Frostpunk 2: 8 Beginner Tips

Frostpunk 2 plays very differently from the original climate-apocalypse city builder, but it remains an engrossing challenge where a single mistake can spiral out of control and cost your colony everything. Even if you're a veteran strategy gamer, there's a good chance that your first playthrough will end in defeat.

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Even though disaster is at the core of Frostpunk 2's gameplay, there are some tricks and strategies that you can use to help keep your proverbial head above water (or, in this case, snow). Give them a read before you start a new campaign - the people of New London's lives may depend on it.

Clump Districts Together For A Heating Bonus

This is bound to be a fundamental part of keeping the city alive as it grows, especially on higher difficulty settings; any District that has three of its tiles touching three tiles of a single adjacent district generates 20 Heat. This means you should plan your construction so that every District gets this bonus at least once, if possible.

A District can get the bonus multiple times, if you can align it with its neighbors properly, but it's harder than it sounds!

20 Heat might not sound like much in the grand scheme of things, but when you consider how many Districts you'll be building over the course of the game, it really adds up. Reducing your overall need for Heat means less fuel that the Generator needs to burn, which in turn means a greater Stockpile for when disasters like Whiteouts hit.

Stockpiles and other Hubs also provide a Workforce Bonus to nearby Districts, as long as they're of the appropriate type. Leave space for them to maximize your city's efficiency!

Be careful not to just clump Districts together willy-nilly, though; Housing Districts gain Disease and Squalor if they're too close to Industrial Districts, so keep them well apart from the city's smog-belching machines. A good idea is to keep Housing and Food on one side of the city, with Industry and Extraction on the other.

Raise Funds From Communities

One of the biggest checks on your growth will be the general scarcity of Heatstamps, New London's official currency. You get a tax income every week, but it rarely totals more than a few dozen Heatstamps - less if you aren't meeting the citizenry's demand for Goods. Construction costs, meanwhile, can run into the hundreds.

If you need to solve a problem quickly and can't wait for the money to come in on the city's regular income, the best thing to do is use the Raise Funds action on a Community. This will cause their opinion of you to fall slightly, so you should pick a Community that likes you; it wouldn't do to try and shake down a population that's already on the brink of rioting. You'll get a number of Heatstamps based on the number of citizens that belong to the chosen Community, so a large Community will contribute several hundred Heatstamps; enough to fund a major building initiative!

If you need to butter up a Community before asking them for money, use Grant Agenda first. They'll pick the next issue to vote on in the Council, but don't worry - you can always negotiate with other delegates to make sure the vote fails if you don't like what they choose.

Replace A Resource Before It's Depleted

Frostpunk 2 gives you plenty of warning when an Extraction District is starting to run low on resources. When you see the depletion meter appear, it's time to start looking for a new source of whatever that District is producing - once it runs out, it'll be time to tear down that District since it won't be accomplishing anything more.

You should aim to have the replacement district up and running - ideally at the same capacity as the original - before the original District's time to shut down arrives. That way there will be no interruption to the city's production, and maybe even a period of surplus where you can add to your reserves.

If you wait until a resource fully depletes before building a new District to produce it, you waited too long.

More Resource Nodes Means More Longevity, Not More Output

It's a good idea to build Extraction and Food Districts so that they cover multiple resource tiles, but not for the reason that you might think. While it's entirely fair to expect that doing so might cause the District to produce more of its resource per week, that's not the case; instead, the District will simply last much longer before becoming depleted.

For example, a Food District built over a single tile of Fertile Soil will produce Food at the same weekly rate as one built over three tiles, but the three-tile District will last three times as long because there are more resource to exploit. This means that if you have access to an infinite tile via a Deep Melting Drill, you should try to build its District so that it doesn't exploit any other tiles - it doesn't need them.

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Change Your Laws As Needed

Chances are that you'll often find yourself coming up just short of reaching a point where you feel comfortable with your city's overall stability. Maybe there aren't quite enough active workers, forcing you to make cuts in districts, or maybe there's a negligible shortage of Goods that isn't causing any actual problems (yet) but has you worried about the future. In cases like that, there's a good chance that enacting or changing a Law could be the fix you need.

Some Laws need to be researched in the Ideas tree before you can propose them in the Council.

This is especially true at the start of the game, when you don't have any Laws on the books and enacting one essentially gives you a bonus that you didn't have before. They can affect your Workforce, the needs of the citizenry, or even Heatstamp income. Later in the game, if a Law outlives its usefulness, feel free to change it!

Solve Problems Before They Happen

Your most successful runs in Frostpunk 2 will be the ones where you're able to anticipate problems and get ahead of them. Obviously this includes the big ones like having enough Food and Fuel stockpiled to wait out storms when they hit, but it also means being able to keep on top of smaller issues day-to-day.

For example, if you research a building that causes Disease to rise, your next research should probably be a Hospital or other healthcare-related Idea to counter it. The less time you have to spend putting out small fires, the more you'll be able to handle the big ones when they arrive.

Pick Your Cornerstones Early And Stick To Them

The city will ultimately pick three Cornerstones that form the basis of your post-apocalyptic society. Based on your decisions, Laws, Ideas, and buildings, you'll slowly align yourself on three axes:

• Progress versus Adaptation
• Equality versus Merit
• Tradition versus Reason

As tempting as it might be to hedge your bets and try to strike a balance, this is a bad idea. It's much better to choose which three Cornerstones you want to embrace and build around them.

Try picking Cornerstones that match the ideals of powerful Communities within your city.

Once the city aligns itself with a Cornerstone, any Ideas, Laws, and Buildings of the opposite Cornerstone will raise Tension as long as they continue to exist. That means that if you tried to split the difference you could find yourself on the brink of defeat out of nowhere.

Going all-in on Cornerstones does mean that some Communities will feel disenfranchised and will ultimately rebel; that's an intentional part of the game's design, so be ready to deal with the inevitable dissent.

Shortages Are Part Of The Game

Your city is going to experience hardships and shortages at several points throughout your playthrough. There's no getting around that fact, and it doesn't mean you're playing the game wrong. Don't worry too much if there's a sudden run on one or more of your stockpiles; what matters is how you solve the problem and get things back on track.

On the other hand, if your city finds itself in a period of prosperity - even for just a year - where everyone's needs are met and the reserves are filling up, that means you're doing exceptionally well. Just beware of complacency, because the next big challenge is always right around the corner in Frostpunk 2.

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