The Hardest Starting Locations In Frostpunk 2's Utopia…

There's a lot that players need to juggle in the widely acclaimed Frostpunk 2. The warmth, environment, hunger, and material needs of citizens are all constantly pressing upon the Steward as they try to transition from simply surviving to thriving in this frigid and unforgiving land.

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By Huzaifa Haq

Once players have gotten their feet wet (or frozen) in the main storyline, the Utopia Builder (not as idyllic as it sounds) waits to provide a more open-ended experience for the player's city building ambitions, where they get to choose the starting location of their city and attempt to build a sustainable metropolis. Similar to the previous title's scenarios, these starting locations provide players with a distinct but potent challenge as their city struggles against the cold.

5 Fractured Gorge

A Ravaged Environment With Few Resources

Fractured Gorge presents a challenge to the player in the form of how efficiently they can structure, maintain, and organize their city. The randomized frostland with geothermal deposits — alongside the lack of fuel deposits — means that players will be guiding their city along these natural sources of warmth. Since this map is randomized, this means that players are leaving a fair amount of the challenge, or lackthereof, up to chance. This is not a starting location for those unfamiliar with how geothermal deposits work. This is a tricky starting location, with a tight map size that can leave a lot of players strained for resources.

Players should ensure they have a good understanding of how to get those basic, essential resources through frost breaking before taking a stab at this rugged, barren starting location.

4 Dreadnought

Harkening Back To The Prologue With A Broken Generator

The Dreadnought starting map seems deceptively easy at first glance. Warmth is the major decider between life and death in Frostpunk 2. Dismissing it and not building up a good system of warmth distribution can be lethal in the early game, even for Frostpunk veterans. When a run begins with generous amounts of coal and/or oil nearby, it's easy to think that the game has given the player a headstart.

However, a headstart means very little if that pace can't be sustained, and players will find in Dreadnought that, while fuel might be easy to keep on top of, especially in the early game, the distant and sparse quantities of other resources will very quickly begin to take a dire toll if they're not careful. Frostbreaking needs to be a top priority, but with so few resources around, this must also be balanced with where to frostbreak to first. Should a fertile soil deposit be prioritized? How sustainable is that if no prefabs are being replenished to produce and maintain districts? This map, based on the prologue map, will keep players second-guessing their priorities well into the mid-game.

3 Hanging Rock

A Balanced Start That Loses Momentum Quickly

Hanging Rock has balanced resources, but its tight starting area and tricky geography provide a challenge to those used to bulding a sprawling or optimized city. Researching more advanced tech to frostbreak quickly and create districts or buildings that are more efficient is the recommended strategy to try and get a handle on this starting location.

Players that fail to keep up the pace with their tech will find that they have no more resources that can be reliably gathered by the mid to late game, and as the resources begin to dry up, the chaos will start to set in.

2 Broken Shore

A Difficult Start Lacking Iron

Broken Shore is an especially cold area, with a bitter coastal wind and lots of frozen-over water. While the area does have what might be called "the basics" of food and oil taken care of, in the early game anyway, the lack of any meaningful iron deposits means that more advanced construction and technology development will be a challenge, and as the city continues to expand over wide, flat terrain, this will become a larger and larger issue.

Paying attention to district synergy is important on this map, as while there might be plentiful oil for warmth, without iron to research more efficient means of warming the city, players will want to utilize that warmth as economically as possible. Finding iron is not impossible, mind, but players will have to be especially pedantic about how and when that iron gets put to use.

1 Horizon

This Huge Map Makes Getting Resources A Trek

The Horizon map is probably the definitive starting location for difficulty in Frostpunk 2. The map is huge and boasts excellent resource distribution, factoring in that those resources are distributed quite far away from the starting area. A map of this scale and scope requires a very different kind of planning compared to the smaller maps where city districts need to be economically braced together. Horizon cities need to spread out more to make resources coming into the settlement appear more quickly, but this raises problems with warmth distribution.

Players will need to take any advantage they can get to survive on this map, so butter up those factions and put any and all incremental bonuses to use.

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