The Grove: World 2
The Grove is the second world of The Great Paper Expansion. In World 1 you fold one sheet of paper until it reaches the edge of the universe. In the Grove you go back to where paper comes from: a forest. You hire a crew, fell and replant trees, build lumber camps, and turn wood into paper for the mill. The Grove keeps working while you're away, and as it grows it makes your World 1 climb stronger too.
How to get to the Grove
The Grove opens once your World 1 stack reaches the edge of the observable universe, at fold 102. From then on, open the world map (the 🗺️ button at the top of the game, or Settings → World map) and tap 🌲 Go to the Grove. To go back, open the world map from inside the Grove and tap Go to the Paper World, whenever you like.
Each world has its own save, and both are kept in the cloud with your account, so you can carry on from another device. While you're in the Grove, World 1 rests; when you return, it carries on from where you left it.
What you do in the Grove
The Grove is a top-down forest drawn as a living map. You can zoom out to see all your land at once, or zoom in close to watch single workers chop, carry and plant. Most of the game is run from the tabs along the bottom (or the side, on a computer):
- Orders: paper mill orders waiting to be filled.
- Crew: hire workers and choose their jobs.
- Build: lumber camps and the woodyard.
- Plant: which trees your planters put in the ground.
- Land: buy new squares of forest next to the land you own.
- Upgrades: tools, experts, growth ring perks and your field notes.
- Goals: daily tasks and award stars.
- Finds: your foragers, materials, rare finds and the wildlife journal.
- Ranks: the Grove's own leaderboards.
- Market: sell what your foragers bring home.
A red dot on a tab means there's something there worth a look.
Trees and land
You start with one square of forest, Home Woods, and a camp next to Mill Road, where the wood is delivered. The map is a grid of squares, and you can buy any square that touches land you already own. Each square has its own kind of forest and its own landscape: pine ridges, birch hollows, mixed woods, a sugarbush, wildflower meadows, rocky hillsides, mushroom glens, cranberry bogs, an old homestead with an apple orchard, a deep thicket, and in the far corners, ancient groves of giant redwoods.
Buying a new kind of forest for the first time unlocks a new tree to plant. The Grove has birch, eucalyptus, pine, spruce, aspen, maple, Douglas fir and the coast redwood. The Plant tab shows how long each one takes to grow; what else makes each tree different is yours to find out. Trees grow faster in summer and slowly in winter, and empty stumps next to standing trees sometimes sprout again on their own. Now and then a tree grows back golden, and it's worth a lot more than a normal one.
Wood comes in three kinds: strong (softwoods like pine), fine (hardwoods like birch) and fast (eucalyptus). Mill orders ask for different mixes of them.
Your crew
Workers are hired from the Crew tab, and each one does a job:
- Woodcutters fell trees and gather the wood.
- Haulers wheel cut wood back to camp.
- Planters replant the stumps.
- Foragers walk out to gathering spots for berries, mushrooms, sap, stone and more.
You can move workers between jobs at any time. Better tools (from the axe up to the chainsaw) make the whole crew faster. Experts can take jobs off your hands: a foreman who moves workers between jobs for you, a silviculturist who sets what gets planted, and a dispatcher who fills mill orders by themselves.
Workers earn stars too. Every growth ring, the busiest worker is named worker of the year and gets a star, and a star worker can be made the boss of a camp.
Camps and the woodyard
Each lumber camp is a home base for the workers around it. Building more camps lets your crew work new land without long walks, and camps can be moved for free or levelled up. Next to Mill Road is the woodyard, with a debarker, a chipper and a bark boiler: each one makes every load of wood you deliver worth more. A tree nursery gives new saplings a head start.
Paper mill orders
The paper mill sends orders for real paper products: newspaper, cardboard boxes, printer paper, book pages, tissue, paper towels, magazine paper and paper bags. Each order needs its own mix of wood. Filling one spends that wood and pays you back more than you put in. The first time you fill each kind of product, you get a field note about how it's really made.
Growth rings and the Heartwood
Every Grove year your forest grows a ring, just like a real tree, and the seasons turn from spring to winter on the map. Rings are also earned from daily tasks, award stars, the daily chest, spotting new animals and reading field notes.
Rings are spent on ring perks in the Heartwood, a tree cross-section you unlock from the outside in: the outer sapwood first, then the inner sapwood, the heartwood, and finally the pith at the very center. Each perk helps for good, from sharper tools and stronger backs to cheaper land and golden trees.
Foraging, rare finds and the Market
Foragers bring home materials from each landscape: chanterelles and morels, maple sap, wild honey and beeswax, fieldstone and flint, pine resin, birch bark, cranberries, old apples and more. Materials can be sold for cash in the Market, where a trader can also sell them for you.
Every item gathered and every tree felled has a small chance of turning up a rare find: an arrowhead, a freshwater pearl, a fern fossil, amber with a beetle inside, a meteorite, and some things far rarer than that. Finds are grouped into sets in the Finds tab. Each new find makes all your wood worth a little more, and finishing a set adds a bonus of its own. Cards you haven't found yet show as silhouettes.
Wildlife
The forest is full of animals, but you only see them when you zoom in and look. White-tailed deer graze in fresh clearings, moose wade through the bogs, black bears roam the ridges (and sleep through the winter), and bald eagles circle overhead. Some animals are rare and only stay for a few minutes, and a couple are very rare indeed. Tap an animal to spot it and learn a real fact about it. The first spot of each kind gives you a growth ring and a page in the wildlife journal.
Each landscape has its own landmark to discover too, from a sugar shack and an old red barn to a beaver pond, a fire lookout tower and a waterfall in the ancient grove.
How the Grove helps World 1
The two worlds are connected. Once you've been to the Grove, a green tree-globe, the Grove orbiter, appears in the sky of World 1. As your Grove levels up and fills more mill orders, it makes every World 1 orbiter work as if your stack were more folds deeper. Tap the Grove orbiter to see your bonus, or to jump straight to the Grove.
Your Grove level, shown at the top of the Grove screen, rises with all the wood you've ever earned there.
Coming back
The Grove is an idle game first. Your crew keeps working and your trees keep growing for a while after you close the game, and the Grove pays you for that time when you return. The world map shows a gold ring around the Grove as that time fills up. There are also maple seeds that drift across the screen now and then (golden ones are worth double), daily tasks with a chest for finishing all three, and nine tracks of award stars.
The Grove has its own leaderboards in the Ranks tab, for this week and for all time, so players who start later can still top the weekly board. To see every Grove added together (trees felled, animals spotted, rare finds and more), visit the Stats page.
Questions
How do I get to the Grove?
Reach the edge of the observable universe in World 1 (fold 102). Then open the world map (the 🗺️ button, or Settings → World map) and tap Go to the Grove. Your World 1 climb keeps its place while you're away and you can switch back at any time.
Do I lose my World 1 progress?
No. The Grove is a second world with its own save. World 1 waits exactly where you left it, and the Grove makes your World 1 orbiters stronger as it grows.
Does the Grove keep working while I'm away?
Yes. Your crew keeps working and your trees keep growing for a while after you leave, and the Grove pays you for that time when you come back.
Is it free?
Yes. The Grove is part of The Great Paper Expansion, free to play in your browser on a phone, tablet or computer, with no download.
New to the game? Start with How to play and the Game guide for World 1. Every World 1 achievement is listed on the Achievements page.