Quick guide to survive the first winter [SPOILER]

[Mr. Wiggles]

Ok, I saw quite a lot of people saying they find surviving winter difficult.
Starting with the "orphans" start, I managed to survive the first winter quite handily.
Ok, here's what I would do.

Embarking screen

Reroll your clan until they all have good or neutral traits.

Spend ALL the money you have, buy:
A) One ram, one sheep. You'll need them after the 2nd or 3rd year.
B) 2 or 3 Boars (they are cheaper than sows). Boars carry a lot of meat, we'll come back to that later.
C) Spend the rest of the money on cheap mushrooms and smoked meat. This way your folk won't need to waste time gathering food while they clean the area and build the first structures.

The first buildings

Start with the usual, gather branches, straws, stones...unlock ideas and clean the area where you plan to build your village. Remove trees, bushes, grass etc.
Build using straws, they are flammable but a lot cheper than everything else!. I found daub walls to be better early game, thanks to the vicinity of clay deposits to your starting position.

What buildings you need?
A) A granary, the space must be a 3×3 or even less. A door is not necessary. Walls and roof to keep the food dry. Place meat racks, baskets, grain pallets.
B) A Stable. Build it with enough room for your animals, one animal bed for each. It must be closed with a door and roof or the animals will feeeze. VERY IMPORTANT: build a haystack inside the stable and fill it with hay! This is very important because you probably will not be able to unlock a feeding trough for your animals. During winter when the animals are hungry just click on the hay stored in the haystack and it will drop on the ground so the animals can eat.
C) The home. One room 3×4 and one room 3×3. In the 3×4 room you will place the fireplace and a branch rack. Important: keep the fire away from your hay walls, set a flammable blocker stockpile around it and place a non-flammable floor around it. In the other room you will place the beds stightly packed. Build 1 vent between the rooms. This way the fire's light won't disturb your folk's sleep but their room will be heated.

Preparing for winter

If you already built everything you are almost done. Now you have two priorities, in this order: build a smoking rack, hunt rabbits for their pelts and meat, craft enough winter clothes for everyone, fill the haystack in your Stable with fresh hay, fill your stocks with branches (or dont if you have a carpentry, this way you can fell trees during winter amd turn them into fuel), gather mushrooms and dry them to fill your stock.
Your folk should not be doing anything else. Start with hunting rabbits for their pelts, cook their meat (it has 50% more calories than smoked meat) to keep a supply of 5 and smoke the rest. In this phase do not waste time with eels, the meat will be enough and you need to focus on the pelts. Place snares and craft bows for everyone.
Do not worry if you couldnt store enough food for 10+ days, but try to store enough for 5 days or so.

Winter

If you did everything in the list you should be able to comfortably survive winter. During winter you should focus on crafting more iron ingots, fell trees to convert them in branches for your fire (using the carpentry), hunt the few rabbits around if you want, unlock new ideas and keep building stuff. I would craft A LOT of bricks because I like them to build and clanfolks like the environment brick walls provide. Place a jugs storage near the fireplace, the jugs filled with snow will provide water if heated.

If your stable animals are hungry, drop one hay stack from the haystack.

Important: if you are running out of food...slaughter one boar. They will provide 60 meat (plenty) and raw hides. Cook some meat and smoke the rest. That's it, quite comfy.

[momochansam]

I did everything on the list to prepare for winter, but for some reason people just laid down on the ground outside. On winter night 2, everyone didn't even sleep in their beds and stayed outside. Eventually, they all got sick. There was no healthy person left to take care of the sick, so everyone died..

[dissent]

I have a different method.

Map and clan creation
At clan creation screen, I build a clan with six adults. I buy two ewes and a ram, which leaves me with about 100 coins to trade with. I also roll a map with one large mountain near two large-ish lakes.

Day progression
On day one, I build two of every implement (sickles, hoes, axes, picks, flutes) and then all the facilities (thresher, charcoal kiln, cooking fire, etc) to unlock techs. I build an eel trap in each lake, set one to 10 eels a day and the other to 15. That is my food sorted till winter. I ignore the sheep until late summer, more on that later. By sunset on day one, I should have laid down the blueprint for the Kiln, that is my benchmark that I've had a productive day. It doesn't need to be built, just the blueprint laid down.

On day two, the two ewes will get pregnant. I still ignore them, the animals can look after themselves in summer and most of fall. I build the Kiln and pump out 100 bricks, 50 each for the Bloomery and Smithy. I hit the mountain with a vengeance, hollowing out five 2x3 tile bedrooms - one for the patriarch/matriarch couple, one each for the other four clan members. Getting them inside and into a Private Room provides a MASSIVE boost to their mood and thus work productivity. I collect a lot of straw as well, rats only start spawning on day three afaik. The straw is needed to make Sleeping Mats, along with Straw Doors and Straw Windows for each bedroom. While hollowing out the mountain, I should also be removing lots of iron ore, which is used to pump out iron as soon as the Bloomery is built.

On day three, I finish the bedrooms and start hollowing out three 8x5 rooms in the mountain. One of these will be the gathering room which will contain the clan's bathtubs, water dipper, Kitchen, flute rack, jug pallets, branch pile, serving table, and a bed for a traveller. The second room will be my clothing operation which will eventually contain Tailor Bench, Wool Processing, Spinning Wheel, Loom, Textile Shelf, Wardrobe, Drying Rack, Hide Shelf, and a bed for a traveller. The third is a general production room, which will eventually contain the Bloomery, Smithy, TImbery, storage facilities, and a bed for a traveller. With my first iron ingots, I make the Timbery, produce some planks and then build the Smithy.

Once the Smithy is up, my first priority is to make some nails to enable bathtubs, water dippers and suchlike. Thereafter I get an Iron Pick. This is used for the Masonry. By this time, I will have a LOT of large rocks from hollowing out the mountain. These are turned into stone blocks which are used to make the Well. I start pumping out jugs at the Kiln. I also make some Shears, they will be needed on day nine of summer.

On day four, I get the Vacancy sign, Trader Post and Job Board up asap. This is the key to getting through winter. While I'm doing that, I systematically start moving things inside the mountain (Cooking Fire, Bloomery, etc) so that rain doesn't interrupt me.

On day five, the first traders and travellers start arriving. My priority is to get both the Mountain and Forest clans to two stars (250 reputation) asap. At two stars, the Mountain trader offers Clean Wool. At one star (100 rep), the Forest trader offers hides and at two stars, they offer fur clothing. These are key to surviving winter without hunting. I accept travellers and house them in the three 8x5 rooms. These are Huge Rooms, giving the traveller 3/s to Satisfaction while sleeping, as well as 4/s for being in a Private Room. So it's quite easy and common for a traveller to give 100 rep and 40 rent for the night. And I can accommodate three of them.

Early traders also often offer adult or senior animals for sale. I buy them, slaughter them, smoke the meat and use the hides to start crafting fur clothing.

On day nine of summer, all three of my sheep will be ready for shearing. I use the 150 wool they provide to start making wool clothing. Around this time, I also usually hollow out a small barn for them in the mountain. It doesn't have to be grand or warm, they won't make it to winter. Around day two of fall, the two ewes will give birth, usually producing three lambs between them. I will shear all three adults again on day 8 of fall, giving me more wool to make clothing from. Then I will slaughter everything - all three adults and the lambs who should now be Juveniles. They provide around 20-25 hides to make fur clothing and well over 100 meat to smoke or store.

Around mid-fall, I hollow out an area to make a cold room, put down two jug pallets and six full jugs on each pallet. They will freeze on the morning of day 9 of fall. By that point, the meat that I smoked earlier will be nearing decay so I immediately move it into the cold room to preserve it indefinitely. I also stop smoking meat at that point, instead storing the raw meat as it now keeps forever.

I roof the rooms inside the mountain with straw to eliminate the chilling effect of the mountain roof, then build two Stone Fireplaces inside the mountain - one to heat the five bedrooms, the other to heat the gathering room. All of these rooms are vented together. This is where the clan will spend the winter. One fire in each area makes things toasty warm.

On day nine of fall, I send the clan out en masse to do a bulk gathering of firewood, stripping every tree near the base for branches. I also build Fishing Spots in the two lakes. These will remain operative throughout winter, allowing me to take 3 fish per day from each.

By the time winter hits, the clan have all their facilities indoors. Each has a full set of Fur Cloak, Fur Tunic, Wool Shirt and Wool Hat. They have warm bedrooms and gathering room. They usually have more than 200 smoked and/or raw meat in the cold room pantry, and this is supplemented by 6 fish coming in every day from the fishing spots. They have a Well close to the mountain entrance and plenty of jug pallets inside.

I don't do any hunting (last playthrough I didn't even craft a bow) and collect no mushrooms. My clan eat hot, freshly cooked meat and fish during winter, not cold shriveled mushrooms. I could hunker down in winter and sit it out but the clan is so warm and well-equipped and comfortable that I put them to work instead. I don't want to stay in the mountain beyond the first winter. Instead, I want them to live in stone block family units next to the mountain. So I build that in winter. When spring arrives, they are ready to move into their plush new homes, find suitable spouses from the day workers, and grow the clan.

NB. I don't tend livestock, haul or process poop (everything is walled and private poop-holes, no toilets), produce fertilizer or farm at any stage. These are the most labour-intensive tasks for the clan. I skip them all. That is what frees me up to do so much iron mining and processing, as well as clothing production, prior to winter. It may seem like a lot to do but when you eliminate the labour-intensive stuff, it's a doddle. By mid-fall, my clan are usually sitting around on Free Time because everything is done and they're ready for winter. Twenty days is heaps of time to get prepared. So there is no rush.

[Lone Lycan (aka. Ippiki Ookami)]

Originally posted by momochansam:

I did everything on the list to prepare for winter, but for some reason people just laid down on the ground outside. On winter night 2, everyone didn't even sleep in their beds and stayed outside. Eventually, they all got sick. There was no healthy person left to take care of the sick, so everyone died..

if they fell over sideways, they won't move until someone takes the doctor task, walks out to them, picks them up, and carries them to an available bed (so make sure doctor tasks are always high on the list)

did you click the people and see what their current ailments are... it would help us determine what went wrong and help you with your next run through or possibly even a rewind on this run through (if you have an auto or timed save file early enough to resolve the issues before folks die)