Endless Frostpunk

This is a guide for how to deal with the Endless mode

Introduction

The Endless mode in Frostpunk is quite difficult. Speed is of the essence when playing this mode and this guide is written for a people who already knows the basics of Frostpunk and has played at least A New Home which is the main campaign of the game.

Before playing Endless mode I also recommend playing The Arks and The Refugees as these two scenarios helps refine your abilities in handling discontent and hope (the refugees) or automating your city (the arks), but this isn't essential to following this guide.

This guide isn't a walkthrough. I will not tell you exactly how to build your city to succeed and you might need both luck and experience even with this guide to pull off a sustainable city.

Basics

The Endless mode is like the name says: Endless. The mode has a storm mechanic which appears about every 15 days. The storm wipes your scout teams from the map and most often lowers the temperature with 20 degrees celsius.

You start the mode at 20 degrees celsius and with 80 citizens, ala 15 Children, 15 Engineers and 50 Workers. At the beginning of the mode it's important to be as quick as possible and waste as little time as possible since the storm comes in 15 days. In that amount of time you should at least be able to research up to level 2, get bunkbeds and the first generator upgrades. The temperature will briefly rise to -40 degrees before the first storm hits and then drop to -70 degrees when the storm hits. After the first storm the temerature will rise to -40 degrees again.

Mode strategy

Your biggest problem during this mode will consistently be manpower. You will almost always be understaffed so a good strategy is to try and research the factory as quickly as possible so you can manufacture your own automatons. You will not find automatons on the map but you will be able to find survivors and steam cores on the map so investing into scouts early and building the beacon should be your biggest priority. The survivors that you do find will be a mix between engineers, children and workers around 20 people and there should be 2 or 3 survivor groups on the map that you can find and they're generated in each of the 3 directions you can go in so choosing the right direction to go isn't very meaningful in that regard. Every time you expore a location on the map you'll find 1 or 2 new locations.

It's easier to find survivors and steam cores at the beginning of the game than during the late game because during the late game your scouts will have to travel further, taking up valuable time between storms. Steam cores also becomes rarer in the mid and late game. The storm will be displayed on your calendar and if it's less than 1½ days away you should return your scouts back to the base again or risk losing them to the storm.

Finding the early steam cores is very useful to your survival as it allows you to both build automatons and the more advanced buildings in the game. You will find around 2 - 3 steam cores if you do find them so they will always be relatively rare and they're usually around 3 - 4 locations away from your base, meaning at least 3 days of travel for your scouts.

You wont find any places where you can build outposts and that research option isn't even availible to you.

Laws strategy

Since your biggest concern during this mode is a chronic lack of manpower you'll have the greatest advantages from laws which increase your manpower pool or allows you to exploit your workers more.

Recommended picks are child labour laws and early emergency shift and extended shifts. You'll want to put your researchers in particular on emergency shift despite the risk of having early engineer deaths here because it's significantly easier to find steam cores and survivors in the before the first storm and it only becomes more difficult in the late game.

I would also recommend faith over order since the faith buildings don't need to be staffed, which allows you to benefit from them without having to invest your valuable workforce into them.

How you want to deal with the other laws is really up to your own discretion.

Resource strategy

The resources that are easily accessible to you is highly random in this mode. You might find that it's easy to get a wall drill or lack an easily accessible coal deposit. These are things you will have to deal with. The sawmill can last you far though depending on where the trees are generated.

You will probably need both a coal thumper and a coal mine. Coal mines saves you manpower and is easier to mount with automatons since you don't have to deal with gathering stations but the modifiers in the game can make steam core buildings highly inefficient. If you have bad luck you'll get a modifier that lowers your steam core buildings' output and your automation efficiency with 90%, each making it practically useless to exploit and this is the reason why you will need to diversify your economy. During the later parts of the game it would also be prudent to conserve your trees and exploit the wall drill so you always have some lumber to be used in these types of emergencies.

There's also a modifier that lowers the output of gathering posts and steam thumpers with 90% as well which means that you need to exploit coal mines to a greater degree. Considering the output that you can lose here if you rely on the thumper, it can be just as debilitating for your economy.

You can't rely on resources found on the map since you'll find very low amounts. Instead, make sure that your economy is diverse in order to thrive.

Summary

In order to thrive in Endless mode follow these 3 simple guidelines:

1) Explore the map early
2) Handle your manpower deficit
3) Diversify your extraction sources

Once you get past day 60 or so you can consider yourself in the late game and you should have all the tools to sustain yourself. If you've been diligent and scouted the map you should have a population around 200 at this point and a couple of automatons. If you reach this point, you have to decide whenever you want to keep playing to find all of the relics that this mode features. In my opinion, they aren't really worth it.

Good luck and I hope that this guide will be useful for you.

[V4D4RS F1ST]

no it is not, automatons require a working generator to fuel up so if you build one it works from 6-12 hours and then permanently shuts down until you build the generator. i know this because i made this exact mistake during my builders run so i ended up leaving the automaton for 32 days until i built my generator at day 47.

[RoflingRalph]

Is automaton strategy viable when you start without a working generator?

[OdstSpartan534]

i mainly use law and order and go with the new order

[Fax]

Solid tips. Thank you.

[Skill Brats]

i've played the rift in normal reach day 98 and i wanted to try the hard one, hope this guide help.

[Toddy-J]

I too am curious about the rifts, the need for 200 wood and 150 iron is a brutal cap when you need access to critical resources.

[trochia]

does this plan work with The Rifts as well?

[Squid]

thanks!