As a commander of a city in a frozen apocalypse, your mission in Frostpunk 2 isn’t just survival. It is to make sure that your population isn’t constantly falling sick. While keeping the generator running and maintaining warmth is necessary it is only part of the equation. Hunger, Work Fatigue, and Diseases can quickly erode your people’s well-being.
This guide will break down every problem you might face in Frostpunk 2 to ensure that you don’t make the same mistakes we made on our first run. We will also try to provide smart and actionable solutions that will ensure that you people are healthy and thriving in this Ice Age.
Frostpunk 2 All Problems and How to Solve Them
Keeping your people healthy in Frostpunk 2 is mainly about making sure that all of the five major problems are under control. You can monitor the current level of all of these problems at the top of your screen.
These problems include:
If you can understand the factors that contribute to each of these problems and take the necessary steps to avoid them, you will easily be able to maintain a healthy lifestyle for the people of New London. Let’s take a deeper dive and understand what each problem is, how it is caused, and how to avoid it.
Hunger
Food is the most basic necessity for humans to thrive. You can go without some other amenities but you cannot live without having food for an extended period of time. Hunger is simply having less food than the population requires. It is also one of the main reasons for illness in people in Frostpunk 2.
Problems Caused
Hunger gives rise to multiple other problems such as Diseases and Tension. The malnourished population is more prone to diseases and productivity also takes a huge dip. Everything will take longer than anticipated and eventually, people will start to die.
Your population growth will also take a hit and the workforce required for the city to run will slowly start to decrease. The tension meter will also rise and the citizens will lose Trust in you. If you don’t pick up the pace and provide a steady supply of food, you will be stripped of your title as the leader and the game will be over.
Solution
Here are some tips that you can follow to keep Hunger in check:
- Build more food districts in Food Supply locations. Every food district outputs 50 units of food and if you upgrade the district, the output will increase to 60.
- If you look in the Resources Section of the Idea Tree, you will see the option to unlock Hothouses and Advanced Hothouses. Once unlocked, you can build them in any Food District and they will also increase your food output.
- At the very start of the journey, invest heavily in maintaining a steady stream of food and try to always have a surplus in case there is a whiteout.
Cold
Cold is going to be your primary enemy in all of Frostpunk 2. Almost everything you do will eventually whittle down to providing your people with enough heat that they don’t freeze to death. It is also the primary reason for illness and diseases. If you want to keep your people healthy you have to take control of the weather.
Problems Caused
Cold gives rise to a horde of problems in Frostpunk 2. At the top of your HUD, you should see the City’s heat requirement and if you are in the red that means you are not producing enough heat to keep the population warm.
The first thing it causes is disease. People when left out in the cold for too long will start to get sick. This will lead to reduced productivity which in turn will lead to the overall rise in Tension. You will lose citizen’s trust and all hell will break lose.
Disease is only the first stop. If you don’t harness the Cold quickly enough, people will start to die and you will be left with a declining population. That will open a whole other can of worms.
Solution
You might be wondering, how does one harness the cold? You can’t really take control of the wind (unless you are the last Airbender). What you can do is take the following steps:
- Expand and build new Housing Districts. If people have a roof over their heads, this solves half of your problem. A person is more prone to freezing if they are out in the cold but having housing will significantly decrease your chances of illness.
- Research new ideas. If you haven’t already explored the Idea Tree, you will see that there are certain nodes that if unlocked will improve efficiency and bring down the city’s heat requirement. You can find these ideas under the “Heating” tab.
- Upgrade your generator. In this blizzard-encased world, your only savior is the Generator which is providing all the heat to New London. If the generator goes down, it won’t take long for everything to turn to ice. You can also find these upgrades in the Idea Tree.
- Shutdown loss-making districts. If you haven’t noticed, every district you build requires additional heatstamps. You can either shutdown the district entirely if you are on the verge of whiteout or you can also decrease the workforce by clicking on the districts and bringing down the workforce slider. Your output might take a hit but this is temporary until you figure out what to do about the cold.
Squalor
To put it simply, Squalor is the overall living conditions of the people of New London. You can’t just build a district and call it a day. You must keep maintaining and upgrading it to keep the living standards a reasonable level. This will not only keep your population happy and healthy but also increase your productivity.
Squalor will increase if you don’t have the necessary material for the upkeep of districts. If you are running low on Materials, you will see a rise in Squalor over time.
Problems Caused
Squalor gives rise to the same problems as Cold and Hunger which is the increase in Disease and Tension. Both of these problems if left unchecked for a long time will lead to people revolting against the leadership.
All of these factors will lead to the degradation of health conditions and crime levels will also see an incline.
Solution
You can take the following steps to decrease Squalor in Frostpunk 2:
- Build more Extraction Districts. Squalor means material scarcity and Extraction Districts will provide you with a steady supply of materials. Once you have enough resources to build a new district, find a suitable location and start the construction.
- Squalor also increases if you don’t pick and choose the location of districts properly. If you have a Housing District right next to an Industrial District or an Extraction District, the living standards will quickly drop and Squalor will rise.
- Build Filtration Towers and Waste Management Facilities. Now that the demands for the Materials are met, it is time to take some further steps. You can research both of them under the “Resource” tab of the Idea Tree. You can place multiple Filtration Towers in Housing Districts and Waste Management Facilities in Industrial Districts. These steps can drastically decrease Squalor.
Crime
You must be wondering how Crime contributes to people’s health. While the effect is not direct, Crime contributes to other factors that directly lead to people getting sick. If the Crime in the city rises, you will see a reduction in Workforce.
That reduction will lead to reduced output in every district such as Food and Extraction. These factors will eventually lead to Food and Material Scarcity and as we have discussed before, both of these are direct factors contributing to people’s health.
Problems Caused
Crime mostly increases when people are left hungry or cold. This will lead to people resorting to unfair means. It causes Tension to increase in the City and increased Tension leads to a whole other set of issues.
Another problem caused by Crime is that people will start to join Radical Communities and these communities will cause Rallies and Riots.
Solution
How does one decrease Crime in Frostpunk 2? While you will figure out a lot as you go these are some helpful tips to guide you along the way:
- Keep the people fed and warm. Crime will only increase if you don’t provide your citizens with the basic necessities of life. If the Food and Heat demands are being met, Crime will also be kept under control.
- Build Watch Towers and Enlist Militia. Regardless of how well the demands are being met, there will still be some crime. To battle that, you can expand Housing Districts, place Watch Towers, and Mobolise WatchTower Squad. You can also pass a law and then pick a Faction of your choice to enlist as a soldier. This will also bring down Crime by a lot or maybe even eradicate it altogether.
Disease
All of the problems that we discussed above eventually lead to a rise in Diseases. Even if you have all of your bases covered, there will still be illness in New London because of the extreme living conditions. You have to make sure you have all of the healthcare facilities in case someone ends up getting sick.
Problems Caused
Diseases are the root cause of almost every single problem in Frostpunk 2. If people are sick, you will not only lose the efficiency of districts, you won’t be able to meet your food and material quota, and that will lead to further problems. Most of these issues have already been discussed before.
Solution
You should invest in the following ideas if you want to decrease diseases in Frostpunk 2:
- Keep bellies full and bodies warm. Prevention is the best cure. There is a good chance if all of the people’s needs are met, they won’t get sick in the first place.
- Build Hospitals. People will eventually get sick so there must be a place where they can be taken care of. Hospitals are going to be the primary source of cures for sick people. You can unlock different types of medical buildings in Idea Tree and then place them in Housing and other districts.
- Pass new laws. There are certain laws in the Society Section that can help bring down Diseases. Try and pass all of these laws as soon as possible to keep illness around New London under control.
Keeping your people healthy might be a relentless battle in Forstpunk 2 and you might feel overwhelmed from time to time but with the right strategies and thoughtful planning, you can get on top of things, keep diseases from spreading, and keep your people healthy.