Grounded guide: All the changelogs for patches, content updates, and more

Being in Early Access and Game Preview means a lot of updates to fix known bugs and issues, and to add new content and features for early testers and players. This holds true for Grounded, the latest project from video game superpower Obsidian Entertainment. Because of these frequent updates and changes, it can be hard to keep track of everything the game adds and what to expect from every update. For this reason, we're keeping an eye on it all and compiling every changelog into one handy place for our readers.

Here are all the changelogs for patch updates and content updates in Grounded:

Content update 0.3.0 (September 30, 2020)

Official changelog from Obsidian Entertainment. Original report from Windows Central.

New features

• The Hedge has been revamped with new content
• New Building: Zip-lines
• New Building: Spinning Wheel
• New Building: Signs
• New World Landmark: Frankenline
• Halloween Additions: Jack-o-Lantern landmark, Candy Corn food item
• Localization for French, German, Spanish, and Italian (more to come at a later date)
• New spider webs that stick to unsuspecting players and critters

Engine changes

• UE4 Version Upgrade

Combat changes

• Ant Soldiers have a set of new attacks
• Ant Soldiers now deal more damage with their attacks
• TAYZ.Ts now deal much more damage with their attacks
• Most armors now block more damage
• All weapons have had their damage, stamina cost, and durability adjusted to fit a stricter Tier-based curve
• Bombardier Beetle burning hazards and Stink Bug gas hazards are now much deadlier
• Bombardier Beetle attacks deal less initial damage (end result should be about the same combined with hazard damage change)
• Fresh Defense perk now blocks twice as much gas and burning damage
• Reliable Friend perk now boosts revive speed by roughly double the amount
• Trying out new combat AI to reduce the effectiveness of circle-strafing

Interface changes

• Processing buildings such as the Campfire now show the progress of each item in the interface, and allow items to be canceled
• The Recycle Building interface now shows how many structures will collapse if the target building is Recycled
• Contextual slurping text informs you what liquid you're going to taste
• Additional icon art
• The Interact UI will no longer briefly appear enabled when looking at a disabled interaction
• Clearer labeling of game modes/type in save/load UIs
• Game no longer asks to overwrite a save if you are not able to currently save the game

World changes

• New perks to discover and unlock
• New SCA.B color themes to discover and unlock
• Stumps left behind no longer prevent foliage from respawning
• Grass will not respawn if the stump is removed
• Ants now have a desire to take back their stolen eggs
• Ant eggs can now hatch even after being moved by the player (but not while in an inventory)
• Ant eggs no longer stack in the inventory
• Larva wander range is now much smaller during the day
• Mushrooms in the world now take much longer to grow back
• Meats now take much longer to spoil
• SCA.Bs that have been moved since prior patches will reflect those moves in older saves
• Mint chunks in the Mint container should no longer spawn on top of the container
• Juice boxes stop spawning juice if a droplet spawned by them is still sitting in the world
• Removed the Broodmother from the hedge (for now...)
• Added Harvest VFX to Hedgeberry

Buildings changes

• Structural buildings are now fully allowed to overlap with any static environment object
• Blueprint buildings in the air cannot be completed unless a supporting building has been completed. This prevents situations where large structures would collapse because they were technically unsupported
• Buildings can no longer be built inside of tables
• Buildings can be placed more easily on the pond flagstones now
• Mushroom Garden spawn timer will now start when the building is built instead of when it is placed
• Smoke from torches, wall sconces, and campfires should now rarely penetrate floors/ceilings
• Plank/Log Storage deposit sound effects now play on clients
• The player will no longer play canteen animations when building a Water Container with a canteen in hand
• Clay foundation now has double the health
• Pebblet foundation now has less health, but still more than clay

Crafting changes

• Most recipes that require spiderweb have been refactored to use a processed spider web obtainable via the new Spinning Wheel instead

Performance changes

• Improved CPU performance of large bases and structures

Other changes

• Additional water caustic effects
• Bird feathers now float in water
• Weed stems now float in water
• The "Drop" control can now be rebound
• The "Swim Up" and "Swim Down" control bindings are allowed to overlap with other controls that cannot be used while swimming

Top community issues

• Free buildings attached to player-built structures will no longer become out-of-position for clients
• The game will no longer crash in some specific cases when demolishing a plank or log storage building
• Ants will no longer spawn in excessively large quantities

Game issues

• Alchemist BURG.L Quests will complete when accepted if the player has already analyzed the target item
• Kill based perks now only track kills on enemies
• Fixed issue with encounters not respawning creatures if they fell through the world in a prior save
• Hiding Interact prompt "E" or "X" when looking at a Locked / Stuck door

Items / equipment / resources issues

• Berry Chunks will no longer inflate themselves when subjected to a strong impact while lying on the ground
• Traps can no longer be triggered for a few seconds after destruction
• Traps can no longer be triggered by the 3rd-person camera
• Tropicop juice droplets should now correctly spawn from the straw of the juice box instead of from the base
• Bombardier Head Trophy should now be much easier to place

World issues

• Building ingredients will no longer remaining floating in the air when large structures collapse while no player is nearby
• Got rid of a small bump in collision while walking up and down player built stairs
• Bombardier Beetle now plays a sleep animation while sleeping instead of playing the stunned animation

UI issues

• Various camera animation adjustments were made to reduce the camera clipping into objects and the player's body
• Hiding Interact prompt "E" or "X" when looking at a Locked / Stuck door

Audio issues

• Buildings no longer create noise events immediately after loading a saved game
• Chatter audio is now attached to the player character and should sound better when moving

Patch update 0.2.2 (September 10, 2020)

Official changelog from Obsidian Entertainment. Original report from Windows Central.

Save issues

• Fixed an issue introduced in 0.2.1 that caused some saves to fail to load for some players

Patch update 0.2.1 (September 4, 2020)

Official changelog from Obsidian Entertainment. Original report from Windows Central.

Top community issues

• The chat log will now show your own messages in the lobby and in the game
• Ants will no longer be able to steal items from containers out of reach from them
• You can now overwrite saved games
• Save Games are grouped by playthrough in the Save / Load menu
• Fixed an issue where the camera would go inside the player while in the 3rd-person camera when near specific building structures
• Grub audio has been adjusted

Performance issues

• Better render performance when dealing with dynamic shadow culling

Major issues

• Added a message that will notify PC players when their system clock does not match the server clock. This issue prevented these players from hosting or joining games
• Save Games now show an icon indicating if that save was made while playing single-player or multiplayer. Affects only new saves going forward
• More accurate handling of cloud save upload / deletion for Xbox and Win 10 Store versions of the game
• Save Game max storage on Xbox / Windows 10 has been increased from 256 MB to 1GB (takes effect on reinstall)
• Fixed issue with saves triggered while having an unplaced building blueprint could cause the save not to be able to load

General issues

• Included gas damage effect that was missing from the Fresh Defense mutation
• Fixed items that are moving around with physics at the time of save not being saved into save games
• Fixed clients not being able to see other players aim their bodies when they look up and down
• Added Acorn Shovel+ recipe and Pebblet Foundation recipes that will become available at BURG.L's Tech Chip Swap Shop when completing the Chipslueth Cold Blooded BURG.L quest by turning in the Stained BURG.L Chip
• Enlarged mint container and resized the mints to make them slightly smaller so players can get into the Ice Cap container more easily
• Collectible SCA.Bs properly disappear on clients when picked up
• Included a fix for the missing leaves throughout the world
• Slime Mold Stalk patches properly disappear on clients when the entire stalk is collected

Wildlife issues

• Water Fleas no longer leave the water to fly around the backyard

Items / equipment / resources issues

• Added a unique icon to the Simple Bed
• Gas Arrows can now be picked up as regular arrows after being shot
• Gas Arrows now deal twice as much damage
• Gas Arrow recipe now produces 2 arrows instead of 1
• Feather Arrow recipe now produces 2 arrows instead of 1
• Fixed an issue where players would respawn inside the Simple Bed instead of next to it
• Weapons now do the proper damage type when thrown
• Fixed Tropicop juice box not spawning juice drops from the straw

UI issues

• Adjusted the interactable highlight to be less intrusive
• Fixed a certain key item showing an audio log model instead of a sheet of paper model

Content update 0.2.0 (August 26, 2020)

Official changelog from Obsidian Entertainment. Original reports from Windows Central for bug fixes and feature additions.

New features

• Bird!—Includes new crafting materials and recipes from bird feathers
• Perk system with 13 unique perks to discover!
• New BURG.L Quest types: Artificer (crafting quests) and Chipsleuth (quests asking you to locate BURG.L chips)
• Added Fence buildings (Sprig and Acorn)
• Added Table buildings (Grass and Clover)
• Added Water Flea ambient insect to flooded biome

Combat changes / tuning

• Buffed damage on the Spider Fang Dagger so it's on the higher end of tier 2 weapons
• Buffed damage on Spike Traps significantly
• Spiders learned a new set of attacks to choose from instead of just their basic bite
• Added a brief forced delay between block start events, preventing the player from perfect-blocking by mashing the block button
• Slightly reduced the bonus damage given by the Eyepatch
• Adjusting larva blade poison proc so it's consistent
• Reducing the stun ratings of two-handed weapons
• Slightly reducing amount of damage the mint mallet deals so it's in line with tier progression
• Tier 2 insects now have a cooldown after being stunned before they can be stunned again
• Perfect Blocking no longer reduces armor durability

Interface changes / tuning

• Updated Raw Science UI icons to be more consistent across the game
• Adding shortcut for dropping items in the inventory screen (Drop Stack is in the context menu)
• Adding "Deposit / Receive Stack" button on storage UIs
• Shift + clicking item stacks in the storage UIs will transfer the full stack clicked
• Dragging an item stack onto the paper doll in the inventory screen will drop the item stack in the world
• Crafting an item with a full inventory will now notify that the item was dropped in the world
• Storage and Flag marker icons have been revised, regrouped, and their colors have shifted (Requires a one-time tour of the yard to set everything back / new trail markers will be blank by default)
• Slight revisions to a few SCA.B flavor schemes
• Canteen slurps available are displayed in the equipped item HUD element
• Additional icon art
• Added a highlight effect that appears on interactable objects when the player looks at them. This feature is controlled by the "Highlight Objects" Accessibility setting

World changes / tuning

• Revised clover cave layout and lighting, and moved entrance slightly
• Revised flooded area layout in southeast corner of yard
• Updated house electrical socket with final, non-blockout art
• Items left in the world (not in a container, etc.) for 48-72 in-game hours will eventually despawn once out of range of all players. Items loaded from a saved game from version 0.1.x, will have all item timers start at zero to give players a chance to react to this change
• Players and critters now create ripples in the water while moving
• Kids are starting to throw Archer Cookies over the fence, along with their Billy Hogs and Apples
• Added a few footprints throughout the yard

Building changes / tuning

• Base buildings will now be more reliably anchored when built on top of objects such as the Baseball
• Palisades will no longer immediately collapse when an attached building is removed
• Water Containers can collect falling droplets
• The player can now drink from Water Containers while holding weapons
• Stairs may now be embedded in the ground like scaffolds and ramps
• Walls that are sandwiched above by two floors will have their crenellations suppressed
• The camera will slide to the correct position when interacting with a Weapon Wall Mount
• Tweaked the placed position of the Weapon Wall Mount to be more centered

Performance changes / tuning

• Better Windowed-Fullscreen performance in Windows versions of the game
• Better UI/Inventory GPU performance
• Significant load game time improvement for games with large bases
• Better GPU performance during nighttime

Other changes / tuning

• The Voice Chat Activation setting is now properly reapplied when entering a game
• SCA.B flavor scheme collectibles now have a pulsing light and are slightly bigger to make them more noticeable
• Hedge Berries now float in water
• Prevented very large numbers of ants from being assigned the same task, such as killing a weevil
• Reduced the camera near clip plane fixing the camera clipping into the player when using high a high field of view
• Polished up spear movement and aiming animations for 1st person
• You should now see grass extend to the furthest reaches of the yard
• Ants now find and store lost Ice Caps
• Soldier ants can now properly drop ant heads as loot
• Tall woody weeds are now displayed as "Husky Weed." Dandelions and husky weed both still supply weed stems. Husky weed now respawns
• Ants will not be happy if you take their eggs
• The Resource Analyzer now animates when analyzing
• A couple of new smoothies can be whipped up at the smoothie station

Top community issues

• Incapacitated players are now saved instead of ignored when a save game is made or they exit the game. With this, players that reload an incapacitated character will have their backpack spawned where they died instead of them just spawning without their inventory in the world. Not retroactive
• Items and insects will spawn under the world less. Cleaning up items / insects that have fallen through the level upon load. (This should help with insect population / egg spawning)
• Insects should no longer spawn inside of the large Pond rocks. Any insect currently in the rocks upon load should be snapped out. (This should help with insect population / egg spawning)
• Grass planks will no longer fall through the ground
• Fixed Hedge Berries appearing in incorrect positions for clients, making them very difficult to harvest
• Fixed torch sound effects
• Insects should no longer "walk through walls" when not looking at them or when they are at your far away base
• Fixed giant arrows sometimes spawning when shot into a large insect

Major issues

• Multiplayer clients will no longer crash when despawning droplets containing items

Game issues

• Optimized building collapsing so the game will no longer lock up when collapsing huge structures
• The game will no longer crash when collapsing very long structures
• Fixed issues where walls could get built in-between a wall snap spot messing up your wall grid
• Gnats will now need a little more delta-V than a Bounce Web can provide if they want to go to space
• Fixed a problem where insects would not become appropriately hungry and sleepy after the players slept

Items / equipment / resources issues

• Standalone buildings that are attached to walls and floors will collapse as well if the floor or wall they are on collapses
• Large Rake Rock now has proper collision
• Soda pop can now be dumped from a canteen
• Fixed water droplets near sprinkler and oak tree that respawned immediately when you approached
• Fixed gas arrows not being one-time use
• Rotten Bee Armor can no longer be repaired for free
• Workbench light will no longer be disabled after loading a save

World issues

• Fixed wall crenellations appearing inconsistently on clients and the host
• Fixed wall crenellations appearing incorrectly after loading a saved game
• Fixed fingers moving on weapon hand during one handed movement animations
• Restructured 3rd person body aiming for unarmed punching
• Unfinished buildings no longer block the third person camera
• Swapping armor after having collected Raw Science no longer displays the material of the previously equipped armor
• Fixed issue with seeing fogless voids in the world after having emerged from a large body of water
• Puddle drinking animation and camera improved to address clipping issues

UI issues

• Fixed SCA.B Bugged scheme not appearing in list correctly
• The resting UI updates properly upon bedtime
• SCA.B won't flash thirst and hunger danger if levels are good
• Defrag button in Inventory can now be navigated using the Gamepad
• Less explosive results when using the Drop Stack action
• Fixed Clover Hood and Poncho description being the same as the Leggings

Windows 10 Store issues

• Fixed issues with 4k fullscreen resolution failing to work properly
• Fixed issues with Alt-Tab crashing the game

Xbox One issues

• Reduced screen edge artifacts / flashing

Patch update 0.1.2 (August 12, 2020)

Official changelog from Obsidian Entertainment. Original report from Windows Central.

Major issues

• Better handling of dismissing profile selection at the Main Menu on Xbox One and Windows 10 Store versions which will help prevent saved games from going missing for players on the Xbox console and Windows 10 store
• Fixed an issue where if you had the "Kill Mosquito" quest before the patch 0.1.1 release where it wasn't removed properly and would crash if you killed a creature while that quest was active
• Fixed crash with approaching a base with traps that have an insect being damaged by one when the player arrives
• Resolved an issue that would cause random crashes with juice drop combining when approaching them

Game issues

• We cleared out excess larva from games that still had large numbers of larva in their game from the infinite larva respawn issue before patch 0.1.1
• Fixed the "Drop All" function not properly splitting items

Items / equipment / resources issues

• Resolved an issue with Mushroom Gardens, Dew Collectors, Acorns, and other resources not respawning after their initial spawns
• Reverting the change, for now, to lock containers to one player at a time since it was causing containers to stay permanently locked occasionally
• Fixed an issue with Slime Mold Sconces not turning back on after loading back into a game

UI issues

• Removed "Customize Marker" from the Loot Backpack UI that was causing crashes if used (was not supposed to be available on that screen)

Patch update 0.1.1 (August 6, 2020)

Official changelog from Obsidian Entertainment. Original report from Windows Central.

Major issues

• Made changes to make finding, joining, and hosting games with friends more reliable
• We adjusted the handling of joining game failure
• Added a way to allow players to resolve the issue of the game logging the player into the wrong Xbox Live account on PC
• Fixed issues with Windows 7 and Windows 8 users crashing when attempting to login. Those users should be able to load into the game after updating
• Fixed crash when saving or loading, and the "Autosave Count" number in the options is set to 0
• We have implemented a fix for players who were getting stuck on the welcome popup screen and unable to move past it
• Fixed characters not being saved occasionally in save games. Unfortunately, we are not able to bring back lost items, but hopefully, this fix will prevent this from occurring in the future

Game issues

• Players will no longer be permanently stuck in spider webs after destroying them
• Fixed BURG.L disappearing in some games if you attacked him and saved and loaded. BURG.L will appear in the games he disappeared from, allowing players to interact with him again
• Restoring save games that have lost progression state (ex. Oak Tree Lab doors no longer opening for players, Mysterious Machine not allowing players to hit buttons to finish the quest, time being frozen, etc.) After updating the game, players should be able to load into their game and continue to progress. Should this issue happen again, logging out of the save and then loading back in should resolve the issue and allow you to continue playing
• Fixed issue with endless larva spawning over time. Larva were also spawning each time a spike trap was built. Players who experienced this issue are asked to start a new game to avoid the problems that may arise from the increased larva spawn rates
• Fixed issue where all item durability in your inventory incorrectly shows "full" when loading back into a game as a client
• We implemented a fix for an issue where games that were saved before Raw Science started spawning prevented Raw Science from appearing later. It also included an update for a problem with Raw Science spawning after analyzing and having additional players collecting it on join. Due to this, players may notice that the starting Raw Science they previously collected has respawned
• Fixed crashes when loading a saved game dealing with ant colonies
• Removed "Kill Mosquito" BURG.L quest. Not retroactive: Players will need to speak with BURG.L to abandon this quest. Then, during the next in-game day, you will be able to talk to BURG.L again to accept a new quest
• Found the cause behind the issue where attempting to cook/dry an item slot with no item in it would crash the game
• Found a fix for the occasional crash caused by dew drops that have items stuck in them. It also included a fix for dewdrops exploding and causing a significant FPS drops on clients
• Fixed issue where clients dragging items from one slot in a storage basket to another would not reflect on the host causing item desync
• Disabled storage baskets and smoothie stations from being able to be interacted with by multiple players at the same time until other desync issues we are working on are resolved
• Block Tutorial now only plays once
• Tuned Wolf Spider hearing and investigation AI to creep on the player less frequently

Interface issues

• UI changes made to the SCA.B OS screen
• Fixed trail markers not showing up on the map, and an additional fix added to prevent the game crashing if you tried to navigate them in the legend
• Reduced screen edge shimmer on Xbox One and Xbox One S under load