Frostpunk 2 | All Problems, Trust & Tension and How To Solve Them

Frostpunk 2 has been a well-received game, and with its release comes the realization that it's really different from the original game. In Frostpunk 2, instead of stressing over micromanagement, you will have to stress over all the dumb ideas your people are getting. 

Another challenge you face in the game is various problems. The game divides these into five principal problems that will affect your city differently: Hunger, Disease, Cold, Squalor, and Crime. 

The game's design makes it so that each thing you do has an effect, and more often than not, many good things you can do, in turn, increase one of these problems in a way. This guide will show you all five problems, what they do, and how to solve them.

Hunger

The name is self-explanatory, really. Hunger appears when the population increases too much and insufficient food is stockpiled or produced. Hunger in the city leads to an increase in disease and tension. Additionally, it starts to reduce population growth.

The main factor in dealing with hunger is food production, and the key to this is having a surplus of food. Building hubs early to stockpile a lot of food will help during crises. If you find yourself lacking in food production with a depleted stockpile, there are other ways to help.

Researching Hothouses will let you boost food production by building hothouses in food districts. Certain ideas will also let you get more food and improve production efficiency.

Cold

Again, with a self-explanatory name, it is not hard to understand what this does. Cold increases when there is insufficient shelter for your population at any given time and insufficient heat compared to the heat needed by the city. Cold is one of the most important problems to keep in check. If left untended, it will increase disease and tension. It will also decrease the population growth of your city, which will, in turn, cascade into other issues, such as death.

The primary method of dealing with cold is to have more heat. So, Heat generation, fuel conservation, and efficiency are your best friends. The entire Heating Ideas tree helps you in this regard, with the best ideas being Coal Mines, Advanced Coal Mines, Geothermal Plants, Advanced Geothermal Plants, and both variants of the Pumpjacks.

Additionally, Housing Insulation majorly reduces the demand for heat. Some other laws and ideas will also minorly affect heat. Finally, you will also often find that the issue is with not having enough shelter for your people, so expanding housing can also help.

Squalor

Squalor is a fancy term used to represent pollution. It has many ways to increase itself, and many are rather subtle. A deficit of materials, certain buildings, and the generator will cause squalor. Additionally, progress ideas will add to squalor, and placing housing districts beside industrial ones will also cause squalor. Squalor affects disease, decreases population growth, and causes district wear.

One of the ways you deal with squalor is by having sufficient materials production. The easiest way to do this is by building more extraction districts. You can also research sawmill or foundry ideas, which will boost your production without building newer districts. Also, remember to expand your districts instead of always building new ones. This will ensure you have locations to place your buildings.

You can also research maintenance hubs, which reduce districts' material demand. Furthermore, additional buildings like Waste Management Facilities and Filtration Towers will help reduce squalor itself. Both buildings need to be researched in the ideas tree, with the Filtration Towers placed in Housing Districts and the Waste Management Facilities placed in Industrial Districts.

As a last-ditch effort, you could always disable buildings producing too much squalor. This allows you to placate the issue until you can get more concrete solutions.

Disease

Another self-explanatory name is disease increases from rising hunger, cold, and squalor. Additionally, many useful buildings will also increase the incidence of disease. As such, it is a problem you cannot entirely avoid. The disease will reduce the available workforce and increase tension.

Reducing Squalor, Cold, and Hunger reduces disease, so those are your most efficient methods of reducing Disease, as you are essentially killing two birds with one stone. If that doesn’t work, you can research and build hospitals and pharmaceutical factories. 

Some laws, such as the ones in Funerals, Contagion Prevention, and Treatment, will also help reduce disease. The treatment laws are only made available upon researching the idea of the same name.

Crime

Crime is the final problem you will face, and it also happens to have a self-explanatory name. It is caused by certain events, tension, and a deficit of goods. Crime will reduce population growth and cause a myriad of additional issues. Certain factions, like the New Londoners, will support more radicalized communities. Once left unresolved, it also causes death or absences.

Goods are the resources that deal with crime. So, to reduce Crime, you should look for a sufficient production or stockpile of Goods. Industrial Districts can be switched to producing goods, which is your easiest method of Goods production. Naturally, you will eventually run out of space, or well, you will seek more efficient methods. Building factories improves this production, and passing a law regarding goods also supplements this.

These laws include but are not necessarily limited to, Durable Goods/Mass-produced Goods and Paid Essentials. You can also research Watchtowers and Prisons once you have researched them and put them in the Housing Districts. The section on laws regarding crime also helps you reduce crime. 

Tension and Trust

The two are completely opposite in what they do. Once you go too long without solving these problems, you will start to gain tension. Like discontent from the first game, tension has the maximum amount you can reach. Once you reach this point, your game will end as you are removed from power. Tension is caused by most of the problems persisting, as well as any political disruption and unpopular laws.

Conversely, trust is the people's belief in your rule, similar to hope from Frostpunk 1. Reaching trust 0 will end your game as you are forced out of power. Non-natural deaths, starvation, disease, and crime will also reduce trust. Additionally, most communities and factions have their trust, affecting how much they support you.

None of the problems will directly bring consequences; instead, they will cascade into causing events, uprisings, and discontent that will affect your tension and trust, eventually bringing about your downfall. So, to ensure trust remains high, you just need to do a good job of playing the game, making fewer people die, and so on. Certain research ideas also affect tension and trust. Overall, keeping the problems at a low level or not having them outright will keep your tension low.

Check out our Frostpunk 2 Review and other guides:
- Frostpunk 2 Review | NoobFeed
- Frostpunk 2 Beginner's Guide | Top 10 Gameplay Tips
- Frostpunk 2 | Best Ideas to Research