“In a day or two,” Obsidian Entertainment will be releasing patch 0.1.1 for Grounded, its just-released survival game for PC and Xbox One. The game is in early access, so it was expected that it would be coming with bugs and slight or big issues that should be fixed with time.
However, it’s worth noting that Grounded actually works, and we’ve seen titles interpreting the early access status way worse. All the improvements implemented in this first update are just fixing and polishing, with no major error preventing users from playing.
One of the areas where Obsidian worked more is matchmaking, which several users didn’t find particularly reliable at first. Save games have also being worked on, and now should not cause issues where you lose your progression “occasionally.”
The full changelog is posted below.
Major issues
- Made changes to make finding, joining, and hosting games with friends more reliable.
- We adjusted the handling of joining game failure.
- Added a way to allow players to resolve the issue of the game logging the player into the wrong Xbox Live account on PC.
- Fixed issues with Windows 7 and Windows 8 users crashing when attempting to login. Those users should be able to load into the game after updating.
- Fixed crash when saving or loading and the “Autosave Count” number in the options is set to 0.
- We have implemented a fix for players who were getting stuck on the welcome popup screen and unable to move past it.
- Fixed characters not being saved occasionally in save games. Unfortunately we are not able to bring back lost items, but hopefully this fix will prevent this from occurring in the future.
Game
- Players will no longer be permanently stuck in spider webs after destroying them.
- Fixed BURG.L disappearing in some games if you attacked him and saved and loaded. BURG.L will appear in the games he disappeared from, allowing players to interact with him again.
- Restoring save games that have lost progression state (ex. Oak Tree Lab doors no longer opening for players, Mysterious Machine not allowing players to hit buttons to finish the quest, time being frozen, etc.) After updating the game, players should be able to load into their game and continue to progress. Should this issue happen again, logging out of the save and then loading back in should resolve the issue and allow you to continue playing.
- Fixed issue with endless larva spawning over time. Larva were also spawning each time a spike trap was built. Players who experienced this issue are asked to start a new game to avoid the problems that may arise from the increased larva spawn rates.
- Fixed issue where all item durability in your inventory incorrectly shows “full” when loading back into a game as a client.
- We implemented a fix for an issue where games that were saved before Raw Science started spawning prevented Raw Science from appearing later. It also included an update for a problem with Raw Science spawning after analyzing and having additional players collecting it on join. Due to this, players may notice that the starting Raw Science they previously collected has respawned.
- Fixed crashes when loading a saved game dealing with ant colonies.
- Removed kill Mosquito Burg.L quest NOT RETROACTIVE: Players will need to speak with BURG.L to abandon this quest. Then, during the next in-game day, you will be able to talk to BURG.L again to accept a new quest.
- Found the cause behind the issue where attempting to cook/dry an item slot with no item in it would crash the game.
- Found a fix for the occasional crash caused by dew drops that have items stuck in them. It also included a fix for dew drops exploding and causing a major FPS drops on clients.
- Fixed issue where clients dragging items from one slot in a storage basket to another would not reflect on the host causing item desync.
- Disabled storage baskets and smoothie stations from being able to be interacted with by multiple players at the same time until other desync issues we are working on are resolved.
- Block Tutorial now only plays once.
- Tuned Wolf Spider hearing and investigation AI to creep on the player less frequently.
Interface
- UI changes made to the SCA.B OS screen.
- Fixed trail markers not showing up on the map, and an additional fix added to prevent the game crashing if you tried to navigate them in the legend.
- Reduced screen edge shimmer on Xbox One and Xbox One S under load.
Despite being so tiny and unexpected from a developer specialized in RPG, Grounded has proved a hit upon release, being played by one million users already.
That has resulted in Obsidian committing even more to the post-release plan, which should bring the first expansion around one month from the original launch.
The developer is also working on a brand new first-person RPG called Avowed, set to be around the same scale as Skyrim when it releases on PC and Xbox Series X.
