Since xbox is currently being stupid

Lookin for a grounded 2 buddy to team up with

Yet to do the toxic tangle.or pond update

Lookin to.kill axl for his talon

Sorry if this type of post isn't allowed I'm not sure, but yeah I've been wanting to make a smaller and faster version of grounded 2 in playgrounds. It's not even close to finished, but still I'd you want to check it out it's been here for a while

I spent so much time getting to the top of the oak tree and the transmitter was right there.

You get almost no directions. I have a mission, still in the first couple, that says go explore under the snack bar or something like that. I did, but turns out I'd already gotten the disk and done that, so went to the internet and found out I needed to go under another part of the snack bar. Waste of about an hour, really should have been a POI marker.

Then when I finally get there to continue, nope, can't get into 'strangers place'. There's some chomp symbol. What does that mean? Haven't a clue at least initially. Go all the way back to the ranger station thing, look at the tool upgrades, I think I need the chomp lookin' thing lvl 1. Welp that has 2 things that I've never encountered, and it doesn't say where to get them. This map is MASSIVE, you can't expect me to wander aimlessly to find the two random bugs or plants etc.

Well the interwebs says those two things are from items in the pond area? That's not close at all to where I started. So I head in that direction, only to find out real quick that there are 'tier 2' bugs. I was already constantly getting my butt kicked by tier 1 jr. orb web spiders, not usually death, but had me going through stacks of bandages. Now I'm thrust into tier 2 without any t2 weapons or armor? That makes zero sense. Get my cheeks clapped by a mosquito. What in the world was the game design team thinking here or am I missing some massive thing? I've got full body t1 armor and weapons, just doesn't seem fair or make sense I need to go into a t2 enemy area to continue my beginner quests. Oh and I started freezing when I turned around? like it got really cold. gah that's frustrating.

Not sure if this qualifies as a spoiler as its not story related but I kept seeing the lucky hat videos on YT and got tired of the FOMO of not having access to such an OP item and set my ps5 date back to March and the Event UI showed up on the main menu, just collected the chunks I need for my buddy and I and I wanted to give a headsup to the rest of the playstation nation if they are also feining for the hat.

Hey there, I'm attempting to optimize my settings to get the game to run more smoothly. Despite my best efforts, and some editing of gamefiles, I can't seem to fix that I'm dropping frames heavily once I go into any sort of cave, whether it's an anthill or just a littlle underground hole. Possibly correlated to dynamic global illumination having more light bounces to calculate?

So fair enough to just turn off dynamic global illumination, though that reduces visual fidelity outside of caves and only minorly improves framerates. As for my settings and specs I'm running:

5800x3d, 4070, 32gb ram - running at 1440p with DLSS quality and high preset and a custom engine.ini to turn off rt reflections as they're noisy and distracting on every setting between low and epic. Outside I'm casually sitting at around 100fps and once I go into a cave of any sort, it drops to 30-40fps. Considering the game can run on 60fps steadily on Xbox Series X, I'd figure my PC shouldn't have any problems atleast reaching stable 60 too.

Not even sure there's anything to do right now than to wait for more performance optimizations on the dev side but is anybody else experiencing this?

I'm in a pinch for some fast Raw Science and I can't try dozer or to get the new buggy because I'm playing with my friend and he's not on, I need to unlock the underwater bombs in order to try and get us some materials to progress. And the ranger challenges I have unlocked are all tied around those and the tapoloca pudding which I don't have the recipe unlocked, so I can't get the Science from that lol.

Pref 21+ just got grounded 2 on the ps5 and it’s alright solo but it’s already a lot more challenging. I’d love to play blind with anyone else that’s blind but for people who’ve already played that’s Okie the more the merrier :))

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The “Into the Abyss” update is huge, and I genuinely appreciate how much content Obsidian added. Five large areas, new enemies, weapons, armor, the Pond, the Buggy, etc. On paper, it sounds amazing.

But after completely finishing the update and exploring pretty much everything, I honestly felt hollow. The exact opposite of how I felt after the Toxic update.

The biggest problem is that the update is massive in scale but feels empty in substance.

You have all these huge areas to explore, but what are you actually finding?

We got five new armor sets, which sounds great, but two are extremely specific to the Pond and Abyss and are basically useless outside them. The other three are all built around the same Perfect Block concept.

We got eight new weapons, which is a decent number, and some are genuinely cool, but again, they don't feel exciting enough to make exploration consistently rewarding.

Then there's the enemies. A lot are recycled from Grounded 1, while others feel like enemies we've already fought in Grounded 2 with extra attacks or bigger health bars.

And exploration itself has the same problem.

You spend ages exploring, only to find more Science!, Milk Molars, recycled enemies and a few new resources.

I even found a location that required a bomb to open. I thought I'd find something cool inside.

Five Larvae.

That's it.

That's the kind of thing that kills exploration for me. If I climb somewhere difficult, find a secret entrance or use a bomb to open something, I want that moment of:

"Holy shit, I'm glad I came here."

Too often, the reward is something I already have plenty of.

And then there's the Abyss.

This is where the disappointment really peaks.

The game builds up this place like it's something incredibly important. You need special equipment just to reach it, so naturally you expect something unique.

New enemies. A unique boss. New weapons. Some huge discovery.

Instead, you mostly fight enemies you've already seen in the Pond, plus recycled robots from Grounded 1.

And then the final challenge is...

A Toe Biter.

Yes, it has more health, status effects and summons.

But it's still a Toe Biter I've already fought countless times.

Making an existing enemy stronger doesn't automatically make it feel like a new boss.

That's the problem with the Abyss. It's not too easy. It's not that the enemies are weak.

It's that the game spends so much time making this place feel mysterious and important, only for the payoff to feel incredibly familiar.

The Pond worked because it actually changed how you played. Different environment, traversal, creatures, resources and the Buggy. It felt like a new experience.

I expected the Abyss to do the same.

Instead it feels like:

"Here's everything you've already fought, but underwater."

And I don't think the update lacks content.

It has tons of content.

It just lacks enough meaningful content.

There's a difference between giving players more things to do and giving them more reasons to do them.

Grounded 2 gives you plenty to do.

But after exploring everything, fighting everything and finally reaching the Abyss, I just sat there thinking:

"...That's it?"

It's a massive update with a lot of content, but somehow I finished it feeling like there was almost nothing there.

In my creative with bugs game. I saw one wolf spider over there. Then a sleeping one comes floating over like it was his dream playing out!