Frostpunk – Builder Mode Tips

Tips for Builder Mode

Before the first storm, focus on getting bunkhouses. You won’t get harsh storm before day 50 and can survive all of them with bunkhouses + heaters on work buildings.

Don’t try to build a part of the gen just before the storm or you will lose the progress, focus on getting the materials and just after the storm get the max workers on building the generator.

If you rush the generator, you will have huge drawbacks, like limited to 2 steam hubs or reduce power of the generator, etc.

I´ve beaten it several times with population on hard, everything else on extreme, and can usually finish either closely before the fourth storm, or a bit after with just 1 emergency shift on an early workshop.

What do you think is your main issue? Being too slow with tech, or with building materials?

My strategy is usually to go for steam sawmill and advanced steel before the second storm, then start researching and building the components (always including the efficiency upgrade). You can arguably delay starting the generator construction up to closely before the 3rd storm, or even beyond the 3rd storm. Which has the benefit of not needing the ventilation plants until you start with construction. And the safety upgrade for the wood and coal components can usually be skipped that way.

With stuff like foreman, agitators or shrines, and using the 20% progress for 5 of the steel components, I can usually make it before the fourth storm if I have already built stage 1, or do stage 1-3 inbetween storm 3 and 4 and stage 4 after the fourth storm.

By the way engineers are probably the biggest earlygame hurdle, as you definitely want a lot of tech early (The first storm is day 12, the earliest of all endless modes and you need 3 T2 techs to keep healthcare running) and have the whole generator construction tech tree.

If you have no generator, you´ll also face a lot of sickness throughout the game, but especially before getting infirmaries.

So maybe if you feel getting started is a big problem due to engineers, you might want to find out where big groups of engineers are at the beginning, restart, and get them asap.