Best Management Tips in Frostpunk 2 | Beginner’s Guide

Frostpunk 2 is one of the hardest RTS or city-builder games ever made. You can expect to constantly die or fail until you eventually learn from your mistakes. Like all hardcore games, you’ll benefit from a good beginner tips and tricks guide to get started and avoid those mistakes. Here are the best management tips you should know when playing Frostpunk 2.

Best Management Tips and Tricks Guide for Frostpunk 2

Never let the heat run out

While the cruel winter is what the game is based around on, you must still remember to never let the heat run out. When you get overloaded with problems such as crime, disease, squalor, and more, you might overlook your heat. The reason why this is much more crucial than the other problems is that most of the other problems actually stem from the cold.

When you think you have enough heat for your city, always have an extra heat source for when the weather drastically changes. If the temperature drops because of the weather, you want to adjust a few things and bring the temperature back to normal levels instantly. When the weather becomes a little warmer, you can lower your heat usage to save more resources. This is the ideal setup.

Micromanage your districts all the time

Speaking of adjusting your heat usage, you want to do this for every single aspect of your city. You must constantly readjust the efficiency rates of districts to fully optimize your city’s wants and needs. For example, if you have a Material problem, you might build another Extraction District on some Material nodes to combat it.

However, it is almost never the exact amount you need. You might have -50 Materials and push to +150 Materials with just one Extraction District. This is too much, and if your stockpile is full, you are just wasting resources. Micromanage and adjust the efficiency of your districts so you can free up resources. You’ll also free up some workforce by doing so.

Always keep a stockpile of the main resources

Pay attention to the yellow bar on your resources. These are your stockpile limits, and if the yellow bar is full and you have an oversupply of a certain resource, you are putting it to waste. You can adjust the efficiency of the districts, but you still want a stockpile of more than 3/4 of any given resource at any given time.

This gives you time to solve problems when they show up. For example, if your population suddenly rises and you also accept more people from an expedition, your shelter, food, and goods needs will skyrocket. Building Housing, Food, and Industrial Districts will take time, so your stockpile will be the one to save you here. If you don’t have enough stockpile, your city will surely crumble so fast you won’t even notice it.

Don’t overbuild

All Frostpunk games start with a lot of space. You’ll frostbreak these areas and have the freedom to build whatever you want. However, you might get a little ahead of yourself. You only want to build what you need in any given circumstance.

If you start spending your Heatstamps and workforce, you won’t have enough to solve random issues that may show up. You’ll always end up lacking the workforce or people, and the only way to increase that is through time.

Keep your districts close to each other

One of the most overlooked mechanics is the proximity bonuses you get from building districts next to each other. Most of the bonuses are heat bonuses, which saves a lot of resources. Keeping your districts next to each other to get more heat is basically a free bonus. Who doesn’t want free resources?

You just need to know that Expedition and Logistics Districts don’t want to be next to Housing Districts because it’ll increase squalor or disease. However, if there’s no other choice, you can still do it just for the heat bonuses.

Research resource-saving ideas and build them immediately

Research resource-saving ideas that help you sustain more resources and lessen the tension in your city. If you have a thriving city with all the needs constantly met, you’ll rarely encounter problems. The best way to get to this stage is to research ideas that give you an absurd amount of resources, such as adding a sawmill to your Extraction District, getting Materials, or even Hothouses for your Food Districts. These are basically multipliers to your districts, and they add a ton of value to your playthrough.

For more tips and tricks, check out How to Avoid Disease and Sickness in Frostpunk 2.