One of the important facets of survival games is crafting and upgrading your gear, base, and more so you can progress through the game’s harsh world. Grounded is no different, with the game sending you off to scavenge and collect goodies to improve your character. One of the ways it does that is by letting the player upgrade their favorite tools, armor, and weapons. In this guide, we teach you how to upgrade weapons in Grounded. Below you will find the best tips for crafting and upgrading Grounded weapons.

Upgrading Weapons in Grounded¶

The process for upgrading weapons is a long one, with several stages you need to know. This guide will go over the following:

• Step 1: How to unlock the weapon upgrade feature
• Step 2: Upgrading weapons from levels 1-5
• Step 3: Upgrading weapons post level 5

Feel free to skip to the relevant heading that best matches your current situation.

How to Build a Smithing Station in Grounded: Step 1¶

To upgrade your weapons in Grounded, you must first unlock the building. Players will need to spend Raw Science on a technology called Smithing Station from a computer terminal. You will unlock this science once you complete the Mysterious Machine quest, and then unlock the Oak Tree Lab and meet BURGL. Once that’s done, head to a computer terminal, and buy the Smithing Station resource for 100 Raw Science.

Once you have the research, you can now build the Smithing Station. To do so, head into the crafting menu, then head to ‘Storage and Utilities’, which is the second blue bar in the menu. From there, scroll down to ‘Misc’ at the bottom and select the Smithing Station. You will need the following items to craft it:

• 1x Brittle Quartzite Shard
• 1x Brittle Marble Shard
• 4x Crude Rope
• 2x Sap

The best place to go for the shards is the Old Anthill, which is the safest place to go and collect the shards you need once you complete the Oak Lab. If not, then you can find plenty in the Red Anthill when you get the Red Ant armor or the other surrounding caves you come across. Note you will need a Pebblet Hammer to whack the boulders to get the shards.

The best places to acquire Brittle Quartzite shards are typically in the lab’s storage rooms and in caves or Anthill areas. You can occasionally find them loose in the open world, such as around the Oak tree, at the bottom of the ponds, and in other such discrete locations.

If you’re looking to craft them, you can instead opt to kill the Larvae that spawn in the Larvae cave. You need to break the cave entrance by blowing the acorns up and then entering. You can also find some Quartz and Marble here too! If you’re better geared at later stages of the game, you can fight Infected Larvae near the haze, or kill Ladybird Larvae near the BBQ Grill in the end-game areas of the map.

Amount of Brittle Whetstones needed¶

Once you have the right materials, you can then proceed to upgrade your weapons. The number of Brittle Whetstones you need will then change depending on the level of the weapon.

For early-level players, it is a grind to upgrade your weapon early on. However, you will naturally find plenty of Brittle Quartzites as you play through the game, so you can easily upgrade your weapons the more you naturally explore and complete the labs.

Upgrade weapons post level 5 in Grounded: Step 3¶

Once you get a weapon to level 5, you then get several choices of what type of weapon you want to make a weapon. These effects are:

• Fresh
• Mighty
• Salty
• Sour
• Spicy

Each one adds extra factors to the weapons. Mighty is your standard raw strength and durability option, while the other four options add an extra damage type to the weapon. This is important, as enemies in the game have weaknesses in different elements, making it easier to fight some of the harder enemies in the game.

If you wish to upgrade a weapon, you are forced to choose for it. Depending on which route you choose, you will then need to make the corresponding elemental globs for levels 6 and 7, and then jewels for 8 and 9.

Here is a table referencing what to expect from the resource requirements for weapon upgrades post-level 5.

For a quick reference, Sturdy Whetstones require , which come from the T2 Quartz, often found in more dangerous caves around the Pond, Haze, Hedge and Upper Yard. This is the same for the Supreme Whetstones, which require the T3 Supreme Quartz resource, and is often found alongside some T2 Quartz deposits.

It is also possible to craft the Whetstones using animal parts, but that requires killing tough enemies such as the Black Ox Beetle and Ladybirds. Both of these enemies spawn near and in the Shed at the top left of the map. When you get to that stage, you can also get the flavored shards more reliably from digging treasures in the Sandbox. Moreso, you can occasionally find Mints in the open world and caves, while Sour comes from wormholes found in more advanced areas of the map.

The other item in the table is the Twinkling Shell. These come from the Scarabs you can see glinting in the light in the Upper Yard. You can find them easily around the BBQ Spill as they stand out the most. But rest assured they are all over the upper yard.

Unlocking the post-level 5 weapon upgrade research¶

However, to begin creating elemental or mighty weapons, you will need to get the relevant research unlocked at level 5, and then again at level 8. You will also need to build an Oven, which requires its own research and burgl unlock. Here are the following research and the main story progression you need to reach to get the relevant technology.