When the cold hits and resources run low, people in Frostpunk 2 will get tense, and if you don’t do anything about it, you will lose your position as a Steward of the city. To avoid that, here’s how to reduce Tension in Frostpunk 2.
How to lower Tension in Frostpunk 2
Address issues in the city
In Frostpunk 2, meters at the top of the screen indicate all the issues: Cold, Hunger, Squalor, Disease, and Crime. A high level of any of these issues greatly increases Tension, so your first goal should be lowering them as much as possible.
Hovering over an issue tells you what is wrong in the city, and you can use that information to decide on your next steps. My biggest issue was severe Cold caused by Heat scarcity, which meant I had to get more Coal by sending Frostland Teams to discover Outposts or building more Extraction Districts.
You can also enact Laws in the city that affect resource output. There are quite a few of them available, but here are the Law subcategories I recommend you take a look at first:
- Food Additives
- Goods
- Waste Heat Conversion
- Worker Shifts
I suggest dealing with the biggest issues before the Whiteout hits the city. Once the storm starts, your Tension will at least double due to increased resource demand, and you risk getting kicked out.
Raise Trust with communities
Communities don’t have as big of an effect on Tension as general city issues, but bad relationships can cause people to protest, lowering the resource output of one or more Districts and increasing the Tension.
I suggest you keep your relations at Neutral with every community and faction in the city. You can do that by making and fulfilling promises, granting agendas, funding projects, and promoting the faction.
Most of these actions are straightforward but avoid making too many Law promises. This is simply because the Council will go on a 10-week recess after voting on a Law, and if you have too many promises lined up, you might not have enough time to enact every Law you promised.
