Over the past few weeks, I’ve lost a portion of my soul to Grounded. The game has absolutely consumed my free time. And you know what? There’s a lot of things I wish I’d learned sooner. Today I plan to share said knowledge with you in hopes that any newer Grounded players out there can avoid some of the same hardship I endured across my playtime.

1. You Can Move Storage Buildings With Their Contents

There are a variety of different storage units in Grounded that make it easy to grow your horde of resources. Players can build pallets for grass planks, and weed stems, alongside chests to store a variety of different items. What’s wild is that you’re not barred from moving these storage facilities while they’re in use.

Because of this, it’s possible for players to load up a chest with several items before running clear across the map with it. In the same way, you can also fill a grass plank pallet with 24 planks before moving it to an area you’re actively doing base construction in. This is a far more efficient way to transport large volumes of building materials, as the alternative is carrying a meager 5 planks. Do yourself a favour, and start carrying mass amounts of materials with a pallet. You’ll thank your past self when you finish construction having taken 80% fewer trips to collect resources.

2. Armor Has Set Bonuses

This one seems a bit obvious in hindsight, but for the longest time my SO and I weren’t utilizing the full potential of armor. Mixed sets provide some great utility, but wearing a full 3 piece armor set provides an additional passive skill to players. In many cases these skills are worth sacrificing the utility of mixed sets. As an example, a full set of spider armor increases your stamina regeneration rate allowing players to run more often, and fight more aggressively.

One set bonus that is especially noteworthy comes from the red ant armor. This convinces all red ants that you are also a red ant, meaning they won’t attack you when you explore their colonies. This is very useful in the early game as the various red ant colonies scattered across the lower yard contain a multitude of rare resources. This provides a huge leg up in the early game, and is far easier to the alternative of cleaving through the horde of infinitely spawning ants.

3. You Can Make Leather on Jerky Racks

This is another one that felt obvious in hindsight, but I can’t stress enough how important it is to use the jerky rack to make leather. Normally it takes 3 berry pieces to make a single piece of berry leather. With many of the mid-tier armor sets requiring leather as a crafting and repair material, players will need to collect a lot of berry pieces. Unfortunately, this exotic material can only be found in 2 places on the map, making it a pain to collect. However, if you put a berry piece on a jerky rack, then it will eventually dry out and become leather. This is huge, as you can convert your berry pieces into leather at a 1 to 1 ratio, as opposed to the normal 3 to 1 rate. The only difference is it takes a little bit of time to finish the drying process, as opposed to being instant.

This tip becomes even more important in the late game when you move on from berry leather to pupa leather. This item requires an enormous 5 pupa shells to make a single piece of leather. That’s ridiculous. Just throw them up on the racks, let em dry, and collect all that glorious leather. Work smarter – not harder.

4. Build Ziplines Between Areas you Commonly Visit

I couldn’t tell you how much time I’ve wasted running across the world in Grounded. That is why I built a zipline network to act as a supplemental fast travel system. Several of the game’s key resources are only accessible from a single specific section of the map. Having a quick way to get to these areas was a huge time saver, even if it took me a while to finish constructing my zipline network. Trust me – ziplines will save you time in the long run.

When it comes to actually constructing ziplines, there’s a few things you need to keep in mind. If your character collides with anything while airborne, they will fall. As a result, it’s important to build towers that are taller than the grass line. You may also find it useful to have an intermediary tower in a central location. This can help with keeping sightlines clear of obstacles. For example, I built a hub tower in the lower yard between my main base, the lake, and the hedge. From there I built an additional 3 towers at each of the locations I wanted to travel to, and finally I hooked them all up with ziplines that stood well above the grass line.

Having a well connected travel system will be a great help in the long run. The amount of time I’ve saved since constructing my own has been more than worth it.

5. Make Sure to Assign Your Mutation Points

This tip feels the most obvious of the lot, but I’d entirely missed mutations for the first several hours of my playthrough. These are passive skills that you can equip to your character to improve a variety of attributes. Each is tied to a quest of sorts, that will increase the effect of the boost provided the more often players complete the action associated with the skill. As an example, killing several foes with an axe will award you a mutation that increase the damage you deal with axes. Similarly, there’s another skill that increases your ability to swim, which is awarded after spending a large amount of time underwater.

The first mutations unlock fairly quickly, and provide large enough bonuses that players will want to start leveraging them immediately. Up to 2 mutations can be equipped by default, but you’re able to increase this to 5 as the game progresses. You’re also not locked into your choices, and can swap your mutations around at any time. Equip what works best for any given situation! Trust me – you won’t want to sleep on these highly impactful abilities like I did for the first several hours of my playthrough.

There you have it – 5 things I wish I’d known sooner in Grounded. My hope is that other players reading this article will find some of the information I’ve shared helpful. Surely I’m not the only player who stumbled around not knowing about mutations, or armor set bonuses. Best of luck out there!