New Garden Zone for Grounded 2 Revealed: Obsidian Confirms New Map Expansion

Obsidian Entertainment has officially dropped details on the next major content update for Grounded 2, confirming that players will soon be able to venture into a massive New Garden Zone alongside the arrival of new critters, high-tier gear, and a much-needed mobility option. This information, released via the game’s official X (formerly Twitter) account, should certainly generate a good amount of excitement.

The primary focus of this upcoming expansion is clearly the new biome. The “Garden” represents a significant shift in environmental design, moving beyond the untamed wildness of the initial backyard and into a space that is still tiny from a human perspective, but entirely structured and managed. The imagery suggests we’re getting a look at actual cultivated areas—think raised beds, irrigation systems, possibly a greenhouse, or large, contained patches of crops like pumpkins and vegetables.

The Garden: A New Frontier for Builders and Explorers

For those of us who spend a lot of time meticulously mapping out the park and building bases, a dedicated New Garden Zone for Grounded 2 is a very interesting prospect. Unlike the previous zones that focused on natural chaos, the garden is likely to be a blend of human-made geometry and organic growth.

This hybrid environment gives Obsidian a lot of room to play with verticality and traversal challenges. Are the rows of vegetables simply obstacles, or can we climb massive, winding pumpkin vines? Will the irrigation channels function as mini-rivers, or just muddy pathways? Logically, a cultivated area would mean an abundance of specific, rich resources that were harder to find previously, which should make the trip worthwhile.

[ We think the New Garden Zone will be behind the BURG.L Statue. Where do you think it will be!? ]

Furthermore, this new structured environment will inevitably come with its own set of unique threats. The post specifically mentions two new creatures: the Cricket and the Earwig.

• The Earwig: This is not a pleasant creature to think about up close. Earwigs are fast, nocturnal, and have those distinct pincers (cerci) on their abdomen. In-game, they are likely to be burrowing ambush predators, possibly requiring us to prepare for fights in tight, low-light spaces like under the cover of dense garden foliage.
• The Cricket: While generally less aggressive than the spiders we are used to, a cricket at this size would be capable of huge leaps and powerful kicks. It could easily become the game’s first genuine vertical mobility threat, capable of bounding over obstacles and engaging players in ways the existing grounded fauna cannot.

Tier 3 Gear and the Ladybug Buggy

Beyond the landscape itself, two other key features were noted, both designed to accommodate the growing scale of the game.

The introduction of Tier 3 equipment is necessary to maintain the game’s progression curve. New zones like the Garden often come with environmental hazards or new resource nodes that require specialized, tougher tools. We can speculate that the new critters, the Cricket and the Earwig, will drop materials needed to craft this new level of armor and weapons. Players who have maximized their Tier 2 gear will finally have a new target to work towards, allowing them to feel truly prepared for the late-game dangers.

Finally, the Ladybug Buggy confirms what many players already expected: the new world is simply getting too large to traverse on foot. The Ladybug Buggy is a mobility solution that should drastically cut down on travel time, allowing players to focus more on exploration and building than on simply running from point A to point B. This implies the garden area itself is a significant distance from the starting locations, justifying the need for a dedicated vehicle to manage the scale.

Obsidian’s reveal confirms that the scope of Grounded 2 continues to expand in meaningful ways. The New Garden Zone offers a visually distinct, structurally new environment that should provide plenty of new building and exploration opportunities, and the associated gear and mobility features are exactly what the community needs to handle the growing size of the yard. We look forward to seeing the full details soon.