Help with The Rifts

[Ghost of Razgriz]

Endless mode, Endurance. Every other map, i can beat on normal. Well, 'beat' as in getting a stable economy 2+ months and going. But with the Rifts, I've only managed by dropping needs down to easy. Day 16, just after the first storm, is the furthest I've gotten before most everybody was dead or frostbitten. It's the bridges that give me the most trouble. Just setting up a working economy takes most of the scattered resources, let alone getting to the coal deposits two isles over.

So, any tips or tricks for this map?

[Bobywan]

if you need coal, use coal thumper. For wood sawmil at first.
your first bridge should be for steel as the ressource is limited on your first area.

[amordron]

The only bridges you need or want is first to the steel work 2nd to wall drill spot rest you only add as you need space or for the lolz after.

Coal is from as bobby said thumpers or kilns. Use sawmill till you get to wall drill spot don’t bother with its upgrades just basic sawmill should tie you over till 2nd bridge.

Playing on buildiers in many ways are easier on this map due to having more resources esp cores on the starting Clift. You don’t bother making gen till after first two bridges and tech is stable if at all you never need the gen even in extreme to become stable.

[Eltia]

If you restart the map a few times, you will notice the distribution of resources aren't equally ideal: some maps have poorer location of resources than other.

You want a distribution in which you have early access to steel and coal. This way you can build bridges quick to other resources while preparing for the first storm.

[Tomato & Egg]

If playing on normal and endurance, then:
1. Like Bobywan and amordron said, the first bridge (if unlucky, the second bridge) should reach the iron ore deposit. Scouts cannot bring a steady suupply of coal and steel. Use sawmill and coal thumper. Failing to build a steelwork before the first storm to support research is suicidal and fatal even on normal level. Then get to the walldrill. That means resource should be conserved for at least 2 bridges before the 1st storm (400 wood and 300 steel). If overspending steel, pray that your scouts can find enough steel or be prepared to dig your own grave.

2. Industrial hothouses are preferred in the early stages. Steam cores are not that rare in rift, but steel and workers are. In fact there are around 10-15 steam cores in the rift map.

3. Sawdust is always a lifesaver. If in doubt, a stomach stuffed is always better than an empty stomach with only acid which generates tons of discontent.

4. Despite the shortage of steel, scouts should still be the 1st tech to be researched. Scouts can bring more resources than one can expect, and people come with scouts.

5. Steam hub is always better than the extended range of heat, particularly so in the rift map.

[Nono]

Hi and thank for the tips.

I gave up at day 40~50. Temperature went down to -70°C before the storm, and my generator was far from completion. At which day should I manage to build one ?

I found difficult to keep worker warm (and healthy), and keep enough ressources to make the generator.

One of my mistakes was to help and develop settlements : it costs too much ressources.
Bridges are expensives too : I have to build at least 3 of them for : iron, wall drill and coal mine.

[Bobywan]

Originally posted by Nono:

Hi and thank for the tips.

I gave up at day 40~50. Temperature went down to -70°C before the storm, and my generator was far from completion. At which day should I manage to build one ?

I found difficult to keep worker warm (and healthy), and keep enough ressources to make the generator.

One of my mistakes was to help and develop settlements : it costs too much ressources.
Bridges are expensives too : I have to build at least 3 of them for : iron, wall drill and coal mine.

Don't start building the gen before the first 2 storms, then 1 upgrade in between storms, 2 when close to day 40.
Keep making material for the generator during the storm to be ready when needed.
For sure, dont waste ressources you can't afford on settlements, just ask for ressources every 24h when favor is moderate.
Rush bunkhouses for workers before the first storm, faith kitchen can help for the workplaces.

[khumak]

For Endurance you need to prioritize building a bridge to the first steelworks site pretty soon or you will exhaust all of your steel and be unable to do anything. For builder mode there is enough steel in the ruins that I will usually build a bridge to a different island that has more than 150 steel laying around for gathering huts to extract before building the one to the steelworks site.

What I do for Endurance/Extreme on Rifts is immediately build 1 workshop and a couple of gathering huts and put the rest on wood for rest of the first workday. Pick Emergency Shift as your first law and start an emergency shift on your first workshop as soon as it completes. Start research on Sawmills no later than about 11am. That guarantees that you will complete research soon after the end of the work day on day 1 so you can have sawmills built and in use for the entire workday on day 2.

The night of day 1 you want to have 3-5 workshops, 3 sawmills, 1 medical post, and enough gathering huts built that all of your people have insulated worksites to work in on day 2. Since all of your people are homeless the first night you want 1 medical post so that 5 of them will be in treatment by morning.

The goal on day 2 is launch your first scout, build tents for everyone, and build a cookhouse to convert your raw food into rations the morning of day 3. I usually prefer to send 5 sick workers out as my first scout because I almost always have more than 5 sick people after that first night. When that scout returns to base I disband it so I can treat those sick people and send out a fresh scout without any sick people.

My research prioritizes wood, steel, food, and scouting initially only deviating to provide enough heat and/or coal to keep my medical and food production active as it gets colder. So I go for sawmills, then beacon, then beeline to more scouts, then faster scout sleds, then hothouse, then heaters, then steelworks, then steam steelworks. By this time some of my scouts have returned with sick survivors so I beeline for infirmaries and then continue down the tech tree to advanced steel works, the 3rd scout, and then boosted scout sleds. Only then do I start working towards coal production and heating options with the goal being to have enough heating and insulation available that nothing is colder than cold or maybe chilly during the first big storm.

If you're aggressive with scouting you should be able to find 2 locations with steam cores and enough survivors to get your city's total population to somewhere between 300-400 people before the first storm. That gives you plenty of man power to do anything you need to do.

For laws, the order I use is emergency shifts, extended shifts, corpse disposal, child labor, radical treatment, overcrowding. After that it doesn't really matter but I prefer the order path to the faith path for the superior production and dissent management. If you're doing a zero death play through you can skip corpse disposal unless you are just using it as a stepping stone to organ transplants.

The research plan above requires having a 24 hour shift active at all times on a workshop. If you're not doing that then you will need to make some sacrifices because your research speed will be significantly slower.

There is a bit of an exploit you can use to allow you to keep 24 hour shifts active without ever taking a death if you start the shift in the morning and immediately remove the people working on that workshop and assign them to a different one until later in the day. The scripted death that normally happens will trigger when nobody is working there (so nobody dies) so then you can reassign your engineers to the 24 hour shift workshop around 15:00 or so after the death would already have triggered. You can do this indefinitely but I will just go ahead and take my first death once I have corpse disposal. It's still a useful trick to use for about the first 3 days though. I prefer my scripted death not to be an engineer so when I decide to take that death I will usually do a shift on a sawmill or steelworks or something and then switch back to workshops again after I have taken a non engineer death.