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Gathering the right amount of food and resources in Frostpunk is tricky. That’s why you always have to follow the needs of your citizens. You also need to be forward thinking, as you will have to research new stuff and place buildings often.
How can you acquire Frostpunk resources?
You just need to click on them, and then you have to assign workers. The way the system works here is simple. You don’t have to build anything on them as you would in strategy games. Assigning workers on any resource pile will be the right way to start this process. However, the piles get depleted in a few days, which means you will constantly have to find new resources all the time.
What can you do to ensure colony survival?
The focus here has to be on creating a workshop at first. Once you have the workshop running, you need to unlock buildings that give you immediate access to resources. You need to be very careful where you place these buildings because each one of them will give a certain amount of resources. Some of them will share more than others, so you do need to take that into account if you can. There’s no need to find new piles, as you can get plenty of resources after you create multiple buildings.
Coal
Coal is a crucial resource here because you will use it as the means to power your reactor. You will notice that the reactor has a certain coal requirement per hour. The thing to keep in mind is that you are unable to gather coal nonstop, and as a result, you need a higher coal intake per day to run the reactor day and night if you want to. So you shouldn’t expand too much unless you can acquire enough coal per each day.
How to Get Coal
Coal is the very first resource you’ll need to get your hands on in Frostpunk. It’s essential for turning on the generator, which provides heating to your entire city and keeps them alive. If the generator is shut down, it’s only a matter of time before your city is wiped out. Because of this, you’ll want to make sure that you have a good stockpile of coal.
Thankfully, when you’re first starting out in Frostpunk, it’s pretty easy to obtain. Before doing anything else, look around the area for stone piles. Click on them, and if they’re identified as coal piles, you can assign workers to the pile to start mining them. You can assign up to 15 workers to work on a pile, and this will allow you to be more efficient. We recommend doing this, as the working hours are from 0800 to 1800, so you want to make the most of these hours in the day.
Once you have coal, you’ll be able to power up the generator. The deposits will eventually run out, but you can find other mining areas around you, and set up mining stations to farm for them in the future. Construct a workshop to access the technology tree, and you’ll be able to research coal thumpers and mining stations. The thumpers produce coal piles for you to dig up, while the stations need to be built on top of coal deposits.
Wood
You will need wood if you want to create buildings. Wood can also be used for research too. But you will need to gather as much wood as possible in the beginning, as you are unable to expand if you don’t do that. Then you have to unlock a sawmill as it will make wood production a lot better. You can always store the excess wood in the gathering post or resource depot. Thankfully, you can always destroy a building to gain the necessary wood from it. That can be one incredible experience when you lack wood, and you can’t find the right amount you need for expanding. But you have to be very careful, as you need to avoid destroying buildings that you may end up needing shortly.
How to Get Wood
Frostpunk is all about staying alive for as long as you can in some really harsh winter. Making sure you’ve stockpiled adequate amounts of supplies is a huge part of that. Wood, steel, and coal are vital, but how do you come across some of them? Here’s a guide for wood!
So, to start, you’ll always have random patches (or deposits) of resources. Wood crates will be what you’re really looking for when you first start any scenario. You can send workers over to them and collect all that they supply, but keep in mind that they’re only meant to be temporary.
The true jackpot will be with Sawmills. You’ll need to research the technology under the Resources tree, but once you do, you can go ahead and build a sawmill near frozen trees to automatically harvest them. Keep in mind, though, that you need to build it near the trees, and they need to fall within the circle around the building. Once that’s all depleted, you need to salvage it and build another to get some more. Rinse and repeat as much as you need.
Another way to get wood is by sending an expedition out and coming across it. This can happen randomly or you can actively chase locations that sound like they have a lot of trees.
Steel
You may not feel that steel is needed in the beginning, but it’s still important to extract some if you can. However, the more you grow your city and research, you will notice that this is a vital resource that you have to use often. Make sure that you mine some constantly, and the more you expand, the more you will need.
How to Get Steel
Coal might be how you keep the heat going in your Frostpunk civilization, but steel is how you’ll build a lot of crucial buildings. It’s easy to overlook its importance because you’re going to be clamoring for coal a lot, but don’t sleep on steel! Here’s how to get it within the game.
First, when you start any scenario, you’ll have your pickings of coal, wood, and steel that you can simply click on and send workers on over to get. You could also build a Gathering Post and workers from there will grab all nearby deposits. These will eventually deplete, though, so keep that in mind. They’re only meant to get you started.
The real meat for this resource will be from Steelworks. If you’re able to upgrade them through technology to make them the Steam Steelworks, you’ll be even better off.
Another way that’s a lot less secure is of course by sending an expedition out and striking some steel. The name of the location usually makes it obvious you’re about to uncover some. If it sounds like it’s a wreck of some machinery, you’re likely to run into steel.
Food
You can’t keep your citizens alive if you don’t have food. You can get food from hunters, as they go outside the city to hunt. But they can deliver only 15 units of food per day. Also, each hunter needs to rest before he goes hunting again. You may find a single hunter hut okay in the beginning, but as you expand that will not be enough. That’s why you have to adapt this the best way that you can, with more hunter huts being necessary as you grow your city. Remember that you also need a kitchen to prepare your food, as you can’t share raw food to your citizens. You can also gather food via the Soup or Care House law.
How to Get Food
Food is one of the most important resources you need to manage in Frostpunk. With it, you can raise your city’s Hope meter and keep your people happy. Without it, your people will start starving and dying, and this could raise the Discontent meter instead. Simply put, you’ll want to make sure you’ve got a good source of food coming in at all times.
At the start of Frostpunk, you should have some raw food units and rations to sustain you for a while, at least until you get the generator up and running. After that, feeding your people should be your main priority. The game will prompt you with tutorials on how to keep a steady source, but just in case you need some more guidance, we’re here to help. Go to your construction menu and click on the Food tab. From here, you can construct a few different kinds of buildings. The hunter hut allows you to assign workers to serve as the city hunters, and they can bring back raw food units.
That should be the first thing you build. After that, you can build a cook house (remember to assign workers to these as well), and you’ll be able to convert the raw grub into much more efficient units to feed your people with. A hot house is used to produce raw food units. Unlike the hunter hut, a hot house is active during the day at regular work hours.