tobias.littmann

Hello Obsidian Team, first of all, my friend and I are really enjoying Grounded 2. We already played the first Grounded together and absolutely loved it, and Grounded 2 has improved and expanded on the experience in many great ways. The new insects, the larger world, the new content and especially the ability to ride Buggies are fantastic. However, there is one aspect that has been quite disappointing for us as players who enjoy both exploration and large-scale creative base building. In the first Grounded, we built a huge castle at the pond pagoda. It became our real home base: a peaceful and relatively safe place where we could spend hours building, designing and expanding our castle. Whenever we wanted adventure, combat or resources, we left our base and explored the dangerous parts of the yard. That separation between “home” and “adventure” was something we really loved. In Grounded 2, we are currently struggling to find anything comparable. Over the last several days, we explored practically the entire currently available map with our Buggies specifically looking for a location where we could build another large castle. We checked open areas, elevated locations, picnic and camping tables and other large surfaces. Unfortunately, almost every suitable location seems to contain aggressive insect spawn points or patrol routes. Especially outside the starting biome, mosquitoes and other stronger creatures appear so frequently that even large elevated surfaces often do not provide a peaceful building area. We eventually returned to the starting area near the food cart and the first Ranger Station/Lab. It is currently the best compromise we have found because the creatures there are relatively small and manageable. But the terrain itself is not particularly suitable for the kind of very large base we would love to build. And this is where we think Grounded 2 could benefit enormously from giving builders a little more room to breathe. We are not asking for the world to become less dangerous. Quite the opposite: we enjoy taking our Buggies into dangerous areas, fighting stronger creatures, exploring new biomes and going on expeditions. But we would love to have a few places in this enormous park that deliberately serve as peaceful building locations. For example: One or two large, relatively flat areas with very few or no aggressive creature spawns. Large elevated surfaces that are suitable for ambitious building projects without constant attacks from flying insects. A system where player-built foundations or structures suppress creature spawn points within a reasonable radius. Alternatively, some kind of base marker or territory system that prevents hostile creatures from spawning directly inside an established base while still allowing creatures from outside to wander into the area. This would allow players to create a genuine home base without removing the danger from the rest of the world. Grounded has such a fantastic building system that it almost invites players to become completely unreasonable with it. We don’t just want to build a small survival hut. We want to build a huge castle with walls, towers, gates, an inner courtyard and several buildings – and then use that castle as the starting point for our expeditions into Brookhollow Park. For us, the ideal gameplay loop is: Build and relax at home → prepare for an expedition → leave the safety of the base → explore and fight → return home with new resources → expand the base. At the moment, Grounded 2 sometimes feels as though every part of the map has to contain constant activity or danger. We think that quiet areas are valuable too. Not every open field or large surface needs an enemy spawn, patrol or combat encounter. Sometimes the building itself is the gameplay. We have also noticed that other players have suggested systems that prevent insects from spawning inside established bases, so we hope this is something the team might consider during Early Access. Grounded 2 already has so many great improvements over the first game, and we are genuinely excited to see how Brookhollow Park continues to grow. We simply hope that future updates will also give the builders among us a few places where we can put down roots, feel safe for a while – and build something ridiculously huge. Thank you for reading and for continuing to develop Grounded 2 based on community feedback. Best regards, Two Grounded players who just want a quiet place to build a ridiculously oversized castle 🙂