For players looking for the ultimate challenge beating Frostpunk on Survivor Mode is a brutal test of the player’s skill, strategy, and understanding of this survival game. There’s no pausing, saves only occur on exiting the game, and the difficulty of everything has been raised above even Hard mode.

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If you find yourself struggling with this new challenge there are some things you can do to improve your odds of survival. Each scenario will be different, but here are some general tips to help your people scratch a living out of the ice.

10 Wood Is Important In The Beginning

Wood is a critical resource in the beginning stages of the scenario as it’s utilized for everything. The biggest drain are the number of buildings you need to construct. At the very least it can be chucked into a furnace to keep your people from freezing to death.

Your early steps are going to be focusing on wood production. Whether you pursue Saw Mills for the frozen trees or Wall Drills for the lumber there is up to you, but you should probably lean towards Wall Drills for the long term. After a while your wood needs wont be as high and you’ll have a source of easy heat so get on it.

9 Steel Is Important Later

Mid game and on your main resource concern will be steel. The problem with steel is that it only comes from a handful of ore deposits which can really create a bottleneck in production.

There’s no real convenient way to avoid this problem so your best bet is to get steel production started early and stockpile while you can. You’ll burn through it fast enough, but having some set aside really takes the sting out of the mid to late game.

8 Resource Technology Is Your Priority

What will make or break your playthrough is technology. Not having the proper means to obtain certain resources or to sustain current production is what will cause most of your failures. It’s important to start technology production early and keep it going.

Any technology related to resource gathering should be your main priority with heat being a second. Afterward, it’s your call based on your needs and the requirements of the scenario you’re playing.

7 Don’t Be Afraid Of Imbalances At First

At the beginning of the game you’ll find yourself struggling to keep everything stable and meet all of your community’s needs. The key is to stop trying and start focusing on one or two things. You’ll have shortages and other issues, but it’s better to be struggling in one or two areas than to be underwater with everything.

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This isn’t to say you should ignore your other needs, the key is to bounce back and forth as needs arise. It’ll seem like you’re putting out a lot of fires, but as your technology improves you’ll notice they pop up less and less.

6 Strive For Moderation

That being said don’t get stuck in tunnel vision mode long term. A stable and consistent community is required to beat Survivor mode so getting things stabilized and balanced is important. Otherwise, you’ll run out of the wrong resource at the wrong time or annoy your workers.

The key is to identify what’s consistently a problem and focus your attention on stabilizing it. If you’re constantly running out of coal then look for ways to streamline or improve production. Once it settles find the next thing to improve until everything is running smoothly.

5 Stockpiling Can Be A Good Thing

Stockpiling resources is a good way to keep things balanced. If you find your coal piles building don’t be afraid to continue building them a little longer before moving to something else. Obviously don’t do this if it might create another problem, but don’t be afraid to stick to production if nothing requires your immediate attention.

This will give you some breathing room if you have a problem and can’t send your workers back to a particular task right away. It’ll also let you justify taking more workers off the line if you know you have enough of a particular resource to keep you afloat for a little while.

4 Heat Up The Night

To help conserve resources and keep your people healthy and happy you should put your generators on overdrive at night. Most of your people will be clumped together and you can flood them with heat to help with sicknesses and discontent.

This will also conserve resources as you can shut the generator down in the daytime. A rule of thumb is to wait for the temperature drop or the sun to set to turn it on and then switch it off at sunrise and when the temperature goes up.

3 Start Scouting Quickly

The best thing you can focus on is getting your beacon built and sending scouts out. You may feel like you can’t spare the resources or the five workers, but scouts can net you a ton of resources depending on what they find.

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It’s also the only way to accumulate precious items like Steam Cores which are invaluable for producing advanced buildings and structures. The benefit scouts provide will always outweigh whatever benefit they could have provided as workers so get them out as soon as possible.

2 Automatons Are A Blessing

With a fairly stable community, some resources piling up, and a few steam cores coming in from scouts you want to start constructing Automatons. These mechanical juggernauts can work longer and in harsher conditions than your human workers which makes them invaluable for production and conserving resources.

Keep your people close to the heat and send the Automatons on the rough tasks. They won't mind and your people will be much happier. They’re expensive, but the benefits far outweigh the costs in a very short time.

1 Beat Hard Mode First

If you’ve applied the above tips and you’re still having trouble, then what you probably need to do is go back to an easier difficulty until you can beat Hard mode consistently. Each scenario has a particular strategy or trick needed to beat it.

Once you’ve figured that out then it’s just a matter of achieving it under harsher and stricter conditions in Survivor Mode. Without that knowledge, you have very little hope of succeeding in Survivor Mode. So go back and get some practice.

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