Mycelarium Beginner Guide - Mushrooms, Achievements

Getting started in Mycelarium is all about expanding your mycelium network, exploring the different soil layers, and discovering the special mushrooms hidden throughout the world. The more ground you cover, the more points you earn to unlock useful abilities and improve your growth.

If you’re starting your first session, I recommend focusing on exploration before worrying too much about achievements. Reaching the bottom of the soil early gives you access to an important water source, while expanding sideways makes it easier to search large areas for Magic Mushrooms.

This guide covers a useful early-game strategy, the five Magic Mushrooms, important ability upgrades, and achievement tips. Keep in mind that Magic Mushrooms and secrets may appear in different locations or orders between playthroughs.

Mycelarium Beginner Guide – Mushrooms, Achievements

Your first goal should be to expand your mycelium as far as possible. Instead of searching randomly, work on reaching the bottom of the map and then explore horizontally.

1. Dig Down to the Bottom

Start by expanding your mycelium network downward until you reach the deepest soil layer.

As your network covers more ground, you’ll earn points that can be spent in the ability tree. These upgrades help you:

Increase the range of your mycelium.
Reduce the water and food costs of growing new nodes.
Improve mycelium growth.
Access water sources and nutrients throughout the soil layers.

There is an infinite water source at the bottom of the map. Reaching it early makes further exploration much easier because you won’t have to worry as much about finding water.

2. Expand to the Left and Right

Once you’ve reached the bottom, start digging horizontally in both directions.

This gives you a much larger area to explore. You can use WASD camera movement to scan through the different soil depths while moving across the map.

Magic Mushrooms and secrets can be extremely far away from your starting position. The original guide author even encountered locations more than one million units along the mycelium network, so don’t expect to find everything close to the starting area.

3. Unlock Useful Mushroom Abilities

After finding four Magic Mushrooms, you may already have enough progress to start focusing on achievements and growing your own mushrooms.

The ability tree provides several useful options:

Decomposer Mushrooms: Help generate nutrients for your network.
Predator Mushrooms: Also provide nutrients and reduce the need to search for food.
Digger Mushrooms: Expand across surface areas efficiently and help pass through rock sections.
Defense Mushrooms: Scare away animals that might take your mushrooms.
Spore Mushrooms: Release spores that can spread and create new mushrooms.
Leaf Degradation: Allows your network to obtain resources from fallen leaves.
Worm Consumption: Provides another way to obtain nutrients.
Water Abilities: Help you obtain additional water.

For resource management, Decomposer and Predator Mushrooms are particularly useful once you’ve unlocked their related abilities.

4. Use Digger Mushrooms to Expand Faster

Digger Mushrooms are especially useful when you want to cover more surface area in less time.

They can also help you get through rock sections. According to the original guide, this is possible through the surface because Digger Mushrooms are fruiting-body mushrooms.

One thing to keep in mind is that fully upgrading their abilities can create a massive amount of mycelium growth. This may cause performance issues or lag in large networks.

All Magic Mushrooms in Mycelarium

There are five documented Magic Mushrooms, each providing a different benefit to your mycelium network.

The game has three soil layers:

Brown
Grey
Red

Grey and Red soil are harder for mycelium to grow through. You can improve your ability to expand through these layers by purchasing upgrades in the ability tree.

The exact locations of Magic Mushrooms may vary between playthroughs, so don’t rely on a fixed route.

1. Water Mushroom (Blue)

The Water Mushroom makes your mycelium grow in random directions from existing nodes.

This helps you cover more ground without having to expand in only one direction. It can be useful when exploring large sections of soil.

2. Light Mushroom (Yellow)

<badge color=”warning”>Yellow</badge>

The Light Mushroom provides two benefits:

Increases resource production by 50%.
Increases mycelium growth speed.

This is a useful discovery if you want to expand your network more quickly while improving resource production.

3. Cosmos Mushroom (Purple)

<badge color=”discovery”>Purple</badge>

The Cosmos Mushroom makes your mycelium glow.

You can turn the glowing effect on or off by pressing F.

4. Flora Mushroom (Green)

<badge color=”success”>Green</badge>

The Flora Mushroom reduces the cost of mycelium growth by 25%.

This makes expanding your network less expensive and helps you save resources as you explore.

5. Fauna Mushroom (Red)

The Fauna Mushroom permanently scares away squirrels.

This can be especially helpful in Survival Mode, where protecting your mushrooms from animals is important.

How to Find Magic Mushrooms

There isn’t a confirmed fixed order for finding the five Magic Mushrooms. They may appear in different locations and potentially in different soil layers.

The best approach is to:

Reach the bottom of the map to access the infinite water source.
Expand as far as possible to the left and right.
Use camera movement to inspect the different soil layers.
Upgrade your mycelium range and growth abilities.
Continue exploring areas that your network hasn’t reached yet.

Don’t assume that a Magic Mushroom will always appear in the same place as it did during another playthrough.

Achievement Guide and Tips

Some achievements are connected to exploration and discovering hidden secrets, while others require you to unlock specific mushroom abilities.

Secret Achievements

There are two secret discoveries mentioned in the original guide:

Find a T-Rex Skeleton: Explore the world until you discover the T-Rex skeleton.
Find an UFO: Search the map for the hidden UFO.

The guide doesn’t provide exact coordinates for either discovery, so you’ll need to explore the soil to find them.

How to Scare Away Animals

Unlock the Defense Mushroom through the ability tree. This mushroom resembles a real-life puffball and can help protect your mushrooms from animals.

You can also use Stink Mushrooms to deter crows and squirrels.

Use Spore Mushrooms on Animals

You can click on Spore Mushrooms to release spores while they are on an animal’s back.

This is a useful interaction to know about when working toward mushroom-related achievements.

The Great Migration

For this achievement, you need to place 100 Spore Mushrooms.

Unlock the necessary mushroom abilities and keep placing Spore Mushrooms until you reach the required total.

Mycelium Conquers the World

The original guide mentions this achievement but doesn’t provide a confirmed unlock method or additional requirements. Further testing is needed to explain exactly what you must do.

Tips for Managing Your Mycelium Network

Here are a few useful things to keep in mind during longer playthroughs:

Prioritize reaching the bottom early to access the infinite water source.
Expand horizontally after reaching the bottom to make exploration easier.
Upgrade range and resource efficiency before spending too many points elsewhere.
Use Decomposer and Predator Mushrooms to improve nutrient production.
Use Digger Mushrooms to expand across surface areas and deal with rock sections.
Unlock Defense Mushrooms if animals are stealing your mushrooms.
Avoid fully maximizing every Digger Mushroom ability too early if your game starts experiencing performance issues.

Mycelarium becomes much easier to manage once you understand how to expand your network and use the different mushroom abilities. Reaching the bottom early, securing the infinite water source, and exploring horizontally is a solid strategy for your first playthrough.

The five Magic Mushrooms also provide useful bonuses, from faster growth and better resource production to lower expansion costs and protection from squirrels.

There is still more to discover, especially when it comes to the exact locations of secrets and some achievement requirements. Since these discoveries may vary between playthroughs, treat exploration as part of the experience rather than relying entirely on fixed coordinates.