Grounded is a tough game, and unless you've mastered blocks perfectly, melee combat is quickly deadly. Combined with plenty of annoying flying critters that are hard to hit with a melee weapon, it makes sense to use ranged weapons as much as possible. The bow very quickly shows its limits, since it takes more than a hundred arrows to shoot down a Wolf Spider, for example. Luckily, an alternative is available fairly quickly, with the Raven's Crossbow.
Find crow feathers and unlock the blueprint
Like many items in Grounded, the Crossbow is unlocked by analyzing materials . In this case, they are pieces of crow's feather . But to get it, you need a level 2 Ax to cut a feather.
Then comes the problem of feathers. They appear quite randomly in the garden, around the various perches that the crow uses. Some are in the water, others on the ground. It often happens that they get stuck in height, in branches or in the grass, so look up. Here is a non-exhaustive list of places where to find feathers, as well as a map with their approximate position:
- Around the strange machine northwest of the starting point.
- At the foot of the birdbath, in the southeast corner of the map, as well as at its top.
- On the Picnic Table.
- In the water, around the sort of stone structure, to the right of the pond.
- In the canyons around the weedkiller canister, near the fog zone.
Craft the crossbow
Once the feathers have been obtained, the other materials are easy to find:
- Acorn shells can be found by smashing acorns with the level 1 hammer, all around the oak tree.
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Silk Thread requires using a Spinning Machine , after harvesting Sticky Web. The web can be extracted everywhere, in areas where spiders are. There is no need to kill any, just attack empty webs with a melee weapon. There are dozens of them all along the wooden divider, between the flower bed, in front of the pond, and the lawn. You can also harvest tons of them in the hedge to the southeast, whether at ground level, or in the branches, and in the laboratory.
You'll keep the crossbow for a long time, so feel free to use your Whetstones on it. The level 3 crossbow requires complicated materials to obtain, on powerful enemies.
An alternative to the crossbow is the level 2 bow, which requires Wolf Spider materials. It deals less damage, and it's also harder to craft, but it has a much better rate of fire.
One of the worst insects in the garden is the chinch bug, aka stink bug, since it will literally gas you up. This makes for a very frustrating fight when you don't know exactly what to do, when you need them for level 2 tools. Check out our guide with tips and advice.
