Dread Hunger: How to Survive the Cold With Your Crew

There are a lot of things to keep track of when playing Dread Hunger. From managing your and your crew’s health to making plans to brave the Great White Unknown while also keeping an eye on suspicious activity from your crew to see who the Thralls could be. One element that trumps just about everything else in terms of importance is warmth as it’s essential to surviving the cold of the Arctic.

While it’s possible to forget about managing warmth from time to time with everything else going on, those who neglect thinking about it, especially in the end-game, are extremely unlikely to end up surviving to the end of the round. Although it’s certainly important to be keeping a lookout for Thralls and other dangers, if a crew isn’t prepared for the cold, there’s simply no reality where they can win.

More Dread Hunger guides:

How to Spot Thralls | How to Kill Everyone As a Thrall

Staying Warm in Dread Hunger

When playing Dread Hunger, warmth should always be on the mind and should inform every decision that the player makes. Although there are many facets to surviving the game, without warmth, the player is guaranteed to fail, so planning with the rest of the crew how to stay warm is essential for making it to the end.

Before going out on major expeditions into the Great White Nothing, make sure to stock up consumable warmth items like lanterns, tea, and stew as they can be easy ways to quickly warm up when out in the cold. Given their consumable nature, make sure to always be keeping an eye out for recourses that could restock them. If you find that you need to get in the water while out there, greatly consider if you’re going to be able to warm back up immediately after getting out. If not, it might not be a bad idea to wait to get into the water until you have more options available to you.

For those staying behind at the ship, make sure to keep the fireplace in the Captain’s Quarters well fed as it provides warmth bonuses for every room in the boat making it a great respite for anyone coming back from a long bout in the wilderness.

The most important thing to staying warm, however, is having good management of fuel. Keeping any fire going in Dread Hunger requires the player to have fuel that they’re willing to get rid of to stay warm so it’s important to know which fires to feed and when. For example, if no one’s back at the ship, it’d be a waste to keep the fireplace in the Captain’s Quarters going, likewise with the various fires that players can start while out in the Great White Nothing.

Fueling the ship to get through the Arctic is the main objective for survivors, but that doesn’t mean that they should put all of their fuel into it. It’s important to balance the fuel needed to win the game and the fuel needed to survive. It’s always better to have more than you need on hand than to come up short during an emergency but have enough to keep the ship trudging along.