Surviving the Ice Sheets

[boates]

So I'm curious and somewhat amused at the fact that this game lets you try to survive on literal Ice Sheets. I've found that normally what will happen is you have about a handful of muffalo and some polar bears at the beginning, and if you don't kill and eat every single last one of them you'll die within the first few seconds... and after that you'll die because there's zero vegetation on the map and animals won't spawn/stick around cause they have nothing to eat. It stays about 0 degrees Celsius during the summer time (32 degrees Fahrenheit) So crops don't grow. Even if you make indoor farms there's hardly anywhere to grow anything on. I even started with 800 packaged survival meals... and managed to loose about 200 before making more than 30 simple meals from other animals. Is this just a troll in the game or is there actually a way to survive Ice Sheets (without mass cannibalism.)

[Shurp]

Potatoes grow just fine in gravel.  Find a few gravel patches, put up a greenhouse, survive.  Yes, you'll need to eat some animals while waiting for your first crop to grow.

What terrain map are you on?  Gravel is usually found near rock so I recommend Large Hills.  Mountains probably doesn't have enough.

[Serenity]

Try the rich explorer scenario. One gravel patch of potatoes is a bit of a stretch for 3 people, but it goes a long way when you're alone. And of course you consume less of your many survival meals.

Almost everything except beds should be built from steel at the beginning. Save your wood for beds, fast doors and workbenches that need wood. Later you can buy wood.
Your base should obviously be built into a mountain.

Your first action is to wall off your starting area (with steel). Look for a patch of gravel that gives the biggest possible growing area when covered by a sun lamp. If you lucked out there might even be a geyser nearby. That can be used for heat and included in the room.
Build a solar panel + battery for power. I found wind power also works pretty well in the arctic, but that might be map dependent. You'll want some more for the sun lamp, but unlike hydroponics, with a green house it doesn't matter if you get short blackouts.
Also build one, then two heaters.
Get those potatoes planted and growing as fast as you can.

Then you need to research hydroponics as fast as possible. Then stone cutting. Once you get a couple of hydroponics basins growing rice, you are pretty safe for the time being.
You don't have to research at the expense of other tasks (there is plenty to do, like tunnels to dig and steel to mine), but you need to get some research done.

With three people, the start can be rough. Definitely hunt everything you can, but the only thing that gives much meat is bears. And even that is gone right away. A nutrient paste dispenser can stretch your raw food a little. You get more out of it than cooking, but it's no miracle machine. You can also butcher and eat the first raider. It's also possible to ration meals by forbidding them for a day or so. But by then your first potato harvest should be done. You can also harvest a few at 80-90% if you have nothing left.

Man hunter packs and thrumbos are a fantastic source of meat in the long run. You might end up with more meat than you need.

Animals having nothing to eat usually means they either go mad (lots and lots of mad hares) or they hang around your base. Bears especially like to come to you, but they are rare.

Then there are all the supply pods. So much stuff just falls from the sky. The game gets more interesting when you turn off drop pods and man hunter packs. But since you are already struggling, leave them on.

Some thing are even easy in the arctic. You don't give a damn about events like toxic fallout, volcanic winter or cold snaps that are a major issue when you grow stuff outside.

You can look at a map first to see if there is a good spot somewhere with lots of gravel and a nice hole in a wall that can be walled off. Note down the seed and coordinates, then load again to roll your characters. However, the geyser positions aren't part of the seed.

I'd also recommend a map that has "warm" summers. A map with -50° winters and summers a bit below zero is nice. Otherwise it's too cold for visitors, traders and even raiders. You would drown in endless mechanoid raids later on.

[avilmask]

Also you can eat people, you know. Corpses spoil only during summer (slightly above 0C), so you have a lot of time to think about it (especially when your dudes start trying to eat them without butchering). So probably don't burry your corpses

[Serenity]

That said it can be done without cannibalism. The key is knowing that potatoes grow well enough even in poor soil and starting with a large enough patch of gravel as possible. There are some places where nearly a whole sunlamp covers gravel (the rest can be filled with hydroponics later). But until the harvest is done you have to stretch your food as much as possible.