After I reached the edge of the upper yard last time, I spent so many hours reaching the Grounded ending. Looking over all the areas of the yard I traveled to, it truly was an amazing journey and I know there’s still things I have not seen.
Once I rolled credits on the bad ending and then the good ending, I knew it was time to move onto a new game. Maybe someday I’ll come back for the new game plus content or to help my son in coop.
Venturing to the Upper Yard
After the BlackOx Beetle scared me off last time, I prepped better to take one on. I knew I needed parts from it to progress the story, so I setup a nice hunting spot up high. After setting up my gear and mutations for salt arrows to exploit its weakness, I took one out.
To my surprise, it took a few more before I gathered enough parts to build the tier 3 hammer. My character was not exactly built for direct confrontation, so I was satisfied the game allowed me to use smarts to get around his weaknesses.
As I ventured deeper into the upper yard, I ran into Termites, Ladybirds and Scarabs. The creature parts for crafting new items seems to never end. With the tier 3 hammer in hand though, it was time to find Dr Tulley’s Sca.b in his favorite spot ouside the shed.
The Grounded Shed
I avoided Ladybird Larva and Orb Weaver Spiders to reach the mountain bike. That was my ticket to get up to the shed. From there, I avoided Black Ants, then killed some Dust Mites for some new creature parts for crafting.
It’s also pretty wacky to hammer rust off the chair, bust up some sour candy (used for flavor weapons) and gathers toe nail clippings. The crafting resources in the game are often comical like that. In my exploration, I also found a flower pot that mentioned summoning a Praying Mantis boss. I said nope to all that.
Instead of dealing with that optional boss fight, I busted open Dr. Tulley’s SCA.B and continued on with the story. My next stop was the Undershed, where it just screamed scary things in the dark.
Grounded Ending up in the Undershed
My intuition for what the Under Shed had in store for me was right. Scary stuff in the dark ahead. Once I heard all the scary crawling sounds, I wasted no time jumping on top of a pipe to stay above it all. My torch did not let off much light, but I could see all silhouettes of the scary bugs from up top.
There were Wolf Spiders, BlackOx Beetles, Termites and Dust Mites. No way I was going anywhere near the ground. I did plenty of parkour to stay on the electric conduits and PVC pipes above it all. Eventually, I did fall and came face to face with Black Widow spiderlings.
I killed them, but they lit me up with powerful poison. The big web lined tunnel ahead was an obvious invitation to a big Black Widow. No way I was ready for that. After a lot of trial and error, I found a way to parkour back up to pipes.
I made my exit and started planning my gear for the next trip.
Prepping for the Scary Things in the Dark
My first piece of gear I prepped was a Firefly Head Lamp. The more intense light would help me parkour farther on pipes. It also kept both hands free to hold a shield and a weapon at the same time.
Next, I gathered supplies to craft a sour flavored spear to take advantage of the Black Widow weakness. Thankfully for me, the head lamp was all I really needed. I saved plenty on my next run to ensure I couldn’t truly fail at my parkour on the pipes. Falling was just an easy load away from fixing.
I was able to stay above it all and glide down above the Black Widow tunnels. My jump feats allowed me to get to the Undershed lab entrance without battling any big bugs. I did save before an experimental battle with the Black Widow, but it wrecked me. That’s a battle I was not ready for, so onto the lab.
Although I avoided the big bugs outside of the lab, inside the lab I battled The Mant. It was a very interesting boss fight with a science experiment gone wrong. I was fortunate enough to already have a fresh flavored axe to exploit it’s weakness.
After defeating it, I finally met the infamous Dr. Tulley who invented the shrinking machine and he was not what I expected. He reminded me of Krang from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. His raisining syndrome (side effect of shrinking) was a gruesome sight.
When he mentioned our next step was the JavaMatic, I knew I was finally nearing the end.
JavaMatic Nearing the Grounded Ending
The JavaMatic machine to brew the embiggening cocktail was the last big “official” battle before I could roll credits. It turned out to be a ton of effort. Turning on the machine attracts big bugs that attack 3 weak points that demand protection.
I turned the machine on to see what I was in for to plan and it was over quick. It was obvious I could not simply battle my way through it. I started building defensive Mushroom Brick walls around the weak points. At that point, I had sunk so many hours into Grounded, I started to get a bit impatient.
When I built a single layer of mushroom bricks around the weak point, I tried again. That second time I lasted longer, but barely hit 25 percent on the overall progress meter. I pretty much knew what I needed to do, but I also knew it would take hours to prep.
I tried another time with 2 layers of mushroom bricks and went even farther. That time it was Mosquitos and Fireflies that made me realize I need a strong roof also. After a few more failed attempts like that, I finally dug in to do what I knew would work, eventually.
Let the Real Prep Work Begin
Taking some resources from my main base, I built a Grinder and Oven for a makeshift Mushroom Brick factory. The lucky thing for me was there was plenty of mushrooms near the JavaMatic. It took a few in game days to produce the amount of bricks to put me over the top.
I finally settled on 3 layers around each weak point, wrapping around. Using quarter size pieces, I built blockers on top of the wires leading to the weak points. I constructed Burr Floor on top of the weak points, then Crow Feather Roof pieces on top of that.
With my brick factory in full production mode, I also built 3 layers of walls to block of the 4 main lanes the bugs travel through. Finally, to make quick work of the big and small bugs, I built 2 Acorn Turrets nearby with 200 rounds of stone ammo.
After all that trial and error, my extra hours of preparation finally paid off. It felt like quite the accomplishment to survive the JavaMatic ordeal (probably a dozen failed attempts). Next step was to roll credits.
The Grounded Bad Ending
I sort of rolled credits on the “bad” Grounded ending by accident. Getting back to the Mysterious Machine, I talked with Wendell to see what I could do to help cure his raisining syndrome. He had mentioned investigating Ominent’s base in the yard, but no quest marker opened up.
My chat did not unlock any new objectives, even though I knew I had yet to travel to Moldorc Castle. I thought maybe when I tried to turn on the machine, it would break again, opening up more missions. That was not the case as the ending cinematic rolled and the credits rolled.
Dr. Tulley’s condition did not improve and he did not get credit for his invention. Director Schmector and his Ominent company got away with shrinking children and attempting to kill them. There was an investigation, but the great invention of the shrinking machine made it easy to sweep under the rug.
There was no doubt this was the “bad” Grounded ending and I’d have some hours ahead of me to attempt the better ending.
Gathering the Last Auxiliary Chips
Learning from all my trial and error with the JavaMatic, I decided to truly prep before I even attempt the final boss fight. To start, I decided to gather the last Auxiliary Burg.L chips. Over the course of my Grounded adventure, I tried to gather as many as I could. That only left two more for me to gather.
The first of the last two was located in the Termite tunnels. I planned to just rush through to find the chip, but accidentally ran into the Termite King. My build at the time did enough damage that I stuck with that fight and finished him off. It was in that general area that I found that chip and dipped out of there.
My final Auxiliary chip took a bit more preparation. It was located in the Brawny Boy box near the JavaMatic, but there was no way to enter. I had to look up online that I first had to destroy the 2 wasps nests near the box.
Once I slept that night, the wasps busted a hole under the box in a frenzy, before they spread to different parts of the yard. When I was inside, I prepped my Firefly helmet and soon ran into a Black Widow nest. They are nasty and I was only able to defeat another one in the yard with a turret, earlier.
I spend my time learning to parkour up and over that nest to finally nab that last chip without a fight. Once I turned in both chips into BURG.L, I unlocked a wizards Hat and some staves (basically magic staffs). The Spicy Staff would be very important for me in the final fight.
Grounded Good Ending
Knowing I’d eventually end up at the Moldorc Castle, I had built a Zip Line to the edge of that pond. It was definitely helpful to travel back and forth from there to my base. I tried a few times to parkour my way into the castle, but ended up having to build a clay ramp to start me off on my climb.
There were so many Mosquitos in the area that I killed with my fresh flavored axe. I made the mistake of going back to my base to sleep after killing a ton and the Mosquitos initiated a revenge attack on my base the next day. I never upgraded my walls or fences to Mushroom Brick, so they did a ton of damage. They almost destroyed my Zip Line tower which would have really slowed me down.
After I fixed everything, I was able to get inside of Moldorc Castle to face Director Schmector. Before that face off though, I made damn sure to save. The first battle was meant more for recon. It helped me identify his robot’s weakness and the best equipment and mutations for me to use.
I already upgraded my sour flavored spear up to that point and could take advantage of his weakness. That was not enough. His attacks were easy enough to defend against until he started summoning Orb Weaver Spiders. I’d have to take them out first and quickly.
Whenever I took too long before I started attacking him again, he’d summon more. During quite a few attempts, they swarmed me, killed me and ramped up my frustration. Although I did have a spicy flavored spear to exploit their weakness, it wasn’t fast enough.
Better Preparing to End Director Schmector
A few times I was able to get Schmector down to just a few more hits, but he just kept summoning spiders. What really irked me is I saw videos where he stopped doing that to other people once his health was far enough down.
I ended up spending an hour gathering resources for and building a Spicy Staff. The wider radius of damage from that helped me crowd control the spiders. With that in hand, it only took me two more tries to finally defeat Schmector.
It was such a relief to finally roll credits on the good ending. Dr. Wendell Tully was back to normal, received credit for his invention and Schmector was arrested for his crimes. The Grounded ending game report card reminded me there were things I missed, but it felt like the perfect stopping point to move onto a new game.
There are still secrets I did not discover, resources I failed to analyze, optional bosses left to fight and the whole Remixer new game plus questline. Maybe one day I’ll return to check some of those off the list, but for now, I’m happy with ending my Grounded adventures.
Now the adventure to decide what game to play next begins.