Back in 2022’s Grounded, riding a Red Soldier Ant was nothing more than a wild idea. But the sequel changes everything, with rideable bug mounts now part of the experience. If you’re wondering how to build your very own Red Soldier Ant Buggy in Grounded 2, we’ve got your back.
As exciting as the idea of riding a bug sounds, you have to go through a grindy process to make a saddle. At the time of writing, there are only two buggy mounts in Grounded 2, with the Red Soldier Ant Buggy being the easiest one to unlock.
Here’s how to get the Red Soldier Ant Buggy in Grounded 2.
How to unlock your first Red Soldier Ant Buggy in Grounded 2
For starters, you can’t really “catch” a Red Soldier Ant and start riding it. Instead, you need to progress through the main story and unlock the recipe for Hatchery. For your convenience, we’ve explained everything separately in sections.
Find Hatchery recipe
After you load into a new game of Grounded 2, you should first get your Omni Tool and go to the Comms Array part of the Ranger Output (down the cave). Pick up the phone call to talk to Ms. Sloan, then get your Omni Hammer and Shovel upgrades as instructed.
Keep progressing through the story: Go to the coordinates Ms. Sloane asks you to, and there you’ll find a dead body and several Red Ant Eggs. Not Red Soldier Eggs, though, so that’s not it.
Claim items from the dead body. As you do, you’ll hear an audio tape narrating why they hid the Hatchery recipe. Then, dig up the Buried Treasure right beside the body. You’ll find a drive: Take it back to the Comms Array and upload it to the Ranger Station. Once done, you’ll receive another phone call from Ms. Sloane, and you will unlock the Hatchery recipe at the end of it.
Build Hatchery
To build the Hatchery in Grounded 2, you need to get the following:
- Six Weed Stems (from Dandelions)
- Five Mite Fuzz (Kill those light red/pink jumping Mites)
- Five Acorn Shells (Use hammer to break Acorns)
- One Acorn Top (Acorns are found near Oak Trees)
All of these are found as ground loot, but gathering them may take some time. Once you have all of it, build the Hatchery and you should be ready for the next—and the most grindy—step.
Retrieve Red Soldier Ant Egg from the Anthill
As directed by your quest diary, go to the nearby Anthill (Hatchery Anthill: Southern Entrance) and head down the cave. But before you enter, make sure you have the best weapons you can carry and as many healing supplies as possible. I took the following:
- Crimson Saber (good against Ants)
- Weevil Shield
- Larvalance (good against the Spider)
- Plenty of Fiber Bandages
- Food
- Torches
A bow (and arrows) may make it easier as it lets you deal ranged damage and keep a distance from the bites. Make sure you assign weapons, healing items, and food to slots. It’ll let you switch between weapons and items and apply bandages easily during a fight.
You’ll fight several Red Soldier Ants in the cave, and even encounter a boss fight-like scenario with the O.R.C. Orb Weaver Spider. In my experience, I couldn’t avoid the spider, although I could ignore some of the Ants. Avoid unnecessary fights. You’ll come across many Red Worker Ants, but they aren’t aggressive, so it’s better to leave them alone.
If you’re dying too many times while trying to retrieve the egg, there’s a respawn station in the cave. To locate it, start from the entrance of the cave and keep going straight. After some time, you’ll come across a white metal cart, which should spawn on your left. There’ll be three roads from that point. Take the path to the right and you’ll reach a lab door with red lights. Enter it and you’ll see beds to sleep and set respawn point as well as drinking water. Set the respawn point to a bed, so if you die at the hands of an ant, you get to start again from nearby instead of having to return from your base.
If you choose the Creative difficulty mode, you won’t need to deal with these creatures. In this case, simply run down the cave and get your egg.
To make your journey to finding the egg easy, we’ve explained the route with as much detail as possible. Start by entering the cave from the South entrance and head down, keeping straight until you reach the first station.
Do you see the black pipeline that goes to the left? Follow it until you reach the second station.
Keep following the black pipe until you reach the third station.
The pipeline ends here. Go to the left from here and keep moving till you reach the entrance of another lab with red lights.
Enter the lab and you’ll see a Red Soldier Ant egg trapped inside a clear tube.
You can’t pick this up, though. So, keep going straight through the lab door on the opposite side. Eventually, you’ll reach a space where there are multiple Red Soldier Ant eggs. Pick one up and run!
You can’t add these eggs to your inventory, so you have to carry them in your hand. And you can’t fight with an egg in your hand. If you get hit by an enemy while carrying the egg, you’ll drop it, so don’t slow down. Keep running till you reach your base and the Hatchery.
As vigorous as this experience can be if you’re playing solo, having a co-op partner makes everything in Grounded 2 drastically easier. I’ve completed this challenge the hard way, solo and no friendly Soldier Ant to give me a ride. But once you have the buggy, you can come back to this cave on its back with no worry about Worker or Soldier Ants chasing you down.
Hatch the Red Soldier Ant Egg
When you reach the Hatchery, place the egg inside with the saddle ingredients:
- Two Grub Hide
- Three Sprig
- One Acorn Shell
Hatching the Red Soldier Ant Egg takes 12 in-game hours, so you can sleep off most of it.
Once complete, you’ll have your very own Red Soldier Ant Buggy that you can ride to explore the vast map of Grounded 2. And once you get your first buggy, take it with you for any future visits to the Ant cave.
You can also unlock another entrance to the Anthill (North). The route is apparently easier to tackle from that side.
How to use and maintain your Red Soldier Ant Buggy in Grounded 2
To use your Soldier Ant Buggy in Grounded 2, go near it and use the buttons as prompted to mount, pet, and ask it to stay or follow you. You can gather items while you’re mounted on the ant and can also ask it to enable gather mode, so it’ll store anything it finds on the ground in its 30-slot inventory. Items can be manually stored in its inventory as well. You can also chop down Grass and other resources with your ant.
If you plan on hatching multiple Red Soldier Ant Buggies or other buggies in Grounded 2, you can store them in an Ant Nest, and give them unique names. One nest has six slots, but you can have multiple. You can call stored buggies from the summon wheel (long press same key used to call your buggy). Having multiple buggies ensures that you can call another when the one you’re riding falls due to heavy damage.
