Grounded is prepping its next major update and has opened up testing

The next update features some significant improvements to building.

What you need to know

• Grounded is an open-world survival game currently in Xbox Game Preview and Early Access.
• The game is prepping its next content update, version 0.7.0, and has re-opened its Public Test ring for hardcore players.
• Participants will be able to play with the update's new features early and provide feedback to the Obsidian Entertainment team before a full release.
• The 0.7.0 February Content Update is just around the corner and focuses primarily on building and bug fixes.

As we begin to approach the end of February, Grounded is returning with another new update to the Grounded early access. This time, though, the Grounded team at Obsidian Entertainment is re-opening the Public Test ring yet again to test the upcoming 0.7.0 February Content Update. This means dedicated Grounded players will be able to test the next big update before it even hits early access!

Grounded has undergone a ton of changes since it first debuted on Xbox consoles, PC, and Xbox Game Pass. Since then, it has received update after update, and been optimized for the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S. Obsidian Entertainment's passion project is quickly becoming one of the Best Survival Games on Xbox. To get the most out of Grounded and to make sure an angry insect never catches you off guard, invest in one of the Best Headsets for Xbox Series X|S.

The full changelog for the public test of Grounded's 0.7.0 update includes:

Crafting content

• Added Stair Railing: Sprig Railing, Acorn Railing
• New Stairs Added: Acorn Spiral Stairs
• New Scaffolding: Bracket Scaffold
• New Floors Added: Grass Half-Floors and Weed Stem Floors
• New Item: Firefly Hanging Lantern
• New Items: Wall-mounted Zipline Anchor
• New Item: Shinobi Sneeze, a smoke-screen escape item
• Mounted Head Trophies can now be crafted for all of the flying creatures: Mosquitos, Fireflies, and Bees

New features

• You can relocate any non-grid building you have made without destroying and rebuilding it (Lean-to, Storage, Workbench, etc.)
• When you are crafting, any items in nearby storage will be available as crafting ingredients without requiring you to put them in your backpack
• You can place hauling items (Grass Planks, Weed Stems) on Ziplines using the "Drop" action when pointing at the line
• Player characters have new and improved stagger animations

Changes / tuning

Systems

• Hunger and Thirst effects have been reworked:
• Bonuses now activate at 80% or higher instead of 90% or higher
  • Hunger Bonus heals you over time
  • Thirst Bonus increases your stamina regen
  • Penalties now activate at 20% or lower instead of 0%
  • Hunger Penalty caps your max stamina at 50%
  • Thirst Penalty reduces your stamina regen
• Repair Recipes have been reworked:
  • Armor Glues have been removed
  • Armors now take ~20% of their initial ingredients to repair
  • Weapons now take 1 quartzite + a minimal amount of their initial ingredients to repair
• Gas Masks now take durability damage in gas hazards

Other

Combat

• Bandages now heal much more HP, but over a much longer period of time
• Mosquito Needle has the life-steal ability slightly decreased
• Bees now have two additional attacks
• When you are wielding both a shield and a canteen, the Block input will both drink from the canteen and block
• Weevil shield durability doubled
• Bratburst and Splatburst deal more damage
• Pollen Shot now adds slightly more stun damage to bow attacks
  • Note: This is not a % chance to stun, this allows bows to deal stun damage in addition to normal damage

Interface

• Lasting (applied by gear or mutations) and temporary status effects appear in the Status UI
• Added "Any Weapon" HotPouch slot type and changed the defaults of the first four slots to be "Any Weapon" instead of "Any Melee Weapon"
• Save games that are older than five update versions will be marked with an "Ancient Save" warning
• The block meter is slightly smaller and scooted to the right
• Equipped shield durability is shown in the HUD
• Equipment rating gauges have been converted visually from a regular bar to a nugget-based bar
• More icons are described in the Icon Legend in the OS tab
• The 'day' count in the OS tab has been embiggened
• More of the map screen is unlocked by default now
• Brown and Yellow added to the icon customizer color array
• A few additional icons added to the storage and trail marker icon customizers
• Adjusted the storage interface for reasons
• Adding 'analyzed' status to storage interface
• Contrast adjustments to the Ghostmint SCA.B flavor
• High Contrast SCA.B flavor applies a dark backing to the HUD SCA.B
• Bringing your teen back from the hunger or thirst danger zones will cause SCA.B to play a happy sound

World

• Interacting with a dropped backpack will now instantly do a loot-all action. If any items are still leftover because your inventory is full, then the dropped back UI will open
• Removed the pre-placed zipline anchors from the paint can and the oak tree lamp
• Thistle plants have been reworked
  • Thorns are now harvested directly instead of requiring a hit with an axe
  • Each thistle plant no longer provides an infinite amount of thorns
  • Thorns respawn on the thistle plant after a set amount of time

Buildings

• Building placement is no longer allowed while gliding, zipping, or in combat
• Pebblet Foundations now require more pebblets than clay to build
• Sap Dripper has been overhauled:
  • A final mesh has been created
  • The recipe has been changed to match the new mesh
  • Sap Dripper is now properly considered a wall-mounted building for placement purposes
  • Placement should be a lot more lenient, allowing easier and more consistent placing
  • Item will now spawn 1 sap every 5 hours and can hold up to 5 sap in total (previously spawned 1 sap every 24 hours)

Crafting

• Berry Chunks can now be dried into berry leather on the Jerky Rack

Creatures

• Larva will now explore a larger area of the backyard
• Larva can now burrow
• Creatures now take much longer to fully regen when out of combat
• Gnats should be less interested in spamming the player with boops

Bug fixes

Top community issues

• Fixed Fireflies not flying down to the yard correctly after loading a game
• The game will no longer lag when placing or removing buildings on saves with huge numbers of buildings
• Grid buildings can no longer be placed entirely under the terrain
• Fixed save game screenshots sometimes looking corrupt
• Fixed "Toggle Crouch" option sometimes not saving and taking effect

World

• Land-only buildings can no longer be placed on water in certain situations
• Buildings such as Fences and Ramps will no longer snap strangely to subsequent buildings
• The underside of a Buoyant Foundation can no longer support other structures
• Palisades will no longer be invalid when placed on some rock surfaces
• Diagonal walls at 90-degree angles will now support each other
• Walls will no longer randomly lose crenellations when loading a save
• Fixed a few cases where snapped structures might be incorrectly detected as invalid
• BURG.L Quest UI will load correctly for clients when they are the first player to access it
• CPU / Networking performance improvements by the flooded sprinkler area
• Multiple overlapping gas hazards no longer stack their damage
• Removing the 'O' binding from the inventory screen that opened the deprecated inspection popup

Items / equipment / resources

• Feathers and Hedge Berries will no longer occasionally disappear when loading a save
• Ziplines will no longer block flying creatures
• Sap Catchers can no longer be placed on Buoyant Foundations
• Fixed consumed items not showing up on your character model in the inventory screen
• Fin Flops+ now behave properly when dropped from the player's inventory

Creatures

• Fixed several cases where mosquitos would sleep in incorrect locations
• Flying creatures are now much less shy about flying through the grass
• Creatures will now wake up when damaged by hazards
• Creatures properly fade out at far distances for clients now
• TAYZ.T's in the pond lab will be more aware of their surroundings
• Fixed sleeping creatures teleporting on clients after they've been woken up (most visible if you wake up a Wolf Spider from sleeping)
• Reduced the annoyingness of gnats

UI

• The camera will no longer start in first-person when loading a save in which the player was gliding or zipping
• "Inventory Full" will no longer be misleadingly displayed when trying to haul an item while swimming
• Fixed some scrolling and display issues in the "Recipes Used In" section on the Crafting screen

Audio

• 'Theft in progress' SFX played upon opening the UI while in combat has been replaced new SFX
• SCA.B crying about hunger and thirst will play a specific sound for each instead of either for both

Xbox

• Fixed audio issues after suspend / resume

Steam

• Logging into an Xbox Live account that was previously logged into with a different Steam account will no longer fail the login step
• Removed HDR tab from the Options screen

Microsoft Store

• When there is a new update available, the game will properly tell you when trying to access Multiplayer instead of presenting a generic "Multiplayer Error" message
• Removed HDR tab from the Options screen

Microscopic survival

Grounded

$30 at Microsoft $30 at Steam

It's a big(ger) world out there.

Obsidian Entertainment makes its exclusive debut on Xbox One and PC with Grounded, a unique survival experience that literally makes all of your problems much, much bigger. Join your friends as you're shrunk down to the size of an ant and are forced to survive in a dangerous backyard.

Grounded

• Grounded: Everything You Need to Know
• Grounded: Is it good?
• Grounded: Beginner's Guide
• Grounded: List of creatures
• Get Grounded's best weapon
• Grounded: How to get the level 2 axe/hammer