Frostpunk 2 – How to get and use the Deep Melting Drill

The Deep Melting Drill is a building in Frostpunk 2 that allows you to access deep resource deposits. There are several prerequisites for building a Deep Melting Drill, and depending on your choices in the Story, you might not be able to build one.

One of the hardest things about Frostpunk 2 is that you never feel like you have enough resources, and everything always feels like it’s about to run out. Deep deposits don’t eliminate these problems completely, but they do help. Technically, they are finite, but they contain millions of units of resources, so you can basically treat them as infinite. But to access a deep deposit, you still need a Deep Melting Drill.

How to unlock the Deep Melting Drill in Frostpunk 2

To build the Deep Melting Drill in Frostpunk 2, you first have to research Generator Upgrade one and then Melting Deep Deposits in the Idea Tree. If you’re playing Story mode, you won’t be able to do this until you reach Chapter Two and swear to defeat the frost. If you swear to embrace the frost, then you can’t research Melting Deep Deposits and won’t be able to access deep deposits for the rest of the Story campaign. The point of the “defeat/embrace the frost” choice is to force you to choose between access to unlimited resources at your settlements and unlimited resources in the Frostland. You can’t have both in Story mode, but you can in Utopia Builder mode.

How to build a Deep Melting Drill in Frostpunk 2

Once you’ve researched Melting Deep Deposits, you can build a Deep Melting Drill, but there are still a few more conditions to fulfill and steps to follow. The first thing you need is a deep deposit. These are marked by the same icons as regular deep deposits—only with an additional infinity symbol. If you haven’t already, Frostbreak your way to the deep deposit and build a corresponding district on top of it. Now, you can build a Deep Melting Drill in that district. It costs 80 Heatstamps, 40 Prefabs, and one Core, requires 300 Workforce to run and 60 Materials to maintain, and increases Squalor.

Bear in mind that the advantage of using a Deep Mining Drill is that deep deposits don’t run out, but they don’t supply resources at a higher rate than regular resources, so your stockpiles can still run out if you’re using more resources than you’re extracting. In other words, deep deposits are useful, but they’re not a miracle cure for all your supply and demand woes.