Finding your way into the Pond Lab is a huge step up in difficulty from everything you’ve faced before and requires more specialised equipment than your quests so far. This quest is pretty much impossible without the Bubble Helmet to increase your underwater oxygen time. To craft it, you need four Eelgrass Strands, five Sunken Bones and four Silk Rope.
Where do you get Sunken Bones and Eelgrass Strands in Grounded?
First, to harvest Eelgrass, you need to craft a Pebblet Dagger out of two Pebblets, two Crude Rope and two Lilypad Wax (which is found on the underside of lilypads in the pond). Next, with a Gill Tube helm equipped, you need to dive down towards the bottom of the pond and look for spotted pieces of grass on the bed. Hit them with your dagger to harvest Eelgrass. Sunken Bones are much more difficult to find. In the middle of the pond, there’s a submerged landmark called the Sunken T-Rex. Dive down towards it and you find it down a hole in the pond floor. Continue diving down towards the feet of the T-Rex and equip a shovel. If you need air in this area, there’s a leaky black pipe that shoots out bubbles which replenish your O2 in front of the T-Rex. Around the feet of the T-Rex, and on the floor of the area slightly past it that’s full of lit-up arches, you find sunken bones poking out of the ground. Use your shovel to dig them up. With a Bubble Helmet in-hand, you’re ready to begin your underwater expedition.
How do you get into the Pond Lab in Grounded?
Return to the Sunken T-Rex tunnel with as much air as possible (it’s in the map screenshot above if you’ve just skipped to this part and don’t know where that is). Past the T-Rex, there’s a lit-up line of arches. Follow it, and you will eventually reach a fan vent in the floor that fires you upwards. Look for a glob of raw science and swim towards it. Then follow that tunnel through a supply room until you find a biometric scanner which opens the door to the pond lab. A short swim through the door and you can surface inside the lab. After you emerge, walk over to the other side of the room and interact with the power grid control. You will be told to reset some breakers to continue. They’re back outside, along the row of lit up arches you passed to get into the lab. With the bubble helmet, you should be able get to at least one at a time, if not all three. For the first breaker, go back out through the supply room then out of the exit in front of you rather than to the left. Look straight down, then swim inside the broken off part of the lab to switch the first breaker. At the end of this part of the lab you can rummage through a skeleton to get the toxicology badge as well as suspicious snapshot 4. Next, back at the supply room, take the left-hand exit rather than the straight one you just used. Over to the right there’s a fan on the wall, in the tree roots next to this is the second breaker dial. The final breaker is out in the lit up archway on the wall. Now, instead of going back through the supply room, you have to go through the new opening. It’s above the last dial. Inside, press the button to open the door back to where you’ve already been, then go through the door on the other side of the room. Take a left, then go right into the flooded corridor. Go through the hole in the floor and make your way through this tunnel, defeating the diving bell spider on your way, and you will emerge in the computer room to log into the power grid. Mash the keys and a new door opens letting you back into where you were without going through the submerged tunnel. Go back to the room where you came up through the opening and a door will have opened to a room full of robots. After you’ve defeated them yet another door will be open on the right which leads up into a different part of the lab. On your left is a SCAB theme on a shelf. But at the top of the spiral staircase in the middle of the room is the Super chip you seek and a terminal to mash the keys on. Booting the computer opens the final door downstairs which leads to the Pond Hatch, a quick entrance and exit to the Pond Lab. With the Super Chip in hand, return to BURGL and claim your reward! He tells you that he can make an embiggening cocktail to make you big again, but it’s tough to make. Plus he’s still missing the recipe. Here’s our hub page to continue with our Grounded Walkthrough!
