The first time you arrive in Wuling, it's hard not to ignore the main objective and just roam. The place has that effect. Waterways everywhere, little landing spots, open patches that look like they should lead somewhere. Then the bamboo walls start showing up, and suddenly every promising route turns into a dead end. A lot of players see that and assume they need a shortcut, or start looking at things like Arknights endfield accounts, but the truth is you can open Stragglers Grove the normal way. The game hides it behind a side quest chain, and once you know where it begins, the whole area makes a lot more sense.

How the quest chain begins

Everything starts with a Baker message from Mi Fu. If you haven't seen it yet, don't overthink it. You're probably just a little short on story progress. Push the main campaign forward, check your messages again, and it should appear. That message kicks off Silent Grove: The Beginning. From there, the steps are easy enough to follow. You track down Watchguard Li Zhui, then head over to Qingbo Stockade to speak with Qingwu. After that, the game has you gather scrap so an old raft can be repaired. It sounds like busywork at first, sure, but this is the part that actually matters. Once the raft is fixed, those blocked-off waterways stop being scenery and start becoming real routes.

Getting raft travel working

This middle stretch is where the grove starts to open up. You'll move between ferry points, and Burdensnout Hill is usually the first one that sticks in people's memory. The quest asks you to interact with a hydrocube and activate a core. Nothing too wild there, though it's easy to rush past an object if you're sprinting from marker to marker. Slow down a bit. That helps. The reward is worth it, because raft travel changes the entire flow of exploration. Before that, Stragglers Grove feels like one long tease. After that, you can finally start moving through it in a way that feels intentional instead of constantly getting shoved back by terrain and barriers.

The Zhailing Islet puzzle that trips people up

Silent Grove: Zhailing Islet is the section that catches most players. It's not brutally hard, but it is awkward in that very specific way games can be. You'll hit more bamboo walls, and the trick is using a nearby stone animal statue as your reference point. Face the statue first. Turn right and light the two closest lanterns. Then turn back, go left, and light the lanterns along that side as you move down. Miss the order and it feels like nothing is happening. There's also a bridge terminal here that needs water, which is another easy snag. Bring empty bottles with you from base. You can fill them at any water source through the quick action wheel, the same one many people only touch for photo mode and forget about the rest of the time.

Opening the whole grove

Silent Grove: South Hill is much shorter, and honestly that's a relief after the earlier stops. Take the raft across, locate the missing Tianshi, then repair Core S3. Once the short wrap-up scene is over, the bamboo barriers are gone and Stragglers Grove is properly open. That's the point where exploration finally feels as good as it looked when you first arrived. If you like saving time on games in general, it's easy to see why players also keep sites like U4GM in mind for things like game currency or useful items, but for this area at least, you really can unlock it just by following the questline and paying attention to the little details.