Frostpunk 2 beginner tips: How to survive the next Whiteout

Here’s your basic survival crash course

11 bit Studios

You don’t have it easy as a player of Frostpunk 2: In your position as Steward, you’re in charge of a fledgling city in the middle of the apocalypse – a city with an ever-growing population and a low amount of natural fuel resources nearby. As if that wasn’t challenging enough by itself, you have to stop your people from killing each other because of ideological differences and listen to their – sometimes very dumb – opinions before enacting laws. 

Table of Contents

1. Frostpunk 2 tips: Recycling
2. Frostpunk 2 tips: Synergies
3. Frostpunk 2 tips: Surplus
4. Frostpunk 2 tips: Expeditions
5. Frostpunk 2 tips: Factions

It’s quite a challenge and you should be prepared to suffer setbacks and restart from time to time, because even the slightest mistake can snowball – heh, get it? – into certain doom, especially on the higher difficulty levels.

If you’re new to this dark, hardcore franchise, then our Frostpunk 2 beginner tips will have some valuable pointers for your first settlement.

Frostpunk 2 tips: Recycling

Survival is all about optimizing all your actions and doing the maximum amount of work possible with the little resources you have at your disposal. This makes recycling one of your best moves.

Ensure that you recycle all districts you longer longer need, such as any Extraction Districts that have emptied the resource deposits you built them on. You can do so by clicking the button next to the on/off-symbol – the one showing a little house with an x inside of it.

Use the button left of the on/off-symbol to recycle something. / 11 bit Studios

This will refund you a whole bunch of resources, free up Workforce, and create some space – something you should not underestimate.

Frostpunk 2 tips: Synergies

Placing your districts, you’ll quickly notice that building certain types next to each other have bad effects, while others have beneficial effects. Housing and Food Districts are a great combination, because they can help each other reduce their Heat Demand. Extraction and Industrial Districts blend together well for the same reason, so you should always plan your expansions with that in mind.

However, you should avoid placing Housing or Food Districts right next to Extraction or Industrial Districts. While they do benefit from the usual Heat Demand reduction, Housing Districts create additional Squalor, while Food Districts create additional Disease when placed near these types.

Another aspect to keep in mind are Hub buildings. Hubs increase the storage capacity of things like Food, Fuel, and Materials, but they have an additional effect when placed near specific types of buildings. Placing a Fuel Storage Hub next to an Extraction District mining Coal or Oil, to give one example, reduces the amount of Workforce needed to operate this district.

You’ll need more and more buildings to feed and fuel your city as the campaign goes on and the Workforce needed to run your economy sometimes just isn’t there – especially once you have to shift people to outposts and colonies. The efficiency modifiers from Hubs come in clutch, so get used to using them right from the start.

Frostpunk 2 tips: Surplus

You may think that simply stopping your resource flow from being negative is enough or that you don’t need to enlarge your storage capacity when you’ve hit the maximum, but that’s wrong – in Frostpunk 2, you need to aim for the highest resource surplus you can and store every little rock or piece of grain you can get your hands on.

Here’s why: During lower temperatures or Whiteouts, the consumption of Heat and Fuel will rise dramatically, while the production rate of everything is decreased – you will lose all resources at drastic speeds. You can save stuff for an inbound Whiteout for an entire year and then consume it all in the span of just three months.

Surviving such extreme events is much easier if you make it a rule to always build more storage whenever you hit a cap – it’ll pay dividends.

Frostpunk 2 tips: Expeditions

Building Logistics Districts at pre-determined spots on the map will supply you with Scout Teams and the opportunity to send these out into the world. Try zooming out from your town all the way and you’ll get to the world map, which is divided into different regions. You can start expeditions to explore these areas, uncovering various points of interest.

Some are camps with refugees you can invite into the city to grow your population, others are spots where you can build colonies. There are also events allowing you to collect vital Cores – materials used for Generator upgrades and other advanced buildings. Finally, there are spots that allow you to draw resources from them, either as a steady flow to supplement your income or in one big wave.

Look over your city's borders and expand. / 11 bit Studios

Engaging with the outside world is of crucial importance in Frostpunk 2, because your starting area won’t be able to sustain your growing city for very long, so we recommend building those Logistics Districts as a priority.

Frostpunk 2 tips: Factions

The factions appearing in your city will be different from playthrough to playthrough, which in turn makes some of the ideas and buildings you get access to different. We’d recommend using the faction overview to study what ideals and principles every group has and then going to the ideas tree to see what kinds of technologies these factions will unlock – that will make it easier for you to choose which faction to throw your lot in with.

In general, it’s advisable to strongly cultivate one of the majority factions and its extremist branch and keep a neutral standing with the other majority faction. One of the extremist groups is bound to hate you in any case.

Don’t forget to make use of the active abilities extremist factions give you if they like you – to give one example, the Stalwarts can provide you with free Guard Squads from time to time. They will come in handy in case you get the Frostpunk 2 Intruders event.

Each faction comes with its own beliefs and goals. / 11 bit Studios

Politics in Frostpunk 2 work on a quid pro quo basis, so you’ll have to make deals and negotiate – but be aware that breaking your word will cause further Tension and reduce Trust in you. Both of these metrics should be kept low (Tension) and high (Trust) respectively, as they are generally good indicators of how well you’re playing the political game.

Learn how to best resolve the Fire in the Shaft event in Frostpunk 2 or read our FP2 review for more on the game.