Playable City in The Arks from a Bird's-Eye View
| “ | As the brightest minds of Oxford and Cambridge, we have been sent to save priceless seed and plant specimens from the eternal winter. Do we have what it takes to keep the Seedling Arks safe? | „ |
The Arks is one of the scenarios in Frostpunk, unlocked after surviving 20 days of A New Home. This scenario revolves around keeping four Seedling Arks from freezing, and producing automatons to keep the city running.
Starting resources & units[ | ]
| Difficulty | Coal | Wood | Steel | Steam Cores | Raw Food | Food Rations |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Easy | 60 | 60 | 50 | 3 | 135 | 0 |
| Medium | 0 | 40 | 35 | 3 | 90 | 0 |
| Hard/Extreme | 0 | 0 | 15 | 3 | 45 | 0 |
| Workers | Engineers | Children | Automatons |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 45 | 0 | 1 |
Events[ | ]
The Seedling Arks[ | ]
The scenario will begin with The Seedling Arks, where you are tasked to preserve seedlings.
New Manchester[ | ]
As you build up your autonomous city, a citizen from another city will arrive. You will have to decide whether or not to assist this other city.
Quests[ | ]
Find the Factory plans[ | ]
Factory[ | ]
- Acquisition: Acquired Factory tech from "Lost Dreadnought" location
- Objectives:
- Bring the Factory plans to the city
- Build the Factory
- Increase the number of automatons
Autonomous City[ | ]
- Acquisition: Completed prior quest "Factory"
- Objectives:
- Employ at least 2 automatons in the Coal industry
- Employ at least 1 automaton in the Steel industry
- Employ at least 1 automaton in the Wood industry
- Employ at least 1 automaton in the Raw Food industry
The search for Steam Cores[ | ]
- Acquisition: Acquired if you run out of Steam Cores.
- Note: This seems to trigger after a certain number of cores are spent. If this event fires too late, it will not be possible to retrieve some cores before the storm hits.
- Objectives:
- Reach the South Pass or Misty Valley
Prepare for the Storm[ | ]
- Objectives:
- Build 5 Houses.
- Disband All Expeditions and Outposts.
- Gather 8000 Coal.
- Gather 500 Food Rations.
Finding the way[ | ]
- Acquisition: Acquired when the scout from New Manchester arrives around day 15.
- Objectives:
- Scout the Frostland and find New Manchester before the storm
Shelter for New Manchester (1/3)[ | ]
Keep the autonomous systems working[ | ]
- Acquisition:
- Objectives:
- Have at least 6 Automatons working in the city
Food for New Manchester (2/3)[ | ]
- Objectives:
- Send 2000 Food Rations and 2 Automatons.
Coal for New Manchester (3/3)[ | ]
- Objectives:
- Send 6000 Coal and 4 Automatons.
Tips[ | ]
- Exploring should be high priority, as the large resource spikes they deliver will allow you to get automatons quicker.
- While Food is available from exploring in limited amounts, the Hothouse is a very high priority research item, as you can't hunt with engineers.
- Other than researching the Beacon, ensuring that heaters and/or steam hubs are researched prior to the second temperature drop is important to prevent the seedlings in the Arks from freezing to death.
- You will not find any more people than those you start with, except for a single worker, so you should be very careful to avoid letting them die, and try to get automatons produced as quickly and as often as possible. A single automaton requires 100 steel, 100 wood, 50 coal, and one steam core. Since you'll be building at least four of them, and probably more, Streamlined Automatons can save a lot of resources, but the automatons themselves should take priority.
- To prevent gravely ill citizens and death, building a medical post early is very important as the player will not acquire additional citizens in the future. Ideally, avoiding deaths allows the player to avoid the cemetery or snow pit laws until the moment a citizen dies. However, dead bodies once spawned are a major source of disease and will cause epidemics without a way to dispose of them, so if for some reason there is spare time for passing their laws, it is still worth doing so.
- 24-hour Emergency Shifts and Extended Shifts laws are extremely useful early on in this game mode. That said, be careful not to overuse Emergency Shifts as they could cause citizens to die.
- Triage and Duelling laws are not advised because citizens cannot be reacquired.
- Assuming the player has and uses exact knowledge of the shipments required, send the relief efforts as late as possible. Then the automatons and other resources can be used in the player's town until the time that they are sent. Shipments take 1d to arrive and the next task will be immediately queued up as soon as the previous expedition is sent. In theory, all 7 Automatons could be sent as one batch about 36 hours before the storm is due to hit.
Lore[ | ]
| “ | We've been chosen to safeguard a priceless treasure – the seeds and seedlings of plants from all over the world. They've been deposited in Seedling Arks to stop them from freezing, but it falls to us to build a city to protect these precious buildings until the winter ends, however long that may be. The only way to do this is with automatons. We'll ensure the green earth is reborn – even if we aren't there to witness it. | „ |
| ~ Intro Dialogue |
The settlement seen in the Arks was founded by academics from Cambridge and Oxford, who were sent to preserve the last vestiges of plant life on Earth. While having the smallest population compared with New London and Sanctuary, the city is an industrial powerhouse. Heavily industrialized and automated, its mechanized army of towering Automatons work day and night in order to ensure that the Generator is fed plenty of coal and to keep the life-support system of the Seedling Arks going.
Unlike the circular crater in New London, the city seen in The Arks is located in an eye-shaped crater with significantly more frozen trees - but no suitable place for an Outpost Depot. Most of its natural resources - like frozen trees, coal deposits, iron deposits and the cracks in the wall - are all concentrated on the south-western end of the crater, while the north-eastern end of it only contains a few frozen trees.
The City of New Manchester lays close to the city, and, depending on the player's choices, New Manchester can either be saved or left to die.
Trivia[ | ]
- The automatons sent to aid New Manchester stay in New Manchester, and do not return after delivering their cargo.
- The game ends before the storm hits, so players do not have to endure the storm.
- Purpose laws are not available in the Book of Laws, and neither are Children-related laws.
- The playable city within this scenario is nicknamed "Legacy" by fans.