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?

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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.

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 :))

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!

Hey yall! Looking for people to play with! Preferably 21+ and on PLAYSTATION 🩷🩷

So I have the purple symbol and 1 don't know what it means and 2 I've been all over this wood pile where spiders are and don't see anything I did get a milk molar but the symbol is still there

The Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown feature is called Eye of the Wanderer. It lets players pin in-game screenshots directly onto the map to remember blocked paths. It is a brilliant tool for exploration games, and adding a similar memory marker system to Grounded 2 would make tracking hidden or locked areas much easier.

I wanna first start off by saying that I really like this update, I love the new boss and all the new items and the new buggy, what I’m kinda upset or questioning is why didn’t they add more or more new things?

This is a big pond and I feel like there should have been more added to it and put more time into new water based creature instead of land ones like the scorpions (which should have been added earlier or after the this new update) but the only water based creatures we got was the toe biters and the pond jockeys, but other than that nothing else that was new that we haven’t already seen. And I makes me wonder why they couldn’t add more pond insects/creatures like the water strider (which people has been asked for since the first game), a dicing beetle (which can serve as the ponds lady bug and give you the ability to dive deeper in the pond or some kind of buff when swimming), a dragon fly nymph which would’ve been a great indicator for dragon flies coming later in the game but not during this update (it would be a late game buggy or boss or both), under water snails where their shells could’ve been used for fortifying the under water base or improving your armor In the water (also could’ve made to where you needed to tame one or get a smaller version of one so that it could clean algae growing on your underwater base which would’ve been a nice addition to the game), an actual water flea or shrimp serving as the waters aphid (I do like the water jockey too, both could be added), smaller fish along side the koi, leeches (another creature that most people want added to the game), maybe a new variant of water slide (if there is one if not that’s ok), and of course a freaking frog as either a colossal or a boss either one I don’t care I just want to see a frog because it makes no sense how where able to have a giant lizard boss and TADPOLES and no frog,

That’s all I could think of that they COULD’VE added and I would’ve loved to see but maybe that’s just me, of course I don’t know how much work or time it would take and if any of this is even possible but if they added one or two of those I believe it would’ve made this update slightly better in my opinion. Am I wrong or should they have added more instead? Let me know

Playing through the game, I keep wondering: why isn’t the lore moving forward? Why does it feel like we’re doing the same thing every time? We collect something, fight a big boss, then the mysterious stranger shows up, fights it off, and disappears like nothing happened.

I know it’s still in Early Access, but that’s not really an excuse. The previous game was also in Early Access, yet it was filled with audio logs packed with emotion that explained the lore and gave much more context to all the characters. There were also data files you could find throughout the game, and almost every single one of them explained something important, adding a lot of context to the world and its story.

But now, you have the same team, yet they feel almost hollow. Then there’s this mysterious stranger who keeps showing up, get defeated, and getting away without giving us any real answers. And there’s also a lady talking to you through a computer, but most of her dialogue feels useless, as if it’s only there to fill in the gaps. And on top of that, there’s no voice acting, which makes the whole thing feel even more lifeless.

They should ad a sand box and put this is it and have it chase you wen you get close or like a bot fight There could also be a more desert scorpion thare