The Networking quest is one of the final quests in Grounded 2’s Early Access window. Players will make their way to the statue to enter one of the final labs to meet the mysterious stranger character. However, getting into the Statue is a tough cookie. Our guide will help you get through the Statue area and complete the Enter the Network quest.

Enter the Network Walkthrough¶

While the Statue and the rose garden area around it is very large. However, there’s a few jumping skips you can do with a buggy to beat it. However, you will need to fight some bosses to get through the area. You should do this as follows:

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(1 of 7) Once you’ve entered the Statue grounds, head north and find this spot to skip a lot of the enemies and make it easier to enter the network in Grounded 2. Image via Gamer Guides / Obsidian.

1. Follow the brick path to the statue. Travel north and enter the North Entrance tunnel.
2. Proceed through the tunnel to the dead end lab door. Turn left and chomp through the Dead Root.
3. Run through the garden area and turn left.
4. Follow the brick path where the O.R.C Worker Ants and Larva live.
5. Enter the large garden space. Look for a tuft of grass where you can jump up. Jump up again and land between the higher blade of grass and the wall. Jump again to get you up to the stone wall.
6. Run along the stone wall and line yourself up with the center of the statue. You should see 500 Raw Science below the wall to show you’re in the right spot.
7. Jump down and avoid the ladders to the lab below. Ahead you should see a Northern Scorpion boss called Captain Nitro. Defeat it and then use your Buggy to crunch through the Dead Root it guards.
8. Follow the branch path to where you can see the Lab above. Ignore it unless you want collectibles. Take the branch path down and follow it along to an ant. Crunch through the dead root and follow it along through another part of the bush. There should be a spider on the branch. Run past that and crunch through the Dead Root again.
9. Now you should see a branch going down towards a brick. The brick has red cloth going from it. Follow that along and ignore the Praying Mantis boss along it. It will take you to an new area of the brush.
10. Turn right and ignore the base unless you want more collectibles. Follow the branch above it towards where an O.R.C Orbweaver is. Follow the branch along to reach the base of the statue
11. Jump the pipe and climb up to where you can see the ladder that takes you to Network.

Restore the Network: The Three Switches:¶

Proceed up the lab levels as normal, dealing with the little O.R.C critters around. Or just sprinting through the office floor section. Either works fine.

You’ll eventually reach a lab room where you are confronted with General Berserker, a rather tame Cockroach enemy. Walking at it for some reason means it doesn’t know what to do, so weave in your attacks, beat it up and dispatch of it fairly easily. You now need to activate three switches to proceed. Firstly, grab the keycard from the dead human on the floor above the cockroach. Now you can open the doors to the switches:

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(1 of 3) Go underneath the power line room and start repairing the cut cables. There’s three of them. Image via Gamer Guides / Obsidian.

1. One on the left takes you to a room where you need to drop into the wiring below. There’s two gaps in the floor to enter the wiring either end of the room.
   • The best way to describe the wiring is its shaped like a P. There’s a cut wire along the spine, then one round the bend, and another in the top corner.
2. The other two are in the room opposite.
   • Simply enter the other room and flip the switch for the one on the left side of the room.
   • Meanwhile, to get the third switch, look for the destroyed panels near the collapsed corridor room. This takes you through the vents to the other side of that room. Kill the enemies inside and you can flip the final switch.

From there, you can progress upwards.

Next few floors¶

Now you can ascend, there’s another level to go through. This takes you through a server room with a few O.R.C Larvae, Ants, Spiders and such things. You can easily run through or sneak through if you want to avoid combat. They typically don’t follow you through to the ladder room.

You will now need to drop into the ventilation again. This time, the vents are filled with Spiderlings spider eggs, and some Orb Weaver Juniors throughout the corridor. Deal with them without getting swarmed and move on. You should eventually be able to climb a ladder that lets you out. Feel free to look behind you and open the shortcut so you don’t have to go in there again.

Networking boss battle¶

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The Masked Stranger is the boss battle awaiting you atop of the statue in the Networking quest. Image via Gamer Guides / Obsidian.

When you reach the top floor, you will find the Mysterious Stranger. This becomes a three part boss battle.

The first phase is a simple battle with melee weapons. The boss has a Spicy Coaltana, a unique two handed slashing weapon with Spicy effect. It’s normally a triple attack you can easily block through the block power. Best to get some anti sizzle effects here just in case.

When the boss is below 50% HP they will take a Rage potion and get their attack up. They will also restore some HP. They unlock a new move here where they channel an attack. They then slam down the sword, which does a shockwave of Spicy damage emitting a decent range. So run away when she does this.

When she gets to 30% HP. She will jump out of the fight. Instead, she will summon an O.R.C Wolf Spider with a boss name to continue the fight. This is your standard Wolf Spider all things considered. Defeat the boss as normal and watch for the Venom build up. Remember that Wolf Spiders are weak to spicy. So you may consider running the Sizzling Staff here for a counter. Slashing is also fine here. Most Tier 3 builds will be fine against it, even if its resistant to those attacks.

Once the spider is down, you unlock the door to the office and get BURG.l’s Head. You should also find the Sizzling Key and a crafting recipe, which gives you a quest to unlock your very own Spicy Coaltana. We have a guide on what to do if you want more help with it.

But this concludes the networking event in Grounded 2. You should now know how to get through the quest and get the rewards. Note that this completes the Early Access storyline. Chances are in future content patches the story will expand.