Grounded Guide: The best sources of food and drink

Make managing your hunger and thirst easy by knowing the best sources of food and drink.

As with all survival games, maintaining your hunger and thirst is a basic necessity. Grounded is no exception, and sometimes it can be easy to lose track of those gauges. By the time you've gone out on a few trips into the backyard you will have already needed to have eaten some sort of food item and have some sort of drink. Knowing the best sources to find food and drink will help immensely in your travels. Here are the best sources of food and drink to find in Grounded.

Playing In The Backyard

Grounded

$30 at Microsoft $30 on Steam

Survival Co-op

Grounded is an early access co-op survival game created by Obsidian Entertainment. Can your shrunken self survive among the ladybugs, ants, wolf spiders and uncover the secrets of the mysterious labs?

The best sources of food and drinks in Grounded

There are a few different variations of food and drink that can be found throughout Grounded. There isn't exactly a wide variety to worry about, which helps keeps things simple and manageable. Most of what you will find for food specifically will be items that can be picked up from the ground or hunted. Occasionally you will come upon some food waste that can be harvested, such as leftover hot dog bits.

Mushrooms

Mushrooms will be one of your main sources of food; these can be found all over the map and can also be grown in a mushroom garden. Keep an eye out for large, red mushrooms that are literally bigger than you are. The large mushrooms grow in two or three groups and have plenty of pickable, smaller mushrooms underneath. Also, you can't cut down the large mushrooms for food. If you are looking to gather a large amount, build multiple mushroom farms. They spawn four mushrooms per farm, roughly two to three times a day.

Insect Meat

Insect meat is another great way of obtaining food to fill up your food gauge in large amounts. There are multiple different insects that you can hunt to obtain meat from. None of them provide any unique benefits being from different creatures; it's simply food. The meat cannot be eaten raw and has to be cooked or dried to be consumed.

When cooked, it will last for a large portion of the day but not forever. It will eventually spoil, so if you really want to stockpile up, make sure to dry the meat. Build at least three to four drying racks to maintain a steady supply. The drying process takes a long time, but the result is food that will not spoil.

There are currently six different insect meat types that you can harvest, cook, or dry to consume. * Aphid meat * Weevil Meat * Gnat Meat * Water Flea Meat * Tadpole Meat * Grub Meat

Food Waste

Another great way to harvest food throughout the backyard is looking for food scraps. Not small food scraps, though, large human food scraps like an apple core or a hotdog. These will fill up a large portion of your food gauge when eaten. To harvest these items, you'll need at least a level two hatchet and a level two mallet. Ideally, it's best just to use your mint mallet if you have one on you.

• Apple core
• Hotdogs
• Archer cookie
• Candy Corn

Drinks/Liquids

Alongside food, your thirst needs to be managed. This can be handled in a few different ways. There will always be something that can quench your character's thirst, from sugary drinks to dirty water. Always make sure to bring along a water canteen. You can even fill multiple canteens if you like.

Juice/Soda

Shortly after starting your journey in Grounded, you'll probably have stumbled upon a juice box or a pop can. These two items provide a great source to drink from. The juice or soda quenches both hunger and thirst, making it a great way to tackle both gauges in one swoop. You'll often find more liquid that can be drunk or stored from juice boxes over pop cans, though.

Honeydew and Nectar

Honeydew and nectar are both the same as juice and soda for sustenance. It fills up both the thirst and hunger gauge. Not a large amount, but enough to keep you going for a while. It will fill up more of the thirst gauge than the hunger gauge, so make sure to offset with some food to minimize waste. These can be found all over the map since aphids can create their own. If you want areas that provide a large amount, scout around the outside edge of the pond and in the flower beds. They look like small golden nuggets of natural flavor.

Clean/Dirty Water/Dew Drops

This is the final source of drink that you can find in Grounded, and it is the most abundant and manageable. All the water that resides on the ground in Grounded is primarily dirty. Meaning when you drink it, you lose a chunk of your hunger gauge. You fill up your thirst gauge, but there is that trade-off. This is a last resort if you are desperate and have an abundance of food. If you have a backpack full of mushrooms, drink away! If you want to avoid drinking dirty water, you'll have to resort to finding clean water or a sugary alternative.