You're running through the Upper Yard, stamina bar blinking red, and suddenly a leggy silhouette twitches in the distance. It’s an Orb Weaver. Normally, you’d just prep a perfect block and move on, but lately, things in the backyard have been weird. If you’ve spent any time on the Grounded subreddits or the official Obsidian forums lately, you know exactly what I’m talking about. The Grounded 2 Orb Weaver buggy situation—referring to the persistent glitches in the sequel's expanded world—has become a genuine headache for base builders and hunters alike.
It’s frustrating.
One minute the spider is pathing toward you with that terrifying clacking sound, and the next, it’s vibrating into the soil or launching itself into low earth orbit. Obsidian Entertainment has always been pretty good about squashing bugs (the digital kind, anyway), but the complexity of the 2.0 systems has introduced some unintended physics interactions that make the Orb Weavers behave like they’ve had too many Berry Juice cocktails.
Why the Orb Weavers are Breaking Right Now
The core of the problem usually stems from the way Grounded handles creature "tethering" and navigation meshes. When the game calculates where an Orb Weaver can walk, it looks for flat surfaces. However, the sequel’s terrain is much more vertical. You’ve got more roots, more discarded human trash, and more complex rock formations. When an Orb Weaver tries to lunge at you near a piece of "clutter," the physics engine sometimes panics. It doesn't know if the spider should be on top of the rock or inside it.
So it chooses both.
This results in the spider clipping through the geometry. Honestly, it’s a bit of a nightmare if you’re trying to farm spider silk. You can’t hit what’s inside a rock. I’ve seen players lose entire sets of Tier 2 armor because they got pinned against a juice box by a spider that was technically invisible. The community calls it "jitter-pathing," and it’s mostly tied to how the AI handles obstacles in the environment.
The "Frozen" Glitch and Desync
Another layer to this Grounded 2 Orb Weaver buggy phenomenon is the multiplayer desync. If you’re hosting, the spider looks fine. To your friend? It’s a static statue sliding across the grass. This happens because the server (the host) isn't sending location updates fast enough to the clients. Since Orb Weavers have complex skeletal animations—all those legs moving independently—the data packet size is surprisingly large. If your ping spikes even a little, the spider's animation cycle breaks. It just floats. It’s creepy, honestly. It takes the "horror" out of the game and replaces it with pure technical annoyance.
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Real Ways to Fix a Glitched Spider
Look, you don't always have to restart your save. That’s the "nuclear option," and nobody wants to lose three hours of progress.
First, try the "Creature Reset" in the debug menu. Obsidian actually tucked this away for this exact reason. If you open your game settings and look for the "Game Repair" tab, there’s an option to reset creature locations. This won't delete the spiders. It just warps them back to their original spawn points. It’s a lifesaver when an Orb Weaver clips into your base foundations and starts destroying your chests from underneath the floorboards.
If that doesn't work, try kiting them to open ground.
Physics glitches happen most often near complex geometry. If you notice a spider acting "twitchy," back away into a flat patch of grass. Usually, once the spider's AI finds a "clean" navmesh, it’ll snap back into its proper state. You’ll see it shudder for a second, and then it’ll resume its normal attack patterns.
The Role of Render Distance
Sometimes the Grounded 2 Orb Weaver buggy behavior is actually a hardware bottleneck. If you're playing on an older console or a lower-end PC, the game struggles to calculate the physics for spiders that are far away. As you get closer, the game tries to "activate" the spider's full physics model all at once. This sudden transition causes the spider to pop into the air or fall through the map.
I’ve found that turning "View Distance" up—if your rig can handle it—actually makes the spiders more stable. It sounds counterintuitive, but letting the game process the spider's location earlier prevents that sudden "pop-in" physics explosion.
What This Means for Your Progression
You need those silk threads. You need the spider chunks for the Insect Axe. If the Orb Weavers are bugged, your progression stalls.
Some players have reported that "sleeping" in an in-game bed resets the local cell's entity states. It’s like a soft refresh for the backyard. If you find a specific area, like the hedge, is particularly buggy, go back to your lean-to and sleep through the night. When the world reloads in the morning, the entities usually behave themselves for a few hours.
Also, watch out for the "Web Trap" bug. Sometimes, an Orb Weaver will fire a web, and if it hits a piece of environmental debris, the web entity doesn't despawn. This creates a "permanent" slow zone that can eventually lag your game. If you see a bunch of old webs lying around that won't go away, you’re likely looking at a corrupted local cache.
Expert Tips for Dealing with Stuttering Spiders
- Avoid fighting near the Oak Tree roots. The roots have notoriously bad collision boxes that trap AI easily.
- Use ranged weapons. If a spider is clipping, don't go in for a melee kill. You'll likely get stuck in its hitbox. Use a Crow Crossbow and pick it off from a distance.
- Check your Save File size. If your save file is getting massive (over 20-30MB), the game engine starts to struggle with entity management. Try deleting old, unnecessary saves to see if it improves stability.
Obsidian is likely tracking these specific coordinates where the clipping happens. Every patch notes release usually includes a line about "improved creature navigation," which is dev-speak for "we stopped the spiders from teleporting through walls." Until the next big stability update, we just have to play around it.
Actionable Steps to Stabilize Your Game
If you are currently dealing with a buggy backyard, follow these steps in order. Don't skip straight to a fresh install.
- Trigger a Manual Save: Before you do anything, save. Paradoxically, the act of saving sometimes forces the game to recalculate entity positions.
- Use the "Fix Creature Locations" Tool: Access this via the Game Repair menu in the Pause screen. This is the most effective way to unstick a spider from a rock.
- Clear the Area: Move your character at least 150cm away from the bugged creature. This allows the game to "de-spawn" the active physics of that creature, which might reset it when you walk back.
- Verify Game Files: If you're on Steam or Xbox, run a file verification. Sometimes a corrupted texture or animation file for the Orb Weaver is what’s causing the crash or the glitch.
- Report the Coordinates: If a spider is always getting stuck in the exact same spot, take a screenshot of your map and send it to Obsidian's support. They need those specific coordinates to fix the navmesh holes.
Dealing with a Grounded 2 Orb Weaver buggy isn't fun, but it doesn't have to be a game-breaker. Stay out of the roots, keep your distance when the animations look janky, and make frequent use of the built-in repair tools. The backyard is dangerous enough without the spiders gaining the power of teleportation.