slug does more work than any raw damage number suggests.
Carry two weapons of different types. That single habit fixes most "this boss is impossible" complaints.
Mutations are earned, not bought
You do not choose mutations from a list. You earn them by doing the thing repeatedly. Block a lot and you unlock the blocking mutation. Kill enough with a specific weapon type and the mutation for that type appears.
You get three slots to start and more later, and mutations level up with continued use, so a mutation you unlocked early and kept using is far stronger than one you slotted yesterday.
The ones worth building around:
Blademaster raises slashing damage, and slashing covers the spiders that will otherwise define your early deaths.
Buff Lungs extends how long you can stay underwater, which sounds situational until the pond becomes half your map.
Coup de Grass improves your first strike from stealth. It pairs with the spear and makes solo hunting viable.
Meat Shield raises health, and there is never a wrong time for more health.
Mithridatism builds poison resistance through being poisoned, which is exactly as unpleasant as it sounds and exactly as useful against the yard's venomous half.
Trapper Peep.R shows nearby resources and creatures. Quality of life rather than power, and hard to give up once you have it.
Armour: match the set to the fight, not to the stat
Sets give bonuses when worn complete, and each piece can be upgraded toward sleek or bulky, which changes what the bonus does rather than simply making it bigger.
Sleek favours speed and stamina. Bulky favours damage absorption and blocking strength. A set built entirely sleek and a set built entirely bulky play like different armours.
Clover armour early for the healing. Ant armour for hauling, because it lightens what you carry. Ladybug for straightforward survivability. Spider armour when you want to fight things rather than survive them.
There is no single best set. There is a set for the specific thing killing you today.
Raw Science and BURG.L chips gate everything good
Raw Science is the currency. You spend it at BURG.L for recipes and at Field Stations for the analysis that unlocks upgrades.
BURG.L chips are scattered through labs and hidden corners of the yard, and each one you return unlocks a chunk of the shop. Hunting chips is the single highest-value use of an afternoon in the mid-game, because everything worth crafting sits behind them.
Do the daily BURG.L quests. They pay Raw Science for things you were going to do anyway.
The yard is zoned, and it will tell you when you are early
Grounded does not gate areas with locked doors. It gates them with things that kill you.
Wander into the Haze without a gas mask and you will learn quickly. Approach the Black Ant Hill or the Upper Grasslands in tier one gear and the same. The signal is always damage you cannot survive rather than a barrier, which means the game trusts you to retreat.
Retreat. Come back with the right damage type and the right mutation, and the same area is straightforward.
The Grounded walkthrough covers the yard in rough progression order.
