JustLikeAFruitPounder

Also this is my last post. I posted all of my ideas, and now I'm gonna stop clogging up the damn forum. I just really like this game, and you get a lot of good ideas for bugs when you study entomology IRL. I was actually thinking "house centipede" for another post but then I realized how big that is. It's even bigger than the solifugid. This game is going to be big one day. I hope at least one guy on the dev team reads all this ****. bye.

Fixed

reply to this if you want the harvestmen, can't edit the poll for some reason

I'm pretty sure you all know the drill by now. I will put these guys up on the poll shortly after I write this. Please check some of my other posts out, such as these: Army Ants Ogre-Faced Spider, Stonefly Larva Scorpion, Pseudoscorpion And now for the ideas! -Bloated Sweet-Tooth- Uhh...how are black ants different from red ants again? Their color? Their tier? Yeah, that isn't enough for me, so I'm gonna make some changes. The honeypot ant is a small, black ant who has a special caste of worker called a rotund. Rotunda can store honey in their big bubble butt to feed the colony's larva (I think). I want to see this in Grounded. The Black Ant Rotund is a caste of Black Ant Worker with serious junk in their trunks. Rotunda are found wherever Black Ants patrol. Their strength and HP falls in between the strength and HP of a Black Ant Worker and the strength and HP of a Black Ant Soldier. They most often accompany Soldiers due to their unique game mechanic. All that time around bees has paid off for these ants, and now they have warriors that...explode. Rotunda will rush you, and are much faster than Soldiers. They are basically suicide bombers. They WANT you to kill them, so they can explode into a geyser of healing honey that lingers for quite a while. Any ant that walks in the honey gains health over time as long as they are in the honey pool. The honey pool is actually harmful to players, since it slows you down when you walk in it. So, you have regenerating soldier ants swarming you while you are helpless and can't escape? Fun! I need this. Rotunda are tier 2 and exclusive to the Black Ants, they cannot be found in any other colony. This addition will basically set in stone the actual species of the dubious "Black Ants". They are now honeypot ants. The names won't be changed though. The game will still call them Black Ants. -Grey Goo- Harvestmen/daddy long-legs are harmless oversized mites that can cluster up into massive globs of stringy legs. They do this for warmth. No, the house is not growing hair. Those are actually bugs. Nanobots in science fiction are based off of daddy long-legs. Small, harmless, and weak bug-looking things that cluster up and kill everything? Yep! That fits the bill. Harvestmen are neutral bugs that roam around the lower and upper yard. They are weak and flimsy, so they are tier 1. But together...they can be a problem. In the Undershed, under the deck of the shed, under the deck of the house, on the underside of the Picnic Table, really anywhere where there's noticeable human presence, there are Harvestman clusters. The thing with these guys is that they work like Zombie Pigmen from Minecraft. If you aggro one, you aggro the whole swarm. So if you shoot at one of these clusters...you better have packed bombs. They drop Mite Fuzz (NOT A SPIDER), Harvestman Legs, and Harvestman Fangs. These are used to craft the Longleg Scythe, which works like a boomerang. You throw it, it hits something, then it returns to you. It's just a cool tier 1 weapon. And..that is all for this post.

I made this so Obsidian can see how many people want a certain idea, because if enough people want something, they might pull a Mantis and put it in the game.

Thanks. People really want these in game for some reason, it's got DOUBLE the views of any of my other posts. Scorpions, earwigs, water bugs? Nah, we want ANTS. And, frankly, I do too. That's why I made a sort of "sequel" to this post. Sequel Post

Please read this before reading this post, since this post ties in to the linked post. Read it? Good. In the linked post, I stated that Grounded's ants remind me of rival fantasy races. These guys...they are the typical "wandering horde of orcs that can eat people". They are strong and numerous, and pillage, burn and...yeah, I don't think they would do THAT, every ant colony they come across. They are raiders from distant lands, trapped in a foreign world. They are called the Eciton Horde. How they got here is a funny story, though. When Wendell Tully caught word of his neighbor's new pet, a colony of Eciton burchellii army ants, he immediately went over to chastise his neighbor, fearing that the brutal ants may escape, become invasive and kill off native ants, as army ants always do (you CANNOT keep army ants in captivity). His furious neighbor responded by throwing the army ant colony as well as the terrarium they reside in into Wendell's yard. The Eciton Ants are based in the Broken Terrarium by the Milk Carton. They don't dig nests like regular ants, what they have is called a... THUNDERDOME. Erm, ackshually it'sh called a bivouac, but "thunderdome" sound cooler. So I'm going with that. The thunderdome is a dome made up of Eciton Workers. No, literally. The walls are made up of ants clinging onto each other. This dome is built around the queen, and is guarded by legions of the finest Eciton Soldiers. The Eciton Ants are tier 2, and they follow a sort of "schedule", like real army ants. It's a cycle between a 14-day rest period, where the entire colony chills around the thunderdome, and a 7-day swarm period, where they raid the red and black anthills. They are neutral to all other ants during the rest, but hostile to all other ants during the swarm. They are the only lower yard ant that is hostile to you, always. When they raid a colony, it's more of a smash-and-grab, they just take the eggs and leave. They do NOT kill everybody. If they did that, they wouldn't be able to raid the same colony again (nobody to lay eggs). Eciton Workers are gray with an orange butt. Unlike other workers, these will fight you to the death. They have a bit more health and damage than the black ant workers. Eciton Soldiers are ugly as hell. Sandy beige, black beady eyes, black, long, sharp mandibles, lanky legs, and orange butts. They have a bit more health and damage than the Black Ant Soldiers. Both ranks drop Eciton Parts, used to make something cool. We'll get to that in a moment. -Warrior-Queen- The Horde's warrior-queen is possibly one of the most fearsome ants in the backyard. She's a straight-up boss, meant to be fought before the Broodmother. Like a black widow, she is only confined to one location, inside the thunderdome. Once you approach the thunderdome nestled into the broken terrarium, Workers will break off of the structure and attack you. The opening forms an entrance. When you enter the dome, a cutscene plays where the Warrior-Queen roars at you, preparing herself for battle. Soldiers form a ring around both you and their queen, stomping the ground and gnashing their teeth in the air. The battle is on. The warrior-queen does not call other ants to her aid-it's a one-on-one with her. Once the battle is over, you end up slicing off one of her mandibles. The queen is on her side, doubled over in pain. You have the option to kill or spare her. If you spare her, the Eciton will respect you, with all the soldiers cheering and saluting you. Eciton ants will now be neutral. If you kill her, all the Eciton ants will despawn from the map and never respawn. The ring of soldiers will try to kill you instead of cheering you on. The mandible you sliced off can be used with Eciton Parts to craft the Pike of the Warrior-Queen, a spear that does 25% more damage to ants. This can stack with Ant-nihilator. And since all ants have a Stabbing weakness (even the Eciton, Leafcutter, and Crazy ants), this won't be good. And this weapon can be upgraded. Every upgrade adds 5% to the bonus. Now for something a little darker. The Tully army ant. A failed experiment in pest control. Also known as the Undying Swarm. The Undying Swarm is a genetically modified colony of Nomamyrmex esenbeckii ants created by Dr. Tully to eliminate the invasive Fire, Leafcutter, and Crazy ant colonies in the upper yard. Since N. esenbeckii normally only raids the colonies of a certain species of leafcutter, their instincts had to be tweaked drastically. Dr. Tully imbued the colony's females with a specific mindset. The belief that they are superior and that everything else should be exterminated. This seemed like a good idea at the time for Dr. Tully, but turned out to be a grave mistake. He thought they would just attack other ants. And then they escaped containment and tried to kill him. The Undying Swarm are lavender-colored tier 3 ants covered in thick, spiky armor. They are resistant to everything except Stabbing, and if you attack them with anything except for a ranged attack or a spear, the thorns will damage you. Their eyes are black as night, their legs are covered in thorns, and their mandibles are as robust as the rest of their body. The soldiers also have stingers like fire ants that give you the Black Widow venom effect. Fun! The workers have the same health as Leafcutter Workers and more damage than Fire Ant Workers, and the soldiers have the same health as Leafcutter Soldiers and more damage than Fire Ant Soldiers. Remember when I said that the Leafcutters were high elves? These are the Drow. They are constantly in a swarm state, and do not have rest periods. They mercilessly raid every other upper yard ant colony. They patrol the entire upper yard and will attack any other ant on sight. These guys are why you get an OP weapon when you beat the Eciton. There is a fountain in the garden near Castle Moldorc. Beneath it is the underground lab where the Tully army ants originated. The queen is found here, still in its former containment chamber, surrounded by a small thunderdome made up of Soldiers. Wendell documented everything about these ants. The logs get more and more gruesome every one you find, and these logs explain the seemingly random corpses around the lab. One of the logs documents how the ants gruesomely killed a Black Widow in a test to see if they would attack non-ant insects. They reportedly had workers hold the spider down while soldiers climbed all over it, stinging it repeatedly and watching it die, then tearing it apart and eating it. They then all clacked their mandibles in the air, laughing. Another log shows the brutal misandry of this species, a product of Wendell tweaking with the ants' brains. Since the workers and soldiers are all female, he only tweaked with the brains of the females, not the males. He documents how a group of soldiers picked a particularly weak male to torment. They tore off his wings and left him with only two legs, and they laughed as he hopped around. They then forced him to eat the colony's refuse until his stomach burst. He also remarks on the colony's mating rituals being more like a r*pe than anything else. The queen picks out the strongest male, forces herself on him, then cuts his head off with her mandibles after mating. Throughout the lab, you see corpses of winged males sawed in half, decapitated, dismembered, and so on. This is why you will not have the option to spare the Undying Queen. Killing her will save 3 colonies and countless other bugs. The Undying Queen will basically be the same fight as the Warrior-Queen, just stronger and with a stinger. After she's dead, all the Undying Workers and Soldiers will despawn and never respawn. IDK why Grounded never had little side stories like this, every other Obsidian game does. Also this game is inspired partially by Dungeons and Dragons, and drow are big in that, as well as orcs. The best substitute for them in Grounded would be army ants, that's why I made this post. I know Obsidian can do this, they've had dark stories like this before. If this will ever be in the game, though, it would probably take half a year, maybe more to make. And it would most likely be paid DLC. And that is all for today, backyard dwellers! Hopefully you liked this post, it took a couple hours to write.

More high fantasy names for more enemies! This is a small one today. Only 2 this time, but these ones will be hella interesting. Please check out the other posts in this series if you haven't already. More views=more of a chance that the devs will read these. Scorpions, Pseudoscorpions Lacewing Adults, House Flies, Sun Spider (BOSS) Saucer Bug (Miniboss), Damselfly (Miniboss), Earwig Damn, clickbait AND self-promotion! I should start a YT channel. Now let's get into the ideas. I just discovered that there was a species of spider called the Ogre-Faced Spider, and how it hunts is very interesting. Like a commercial fisherman, it throws a net out into the open. When something wanders into it, they stick to the net (since said net is made of sticky silk), and then the spider closes the net around its prey, pulls the net up to its mouth, and eats its prey alive. I want to see this in Grounded for obvious reasons. The spider will be tier 2 and will be specific to the Hedge. They hide on the lower branches of the Hedge, tossing their net down on the mossy floor. Since the Hedge is very dark and you don't know where you're going, this is the perfect area to jumpscare people, especially at night. If you don't bring a few torches, you are practically blind in the Hedge at nighttime. This gives the Ogre-Faced Spider the perfect opportunity to strike. Once you are in the net, you must press A and D repeatedly to get out. Once you are out of the net, the spider will drop to the floor and attack you. They have a little less health than an Orb Weaver, so you should be fine. But once you are in the net, the spider will bite you constantly, with no way to block the attacks. If you shoot the spider out of the air, it will just fall to the floor and attack you. It'll just drop Spider Parts and Web Fiber, nothing special. Next up is the "Savage Merfolk". Even though the only neuropteran larvae we see in-game live on land, most neuropterans have larvae that are fully aquatic. Stonefly larvae fall under this category. These tier 2 larvae inhabit the Pond. Take a lacewing larvae, give it two tendril-like tails, make its skin gray, its eyes light blue, and its spots black, and you have yourself a Grounded-style stonefly larva, which looks nothing like an IRL stonefly larva, except for the tails. These things swarm you like piranhas. The koi love them, that's why they are in there. You can buy live bugs by the thousands as fish food, pest control, etc. The Tullys threw a whole bag of them in there to feed the koi. They chewed their way out and now they're here. They are a sort of middle ground between a water flea and a diving bell spider when it comes to attack and HP. But they attack in packs of 3-5. They drop Larva Spikes. You can find the bag they were in at the bottom of the pond. It's full of holes from the larvae eating their way out. That is all for today, backyard dwellers! Just trying to make already existing areas a bit more scary, but in a fairly balanced way. Watch out!

More high fantasy-themed names today, because I main Pete and Grounded is partly a parody of high fantasy. I used to be an avid AntsCanada watcher back in the day, and the ants were the main reason I got this game. I always thought of the ants as rival species. Almost like tribes of goblins or orcs. Weak, numerous enemies that are absolutely EVERYWHERE. You can interact with them, raid their encampments, commit mass genocide, put on armor and become one of them, the list goes on. But sadly, they aren't as in-depth as I (and many others) want them to be. Obsidian is working on ant queens for a later update, but I still want more, especially in the Upper Yard, where a fascinating species became a half-baked nuisance. First let's fix the Fire Ants before we get to the "High Elves" and "Mad Kobolds". The Fire Ant Workers are strange. Instead of hatching from eggs, they spawn right behind you every X amount of time. The annoying bit is, the workers are too tanky and run like hell to alert the soldiers, which can overcomplicate things. Fighting ants should not be this common, especially since the Fire Ants are tanky, almost always spawn soldiers, always spawn near you and bite you in the butt after you got your butt kicked by larvae or beetles, and are always aggro. Please for the love of god, make the Fire Ants like every other ant. Make them hatch out of eggs, decrease their health pool, and instead of always aggro all the time, only make them hostile when you are getting a little too close to their anthill. Also please add more depth to them. Give the Soldiers a stinger, and a new attack to come with it where if you are stung, you get max sizzle for a few seconds. This attack is telegraphed like the Bee stinger, though. Now for the first idea. The Leafcutter Ants, also known as Atta cephalotes or "high elves" in clickbaitspeak, inhabit the eastern upper yard. Their anthill is in the garden near Castle Moldorc. Leafcutters have strange anthills when compared to other ants. Their anthills can span for miles, and they have garden rooms where mushrooms are cultivated. The mushrooms these ants cultivate in-game are also quite strange. They function as tier 3 healbasas, healing way more health than an actual healbasa. This is due to the fact that these mushrooms are puffball mushrooms that were artificially selected by the ants for medicinal use in massive battles with lots of wounded. They also taste good. Pete will actually call Leafcutters a "high elven kingdom". And due to these ants living off the land, chilling in gardens, and eating mushrooms, I have decided to give them a Spicy weakness, due to them being based off of elves, having a green thumb, and all that. Here are their ranks: Worker- Just your typical ant worker, but a bit tankier. The tradeoff is that these workers deal less damage than fire ant workers. Soldier- Typical ant soldier. More health and less damage than fire ant soldiers. They have massive heads which make them deliver knockback to the player in their attacks. Charger- Ant megamind. Even bigger than the soldiers, a Charger's head can block off entire chambers in their anthill, where they stay their whole lives. They never leave the anthill. Can fling you across the room with their high-damaging attacks. They have a bit more health than an Ox Beetle. Time for the second idea, the yellow crazy ants (or "mad kobolds" in clickbaitspeak, as well as in Pete's dialogue). They inhabit the Shed, its surroundings, the grasslands east of the BBQ spill, and a small part of the upper yard. Pete calls them "kobolds" because their anthill is a sprawling, cavernous dungeon deep down in the "Trenches of No Return" south of the shed, and also because they hunger for "lost electric magic" (the generator) because their "dragon queen" needs it to become a god, so they set up camps on the "Plateau of Doom" and "Mount Chair". Pete would make a sick DM for sure, but that's beside the point. The thing with kobolds is that it's never a kobold. It's lots of kobolds. The same goes for the Crazy Ants, which are faster than any other ant in the game. The Fire Ants beat them in health and raw damage by a fair amount, but the Crazy Ants win in speed and pack tactics. Crazy Ants don't spawn like any other ant. Their anthill is chock-full of eggs, simply because of their pack movements. With Fire Ants and Leafcutters, you only see 1 worker scouting and hunting most of the time. With Crazy Ants, you'll see 3. Time for the ranks: Worker- Weak, numerous, speedy. A true kobold. Soldier- Pete calls them "dragonwrought sorcerers" for a good reason. These things patrol in pairs, and while weaker than any other upper yard ant soldier, they are very fast. They also can summon an electric aura for a few seconds. This aura makes them immune to all attacks, and will damage you if you try to attack the ant. Crazy ants actually do this IRL. Their body coats itself in acid to protect from fire ant venom. The crazy anthill is chock-full of sour wormholes and upgrade materials. Chewed-up wires zapping with electricity also run through the anthill. In the deepest depths of the dungeon, though, is the recipe for the Salty Staff, a staff that makes salt spikes shoot up out of the ground. Since crazy ants are weak to Salty, this is very useful when fighting them. The crazy ant territory and the fire ant territory overlap. The leafcutter territory and the fire ant territory overlap. Since all of the ants attack each other on sight, this can lead to significant border conflicts. And that is all. A block makes a difference, backyard dwellers.

There are a few cool things that I want in the game. I posted like hell in Suggestions, but I'm wondering if the devs will actually read it. Do they have a history of implementing fan suggestions? Do they commonly read that forum? Are my ideas cool enough to put into the game? Thanks in advance.

Very, very smol. First off, the sweets. In MMORPGs there is always the healer. Every group needs a healer or else they are screwed! And since Grounded is littered with RPG elements but no healing candy equivalent, I am going to fix that. Gummi Gems are candies that have hard shells made to look like magic gemstones, but they have a gumdrop for an inner core. The gumdrop is what you want, since it is necessary to make Gummy Globs, used to make the Sweet Staff, an item that casts a constant beam of healing energy at whatever you desire. Even enemies. Next, the smol-I mean spiders. The Jumping Spider is a passive creature that pounces from the tops of grass blades onto unfortunate mites or aphids. It doesn't harm anything bigger than it, though. Most creatures just left it alone, until you picked it up and named it Fluffy, and now Fluffy has the entire backyard hunting them down. Yes. I want tameable smol spiders. That you can pet. That is all. Except for one tiny-just ONE small, minute, miniscule thing. -Brown Recluse The Brown Recluse is a very poisonous upper yard spider the size of an Orb Weaver Jr. They have the same health as an Antlion, but also come in pairs and have the Black Widow venom effect. I just want this so we have an upper yard spider that's not a boss encounter or a reskinned Spiderling.

Hopefully this will be my last post. Again, so sorry. These ideas will be cool though. Let's start with the last one first. The Futakuchi-onna is a strange ghost in Japanese folklore. It takes the form of a beautiful woman until you notice the second mouth on the back of its head. Also, it is a very strange nickname to give to an earwig, even though an earwig looks like it has two mouths. Earwigs, like a lot of other bugs in Grounded, live their own lives and have their own schedule. Earwigs, being nocturnal creatures, will hide in burrows and caves during the day. They only come out to hunt at night, adding even more danger to the night. They are tier 2 and drop Earwig Wings and Earwig Mandibles, used to make the tier 2 glider. They will mostly attack using their deadly derriere, using an attack similar to that of the Ox Beetle. Body-checking you as they whip their body around, and then jabbing you with their butt-blades. They also have attacks akin to Soldier Ants and Larvae, a one-hit bite and a three-hit thrash. The "False Dragon" is my clickbait nickname ("clickname" if you will) for the Damselfly, since everyone wants dragonflies but then they remember that a dragonfly is the size of a skyscraper to an ant. I was also one of those people, so I made a compromise. A Damselfly looks like a small dragonfly, but they aren't a dragonfly. Hence, "False Dragon". Damselflies are neutral insects that chill around the Pond. They also inhabit the garden right next to the pond. They are tier 3, and when aggroed, can be a straight-up boss fight, even to endgame players. They drop Damselfly Wings and Damselfly Antennae, used to make the tier 3 glider. Damselfly Larvae are hostile tier 1 bugs that inhabit the Pond. IDK what they would drop. And now for the "Sea Giant"...the saucer bug. I always wanted a water bug in the pond. But sadly, water bugs are too big, except for the saucer bug, the runt of the water bug litter. These things are ambush predators both IRL and in the game. In-game, they are deep-sea monsters. Ogres of the sea that hide in the seagrass at the bottom of the pond, deep in the muck, and then you hear a roar. A split second later, you have been decapitated by a horror you never saw. Yep, this is another open-world miniboss encounter. I am surprised we didn't have water bugs in the pond caves, seeing how valuable Sunken Bones are. These things hide in the vegetation in the pond caves and then lunge out at you. Bring a shield. I've always wanted a Reaper Leviathan-esque encounter in Grounded, and this is it. The Saucer Bug is tier 3, and is basically an underwater Ladybug with mandibles. It fights like a Ladybug, except for one attack unique to this enemy where it grabs onto you and thrashes you around, similar to how Reapers grab your Seamoth. It has the same health as a Ladybird, but is weak to stabbing. Also bring a Rust Spear, preferrably upgraded. These things are rare, there are only a few spawn points for them. They are exclusive to the Pond Caves. They drop Saucer Bug Mandibles and Saucer Bug Parts, used to make the Sword of the Sea Giant, the only sword that can be used underwater. It does a little less damage than the Toenail Scimitar, but is very versatile. And that is all for this post! Good luck, backyard dwellers. Hopefully the two of you that read this liked it!

Okay, this is my last suggestion. I am so sorry, I just have a lot of ideas for this game. Grounded is going to be big, I can feel it. It's going to blow up like hell if they keep dropping bomb-ass updates, and I want to help them out. This time it's two tier 2s and a straight-up boss. First, the two tier 2s. The tier 1 larvae in Grounded are actually lacewing larvae. Lacewings are bright green flies that have wings that look like nets. They emit a horrific stench when scared or provoked. Why aren't lacewings in the game again? We're fixing that today. The Lacewing is a neutral insect, only active during the day. If you aggro it it will straight up do a bombing run. It will fly overhead and drop stink bombs, covering an entire line of terrain in noxious gas. They have very low health though. I have no clue what you could make with their drops, do whatever you want Obsidian, it's your game. Speaking of insects that I have no idea why they ain't in Grounded yet... The house fly is an annoying pest that eats corpses. They will literally swoop in and carry off your kills to eat if you don't harvest the drops soon enough, making you lose your chance of ever harvesting the drops at all. We're not putting maggots into Grounded, since a wriggling yellow blob isn't an interesting enemy. If you want that, reskin the grubs. Flies are also neutral, and are very tanky, even more so than bees. They drop fly fuzz and fly eyes, used to make the Charm of the Necrophage, a trinket that heals you slightly for every corpse you harvest. And finally, the boss. The king of the sandcastle, known by many names. Demon, hellspawn, wind scorpion, sun spider, solifugid, etc. But he is known to the dwellers of the backyard as "AHHHHHHH WHAT THE **** WHAT THE **** WHAT THE **** SAVE ME SAVE ME PLEASE! AHHHHHHHH!!!!!", and he is out for blood. Note that a sun spider is different from a camel spider. Camel spiders are the size of a human hand, whereas the much smaller sun spiders live in almost all of the southwestern states and are a wee bit bigger than a wolf spider. This boss is a sun spider, not a camel spider. He is only encountered in the sandcastle, and he is summoned with the Broodmother Burrito, a meal made from the carcass of the late spider queen. Solifugids have an interesting mouth, their mouth is almost like a pair of crab claws. They tear chunks off of their prey and eat them. This is why the sun spider's drops, sun spider mandibles and sun spider legs, are used to make the Snaptrap Gauntlets, pincer-like boxing gloves that cause the enemy bleed damage, an effect that makes you take chip damage as well as take 2x more damage for 5 seconds, simply because if you tear a chunk out of something, it will make that thing bleed out. Solifugids have poor eyesight, which is why they have 10 legs. 2 of them are feelers, like a blind man's cane. And since the king of the sandcastle is a careless and hotheaded creature, he often rushes headfirst into walls, causing heaps of sand to fall on him, burying him alive so you can go in for the kill.

The Legend of Zelda is a heartwarming memory to me as a gamer. I remember the Deku Tree in Ocarina of Time. A bug named Gohma took it over and was eating it from the inside out, and I had to go inside it to stop Gohma. I killed it, but the Deku Tree sadly didn't survive. The Oak Lab is also a very cherished memory. And I thought I would give it the same treatment. Once you beat the game, you can go back to the Oak Lab and BURG.L will tell you that there are heavy biosigns near the lab. He then discovers said biosigns are INSIDE the Oak Tree. The screen goes dark, and then BURG.L tells you he just constructed an elevator inside the lab so you can access the network of tunnels and rooms the bugs have been digging throughout the tree. The tunnels create a complex, cavernous system of chambers, hallways, and nests. As soon as those elevator doors opened, you saw that the inside of the tree was cluttered with vines dropping from the ceiling, as well as various types of mosses, molds, and mushrooms covering the floor and walls. You also come face-to-face with a bark beetle, an enemy exclusive to this biome. These beetles are weak, but come in packs of 2-4. In some of the larger chambers of this mega-dungeon, you may come across horntails. Horntails are solitary, wood-boring wasps with one hell of a sting. Horntails attack by grabbing you with their mandibles, flying in the air, stinging you a bunch, then dropping you. Moth caterpillars are a common sight here, and are large but passive beasts that drop 6 pieces of meat, adding to the high reward of this high-risk biome. Longhorn beetles are giants that pack a hell of a punch. They use their horns as whips, and can detect you from miles away. Grubs are numerous in the Oaken Tunnels, and you don't need to worry about "surprises" when digging-neuropterans don't nest in trees. There are no larvae here. Upgrade materials like candy, quartzite, and marble are everywhere in the Oaken Tunnels, but the beetles outweigh the mats by a large margin. There are also multiple lesser stag beetles here (the small ones, about half the size of regular ones) These serve as the "Black Widow-like" enemies. They are hidden away and never leave their den. Lakes of pure tree sap overpopulate the Oaken Tunnels, if you fall in one it is very hard to get out. There are 2 warring wasp hives here, each with their own loot. Bald-faced hornets and paper wasps will attack each other on sight, and packs of them will roam the tunnels. Their hives are like small mini-dungeons inside the mega-dungeon. Wasps are weak, but fast. The main reason they are tier 3 is because of their speed and pack tactics. They have the same health as a bee with a bit more attack strength. There's an abandoned and dead honeybee hive deep within the Oak. Now overtaken by beetles and wasps, the hive still holds one deep secret: a lost lake of Royal Jelly used by the bees to feed heirs to their throne, now forgotten. -LOOT- -Bark Beetle parts and heads are used to make the Bulwark of the Druid, a shield that has a chance to make low-level enemies like worker ants and larvae switch sides and fight for you if they strike the shield. -Longhorn parts and horns are used to make the Longhorn Longbow, an alternative to the Black Ox Crossbow that has immaculate range and attack power, but is slow to fire. -Horntail parts and stingers can be combined with Dust Mite Fuzz to make Horned Arrows, an alternative to Splinter Arrows that do considerably more damage, but cannot be used to make elemental arrows. -Wasp parts, heads, and stingers can be used to make Wasp Armor, allowing you to chill in wasp hives and see inside the life of a wasp. Each wasp faction has its own armor set. -Stag Beetle Plates and Stag Beetle Mandibles can be used at an anvil to make things unbreakable. Apply Stag Beetle Plates to your armor, and it has infinite durability. The same goes for Stag Beetle Mandibles and weapons. -Royal Jelly is used to make the Queen's Delight, a smoothie that considerably upgrades your max HP value. This smoothie can be used only once. And that is all. This is never going to happen, I am very sure, but maybe some ideas can be taken from this pipe dream. Hopefully.

Obsidian has created a monster with Grounded. A game about bugs practically begs for intense enemy variety, since insects, arachnids, etc. are VERY diverse. Grounded is a blessing and a curse. It demands so much, but allows the devs to DO so much. And I am here to help them out. I propose a small update for 1.2 (or 1.3 if they already fleshed out 1.2 by the time of writing) that will add 2 new bugs, one being a regular enemy and one being a rare, miniboss-like encounter similar to Ox Beetles. First, we'll start off with the "facade", a bug that is both numerous and deadly. It loves humid areas such as moss and leaf litter (think the bottom of the Hedge or the Oak Tree). It can also be found in the domain of its role model, hidden in the grand oasis of the Sandbox. And nobody's ever heard of this thing, letting it catch the backyard dwellers by surprise. Enter the Pseudoscorpion, also called the book scorpion. Take a mite, turn it black, multiply its size by 2.5, give it pincers, and give it one singular horrific compound eye similar to an antlion's smack in the middle of the forehead, and you have yourself a Pseudoscorpion. It's a tier 2 mite, if you will, but it also has a 3 hit claw attack similar to a larva's bite attack. It can also backhop, similar to a ladybird larva. It can still jump and bite you, like every other mite-like enemy. These things hunt in packs of 3-5 and are nocturnal, but they are quick work for an experienced backyard dweller. They're still mites, just bigger. If mites are the goblin of the backyard, the Pseudoscorpion would be a bugbear. Now time for the real deal. The Southern Devil Scorpion is a rare creature, exclusive to the Sandbox. There are only 5 SDS spawn points in the game, and 2 are in the sandcastle. They will attack antlions on sight, and are also nocturnal. The ones that aren't confined to the sandcastle sleep together in a burrow during the day. If you hate yourself, go there. There's some supreme quartzite and marble as well as a few hot chachas in there, but the scorpions will probably eat you alive. "Well, I can just go there during the night!" No, you can't. 2 of the 3 scorpions will pathfind to the burrow as long as you are in there, and they are damned fast. Good luck! And no, these things aren't venomous. SDS are not harmful to humans, they sting like hell but that's it. They are also small for a scorpion, IRL they're smaller than wolf spiders. Any other scorpion would be a raid boss in Grounded. SDS are tier 3. -DROPS- Pseudoscorpions can drop Pseudoscorpion Fangs and Pseudoscorpion Claws. You can use them to make a grappling hook. I am not kidding. It'll have a short reach, it won't be like, say, Halo Infinite's where you can swing from the trees like Tarzan, but yeah, it's a grappling hook. You can grapple walls, bugs, really anything. SDS will drop Scorpion Parts, Scorpion Claws, and Scorpion Stingers. You can use these to make armor. Think of the Chitin Armor from ARK. Scorpion armor works the same way. Its defense is higher than the Roly Poly armor, but you take twice the Sizzle damage. And that is all. Stay strong, backyard dwellers, don't let the spiders eat you!