Can a clan use a cave to survive their 1st winter?

[LaughingHen]

wondering if i carve out a cave in a mountain, can my wee folks hunker down inside to make it through the first winter?
do caves get too cold/hard to heat in the winter? anyone tried that yet?

i keep failing and my folks either freeze or starve before winter ends. i just cant seem to get enough food/water/wood stored up AND have a warm house (with a roof) made before end of fall. I'm driving myself crazy here... any suggestions?

[Philtre]

You can live in a cave, but the natural cave roof will cause the rooms to be significantly colder, so unless you replace the roof you will need more fires to heat living areas (including barns, if you build one in a cave), and more fuel to keep them burning. However, caves are fine for storing anything that doesn't need to be kept warm, and positively beneficial for storing anything that needs to be kept cool (like food).

For heating, I would suggest the peat stove (requires tiles, bricks, and dry peat); peat is easy to harvest in quantity and it lets you save your branches for cooking, plus it is the most space- and labor-efficient heat source. For low-tech, durable winter food, you can harvest wild oats and make them into brose on the peat stove (requires clay bowls and oat grain), and gather mushrooms and dry them. You can also buy all kinds of food from traders, so build the "trading post" sign (put it in a warm room so they don't get unhappy while waiting for you to interact with them)

You don't actually need to store water as long as you make a few jugs; your people can fill empty jugs with ice from the lakes (at the drink zone), and you can order them to melt the ice to create water at the cooking fire / stone fireplace / kitchen (but not peat stove). Just either keep an eye on the situation to prevent all your jugs being filled with ice: order the ice jugs melted whenever they make one, or have a fire dedicated to melting ice on "repeat build queue" setting. Once you get further into the tech tree, you can make a well, which works year-round and doesn't require micromanagement.

[LaughingHen]

Philtre you're awesome :) thanks for this