If you haven’t played the first Frostpunk before and decided to start with the second one, you may have a lot of questions that are best answered. That’s why we decided to write a guide to the basic mechanics and partially touch on the new elements that were added in the second part.

Frostpunk 2 – Basic Mechanics Guide

Before you start to understand the mechanics of Frostpunk 2, you should remember one main truth – hunger, cold and devastation negatively affect the incidence of diseases of the population. This, in turn, leads to a decrease in the number of workers and slows down the growth of your settlement. These indicators also affect the tension in the city. All these factors have a complex relationship, and it is important to monitor them for the successful development of your settlement.

Content :

Interface and basic mechanics.
New mechanics: Community, attitude and trust.
Interacting with the community.
The Impact of Relationships on Management.
Construction, bonuses and ice picks.

Interface and basic mechanics

In this section of the guide, we will take a detailed look at the game indicators that determine the successful development of your settlement. Before you unpause the game, it is important to familiarize yourself with the interface, which may seem confusing at first glance.

Population (1): Key Indicator

Let’s start with the top left part of the screen, where the most important parameter is displayed – population. This is the most important indicator in the game, on which all other parameters depend. You will see that all aspects of the gameplay are tied to the population, and the mechanics of the game will be as simple as possible in this regard.

Population decline : This is a sign that something is wrong.
Population increase: Indicates that you are doing the right thing.

Labor force (2)

One important metric is the workforce. This is the number of people you can employ, calculated as a percentage of the total population . This metric can change depending on laws, events, and other factors.

Health of citizens (3)

Next to the workforce there is a section with information about the sick and injured. These are citizens who for one reason or another cannot participate in the work.

Scrap (4)

Next, the interface displays scrap – a resource that accumulates, and is actually money and is withdrawn in the form of taxes. Scrap can be used for a number of actions, such as:

Ice chopping.
Construction.
Other various actions.

Modules (5)

Modules are an advanced resource and are used to create various buildings.

Warmth (6)

Heat is a fundamental indicator that is produced using generators and using fuel.

Oil (7)

The adjacent tab will display the types of fuel currently available to you that can potentially be converted into heat.

Housing (8)

The next interface element is housing . Living space, together with heat, affects such an indicator as cold. Do not forget that population is a key aspect in the game.

Food (9)

Food is a vital resource for survival. When food is scarce, people become hungry and angry, which leads to illness and increases tension among citizens.

Materials (10)

The last important parameter in this section is materials. They are needed to maintain districts, buildings and their internal mechanisms. Materials are also used to produce modules and goods that your population will need later. Failure to meet the demand for materials can lead to districts deteriorating and will require restoration costs using expensive modules.

Devastation (11)

Now let’s talk about Devastation, which is also an important modifier, located in the same place as Famine. It has a negative effect on population growth, as it leads to diseases. The more people suffer from diseases, the less workers are available, which can significantly affect productivity.

Morbidity (12)

The more people you have sick, the more people will be out of work, which can potentially have a big impact on your production.

Hunger (13)

The Hunger modifier shows the presence of hunger in the city and the level of food demand.

Cold (14)

This modifier shows the needs for heat and shelter , as well as the level of need for them. As you may have noticed, the cold affects the incidence of diseases and thus slows down the population growth.

Time (15)

It does not need any comments, but we will just note that, unlike the first part, we are counting not in days, but in weeks.

Temperature and its forecasting (16)

Everything is quite simple here. Blue indication, there will be a colder season and accordingly more fuel will be needed for more heat. Warmer season, so you can relax. Snowstorm, the toughest period of time. Actually, our task will be to prepare for the snowstorm, having accumulated the necessary resources.

Conclusion

The most important parameter is the population, part of which is your workforce, pays you taxes , increases or decreases, depends on what your situation is, housing, food, heat, whether the population is starving, whether there are diseases, how cold it is, how things are with devastation and in general everything.

New Mechanics: Community, Attitude and Trust

Let’s look at one of the innovations of the second part of the game – interaction with communities. Your citizens are presented not just as a soulless mass, but as groups of individuals with common views and life experiences. At the initial stage of the game, you have access to one community – nomads, who make up one hundred percent of your society.

Interacting with the community

When you navigate to a specific community, you will see three tabs: special, services, and trust. These tabs allow you to interact with the community and manage its needs.

Decrees (1)

One of the options available is to issue an edict , such as tightening your belt. This action will reduce your food consumption, but it will also affect your hunger levels. This in turn can lead to disease and slow down your city’s growth.

Fundraising (2)

The next point is forcibly collecting money from the community. Although this increases your treasury, such actions worsen relations with citizens.

Improving Relationships (3)

To improve your relationship with the community, you can also offer them financial support. This will strengthen your power and help you create more positive connections with them.

The Impact of Relationships on Management

Communities and factions react differently to your actions in governing the city. The better the relationship with the community, the more supportive they will be. However, if the relationship is bad, your governance will cause discontent.

Note: It is important to remember that the sum of relations with all communities affects the overall level of trust in the city. Even if you cannot please everyone, try to maintain more supporters than enemies. Otherwise, the level of trust may fall to a critical level and you may be removed, which will lead to the end of the game.

Trust indicator

The trust indicator is located at the bottom of the screen. It determines the state of your relations with various communities and factions, which depend on your actions and the fulfillment of your promises. Also, the course of the city’s development – what you research, build, and implement into laws – affects the relations with communities.

Note: It is important to remember that illness and death of residents negatively affects your relations with communities and reduces the overall level of trust.

Construction, bonuses and ice axes

Here we will take a closer look at the last three interface elements, located in the lower right part of the screen. To do this, we unpause the game and move on to the important aspects related to the construction of large areas that will fulfill specific purposes.

Main types of districts (1)

When building, you need to keep in mind three types of areas:

Residential area.
Food district.
Mining area.

There is also a separate section of special buildings (2). During the tutorial, you will only have access to one special building – the food storage. Its purpose will become more obvious later. There is also a tool for cutting through ice in this region.

Activating the Basic Economy

At the moment, the area that is allowed for construction is not entirely clear. To see it, activate the base economy lens by pressing the “left alt” key. The light area displayed on the screen indicates the areas that are available for construction. Areas covered by the conditional grid are inaccessible.

Achieving the first goal: cutting through the ice (3)

To get to the first objective – cutting through the ice to get access to the oil cars – you need to use the ice picks. And you can activate the ice picks by pressing the “X” key. Now you can lay out routes to clear the ice in a certain area.

By directly routing to the construction van, you can extract resources from modules that are used for construction. When cutting through ice, you will have access to several hexes for processing, and you can place them at your discretion.

Resources and costs for ice axes

Keep in mind that ice picks are not cheap. To successfully operate them, you need to allocate 300 people and pay 30 local currency. By activating the lens, you will be able to see the location of your resources and compose a map to determine routes for further ice cutting to other resources.

We recommend starting right away by cutting another additional path to the food sources in this region. Now that the first step is done and two ice axes have started to break through to the necessary resources, you can start building residential areas, given the housing shortage, which will obviously require expansion.

Neighborhood of regions and bonuses

Another important point to consider is the proximity of regions. Some districts provide bonuses depending on their proximity to each other. For example, residential districts receive a bonus to heat if they are located next to a generator, such as a dreadnought.

When you start the building process, try to fill three slots at the generator to get a bonus. The remaining slots can be placed freely.

Eliminating the housing shortage

Now, if you look at the residential area, you will see that it provides 15 housing units. Given the shortfall of 47 units, you will need at least three residential areas to fill the gap.

To do this, you need to clear some more territory to install an additional residential area, which will be on the border with the dreadnought to get a bonus to heat.