Overview
*Outdated bits may still work*Struggling with Frostpunk? Learning curve too steep?keep starving to death? Losing your fingers to the bitter cold?Look no further, ladies and gentlemenI am here to provide you with the know how and the how know to surviving the first few days with optimal efficiency!and heres a bonus. Its pretty much a 100% “Goodguy” route and works with all difficulties, and with some variation, all scenarios!So sit, back, relax, and follow along to success
The Optimal Start
So, you’ve bought Frostpunk, you’ve played a few times, but you just can’t adapt. What am i doing wrong, why are the people not doing things, WHY IS THAT AUTOMATON JUST STOOD THERE!?
Before we continue, i will link a video guide explaining more in depth and a few more parts if you wish to see the end result!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xIX-GXekxg
It’s important to note, this is a MEDIUM DIFFICULTY PLAYTHROUGH
Slight variation on this will allow you to achieve victory over Harder difficulties with ease, if there is enough call for it, i will make a HARD DIFFICULTY OPTIMAL GUIDE, otherwise, just play around and come up with something!
*Edit*
Here is a link to the hard optimal playthrough
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocSjRC2AnrE
The first few days are crucial to your economy. The more people to have, the more resources you get earlier, the more research and the more chance of survival.
TIPS & TRICKS
– Hunters huts work during nighttime hours, take advantage of this by removing workers from other areas before they clock off, and assign them to work another shift at the hunters house, there are no repercussions for this, so take advantage
– Micromanagement is so important for an Optimal start, take people off resources, notice that cooks are idle when you have no food, place them onto another resource. If you only have 1 sick citizen, remove some of your engineers, Always be wary of what is going on in your game and adapt to it.
– Build as much as you can DURING THE NIGHT this reduces idle time for your citizens as they don’t do anything after 20:00 (After extended shift)
– For the first 4 days (Before the temp drop), You do not need tents.
– You can flick the generator on and back off at 3am – 5am and suffer no backlash, saving on coal for the first 4 days
– Gather as much as you can from the gather spots with your unused workers/engineers before day 4, post day 4, any gathering will lead to Gravely ill –> Death (The infirmary is too costly of a research at this point
ORDER OF RESEARCH (feel free to make a variation on this, but this works for me)
– BEACON
– SAWMILL
– HEATERS
– STEAM HUBS
– HUNTERS’ GEAR
1. Day One
So, you start with 65 Citizens in a combination of Engineers and workers, workers being your unskilled workforce, and engineers being the skilled workforce (VALUABLE).
You want your ” BEACON ” up ASAP to get scouts to find more survivors
To start, do as follows.
PAUSE THE GAME
Open up the book of laws ASAP and sign the Emergency Shift Law, (Don’t use it, people will die at random times through using it
Build a workshop next to your generator in the first ring. This will enable quick building and getting your engineers researching as fast as possible.
Have 10 “idle” Engineers to build with optimum efficiency
Assign 2 x 15 people to steel
Assign 1 x 15 people to Wood
Assign 1 x 5 people to Wood
Assign 1 x 5 people to Coal
UNPAUSE THE GAME
Wait for your workshop to be built
Assign 5 x Engineers to Wood
Assign 5 x Engineers to Workshop
Research ” BEACON “
Stockpile 35 Steel
Remove all people from Steel
Place everyone from Steel to wood
The idea is to gather as much wood as you can as it fuels all early research and all resource buildings (except gather points)
2. Starting your scouting.
At the end of the first day, you should have successfully researched ” BEACON ”
You want to place it somewhere behind your workshop, so as to not obstruct the first circle of tents that you’ll eventually want to build
End of day one should look something similar to this.
Also, at this point you will want to research sawmill. This will enable you to gather a semi-reliable source of wood, with protection from the cold when the wood crate resource points deplete.
once your beacon is completed, take 5 workers off wood and you want to scout with them to the “Lost Expedition”
While they are scouting you’re going to want to prepare for the first night, a trick is to “generator flick” where you only use around 10 coal. Turn the generator on about 1am, turn it off about 3am, and that wil allow the heat to diminish but still keep your citizens warm during the night.
this is your ticket to gathering more important resources at the start of the game
3. Medicals and Extra people
So as day 2 starts, you’re going to want to build a ” MEDICAL BAY ” around the first ring of your generator, as it doesn’t provide its own heat and will not heal anyone during the cold of day 4
As soon as the cooldown is lifted, you’ll want to sign the ” EXTENDED SHIFT ” law and go through all your resource points and switch ” WORKING HOURS ” to 6:00 – 20:00 this will give you 4 hours worth of resources per day. DO NOT USE EMERGENCY SHIFT, it is too risky
So for the rest of the day, you just wait for the scouts to bring in your new survivors and wait for your ” SAWMILL ” research to be completed.
Once your ” SAWMILL ” is researched start to research ” HEATERS “, this will be useful for when the cold hits and you’re unable to work in the “cold” conditions, at risk of getting Ill.
By this point, your new survivors should be entering the city, assign them to steel and wood if you have any points left over and send your Scout out to look for more survivors
Do not send your scout to “STURDY SHELTER” yet, You have a chance at getting more survivors from places such as:
OBSERVATORY – Survivors
GLOOMY CAVE – Survivors + Risk of Losing Scouting party
The idea is to get as many survivors early on as possible so you can boslter your economy and put you in a good stead for the future
4. Food Production
So, by this point you’ll have covered Medics bays, have a large-ish, stockpile of wood, a steady flow off steel and a few people gathering coal for the 2 hours of generator time during the night.
Now its Food time. You’ll find that around the end of day 2 people will start to get hungry and you’re going to need to rectify this with a steady income of food
I find that building 1 ” COOK HOUSE” and 2 ” HUNTERS’ HUTS ” will be enough for a while, but you won’t be able to populate these buildings fully just yet, there are more important things to attend to.
Build these somewhere away from the inner ring, as you have heaters now and don’t need the inital ring to make these buildings workable during the colder weather
By the end of Day 2, you’ll want to have something that looks like this. Populate your ” COOKHOUSE ” ready for day 3, and when you run out of food, take them out, and place them on another resource, probably steel at this point
You can exploit the way the ” HUNTERS’ HUTS ” work by taking workers off a certain resource and placing them on the hunters’ huts during the night shift, and then replacing them back onto the resource they were working on during the day. This is micromanagment intensive, but if you want the optimal start, it is definitely worth the attention.
The Optimal Start – Continued
5. Housing and Temporary Coal production
So, we’re coming into day 3, and we’re going to want to be thinking about coal production for the coming cold weather, ” TENTS “and ” SAWMILLS “, this part gets a little dicy, but if you followed correctly you should be fine
To start off day 3, i’m going to build another ” MEDICAL “, as i noticed my sick is higher than what i wanted, 2 ” GATHERING POST’S ” and a ” SAWMILL ” on one of the frozen treelines.
once you’ve placed these buildings, you’re going to want to surround the remaining areas around your generator with tents, and build a small clump which is going to be reachable by a single steam hub, turn your generator on and keep it on for the rest of the game
By this point, your gathering points will start depleating so you need to re-assigning your workers/engineers to different points. ensuring you have some kind of wood income, and coal income, Steel will come later on as we enter the 2nd tier of research.
Before the cold hits, go around and remove all workers from the outlying resource points, you should have nearly gathered the wood/steel anyway, so it doesn’t matter. But keeping them on the resources will make them Ill due to it being a cold area.
when the cold finally hits you should be completely safe, have the infrastructure to feed and keep your people warm.
Build a 3rd medical bay, and a second workshop. Make sure all the survivors that your scouts are bringing in have jobs. 0 Unemployment is the goal and will ensure you have a strong economy.
From this point you’ll be able to play as you normally would, with emphasis on scouting, economy management, upgrading your resource buildings. Keep an eye out for the cold on the day timer, as you’ll need to upgrade your heating and insulation over time. But with this start, you should honestly be good till around day 20 without needing to worry about heating.
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That just about wraps up the start of the game, which i feel is what most people struggle with. Obviously you can tweak this guide to include things such as child labour for that extra bit of work force, but as you can see, it really isn’t necessary, and the long term benefits of having them work in the medical bays far outweighs that of the early eco boost. In my opinion
If you enjoyed this guide, please leave it a rating, a comment would be great too as it is my first in-depth “guide” with a youtube video to boot, if you want you can give that a watch too, and show your support if you found it helpful
Thanks alot guys