Know what the cook is asking you to collect
Underkeep's opening cook wants five mushrooms, but two of the important discoveries involve more than spotting a cap on the ground. One is concealed by a crate, and another sits beyond a rock pile that needs the pickaxe interaction. This Underkeep mushroom quest walkthrough gives the full reported demo route and explains the choice waiting at the end.
The directions come from the Steam community's five-mushroom discussion, with the hand-in branches supported by narrated demo playthroughs. The official demo page describes a limited starting area and one dungeon, so these locations should not be treated as a verified full-release quest map.
Use right-click to collect items, as stated by the demo tutorial. Inspect your inventory after a pickup: seeing the mushroom in the scene is not the same as having collected it.
Find the two mushrooms in the forest
Community member Edelweiss provides the following outdoor locations:
- The opening fork: check to the left near the start, south of the resurrection statue.
- The merchant's glade: search the northwestern corner of the clearing where the trader is being harassed by rats.
The trader encounter is a useful landmark even if you already passed through the clearing. Revisit the corner rather than assuming that finishing the fight means you collected everything nearby. Narrated players repeatedly overlook ground items while watching the map instead of the main view.
Helping the trader also leads to a separate supplies-chest key in the narrated runs. Collect that key and any useful supplies before heading deeper, but do not confuse the trader's chest with the mushroom objective itself.
Follow the three dungeon locations
Inside the cave or mine, use the first purple worm area and the sunlit bush as orientation points. The community directions identify three mushrooms here:
| Location | Route reported by the player | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Sunlit bush | From the fork near the first purple worm, head north to the chamber with a bush lit by a sunbeam | Inspect the bush's square and collect the mushroom. |
| Crate room | From that chamber, continue east along the corridor to the crates and barrels | Attack the crates and check the revealed space. |
| Beyond rubble | Take the route south of the first purple worm area | Clear the blocking rock pile after obtaining the pickaxe. |
For the rubble, first visit the chamber containing the humanoid mushroom and collect the pickaxe. Leave it in your inventory, then left-click the rock pile. The thread specifically distinguishes that solution from attacking the blockage with weapons or trying to equip the tool.
If you are stuck at four mushrooms, the crate room and rubble route deserve another look. The discussion includes a player who thought the rockslide was scenery and another who had tried several interactions except left-clicking the pile. These are useful explanations for a missed mushroom, not evidence that the game has randomly failed to spawn one.
Check the five named locations before repeating the entire map. Two outdoors and three inside gives you a simple way to identify which part of the route still needs attention.
Choose between the cook and the mushroom family
This section contains demo-ending spoilers. The humanoid mushroom is not merely an obstacle on the way to the last collectible. Its dialogue identifies the small mushrooms as missing family members and asks you to return all five, creating an alternative to the cook's original request.
The two supported hand-in outcomes are:
- Return the mushrooms to the mushroom character. Splattercatgaming's narrated run follows this choice. A spore-filled sequence culminates in the party becoming mushroom people and reaches the demo's completion message.
- Bring the mushrooms back to the cook. Solo dungeoneer's narrated run gathers the five mushrooms, returns to the cook, and receives the quest reward before the recording concludes the demo.
If you want the mushroom-family outcome, leave that character alive and follow the return dialogue after collecting all five. You do not need to attack it to obtain the missing mushrooms: the player route above accounts for them elsewhere.
These recordings establish the two described demo branches, not an exhaustive count of every possible ending in the full game. They also do not establish that you must clear every optional chest or environmental secret before completing the mushroom task.
FAQ
Where are all five mushrooms?
Players report two in the forest—the opening fork and the merchant's glade—and three in the dungeon: the sunlit bush, the crate room, and the area beyond the rock pile.
Why am I stuck at four mushrooms?
Recheck the crate room and the route behind the rubble. One mushroom requires breaking a crate, and another requires carrying the pickaxe and left-clicking the blocking rock pile.
Do I have to kill the mushroom character?
No. The reported collection route does not require it, and narrated runs show returning the five mushrooms to that character as an alternative hand-in.
Who should receive the mushrooms?
That is the demo's choice. The cook provides the original reward branch, while returning the mushroom character's family leads to the transformation sequence described above.