| “ | We've built our city to survive the long winter. Now we have to fight against time to save it - and our lives - from impending doom. | „ |
The Fall of Winterhome is one of the scenarios in Frostpunk, unlocked after surviving twenty days of A New Home. It takes place before A New Home, in which you have been appointed as the new leader of Winterhome after the previous leader was thrown out of power for horrible neglect and mismanagement. Unlike the other scenarios, your city is pre-built (but in very bad condition), some laws are already signed and research is already completed.
Starting resources & units[ | ]
| Difficulty | Coal | Wood | Steel | Steam Cores | Raw Food | Food Rations |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Easy | 900 | 130 | 100 | 4 | 300 | 0 |
| Medium | 900 | 30 | 50 | 4 | 300 | 0 |
| Hard | 600 | 30 | 50 | 4 | 250 | 0 |
| Extreme | 300 | 30 | 50 | 4 | 200 | 0 |
| Workers | Engineers | Children | Automatons |
|---|---|---|---|
| 330 | 60 | 190 | 0 |
- At the start of the game, a notification states there are additional dead
- You also start with at least 30 amputees and 80-85 dead Bodies
Book of Laws[ | ]
Below you will find what is Signed into law.
| Adaptation | |
|---|---|
| Child Labor - Safe Jobs | Child Labor - All Jobs |
| Corpse Disposal | |
| Fighting Arena | Public House |
Technology Tree[ | ]
Below you will find what has been researched.
| Food, Health & Shelter | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Bunkhouse | House | Hunters' Gear | Hothouse |
| Resources | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coal Thumper | Coal Mining | Charcoal Kiln | Sawmill | Wall Drill | Steelworks |
| Exploration & Industry | |
|---|---|
| Beacon | Outpost Depot |
| Heating | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Steam Hub | Generator Power Upgrade | Generator Power Upgrade II | Generator Range Upgrade | Generator Range Upgrade II | Heaters |
Overview[ | ]
Warning! This overview may contain spoilers. Continue at your own risk.[ | ]
In The Fall of Winterhome, the player is put in charge of a city that is on the brink of total collapse as a result of horrible neglect and mismanagement by its previous leader in addition to the city having been seriously damaged during a violent revolt that overthrew its former leadership.
The player is tasked with cleaning up the mess left behind by their predecessor, who was not only an abusive tyrant but apparently also a complete and total idiot as many of the hardships the player has to endure are the result of the previous Captain's sheer incompetence:
The city layout is horrendously badly designed; with buildings that require heating being located far away from any such heating, roads that lead to nowhere, excess roads that serve no function and a painfully inefficient use of the limited space. In addition to that, much of the city lies in ruins as result of the violent revolt that overthrew the previous Captain. Many people died in the fighting and as a result, the game starts with extremely low Hope and very high Discontent. The initial Book of Laws has full Child Labour, Public Houses, and Corpse Pit, but is lacking in Emergency Shift/Overwork, Food and Medicine. Purpose Laws are immediately available for choice at the start of the scenario, and none have been chosen.
In order to have even the slightest chance of getting things on the right track again, the player must tear down all the ruined buildings within Winterhome and drastically rework the general layout of the city in order to not only make the city run more efficiently but also make it more liveable for the people to avoid or at least minimize the chances of people getting sick or going hungry.
Once the player is able to clean up the mess that Winterhome has become and get the city to properly function again, they will be tasked to examine the City's generator to determine its condition. It is at that this point that they will discover the biggest problem that Winterhome faces which is that the city's Generator has been irreparably damaged and will not be able to stay functional for long. From that moment onwards, the Generator will suffer from regular malfunctions and breakdowns, causing it to shut down each time and increasing Generator Stress every time. The city's engineers will always attempt to work out a temporary solution to keep the generator running and the speed at which they succeed in this depends on how many Engineers the player has assigned to work on the Generator. Despite that, it is now clear that the Generator is doomed to explode sooner or later and that the city must be evacuated before the Generator explodes and kills everyone in the area.
To evacuate the population, the player is tasked with securing a nearby Land Dreadnought and investing resources into repairing and turning it into a humongous personnel carrier to transport the citizens of Winterhome to safety, wherever that may be. This is done by constructing an Evacuation Centre and converting the Dreadnought's decks into cabins, sending people over to it and supplying them with Food and Fuel to last the journey, wherever that may lead them. The Dreadnought, once fully retrofitted, has the capacity to carry up to 500 people and the player only has a limited time to do this before the Generator fails completely and destroys Winterhome.
Fully upgrading the Dreadnought costs 5000 Coal, 5000 Food Rations, 9000 Steel and 10 Steam Cores. People cannot be housed in partially upgraded decks and overcrowding will lead to an ill prepared result.
- 300/700/1500/2500/4000 steel per deck level
- 1/1/2/2/4 cores per deck level
- 1000 food and 100 people per deck level
Once 5000 Coal is supplied The Dreadnought can be manually launched in the Evacuation Center interface, prepared or not, to end the scenario. Regardless of how well the player is able to outfit the Dreadnought, once the Generator finally explodes, time has fully ran out and the Dreadnought will launch automatically. It will carry its passengers with itself out from the ruins of the fallen city and into the Frostlands, headed towards an uncertain, yet somewhat hopeful fate, whatever that may be.
Events[ | ]
Restore the City[ | ]
Restore the City is centred around clearing the rubble from the previous Captain's failures.
From Fire and Riots[ | ]
This event arc will trigger during the restoration of the city, and is centred around rescuing those trapped under the ruins of the city
Examine the Generator[ | ]
After the city is restored, the next task will be to examine the Generator. This arc centres around those examinations.
Prepare the Evacuation[ | ]
Once the Generator is examined, it's determined that the Generator will fail, and Winterhome will need to be evacuated. This arc centres around the initial preparation of that evacuation.
The Evacuation[ | ]
This arc continues the evacuations set in place in Prepare the Evacuation.
The Price of a Lie[ | ]
This arc follows an engineer who attempts to blackmail you during the evacuation.
Save the Children[ | ]
This arc follows the evacuation of the children of Winterhome.
Lonely Father[ | ]
This arc follows a father who has been separated from his child.
Hanging by a Thread[ | ]
As you evacuate Winterhome, the Generator will continue to deteriorate. This arc centres around its demise.
Final Hours[ | ]
This arc occurs after the generator has shut down for the last time.
Quests[ | ]
Restore the City[ | ]
- Objectives:
- Turn the Generator on
- Remove at least 30 ruins
- Raise hope to 50%
- Reduce discontent to 25%
Examine the Generator[ | ]
- Objectives:
- Research the Repair Station
- Build and man the Repair Station
- Research the cause of the Generator's malfunction in the Repair Station
Prepare the Evacuation[ | ]
- Objectives:
- Build the Evacuation Centre
- Have engineers on the Dreadnought site.
- + Send Steel to fit out the Dreadnought
- + Send Food Rations to the Dreadnought
- + Send a Steam Core to fit out the Dreadnought
+ Added on to initial mission
Evacuate Winterhome[ | ]
- Objectives:
- Send Coal to fuel the Dreadnought
- (Optional) Send people to the Dreadnought
- (Optional) Send Food Rations to the Dreadnought
- (Optional) Convert more decks to cabins
Tools for the road[ | ]
- Acquisition: This event will trigger during the evacuation if you have amputees
- Objectives:
- Provide all amputees with Prostheses before sending them to the Dreadnought.
Generator malfunction[ | ]
- Acquisition: This quest will trigger every time the Generator malfunctions
- Objectives:
- Repair the Generator in the Repair Station
Blackmail[ | ]
- Acquisition: Require choose Lie
- Objectives:
- Send at least 2 Engineer and 2 children to the Dreadnought on the next transport
Lonely Father[ | ]
- Objectives:
- Send at least 1 worker to the Dreadnought on the next transport
- This must be done manually - it is possible to fail the objective, causing a small Hope decrease.
Save the Children[ | ]
- Objectives:
- Send some or all the children to the Dreadnought
- 50 children are required for "some".
Engineers First[ | ]
- Objectives:
- Send some or all the engineers to the Dreadnought
- This objective is triggered by the event "A pragmatic approach". 25 engineers are required for "some". Making no promise ("I need you here") leads to "Hope will fall" but no objective.
Tips[ | ]
- There are plenty of unneeded roads you can rip up for extra wood at the start.
- Tear down the ruins by going from the centre out, so that you can use the Generator as heat for the cold buildings. Dismantling the buildings near the generator provides building space on day 1 early morning. Consider dismantling even some tents to provide space for gathering post.
- Consolidate the tents under steam hubs and try to have dedicated steam hubs serving the industries. Use the Steam Hubs near the prebuilt Steelworks only during the work days to save on Coal, as well as use its coverage zone to collect Steel from the ruins.
- Prioritize on building Gathering Posts as getting resources is very important. Directly gathering from the ruin is 40% effective that of usual wood crates and steel wreckage; gathering posts remains as usual effective against ruins, further increasing the values of using gathering post. Gathering post also reduce the number of people falling sick, and can also be used to 'extend' the heat zone, to gather from ruins outside of heat zone.
- Research on Faster Gathering may be a good choice since there are plenty to gather.
- Infirmaries may be rushed to deal with the initial gravely ill, in normal difficulty. Gravely ill may also be sent on scouting expedition.
- If you have found the Freshwater Springs location you can switch outpost sites after a shipment is sent to allow both coal and food collection if you watch for it. Keeping the automaton on the steel bridge may be a wise choice in order to have outpost team to collect 200 steel daily from Iron Deposit.
- Ensure that everyone has their dwellings properly heated so as to avoid having people get sick.
- Make sure to set up a reliable and functional healthcare system (via Medical Outposts and Infirmaries) to ensure that anyone who gets sick is treated in time. Having people die is the last thing you want as that will drastically reduce Hope and you cannot sign the Cemetery and Ceremonial Funerals Laws to mitigate Hope loss.
- With starting population of around 580 inhabitants, Winterhome consumes large amounts of Food and running out of it is a very real danger which can spell disaster if it happens. Make sure to research things such like Hunting Tactics and Flying Hunters and build Hunter's Huts and Hothouses to keep everyone well fed. Hothouses may be built temporarily on day 1 to use up the 3 steam core provided. In emergency situations, signing laws like Soup help to partially mitigate Food shortages but beware that people will not like either of these laws.
- When considering manning the Repair Station, note that the more Engineers you have at the station when it malfunctions will have an effect as to how long the malfunction takes to repair. If you only put engineers in it in a reactionary manner, it will take longer to repair the malfunctions.
- Generator and steam hub range will be reduced by up to 30% in later days; when placing buildings, prepare for a reduction in heat zone.
- For a guide with detailed suggestions, see The Fall of Winterhome - Survivor Strategies
Trivia[ | ]
It appears the canonical decisions made by the captain evacuating Winterhome was to evacuate 150 children and all of the engineers. This can be seen from scouting shrouded cave and freshwater springs in A New Home, where the number of found Winterhome survivors totals to 41 children and 22 workers. With this scenario starting out with 191 children.
Possible connection to the "A New Home" scenario.[ | ]
Hearing of the downfall of Winterhome catalyses the rise of the rebellious faction in A New Home, which is one of the major turning points in the scenario. Called the Londoners, they are a group that wants to leave out of fear, and return to the original London.
If you allow the scientists in the Frostlands (at the Storm Shelter) to continue their explorations of the Frostlands until the generator is almost about to explode, they might eventually find a trail to the south with smoke on the horizon (however, for an unknown reason the event might not trigger). You can choose to send a team of scouts to investigate, but the they will not be back in time to join the evacuation and the trail is too rough for the dreadnought to traverse. While it is never confirmed, if the trail does indeed lead to New London, then one of the scouts you send may in fact be the Winterhome survivor who reaches the city and causes the Londoner crisis.