How to beat Chapter 2 in Frostpunk 2

Things only get more challenging as your city grows and all resource requirements go up. You’ll face another set of hefty challenges during Chapter 2, and having already completed it, I might be able to offer some advise.

So here’s how to beat Chapter 2 in Frostpunk 2.

Defeat the frost or embrace the frost?

If you choose to defeat the frost, you’ll gain the ability to exploit unlimited resources by constructing a special building within Extraction Districts, but your Generator will only be able to run on Oil after the upgrade. You will keep the Stalwarts happy, however, which is a much larger percentage of your city than the Pilgrims.

If you choose to embrace the frost, your Generator will be able to burn both Coal and Oil, depending on what you have available. You’ll also be able to unlock unlimited settlements in the Frostlands. The Pilgrims will also be happy, but the Stalwarts will not like this decision.

I went with defeat the frost, in case you’re wondering. But let’s be honest with ourselves, we’ll come back and choose the other option too, because we want to experience all paths, right?

Finally, if you ready my guides on how to beat the Prologue and how to beat Chapter 1, you may be expecting a step-by-step walkthrough. However, in Chapter 2, things diverge a fair bit, and there can be plenty of differences between your game and mine.

For that reason, I’ll be giving you the strategy on how to beat Chapter 2 instead, packed with challenges you’re sure to face and also how to overcome them. Let’s go!

Manage your Resources effectively

The first challenge you’ll have now is getting both your settlements sorted out. New London will need tons of oil, while the Old Dreadnought will need food and materials to keep functioning. So keep balancing your resources and make use of the Resource Transfer feature to make sure both places stay topped up.

Build the Oil Pumps (or adaptive pumps if you chose to embrace the frost) in the Central District as soon as possible. This will give you a more reliable fuel source than coal, which will run out soon once your deposits empty out.

Once you have oil going, you can transfer some of your workforce over to the Old Dreadnought. If you don’t have enough workforce to transfer over, keep exploring the Frostlands with your free expedition teams — you’re sure to find a quick boost to your workforce out there.

The other option is to wait patiently until your workforce increases, but with dwindling resources, proactive action is what I recommend.

Manage disease in your city effectively

A problem that will certainly emerge during Chapter 2 is a large portion of your workforce being ill. You can counteract this by passing laws against disease, as shown in the above screenshot of the City laws tab.

Implementing either a quarantine or an infectious badge will reduce disease in your city, but there’s a catch. You might need additional housing to implement the quarantine effectively, and if you implement the infectious badge law, you’ll need to revoke it later or face declining trust from parts of your population.

You can also build medical buildings to counteract disease, after researching them in the Society tab of your Idea Tree.

With your disease lowering, it’s time to prepare for another whiteout. Yep. If you want to see a full guide, here’s how to decrease disease in Frostpunk 2.

Stockpile Resources

If you didn’t research the Pumpjacks in the last chapter, you might want to get that done now. They’ll help your oil output a great deal, and you can unlock them by researching them in the Idea tree under the Resources tab.

Now it’s time to start stockpiling. If you chose not to desecrate the graves of the Nomads, you’ll have fewer oil deposits, and so you’ll absolutely have to research Advanced Pumpjacks to stockpile enough oil for the coming whiteout.

Either way, start building storage hubs if you haven’t already. Build both fuel and food storage hubs in both of your cities. I had almost 130k of stored food just before the whiteout hit, and close to 100k oil spread across the two cities.

This proved to be enough, even after giving the Nomads 30k oil. The nice thing is that oil production continues at the Old Dreadnought, and if you really need to, you can implement double shifts to tide you over.

Food production stops almost entirely though, so don’t compromise on the food. Make sure you store more than enough, just to be safe. Build extra Food Districts if you need to.

How to survive the whiteout in Chapter 2 in Frostpunk 2

Once the actual whiteout hits, survival is your only priority. Hover your mouse cursor over your food or oil to see how long you have left. You’ll see a “Will last for X weeks” just below the Stockpile info.

When it gets low, hop onto the Resource Transfer Screen and move resources over. Mercifully, the transfer will happen instantly and you’ll be able to survive the transfer.

However, an interesting challenge would be to stockpile enough beforehand so you don’t have to transfer anything.

Are you up for that challenge? You’ll need to stockpile around 150k oil in New London, and around 50k food at the Old Dreadnought.

Anyway, survive this whiteout, and you’re home free. Onwards to Chapter 3!