Materials are the bread and butter of your ability to survive in Grounded. Without the basics like Woven Fiber and more advanced materials like Grub Hide and Berry Leather, some of the bigger critters roaming the garden will take your head clean off, or take far too much time to kill to really be worth the effort.
To help you survive long enough to become a true garden warrior, we’ve pieced together this handy guide on where to find some of the game’s most common and more lucrative materials, from the essential Grub Hide to the end-game Berry Leather.
Further Reading
- Ranking the best and worst armor sets you can own in Grounded
- How to unlock tier two tool upgrades in Grounded
- All the critters you’ll face in Grounded and how best to beat them up
Where to find materials in Grounded
Woven Fiber
Used in:
- Basic tools, weapons, and most armor
- Canteen
- Shovel
- Gas mask
- Torch
When you first drop into Grounded, Woven Fiber quickly becomes the go-to material. It’s the first craft you’ll need to fashion a couple of important items in the early moments of the game. If you analyze the wrong materials with your first three charges, you’ll end up needing the material without knowing how to even make it: So here’s how it’s done.
Where to find: Woven Fiber is actually a craft. It’s made up of nothing more than Plant Fiber. You’ll find these virtually everywhere. In fact, they’re so small, you’ve probably walked over dozens — if not hundreds — while out and about.
Plant fibers come in two different varieties, but both function exactly the same way. Look out for either tiny saplings sprouting from the ground, or twisty roots growing upward. Analyze one to discover the Woven Fiber recipe, then use three to make one. Easy.
Sap
Used in:
- Torch
- Fiber bandage
- Acorn armor
- Workbench
Sap is a common sight in Grounded and one you’ll need to craft important items like the workbench. Learning where it comes from can help you zone in on large quantities quickly.
Where to find: Sap is a byproduct of trees, so you’re most likely to find it secreting from roots and logs. It’s entirely possible to see small pieces of sap sitting on the ground around these types of foliage, but walk along branches and you should find even more.
Clusters can even form on the underside of tree roots, but you’ll need a basic hammer to shatter the cluster into stacks of the sticky stuff.
Grub Hide
Used in:
- Grub armor
- Canteen
- Larval blade
Grub Hide is one of the first staple materials you’ll wonder where to find. You’ll probably end up bonking Soldier Ants and Gnats before coming across a Grub if you don’t know where to look, though the virtually nonexistent combat skill of the burrowing insects makes them a fine choice for building your first set of competent armor.
Where to find: To get Grub Hide, you first need to uncover a Grub. This is done by crafting an acorn shovel, unlocked by busting open an acorn and analyzing its shell. With the acorn shovel in hand, poke the moving dirt trails you’ll sometimes see in the ground.
By doing this at the current tip of the trail, you’ll uncover a Grub, which will pop out and land on its side, stunned and ready to whack into oblivion. Two hits with basically any tool or weapon should be enough to take it down, producing materials like Grub Hide. Analyze this and you’ll discover how to craft the grub armor set.
Quartzite
Used in:
- Repair tool
- Dew collector
Another sought-after material is Quartzite. Like the boulder you break up to produce Pebblets, Quartzite comes from larger deposits. Quartzite can then be used to make all sorts of items. The ever-useful dew collector is a great asset.
Where to find: You’ll find plenty of Quartzite deposits both small and large in the game’s underground tunnels. You’ll likely first come across this stuff when fending off the Lawn Mites from the Mysterious Machine’s damaged cable in the single-player mode.
Weed Stem
Used in:
- Mushroom garden
- Structures and traps
- Dew collector
Weed Stems are another important component of the dew collector, but they’re also used to fashion the mushroom garden, too. All in all, keeping a stock of these close by can help you make the two most important structures for a self-sufficient playthrough, so it’s good to know how to get them.
Where to find: To get Weed Stem in Grounded, all you need to do is take your chopping tool of choice to a dandelion. Fell one of these tall, towering weeds and you should be able to pick up its Weed Stem.
You’ll need to haul these like Grass Planks, so set up a base nearby if you plan on using lots. If you’re having trouble finding tier-1 weeds like the dandelion, just look up. They’re tall, and their white, fluffy tops stand out.
Spider Silk
Used in:
- Dew collector
- Spider armor
- Tier-2 insect bow
Spider silk can come either from swinging at webs or directly from a defeated spider. Calm down, though. You don’t need to take down a fully grown Wolf or Orb Weaver spider to get your hands on large quantities of this stuff.
Where to find: Spider nests are a great source of Spider Silk. Not because of the bigger spiders, but because Spiderlings practically give it away. Knowing this can help you dot dew collectors around the map to keep you hydrated as you travel.
You’ll need the stuff to craft high-tier spider armor once you get the hang of killing their parents, too, so stock up as soon as possible. You can read more about how to kill spiders in Grounded here.
Berry Leather
Used in:
- Tier-2 tools and armor
Berry Leather is a high-tier craft material used to make armor like the spider set. It comes from berries, obviously, of which you’ll find high up in the shrubs. Don’t worry about tracking these down early on; you’ll need some decent equipment to harvest them.
Where to find: Berries and, by extension, berry leather, are found in the hedge area to the very south of the map. It’s a long walk from your initial stating location, so be sure to set up a lean-to once you get there and reassign your spawn point. A good landmark to look out for here is a massive water fountain/birdbath just past the swampy area you’ll likely have to swim through.
If you can’t get close enough to a berry to melee it down from a branch, a projectile like a Pebblet or arrow can work. Once the berry falls to the ground, you’re going to need to use a tier-2 axe like the insect axe to extract the berry chunks. It takes three chunks to make a strip of leather, so each berry should net you a single strip.
