There are a variety of bugs crawling around Grounded, and many of them are exceptionally useful to provide with you crafting materials. The smaller bugs give you basic components that you can use to craft decent items, but if you want to start creating the more durable, better items, you need to go after the bigger bugs, such as ants, ladybugs, and even spiders. These creatures are tough to take down, so you can expect a fight each time. A useful item you can harvest off of ants is ant mandibles, although it comes from a particular type of ant.
You need to go after the ant soldiers if you want to harvest the ant mandibles. The traditional workers don’t provide those items. The soldiers put up a fight, so it’s not an easy item to obtain. The best way to go after a soldier is to take out one of the workers while it’s wandering around. You have to do this a few times to eventually lure out a soldier. They normally come in pairs, so prepare to simultaneously fight two of them, or try separating them, which can be a bit difficult. An excellent way to take them out is to use the Sprig bow to take them out from a distance.
After you kill it, you should find an ant mandible or two on its corpse you can harvest. You can use them to make a sap catcher, a powerful ant club, a stuffed soldier ant furniture piece, or a soldier ant head mount to hang in your house. The ant club is a great item to use to stun smaller bugs you fight, but it does require two hands to use, which can be problematic in the dark.
