Grounded Has Launched for PlayStation and Switch with a Meaty New Update

Microsoft’s rollout of first-party titles on non-Xbox consoles is continuing. Hi-Fi Rush and Pentiment have been made available on rival platforms in recent weeks, and the next to join that list is Grounded. Obsidian Entertainment’s survival game has now launched for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, and PlayStation 4, bringing with it support for full cross-platform multiplayer, as well as a host of new content and features.

The latter comes in the form of Grounded: Fully Yoked Edition, which brings update 1.4 to the title. Among its many notable additions are intimidating new foes (or possible allies) in the form of Royal Ant Queens, a New Game Plus mode that will take you to “alternate dimensions with remixed challenges”, new buildings, pets, and equipment, new quality-of-life features, and much more. Obsidian says this is the final major content update for Grounded, and it’s certainly looking like the developer is closing things out with a bang, given how meaty this new update is.

You can check out the full patch notes below, or watch a deep dive video for the update, along with Grounded: Fully Yoked Edition’s launch trailer.

The next Microsoft game getting a multiplatform release is Sea of Thieves, which launches for PS5 later this month.

PATCH NOTES:

ADDITIONAL NEW FEATURES

“BUGS FIGHT EACH OTHER” CUSTOM GAME OPTION

• By default, natural enemies will fight each other if they are near each other, and neutral creatures will fight each other if struck accidentally. This can now be turned off (useful in Playgrounds when designing encounter rooms for the player).

ADDITIONAL PLAYGROUND FEATURES

LINK COLORS

• Links now have 5 color options for distinguishing them while editing.

QUALITY OF LIFE FEATURES

MULTIPLAYER LOAD GAME

• You can now load a save while in the middle of a multiplayer session. All connected clients will load into the new world once the load is complete.

RECOVER PETS

• A new Game Repair button has been added to recover any pets that are not currently following you.
• Pets allocated to a pet house will also teleport to their house, in case they are outside of the terrain.

OBJECT CAPACITY

• An object capacity meter can be found on the pause menu that tells you how many objects, either in a Playground or a standard game, you have in your level. This is useful to know if you are sharing worlds with lower end machines to make sure the game can be played reliably on all hardware.
• If you have no intention of having your yard be as crossplay compatible as possible, this capacity limit can be changed in the Game Settings menu to match your platform’s suggested limit or have no limit at all.

PLAYGROUND LINK COPY/PASTE

• There are now buttons available to copy and paste the configuration of a Link in a Playground.

PLAYGROUND BROWSER FILTERING

• Community Playgrounds can be filtered by keywords, player count and genre while browsing.

REPORTING PLAYGROUNDS

• Community Playgrounds can be reported by players if they violate rules.

NEW CONTENT

NEW BUILDINGS

• 12 Ant Queen-related buildings
  • Chaise Lounges
  • Chandeliers
  • Stuffed Queens
  • Head Mount
• Yoking Station
• New Floor Rugs
• Termite King Pipe Organ
• REDACTED

NEW PET

• 3 new Baby Ant Pets to befriend.

NEW EQUIPMENT

• Over 20 new items and equipment.
• Over 20 new trinkets.

A lot of these will be found only in New Game+

NEW MUTATIONS

• Antbassador – Become one with the ants of the yard.

NEW SIGNS

• A new sign-set that can only be purchased in New Game+

4 NEW ACHIEVEMENTS

• 2 for the base game
• 2 for New Game+

FULL JAPANESE VOICE OVERS

• The game now has full Japanese voice over, including voices for the teens, BURG.L, cutscenes, and audio logs. Select Japanese Voice Over from the Game Options menu to enable this feature.

PLAYGROUNDS NEW CONTENT

There are a number of new props that are now available to be placed in Playgrounds. This includes the Jack o Lantern, Ice Caps Box, Big TazT, Big Dice, Wendell Chair, Big SCA.B Mesh, Stump Bark and Pulp, Rash, Yoked Girth and Yogi Swole, Quarter, Garden Light, Milk Molar Bottle and Lid, Gnome, Baseball Bat, Trash Bag, Pink Slip, Anarchis, Lab Dome, Pink Flower Petals, Cattails, Honeycomb, Lilypad, Shovel, Cacti, Charcoal Bag, Moldorc’s Castle, the Bird Bath, and more.

OTHER CHANGES / TUNING

COMBAT

• Attack speed slow effects no longer stack.

ANIMATION

• Stagger animations for all ants and stinkbugs now physically displace them.

ARMOR AND WEAPONS

• Increasing scythe attack speed by 15%.
• Lowering attack speed bonus granted by battle axe combo finishers by 5%.
• The Mighty upgrade path now applies an additional status effect to weapons, much like the Sleek upgrade path for armor.

ITEMS

• Trinket items that previously appeared as brown bags now have a new shared trinket model.
• Gold cards are not required for 100% on the Report Card.

UI

• Quest objectives on the map show the quest name now when hovered over.
• Trailer Marker names are shown on the map when hovering over a Trail Marker icon if a name is set.
• Improved image quality of item icons on lower end hardware.

AUDIO

• New audio track added for New Game+

PLAYGROUNDS

• Ziplines created in Playground edit mode cannot be recycled or renamed in Play mode.

OPTIMIZATION

• Significantly reduced the CPU load of the game.
• Significantly reduced the CPU load during defense events.
• Reduced memory usage across the game.
• Saving the game is now faster.

BUG FIXES

MAJOR FIXES

• Audio logs that were collected but not showing up in the Data tab will properly show up now.
  • This was affecting some people from getting 100%.
• Animations and audio work correctly for clients when someone else uses a dandelion tuft.
• Some buildings placed in very specific locations will no longer be unsupported upon loading the save.
• Fixed a problem where certain stacks of ladders could cause a saved game to never finish loading.
• Non-grid buildings attached to grid buildings will now appear and disappear correctly on clients.
• Bugs will interact with the world around them more often (Lady Bugs chasing Aphids, Aphids dropping Honeydew, etc.)

OTHER FIXES

• You can steal from aphids while wearing sleek aphid slippers.
• “Read To Me” will now read building customization sliders correctly.
• Buildings cannot be placed inside stem pallets.
• Digging up Koi fish bones and scales as a client no longer has them float up quickly and teleport back.
• Weapon upgrade icons on the HotPouch no longer disappear after hitting something.
• Black Ants properly navigate from outside the Trash area back to their ant hill.

PLAYGROUNDS FIXES

• The building distance axis will now be properly conveyed to clients in Playground Design Mode.
• Preplaced grid buildings placed in the air can no longer be induced to collapse in Play Mode, unless Building Damage is enabled.
• Non-building actors placed on slopes will no longer change rotation slightly when relocated.
• Placed objects with simulated physics now correctly simulate physics in play mode and not in edit mode.
• If an object is rescaled while being relocated, clients will now see the correct scale.
• Pre-existing scene objects will no longer disappear when loading the game after trashing them and then undoing the trash.
• In edit mode, destroying a building with other buildings attached to it will now reliably destroy the dependent buildings as well.
• The Toggle Grid Snap radial menu option now works even outside of placement mode.
• Slime Mold Grass will no longer become uninteractable after being relocated.
• Double-clicking a building supporting Place Many in the Playgrounds build menu will no longer immediately place a copy.
• Buildings placed on scaled buildings will no longer sometimes appear at the wrong height.
• Mushrooms will no longer lose their stems when relocated.
• Undo operations cannot be redone if another player makes conflicting changes to the same actors.
• The Lab Control Panel now faces the correct way when placed on walls.
• Dandelion D can now be placed and trashed in Playgrounds.
• Cacti can now be copied and relocated.
• Dice can now be copied and relocated.
• Mushroom Curved Doors will no longer rotate and break after cancelling connection from them.
• ASL Terminal and Resource Surveyor screens will appear correctly after undoing destruction.
• ASL Terminal and Resource Surveyor will actually reappear when destruction is undone.
• Players can no longer become stuck on the Frankenline when transitioning between Play and Design mode.
• Strange Spore is easier to place.
• Table B can now be stacked.

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