"Embrace the Frost" decision and Food

[Boney M]

Hello to everyone!

What to hear about the expirience of those players, who chose "Embrace the Frost" in the story mode.

How did you get enough food? I played slowly while I figured out the mechanics of the game. And eventually I've noticed that almost all spots of food (and, in fact, all other resources) are finite there. There is only one colony with infinite food and it produces only 300 food, while I need about 1200. So all others sources of the food expired and my cities started to starve.

Eating corpses looks like a radical idea. I started to play on the second difficulty and this difficulty shouldn't demand such actions.

Is there some solution or I just need to go faster through the missions in the story mode? But in this case gameplay feels weird. People went through many hardships, rebuild civilization and eventually died due to lack of food?

[ESPADA]

Turn those outposts into settlements and it will provide additional resources. That is the counter for the deep mining (defeating the frost). As I said, food will be an issue if you already explored all options. You need to rush to complete chapter 5 and yes embrace the frost is harder than defeating the frost.

[Boney M]

Originally posted by ESPADA:

Turn those outposts into settlements and it will provide infinite food. That is the counter for the deep mining (defeating the frost). As I said, food will be an issue if you already explored all options. You need to rush to complete chapter 5.

Sadly that I need to rush. I mean, how will these people live after I finish the game then? :D

And, as I see, the whale colony is the only outpost which produces the food that I can turn into a settlement. So eventually at the deep late you will have only this 300 infinite food production. And likely you will need much more

Meanwhile I found 3 outposts with iron. And I don't need so much of iron. While all food sources have run out, I still have about 6M of iron in those outposts.

Looks like something unbalanced

[BasicallyClueless]

Extraction stronghold does in fact boost it like Kiilgore said, but everything else seems to only give bonuses to the finite-resource extraction outposts. Once you transform it into a "settlement" to get infinite resources from it, all the bonuses go away. Yet the Extraction Stronghold law, which pertains to "outposts", still works on it?

So confusing.

[Atharian]

I also took embrace the frost path (I'm playing the game on GOG) and had the same problem even before chapter 5. In my case though I foolishly decided to dismantle the whale drill for steam cores early in the game, thinking surely there will be other "infinite" food sources somwhere. I even spared seal colony the second time. I only later realized how I f#%@ up myself when I had to somehow finish chapter 5 reconciliation attempt on week 900+ while having catastrophic starvation and no food anywhere (small food deposit in winterhome didn't help at all at this point). This really seems like an oversight on devs part, as you most likely don't expect the campaign to be a race against the time, or food should I say. It also doesn't make sense to me when I'm thinking about it - after I finished the game then what? The city and colonies finally had peace and then just starved to death I guess.

If I go for another playthrough I'll certainly be taking fight the frost decision because embrace the frost was, in the long run, disappointing.

[Ridesdragons]

honestly, I wouldn't really call the "embrace the frost" path the hard path. if anything, it's easier. a lot easier. adaptation laws and buildings are generally better than progress buildings, and while you bring up that the deep drill lets you access "200M" food, it does not let you access all of that at the same time. you have to mine it. with a single district. with only a single building slot (the other slot is dedicated to the drill). in other words, the whale farm not only lasts for actually forever, but it also provides more food per week. you would need to stack an obscene amount of efficiency bonuses in order for the deep drill to produce more, which is not typical play, and afaik requires a radical law to even be possible.

the general consensus is that colonies>>>>>>deep drills. it's not even close. you may eventually starve to death if you have too many people and take too long to beat the story, but you'll starve to death faster if you go the progress path. that said... 700 weeks is a long time. all of my campaign runs ended in the mid-500s, and I wasn't speedrunning (in fact, in my captain run, I was purposefully stalling because I was hoping to get automated workforce to make the plunger achievement possible without killing anyone - turns out you don't get that tech with evolvers/faithkeepers. oops!). the amount of food on the map is more than enough to finish the story. in my captain run (which was down the adaptation path), I still had most of the food outposts up, and I hardly even touched any of the food in new london.

[Airatome]

Originally posted by Ridesdragons:

honestly, I wouldn't really call the "embrace the frost" path the hard path. if anything, it's easier. a lot easier. adaptation laws and buildings are generally better than progress buildings, and while you bring up that the deep drill lets you access "200M" food, it does not let you access all of that at the same time. you have to mine it. with a single district. with only a single building slot (the other slot is dedicated to the drill). in other words, the whale farm not only lasts for actually forever, but it also provides more food per week. you would need to stack an obscene amount of efficiency bonuses in order for the deep drill to produce more, which is not typical play, and afaik requires a radical law to even be possible.

the general consensus is that colonies>>>>>>deep drills. it's not even close. you may eventually starve to death if you have too many people and take too long to beat the story, but you'll starve to death faster if you go the progress path. that said... 700 weeks is a long time. all of my campaign runs ended in the mid-500s, and I wasn't speedrunning (in fact, in my captain run, I was purposefully stalling because I was hoping to get automated workforce to make the plunger achievement possible without killing anyone - turns out you don't get that tech with evolvers/faithkeepers. oops!). the amount of food on the map is more than enough to finish the story. in my captain run (which was down the adaptation path), I still had most of the food outposts up, and I hardly even touched any of the food in new london.

Yeah I didn't have any food issues either and I was still learning the game during campaign mode. I did also go embrace the frost, went Adaptation, and had the Evolvers (which I think makes ANY mode EZ mode once you start pushing their "Perma boost to production efficiency citywide" button every several weeks). Found the whale colony pretty late but with three cities making me food and several
smaller food spots I had Frost teams harvesting at until they ran dry it was pretty much a non issue.

I think the fact that they were VERY slow on the uptake and branching out may have used enough of a catastrophic amount of food that they can't recover unless they do something drastic but....I don't know.
You seem to have had a very similar experience as I did and we were smooth sailing 🤷‍♂️

[Atharian]

I like to take my time in games :D But I agree that it took me too long to get to the end. I just find it wierd that you can actually run out of food if you play slowly and carefully, which wasn't the case in frostpunk 1. In the first game I never felt like I was on a "resource timer" as it was mostly about how many people you could put to work in hunting huts and hothouses to produce enough. Also automatons were great way to help with shortage of workers - I'm sad that they are now just a flavor text (1 automaton = 800 workers) and a moving decoration on the roads.

So I guess my food situation - that's on me for not playing the game the correct way or as the developers intended.

[Airatome]

Originally posted by Atharian:

I like to take my time in games

So I guess my food situation - that's on me for not playing the game the correct way or as the developers intended.

I wouldn't go so far as to say all THAT.
Like that you played wrong or incorrectly.

I think there's a learning curve, and you learned one of the lessons from it.

There are variables, but also things you might need to do if you continue to struggle with food.

Rip some cores out of some of the automa you find so that you can at least build one deep vein drill after researching it in the research tree progress side under the resources tab. This will let you put a drill into the food spot with an infinite sign and have almost endless food that will..at the very least..last you for the whole campaign.

Sign laws into effect after researching and discovering them that help your food requirements or control your population growth so you have less people to feed.

Expand out to sites that have food you cant hunt in the Frostlands and make sure they are activated and actively providing food.

At the whale colony, make sure you take the time to build it up into a site that provides limitless food. Then upgrade it AGAIN so that it provides the highest amount of food. This will require even more cores. Always take those from automatons you discover. Your work force can always grow infinitely. Your cores cannot.

There's another site that gives you the option to harvest them immediately.... or let them repopulate so that you can come back later for ANOTHER permanent source of food.

And if you can stabilize your food? Remove the drill from the food area and throw it somewhere else. Or build more but that might lean you more towards embracing progress over adaptation.

These are just a few things you can do but other variables happen. You'll get there! Adapt a little, learn a little, but playing tall and slow is absolutely viable....just keep everyone fed while you do so.

[醉仙望月]

Originally posted by Boney M:

Week 711. New London 51000, Dreadnought 7700, Winterhome 10500

The game assumes you can complete the story mode in about 700 weeks.
Any longer and you'll have to resort to extreme terms such as producing food from corpses to survive.

[SoloQ]

Not sure how accurate it is because I haven't tried it nor have I gotten far enough to need to utilize it. But, I read that buildings in districts don't use resources from nodes, they just generate it. So you can try food districts with hothouses in them.

[Roadie]

Originally posted by Atharian:

And after I finished the geme then what? The city and colonies finally had peace and then just starved to death I guess.

I find this really funny about the story mode, in a black comedy kind of way. No matter what you do, everyone is doomed because all the food sources in reach of New London WILL run out by week 800-900.

[Atharian]

Originally posted by Airatome:

Originally posted by Atharian:

I like to take my time in games

So I guess my food situation - that's on me for not playing the game the correct way or as the developers intended.

I wouldn't go so far as to say all THAT.
Like that you played wrong or incorrectly.

I think there's a learning curve, and you learned one of the lessons from it.

There are variables, but also things you might need to do if you continue to struggle with food.

Rip some cores out of some of the automa you find so that you can at least build one deep vein drill after researching it in the research tree progress side under the resources tab. This will let you put a drill into the food spot with an infinite sign and have almost endless food that will..at the very least..last you for the whole campaign.

Sign laws into effect after researching and discovering them that help your food requirements or control your population growth so you have less people to feed.

Expand out to sites that have food you cant hunt in the Frostlands and make sure they are activated and actively providing food.

At the whale colony, make sure you take the time to build it up into a site that provides limitless food. Then upgrade it AGAIN so that it provides the highest amount of food. This will require even more cores. Always take those from automatons you discover. Your work force can always grow infinitely. Your cores cannot.

There's another site that gives you the option to harvest them immediately.... or let them repopulate so that you can come back later for ANOTHER permanent source of food.

And if you can stabilize your food? Remove the drill from the food area and throw it somewhere else. Or build more but that might lean you more towards embracing progress over adaptation.

These are just a few things you can do but other variables happen. You'll get there! Adapt a little, learn a little, but playing tall and slow is absolutely viable....just keep everyone fed while you do so.

Thank you for all your advice :) I finished my story and one utopia builder run (I found utopia easier) and I think I'll have another story playthrough. This time with all experience I got - how to build efficiently, what research and laws to prioritize and with knowledge where things are on the frostland. I think I'll do better this time.

Originally posted by Roadie:

Originally posted by Atharian:

And after I finished the geme then what? The city and colonies finally had peace and then just starved to death I guess.

I find this really funny about the story mode, in a black comedy kind of way. No matter what you do, everyone is doomed because all the food sources in reach of New London WILL run out by week 800-900.

That's what was bugging me the whole time, especially near the end - not having factions rioting and killing people is great but what they are going to do after peace is achieved? There's still no more food in the area around New London. Most people will starve to death. When I'm thinking about it outside of gameplay reasons it doesn't make sense to me story wise, whether it was intended or not. Frostpunk 1 left me with hope that after all hardships the city will survive and thrive. Frostpunk 2 leaves me with: "Unless they can eat coal and drink oil the city will fall"

[HardNRG]

Originally posted by Roadie:

Originally posted by Atharian:

And after I finished the geme then what? The city and colonies finally had peace and then just starved to death I guess.

I find this really funny about the story mode, in a black comedy kind of way. No matter what you do, everyone is doomed because all the food sources in reach of New London WILL run out by week 800-900.

Panaceum factories create food, and food inspectorates decrease hunger, so when you are out of food, people require less of it and also they can conjure up food out of nothing, in exchange for some injuries.

[DopeDawg]

This "deep soil deposits" thing is dumb, they should be infinite. Ask any professional farmer or scientist you can grow crops on the same spot infinitely provided you use correct agricultural techniques.

[Ridesdragons]

Originally posted by DopeDawg:

This "deep soil deposits" thing is dumb, they should be infinite. Ask any professional farmer or scientist you can grow crops on the same spot infinitely provided you use correct agricultural techniques.

nah man, crop rotation is lost, ancient knowledge, we don't understand what phosphorus is anymore. but we can make hulking automatons? what's weird about that? anyway, brb, pouring my plants another lager so they grow big and strong before the next whiteout.