On November 1st, Obsidian Entertainment released a massive update to their popular garden survival game “Grounded”. The update is primarily focused on a new gamemode called “Playgrounds”, which allows players to build, share and play their own levels, but also contains some updates to survival.
If you want to read more about the new gamemode, you can find the full official patch notes on Obsidian Entertainment’s forums, but if you just want to see a summary of what’s new in survival only, we’ve got you covered!
Everything New in Survival
Although the update contains many features surrounding the new “Playgrounds” mode where players can create and share new experiences, the developers haven’t forgotten about survival.
With the additions of new custom game options, a new system for daily quests, new items, buildings and even a few quality-of-life updates, there’s still a lot to tinker with if you’re dead set on playing survival.
New Custom Game Options
It’s always been fun to tweak how the game plays with the custom options like bug spawning, stamina drain, or really just switching up the difficulty.
In 1.3, the following options have been added as toggleable customizations in your Grounded playthrough:
- Building Enabled: An intuitive toggle on whether or not players can build and relocate buildings.
- Crafting Enabled: Toggles access to the crafting menus.
- Time of Day Speed: Adjusts how long a day cycle lasts.
- Thirst Burn Rate: Adjusts the multiplier that controls thirst loss.
- Hunger Rate: Similarly, adjusts the multiplier that controls hunger loss.
- Resource Respawn Rate: Adjust the rate at which resources can respawn.
- Creature Health Scaling: Adjust how much health creatures will have.
- Fall Damage Scaling: Adjust the fall damage you receive from falling.
These new options, along with the old options, have been grouped together to make the menus easier to navigate for players.
BURG.L Daily Quest System
BURG.L, the friendly robot that we know, and love has also gotten an update this time, aiming to streamline how new players start progressing through the game and doing the daily quests.
Rather than being able to jump into the randomized daily quests, players will now have to complete a series of “Apprentice Quests” first. There are roughly 100 of them, and each one unlocks the next one, scaling in difficulty.
As for the regular daily quests, players will be able to unlock them after completing 20 of the Apprentice Quests.
The objectives you get in the daily quests will vary based on your progress in the Apprentice Quests, so you’re always getting balanced tasks!
New Equipment, Items, Buildings & More
The update adds two new basketball items: the Berry Basketball and Pupa Basketball.
Three new early game trinkets have also been added, each meant to correspond to one of the typical RPG classes:
- Astonishing Acid: Increased combo finish damage for players who prefer a melee playstyle.
- Nifty Needle: Increased charged shot damage for players who like playing ranged.
- Sturdy Shell: Decreased friendly fire damage intake and major threat effect for tanky players.
11 new buildings have been added, such as the Target Dummy, the Gnat Lamp, the Pupa Leather Ottoman, and more. Additionally, they’ve added over 40 half/quarter wall, floor, and stair pieces!
A new mutation has also been added called Battle Buddies! It reduces the friendly fire damage you deal and receive, making it easier to not kill your friends in your playthroughs.
Quality of Life
On the QoL side, there are some small changes that will help the game play better. It will be easier to find collectibles like the Milk Molars or SCA.Bs now, since the ones you’ve already found will be marked on your map.
Speaking of Milk Molars, did you know that you can get inside a Milk Molar jar bottle?
Ziplines can now be named so that you can better navigate where to go. When dropping, transferring, or trashing items, you can now specify how many you want to apply that action on.
There have been some updates to Basketball, other than the new items we mentioned, such as animations. The hoop also has new audio, and shooting distance now depends on how long you hold your attack button.
Difficulty Settings & Consumables
Lots of changes have been made to difficulty settings, particularly Medium Mode and Woah Mode, both of which have been made slightly harder.
Consumables have also been rebalanced, with some of them being given a 4 second cooldown on-use. Quesadillantlion and Omelant thorns now deal double damage.
Bandages will now provide a burst heal in addition to the heal over time that they already had. Their healing over time has also been tripled per tick, but the duration of the healing has been reduced.
Smoothies have been changed up as well, with Questionable Slop no longer being craftable, unlocking the smoothie station also unlocking the Soothing Syrup, and all smoothies having their healing doubled.
Dandelion Tufts have been changed to single-use items without any durability, rather than having to equip them. They can also now be stacked, and dandelions will drop more tufts when they’re destroyed.
However, the Fluffy Dandelion Tuft now has unlimited uses, meaning it will now be more viable.
Combos, Weapons & Armors
Notably, combos have also changed, with the combo damage of all weapons now being: 50% → 100% → 150% to 100% → 100% → 125%.
Some other misc combat changes are included as well, such as charge attacks dealing more damage and players having a small crit chance by default without any boosts equipped.
Armor and weapons have received the most changes, with almost all armor sets being modified in some way. The Mother Demon and Moldy Matriarch armor sets have been buffed in damage reduction and durability but will now also be considered heavy armor.
Tier 3 shields will provide more block strength. Grub armor will deal more damage to tier 1 creatures, but Clover armor will have higher defense against tier 1 creatures.
Some weapons, like Mosquito Needle and Tiger Mosquito Rapier can now be used underwater. Others will also have their effects applied underwater, like Rusty Spear’s infection or Widow Dagger’s poison effect.
Another notable change is that the Elemental upgrade paths will provide the same damage boost as the Mighty paths, which will definitely make them more favorable.
Trinkets
Trinkets have also been touched up as well, with the refund chance for arrows from the Wasp Queen trinket being increased.
Meanwhile, the Broodmother and its infected counterpart dealing double damage by player summons, Mantis Trinkets granting stacked crit chances, as well as buffs for most Ominent Employee Badge trinkets.
Some of the mutations have been adjusted as well, like:
- Sour Sensation thorns now dealing triple damage.
- Parry Master’s stamina increased.
- Spore Lord having the damage up effect proc chance upped.
- Javelineer thorns damage doubled.
- Sharpshooter increasing crit chance with bows and crossbows rather than the sprint stamina reduction.
Fans of the Infected Broodmother boss fight will also be happy to know that her drop rates have improved. If you still haven’t gotten past this tough boss, check out our Ultimate guide to beat the Infected Broodmother.
New Secret Door?
Some players have noticed that a new passageway has appeared near the pond on one side of the flower bed. If you go into it, you’ll find a little cave area with a locked door that looks like the image shown below.
Okay, but what about it? Well… nothing, for now. The doorway itself seems very different to everything else currently in the game, leading to speculation that it might lead into the game’s next expansion. What that could be about, we’ll have to wait and see.
For now, you’ve just learned about everything new in Survival in Grounded 1.3. If you still haven’t checked out Playground Mode, the main feature of this new update, go ahead and do that right now, as it seems like player-made content is planned to be a key-feature for the future of Grounded.
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