Dr_Spaceman

After spending many hours playing the open beta, my brother and I decided to do our first 1.0 run on Whoa! difficulty. It was a challenge at first, which was great because that's what we were looking for with this playthrough. However, as we've hit end-game in the upper yard with all our gear at 7+ we've come to a disappointing realization: maxed out equipment is not enough to make combat against the "hardest" enemies a tedious slog to burn through huge hp bars. Some of the boss fights have more mechanics and thus are still quite fun (Asst. Manager and the Director spring to mind) but most are just an exercise in perfect blocking predictable attacks, chugging beefy smoothies, and watching huge hitbars slowly chip away unless you optimize your build. Throughout the playthrough, we've relied on the wiki for details on what exactly armor and weapon perks actually do because the game only provides vague descriptions and useless bars. Optimizing our damage to speed up slow encounters would have been impossible without players data mining game files. Now in the latest patch, a handful of nerfs were dealt to some of the strongest end-game builds (poison and staffs) with the clear intention of maintaining combat difficulty in the end-game. On principle that's a fine design goal; grounded isn't a power fantasy it's a survival game. However, if devs are determined to keep combat challenging, it is only fair that players be provided with the necessary knowledge to overcome those challenges within the game's UI. It's not enough to know a perk activates "occasionally," we need exact percentages in the item description. It's not enough to know an item does 10 bars of damage and has 3 bars of speed. We need actual double-digit numbers to understand a weapon's strengths and weaknesses. It's not enough to know a trait debuffs an enemy's attack, we need to know not only the numeric value of that debuff, but also its duration. It is unfair to the player base that gear is nerfed and enemies are buffed while not providing concrete numbers on the tools given to defeat those challenges. If the developers want item info and UI elements that are minimalistic and immersive, then players should feel powerful no matter what weapons they choose because it's not about the details, it's about the fantasy. But if the devs want the players to struggle to survive throughout the full duration of the game, then they owe their players specific game mechanic data so we can work towards more optimal builds. We shouldn't have to rely on data mining wikis (which are frequently out of date and thus false) to build strong strategies. That info needs to be in the game itself, lest the whole game feel like a battle with the developers instead of the backyard.

After playing around with the new weapon enhancement system for a bit I'm torn. One the one hand, I'm always a sucker for crafting sets to counter difficult enemies in any game. On the other hand, I appreciated how mechanic-lite and intuitive Grounded has been so far, and weapon enhancements are (currently) very non-intuitive. There's no indication of what 'spicy' 'fresh' 'salty' and all the physical damage types actually do in-game. And even when you figure out insects are weak and resistant to certain types of damage by reading a wiki article, there's no reasonable way to figure out what any given insect is weak to outside of finding some fan-made spreadsheet. Obviously the game is still in development and creating tutorial data is usually the last step, I just want to emphasis how important a in-game bestiary will be if damage types and weapon enhancements make it into 1.0. Knowing what insects are weak or strong against isn't something a player can figure out in-game without a lot of tedious testing. If the design intent is for players to bring specific weapons against specific enemies, the mechanical data must be available in-game. If the devs don't want that level nitty-gritty info available to players for the sake of immersion, then the weapon enhancement and damage type system probably need to be scaled back. Personally I'm not a huge fan of how the enhancement system works within the natural progression of the game. Getting weapons enhanced early requires dangerous delves into red ant tunnels, which is tense and fun at first. But as I progressed in power, repeatedly clearing out red ant tunnels to enhance new weapons is just a mindless chore. And by the time I advanced enough to unlock candy enhancements, I was are already strong enough not to need them outside of the absolute toughest enemies (which is exactly where a bestiary would shine). Granted, this is just my experience with the system and it may be an outlier, but nonetheless the whole system hasn't felt very necessary. I hope this feedback is helpful, and thanks for continuing to make Grounded an awesome game!

My brother and I came back to check out the new content after being gone for several updates, and we immediately noticed there's now TWO wolf spiders living under the tree (and our magnificent treehouse base). Though tougher to kill than we remember, we axed both of them on the same day and continued trying out new features. Imagine our surprise when, at the dawn of the next day, two wolf spiders were again snoring menacingly under our fortress. Unless I'm wildly misremembering, it used to take around three days for a wolf spider to respawn after being killed. The current daily respawn rate is troublesome for two key reasons: zone control and immersion. If wolf spiders only take a day to respawn, building a base anywhere near a spawn point is a huge risk. Having a wolf spider permanently prowling around your under-construction base is going to result in frequent an frightening deaths, no matter how many times you squash them. That leads into the second point of immersion; when you conquer an apex predator, you should gain control of the area for a reasonable time. One of the foundations of survival games is imposing order on nature but if the nastiest enemies only stay dead till the next day it ruins that sense of taming the wilderness. Plus, regularly scheduled daily respawns of pretty much anything reduce the sense of playing in living world. I know creature respawn rate balance is probably low on the priority while new features still need to be created, but at least for the wolf spiders, please tone them down so its reasonable to build in the vicinity of their spawn point. Thanks!

After the latest update, you drink stagnant water on key press instead of key hold. I hope this is a bug and not intentional, because it's extremely frustrating. Anytime items end up in puddles or the pond and you try to pick them up and miss, you take a big gulp of bad water. Please change it back to key hold, as that allows players to spam the interact button to pick up items without worrying about performing an unintentional poisoned drink.