Overview
A Helpful guide, to help you get started on your arctic base.
The Scenario
For the most fun scenario, Select a Lost Tribe, this means you won’t have access to electricity, and therefor are limited to your wood, an extremely valuable commodity where you’re going!
For the map, i use the seed “kp88”,
That is the seed with the absolute coldest place i could find online, with an avg. temperature at -60,
but every map i’ve seen does atleast have a square where the temperature dips below avg. -40, This means that a cold winter night could scratch the -90s or less
To pick the perfect spot easier, i suggest using the Temperature mode, and look for the huge white areas within the blue, the brighter the white, the better. If using the same seed as me, there should be a huge white spot pretty much in the center of the northern edge.
This is what we want! and somewhere in it, is out sweet spot, it’ll be an avg. of -94.5 degrees in the winter, and the most extreme un-modded cold I’ve encountered. But any of those white tiles would do the trick.
Now, before we get started, be sure to specify that you’d like to start in the summer seasons (under Advanced Options). as pretty much any other season would make you freeze to death within the first 5 minutes.
The Beginnings.
Now that we’re all setup, and ready, let’s get fired up. Welcome to the arctic, and the severe cold!
first things first, We need to find shelter, not to sleep in, but simply to get warm again, and it needs to be done quickly, so anything that needs almost no wall, and some roof is perfect, Don’t pick too big of an area either! as it may take too long to heat up.
Something like this is perfect, Remember, you’re running on the hypothermia clock, so walling it off, and heating it up is your absolute first priority!
I suggest using double walls, with a tile of air between, just so you have a temperature buffer room, this room doesn’t need to be heated, and is usually somewhere between the outside, and inside temperature. but it helps you keep your heat inside, and the cold outside.
And do remember this, This is in the arctic, so outside is way below freezer temperature, so storing your food outside is just fine for now, Frozen food doesn’t spoil.
Here all build up, Only a single person suffers from hypothermia!, and both the fires are necesary, as one will only heat you up to about -10 degrees, while 2 keeps it nice and toasty at almost 30 degrees. do note, that winters, even if using this layout, needs more heating than summers.
The little growing zone outside won’t ever be growing anything before you get a sunlamp up and running, and this sunlamp needs electricity.
Since you can’t grow food, and the rations you started with is running out fast, you need to get food in other ways. Hunting, slaughtering your pets, and cannibalizing (yes, even your colonists are fair game!).
While figuring out how to get a steady stream of food, make sure atleast one colonist is assigned to full-time researching of Electricity. Growing stuff is soo much better up here in the cold!
Things to do while waiting for electricity:
Wall off your storage, and put vents on it, so things don’t deteriorate in it, and wild animals don’t eat your already scarce food, AND you keep it at outdoors temperatures, saving you all that power you’d otherwise need to keep it frozen.
Onwards
As you can probably tell, i didn’t make it that far, One of my fireplaces burned out, and i didn’t notice it, so the temperature dropped to -10 indoors, and everyone went ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ crazy over, and got hypothermia, and things just took a turn for the much worse.
But this section is for you who made it beyond my achievement!
If you manage to get electricity, your first priority should be to get a farm up and running, now, there’s not a lot of farming area, in fact, the only farming area there is, is the gravel between the mountains and the ice sheet.
Exactly where my growing zone is, This place needs, just like your interior, a double wall (with a single air tile between them), a sunlamp, and radiators, or other better heating sources than camp fires, as i’m sure your wood is almost non-existant at this point.
One radiator is not enough, it will, just like the fireplaces, not keep the place warm enough. in some of my earlier arctic games, Even 4 had troubles keeping the heat up during the winter days.
With all this done, you’re pretty much set for the rest of the game, and by this time you can start playing almost as if you had just landed in any other area.
Just do remember, that colonists without parkas shouldn’t be allowed outside during any other season than summer. as they’d just need to be rescued, Constantly.
Nice to knows.
Hostiles, and new colonists joining your colony usually packs the best suited clothing for the area, meaning Parkas, and Parkas are king, with them, you can work outside for ages, without them, you need to rescure your hunters every second second.
If you see a snow bunny, for the love of god! kill it! KILL IT NOW!, i let one run because it was cute, when the hunger really stroke, i had to resort to killing a polar bear instead.
Your pets, yes, those nice animals your colonists bonded to, did you know there’s food in them too? Slaughter them quickly, so they don’t just eat your scarce food, but contribute to the food supply.
3 more mouths to feed vs. 3 days more fed.
It’s only the rooms with entrances from the Cold Outside, or the freezer, that needs about twice the heating sources, than all ordinary rooms.
The way of walling, with an air buffer tile, works with freezers in deserts aswel, It is by far the best cheap & effective solution to divide extreme temperatures changes, that I know.
Parkas are pretty much the only useful clothing item. And Human Skin parkas can be made, So i’d advice against burrying humans, for more than just their meat.
If this guide lacks anything, feel free to comment!