Frostpunk – Extreme Endless Endurance

Early setup for Extreme Endless Endurance.

Other Frostpunk Guides:

• Some Basic Hints and Tips.
• New Home Survivor Mode.
• How to Build a Successfull City.
• Complete Unlocks: Golden Path.

Introduction

All credit goes to Shining Hector!

So, here is my early setup for Extreme Endurance. I think it gives as close to an optimal setup for further growth and setting up for the first storm that I can think of. I’m sure there are other ways, but this one offers above all early healing and flexible staffing options (most notably being able to put 100% of your engineers in workshops plus have terrific healing capability by Day 6). For the sake of having a starting map so that other people could reliably reproduce my start to the letter, I used Crater, and kept restarting until I got the exact resource layout for A New Home. Adjustments will need to be made if you have a different start, obviously.

One other thing to note, I would always turn on the Generator as people returned home, flip on the Overdrive for extra warmth, then turn it all off in the morning as people left for work. I won’t repeat this in every section, so just remember to do so, or you’ll end up with even more sick people.

Day #1

You will start at 07:30. Immediately hit pause, select Emergency Shift, and start building 2 workshops just past your Stockpiles. Set your 15 engineers to the Steel Wreckage at 5 o’clock, 10 workers on the Coal Pile at 12 o’clock, and the remaining 40 workers split amongst Wood Crates. Unpause, and your workers will start construction automatically, and 20 will not go to their jobs until the Workshops are finished. As the Workshops finish, remove Engineers from the Steel Wreckage and put them in the Workshops. Research Sawmills to start. It will sadly not finish yet even with 2 Workshops, so wait until 18:00 and then build with your scavenged resources. You should have just enough Wood for a Medical Post (put immediately North of the Stockpiles) and 3 Gathering Posts and the roads to get to them. See below image for my Day 2 morning for locations. Accept the Quest to Build Homes for all 80 people (you can do it, and you need the Hope).

Day #2

As building completes, staff your Medical Post, 2 Workshops, 3 Gathering Posts, and leave 10 workers on the north Coal Pile, and put 10 workers on the wood pile closest to the road between your two Eastern Gathering Posts. At 01:30, select Extended Shift. Put everyone on Extended Shift, no exceptions. The minute Sawmills is finished, take your 10 workers off the Wood Pile and build a Sawmill next to the Easternmost Gathering Post. Research Beacon, then Heaters. At 19:30, select Child Labor, and put the 15 kids on a Woodpile on Extended Shift for the last 30 minutes of the workday. At 20:00, start building. I had exactly 105 wood, yours should be at least close. Put up another Medical Post immediately North of the first one, empty a Workshop to staff the Medical Post assuming you have more sick people overnight, and place six tents clockwise past the Stockpiles around the Generator. This was the most my workers would build before going to sleep. Change up your workers by leaving 15 workers unassigned the next morning, replace a staffed gathering post with children, and place 5 children alone on a Northern Coal Pile. Here is my setup on the morning of Day 3.

Day #3

At this point you will need to start daytime building, which is what the 15 free workers are for. Put a Beacon next to the Gathering Post at 4 o’clock, after it finishes you should have enough wood to launch a scouting party. Start building a Cookhouse just north of the Workshops. At 13:30, select Soup, fully staff the Cookhouse with workers, and make Soup. When Heaters completes, select Drawing Boards. Finish up with 2 tents in the remaining Generator space, completing the quest just before the deadline. At 20:00, extend the road past the Western Gathering Post to build a Sawmill and another Gathering Post, as in the image below. Take the kids off the Coal Pile and your free workers, and fully staff all Sawmills and Gathering Posts.

Day #4

Ah, the calm before the storm. My sick at this point diminished to 2, so empty a Medical Post and staff another Workshop. You should get a 2 level temperature drop at 07:00, so turn heaters on all the workplaces other than Workshops. If you are in a similar positon, the minute you have 15 wood, take the workers off the Eastern Sawmill and put up another Workshop North of the Beacon, then restaff the Sawmill. Unstaff your last Medical Post and staff the new Workshop (your 2 sick should survive until night, and you need the research). Start Hothouses next. At 20:00, build your two Houses of Prayer to cover all 8 tents. Use Sermon once both Houses are complete. Place a final Gathering Post at the Northern Coal Piles. Move the staff from the Eastern nearly tapped out Gathering Post to the new Northern one. Again, see below.

Day #5

Time to thread the needle! I had a ton of sick overnight, but Hothouses was still the highest priority as food was out, so I fully staffed the Medical posts once the sick piled up to 06:00, then left 1 Engineer in each Medical Post primarily to prevent further deterioration and had 13 Engineers in Workshops until Hothouses completed. Shuffle workers if necessary to leave 10 in the Eastern Sawmill and 10 in the Gathering Post South of it. The minute Hothouses completes, empty said Sawmill and Post, as well as free up 8 Engineers from the Workshops (you can restaff the Medical Posts bit by bit, but stop once you don’t have 10/10 workers building both Hothouses), then put up 2 Hothouses past the Workshops. As the Hothouses complete, staff them with your free workers, turn on the Heaters, and Extend the Shift. Fully restaff the Medical Posts, then start More Scouts. Pull children from Gathering Posts to staff the Cookhouse as needed, and extend the Cookhouse hours to 20:00 as well, your people are hungry! At 19:30, select Shrines. At 20:00, place one to cover your Medical Posts, first 2 Workshops, and Hothouses. Place another to cover your Eastern Sawmill, Gathering Posts, and third Workshop. Place the last to cover your Western Sawmill and Gathering Post.

Day #6

This is the last day of the guide, past this you’re on your own!

Keep the Hothouses fully staffed for now until you get a food cushion. With Shrines, Extended Shift, and Soup, you can produce 200 rations a day, so this shouldn’t be hard. Children can also staff Hothouses as safe jobs. You probably are pushing the limits for coal, so adjust your workers for wood. I’d like to say put up Resource Depots and keep gathering, but we’re not producing steel… yet. Welcome to Extreme.

When More Scouts finishes, take 5 workers off production and send a party. You’re soon to be on your own, but I picked Steelworks, as steel is now getting critical. Should your first scouting party have found a load of steel and are returning home, adjust as necessary.

At 13:30 select House of Healing. Pull workers off Wood/Coal production to build these beauties immediately, within range of your shrines, then staff them with the same workers. This is the end point for my guide. You can now heal 20 people at once, including the Gravely Ill, with 0 Engineers! This is critical for Extreme Endurance going forward IMO, especially during the storms. You also can feed 200 people with only 20 children if necessary (plus cooks) and have 2 active scouting parties to build your population. You also have enough Coal to last for several days, and gathering posts to get more. The Sawmills still have a lot of lumber left to harvest, too. Not bad for Day 6 on Extreme. Fully staff all 3 Workshops, and full steam ahead!

End Notes

Note that you will likely get the Christmas update event soon. Luckily, you will have enough food and wood to get the best result. Just note that you’ll need to boost Hope, so keep up with Sermons every 2 days, and Evening Prayers would be a Law to get sooner rather than later. You will also get a scripted death from House of Healing, so you’ll need a way to dispose of the body. I prefer Corpse Disposal so that you can get Organ Transplants, but this might put your people in a not so Christmasy mood, so it may be best to put it off until after the Christmas event, unless you can tank the Hope penalty and still keep it over 50. Otherwise, tailor your future plans as needed depending on what your scouts find.

For fans of Child Shelters, who think this could all be done without them and they’ll be unnecessary going forward and I’m missing out on a sweet bonus (+20% to one specific activity for just 8 hours a day; ha, ha), now that a level of stability is achieved and my gathering posts are starting to tap out already, note that Cookhouses, Houses of Healing, and Hothouses are all safe jobs. Just at the current level of buildout, I have 45 slots kids can fill not including Gathering Posts! 5 Cookhouse, 20 House of Healing, 20 Hothouses. I will almost always need a House of Healing and Hothouse running in the best of times, so there’s a baseline of 20 jobs kids can and should permanently station at this current low population and production level, and food and healing requirements only scale up as population grows. Any job a kid can do, an adult doesn’t have to do, now and forevermore. I now have 15 in research, 10 scouting, 20 food production, 20 healing ( because there are 16 sick currently); 65 in total – the size of my entire adult population. More importantly, I CAN have all 65 adults tied up in these currently critical tasks. Without Child Labor, there would be nobody left for other resource production, and there’s no guarantee of finding many people early during scouting, or that they won’t include a significant amount of children who would otherwise be mostly useless. I can always find a place for a child laborer until I’m so established with excess population that I’m leaving most of the people idle regardless (in which case I’m so far ahead I still don’t really need Child Shelters, anyway).