What you need to know
- Grounded is an epic open-world survival-adventure title from Obsidian Entertainment and Xbox Game Studios.
- The game recently released its full 1.0 update, completing the Backyard and its narrative campaign.
- On Thursday, Obsidian Entertainment began releasing the 1.0.2 patch update for Grounded.
- The update brings dozens of balancing changes, fixes, performance and stability improvements, and more.
For over two years Grounded quietly accumulated a passionate community while Obsidian Entertainment built out the Backyard. Now, the open-world survival-adventure game is widely available to all players, whole and complete, across Xbox, PC, and the cloud. On Thursday, Obsidian Entertainment began rolling out a patch update to resolve a number of issues in Grounded that have affected players since its full release.
Grounded is one of Windows Central's favorite games of 2022, and it's now going to get even better. The 1.0.2 patch update that's now rolling out to players on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC via Steam and the Microsoft Store, and Xbox Cloud Gaming may only measure approximately 607 MB in size, but it's packed with a plethora of awesome fixes and improvements for the still-evolving survival title.
Highlights of the patch update include a number of balancing changes to make the Backyard feel more fair and tweak the difficulty (especially for solo players), including increased durability for lots of equipment, lowered damage and HP for some Tier II creatures, improved reliability for Wolf Spiders sleeping through the day, and much more. There are also plenty of other fixes for crashes, launch issues, and other problems.
Obsidian Entertainment has not only crafted one of the best Xbox games of the year, it has set the benchmark for a new survival game in the growing genre. The 1.0.2 patch that's now rolling out should make the game even more approachable for new players, as well as resolve many of the most annoying bugs that have been afflicting players in the last few weeks.
The full changelog for Grounded 1.0.2 includes:
Features & changes
Features
- Added a "Sort" button to the Inventory and Storage screens
Game balance & difficulty changes
- Doubled base durability of most weapons and armors
- Doubled duration / durability of all torches
- Mosquitos in the Grasslands do not spawn until 1 Super Chip is turned in
- Damage and HP for some of the early tier 2 creatures have been lowered a bit
- Toxicology Badge now provides 90% gas damage resistance instead of full immunity
- Javamatic fight spawns less creatures in single player now to make it less difficult
Other changes
- Relocating a building will no longer be canceled if you stumble into combat with a creature
- BURG.L will now only give Artificer quests for items the player has not yet crafted
- Mant combo attacks no longer interrupted via perfect blocks
- Mant damage slightly increased
- Quartzite and Marble of all tiers now default stack to 99 (cannot be upgraded further via milk molars)
- Slightly increased the stamina cost of staff attacks
- Spiny Water Fleas now have a very small chance to drop Pond Moss when looted
- Text chat messages filter for profanity
- Edible mushrooms placed under all large mushrooms in the Upper Yard
- O.R.C. EMP Bomb applies a large DoT (damage over time) to to O.R.C. creatures that are hit with it
- The field station near the outskirts of the Stump area has been moved into the Stump itself for higher visibility and utility
- You can remove a Surveyor Resource waypoint from inside the default Map screen (no longer have to be at a Surveyor to do it)
- Slime mold light sources and the Firefly Headlamp light color has been desaturated a bit to not cast an overly lime green color on everything
- Getting a 100% on the Game Report Card requires completing all of the MIX.Rs now
Bug fixes
Crash fixes
- Fixed crash that could happen if a creature is looted or despawns while an attack with visual effects was about to play
- Fixed crash that could occur when taming a pet
- Reducing Out of Memory crashes when loading a save
Major fixes
- Xbox and Windows Store players can rename Storage chests again as long as their profile allows User Generated Content to be shown
- If you progressed beyond the story of receiving the Embiggening Cell, but did not get it for some reason, the game will grant it to you on your next load of the save
- If you progress to the story point where you need to interact with the Javamatic but the game will not let you, the game will fix up the quest state on your next load of the save
- Loading an early access save will no longer trigger the "Analyze a Pebblet / Analyze Raw Fiber" quests if you have already done so. Fixes 1.0 saves that are stuck with this quest as well
- Players will no longer disconnect from multiplayer after being online for 4+ hours
- Doors at player bases will properly have the door open state synced if the open state was changed while a client was far away
- Wolf Spiders will more reliably sleep during the day
- Addressed some cases where you could not get a 100% on the Game Report card
Other fixes
- Addressed additional use cases where creatures could become stuck in the terrain
- Optimized the Mantis Pollen attack for Low and Medium quality settings (this includes Xbox One)
- Pinch Whacker now properly classified as a club instead of an axe, no longer deals chopping damage
- Prod Smacker now properly classified as a club instead of a greatsword, no longer deals slashing damage
- The "Got to Peep Them All" Achievement no longer requires having all Gold cards
- Jack-O-Lantern will no longer spawn on the porch during October if you have any base buildings in the way
- Poison immunity has been readded back to Spiders as that was not supposed to have been removed
- Backpacks that drop near the car batteries in the Upper Yard will be teleported to a safe location nearby to prevent them from getting stuck in instant death locations
- The workout monitors in the Pond biodome will correctly turn on after opening the biodome instead of after turning in the Super Chip to BURG.L
- You can no longer nab certain items through the walls or windows
- Your character name should no longer rarely show up over your own character
- The text filter in the crafting menu will be applied correctly after changing tabs or crafting an item
- Placement of the Sap Catcher provides better control over the placement angle
- Buildings will now actually display their Defense values in the building interface
- Items will now actually display their Stun values in item description boxes
- Mantis armor crit effects no longer sometimes apply themselves to the player
- Bomb arrows now cost stamina to shoot like every other arrow
- Sour battle axe now properly considered an axe
- Non-diagonal buildings can now snap to diagonal rotations at specific angles
- Fixed various terrain and foliage and floating dirt issues
- Loading an early access save will not reset dropped player backpacks
- This is not retroactive for any playthrough that has already made progress on 1.0 from an early access save
- Fixed some audio volume issues that would cause abrupt music stoppage
- Using photo mode no longer scales up creature damage
- Mutations on old saves will properly sync to their correct unlock level based 1.0 value changes
- Depositing partial stacks into containers works correctly
