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Dread Hunger is a mix of survival and social deduction game, forcing players to cooperate with people they don’t entirely trust if they are to have any hope of breaking their ship free of the frozen sea and escaping to safety. The game ends with the appearance of a blizzard on the final day, and if players are not quick on their feet and well-supplied, they’ll freeze to death before they can break through the final iceberg. Here’s everything players need to know about surviving the blizzard.
The Basics Of Warmth
Without adequate warmth, the player will die, but warmth is a complicated matter in Dread Hunger, which is part of what makes the blizzard so hard to survive. On top of that danger, the player must contend with thralls creating totems and causing other dangerous mischief. There are six levels of warmth in the game:
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The player typically has time to find or make a source of warmth before they freeze to death in Tier -1. The risk posed by Tier -2 is more substantial, and the character will need to act quickly to avoid freezing. Tier -3 will kill the player in seconds if the player doesn’t get out of the water or stack warmth to counter the cold’s effects. Move too slow and the player will wish they’d crafted a powder keg to use on themselves.
How To Keep Warm In The Blizzard
The player has several sources of heat available to them, but they must be used intelligently to survive the blizzard. Heat sources fall into three categories: food, pre-placed, and crafted. Only by using these heat sources well can the player endure the coming cold.
All foods recover warmth at a Tier 3 rate, but the amount of warmth they provide differs depending on the food. Stew (crafted on the ship’s stove) is one of the best options. It can be made from any combination of 10 raw meats, blubber, bone clubs, and the body parts of other players. Thralls can gain warmth by eating the cooked meat of humans, which provides warmth at a Tier 3 rate.
Pre-placed sources of warmth include caves, igloos, tents, and the ship itself. Best of all is a fireplace: these are located in the captain’s quarters, by the beds of the wrecked ship, in the tent of center ice wall Butte, and in the tent at the nitro camp with the workbenches. The fireplace in the captain’s quarters provides Tier 3 warmth to anyone in the room and provides Tier 2 warmth to other parts of the ship. The stove provides Tier 2 warmth to those near it. The boiler provides Tier 2 warmth.
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Crafted sources include the campfire, lantern, and tea. The campfire can be crafted with 3 wood planks and 4 stones but must be fed fuel (anything the boiler takes) to keep it going. The Tier of a campfire’s heat depends upon its fuel level and whether it is located in a cave. The lantern is the Navigator’s starting item and can be crafted with 1 scrap and 1 blubber. The player can refuel it by dragging blubber onto it. A lantern provides Tier 1 warmth during the day and improves nighttime warmth from Tier -2 to Tier -1 for anyone within its light. The player can craft tea at a stove using 3 dried herbs, and drinking it restores warmth at a Tier 3 rate. Negative Tiers from the nighttime, being outside or being in the blizzard reduce the warmth the player receives from food before the player’s current warmth.
The blizzard exists to put a time restraint on the crew, forcing them to either clear the iceberg at the end of the strait quickly or perish. It is possible to survive in the blizzard briefly, but once the sun sets, there’s little that can be done, as heat will drain faster and heat sources will provide less warmth. Stacking multiple warmth sources such as tea and stew is the only way to endure the effects of the blizzard for long, and even then the crew must act fast to win this brutal survival game.
Dread Hunger is available now for PC.
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