Where to find thistle needles in Grounded 2

A Grounded 2 player standing in front of a Thistle's budding flower while cheering. The weed has little prickly needles you can see just behind her, those are the thistle needles.

(Image credit: Obsidian Entertainment, Eidos-Montréal)

The thicket of flower petals, dandelion tufts, and grass seeds in Grounded 2 can be a pain to sift through, but fortunately, thistle needles aren't too hard to spot once you know what to look for. They're handy materials to hoard too, as I'd easily blow through stacks of thistle needles while crafting arrows and fences en masse. You can never really gather too many, so get your storage bins sorted early.

The only bummer is having to pick thistle needles up one by one. They grow on weed stalks, so to gather a healthy supply, you'll need to carefully climb up and hop along leaves to strip plant stems clean.

Where to get thistle needles in Grounded 2

The map of Brookhollow Park in Grounded 2. This shows the Snackbar Front area, just outside the entrance in the far western corner. There's a little circle highlighting where to find Thistle Needles. — (Image credit: Obsidian Entertainment, Eidos-Montréal)

Thistle needles are available in Grounded 2's first location, Snackbar Front, and I easily spotted some from Ranger Outpost: Snackbar. Identify them by looking up along the park's skyline for one of the pink flowers with spiky leaves—those are Thistles.

I found my first just northeast of the Snackbar outpost, plus a few more nearby. I've highlighted that in red in the screenshot above, but if you zoom in on your map while exploring, you'll notice little pink dots scattered about the surrounding zones. Those small markers should yield more thistle needles.

When you've got your sights set on a weed, use 'E' to pick up one thistle needle at a time. Once the bottom of the stem is picked clean, hop along the prickly leaves to climb higher and collect more needles. It's not a difficult chore, but it's tedious, so I wound up making a basket and filling it with thistle needles early on.

How to use thistle needles in Grounded 2

The Thistle weed in Grounded 2. It's a tall green plant with a pink bud at the top. Its leaves are spiky, and there are little needles running all the way down the stem. — (Image credit: Obsidian Entertainment, Eidos-Montréal)

After my early game collecting spree, I didn't run out of thistle needles often, but did use them quite a bit. For reference, you'll need the extra raw materials for quite a few crafts in Grounded 2:

Spike strips, used in The Art of War quest
Arrows, reusable ammo that's not always easy to find after taking a shot
The Nifty Needle, a trinket that adds extra bow damage

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Andrea has been covering games for nearly a decade, picking up bylines at IGN, USA Today, Fanbyte, and Destructoid before joining the PC Gamer team in 2025. She's got a soft spot for older RPGs and is willing to try just about anything with a lovey-dovey "I can fix them" romance element. Her weekly to-do always includes a bit of MMO time, endlessly achievement hunting and raiding in Final Fantasy 14. Outside of those staples, she's often got a few survival-crafting games on rotation and loves a good scare in co-op horror games.

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