Grounded Insect Axe: How To Upgrade Your Axe Quickly

The Grounded Insect Ax is one of the most important early tools you need to craft, further opening up the crafting menu and giving yourself access to a whole host of new recipes and tools. Better than the starter item, the Pebblet Axe, the Insect Ax allows you to chop down objects like husky weeds, apples, toadstools, and more. There is limited progression with the Pebblet Axe, so read on to find out how to quickly gather the necessary crafting ingredients and make your own bug axe.

Recipe to craft a Grounded Insect Axe

The Insect Ax requires a total of eight items, divided into three categories. This contains:

• 1 ladybug head
• 3 Bombadier parts
• 4 silk rope

Each of these items can theoretically be collected very soon after the start of the game, but they each require some skillful combat skill and/or expert sneaking. Silk rope is made from cobwebs, which you can find wherever spiders live, like along the wood stumps south of the koi pond. You can break these webs apart with a melee item and you’ll pick up the webbing instantly, but be sure to do so while the local spiders have left the area, even if it’s only briefly.

Ladybugs can be found all over the map, including right where you first start, but they’re pretty hard to trip down on your own. You should either face one in co-op with some friends, or at least have a melee weapon and armor equipped. The easiest armor set to craft is the Clover set, which requires 13 shamrocks, six coarse ropes (made from plant fibers found all over the backyard), and 2 twigs.

Once you defeat a ladybug, all you need is a few more Bombadier parts. You can find these green and black spotted bugs in the southeastern part of the map.

Bombardiers possess a unique ability in that they can throw blobs of acid at you, so while they won’t test your parrying ability as much as, say, spiders, you should dodge their projectiles of acid and be sure not to interfere with the puddles that they form when they hit the ground.

Keep in mind that you can sometimes find these and other insects in locations far from their spawning locations due to the way they move. So these are just some of the more reliable ways to locate them quickly.

Once you have all the parts you need, go to your workbench and craft the Insect Axe. Now you’re ready to face a large, and perhaps newly intimidating, part of Grounded. For more on Obsidian’s kid-friendly survival game, check out our review of Grounded glowing like a firefly.