EmberFrost beginner's guide: 12 tips to keep the fire alive

You arrive in Tamarisk with one ember, a cold fire pit and a village under the snow. These twelve tips cover the things most new keepers learn the hard way. They are spoiler-light: you will not find story twists here, only how the village works.

The basics

1. Light the fire before anything else

The first thing the village needs is fire. Head into the forest, stand next to a tree until you have a few logs on your back, and walk into the stone fire pit. The Last Ember does the rest. Everything else in EmberFrost grows out of that ring of warmth, and the first villagers will not come until it is burning.

2. Learn to read the fire

The fire burns wood all the time. You can see how much fuel it has in the ring around the temperature icon at the top of the screen and above the fire pit itself. Keep an eye on it: the fire burns faster at night and faster as the village grows, because it is keeping more people warm.

If it runs dry, do not panic. The fire sinks to embers instead of going out forever, and it catches again as soon as you add wood. But embers barely warm anyone, so do not let it sit there.

3. Do not stay in the cold too long

The warm ring around the fire is your safe zone. Step out of it, toward the forest edge, the quarry or the lake, and after a while you get chilled: you slow down and frost creeps in from the edges of the screen. Walk back into the warmth and it passes in a few seconds. Plan your trips so you come back before the frost sets in.

4. Carry full loads, but not always

Your backpack holds only a few items at first. Carrying a big stack slows you down a little, so a full load is worth it for long trips and less so for quick ones. The backpack upgrades are some of the best early purchases: every trip after them carries more.

Making money

5. Your first coins come from the sell circle

Before there is a working market, stand on the glowing sell circle next to the ruined market stall and your logs turn into coins. Gathering also drops a few coins at the source, so pick those up as you go. Fish and stone get sell circles of their own once you open the ice hole and the quarry.

6. Rebuild the market stall early

The market stall brings customers who pay full price for what you stock, much better than the sell circle. Keep its crates filled and walk through to pick up the coins they leave behind. The sell circles stay around as the quick option when you need coins right now.

7. Watch the prices on the ruins

All the village's ruins are there from the start, but only the next few show a price; the rest wait behind a padlock. You do not have to pay a price in one go: stand on the zone and your coins go in as you have them, and whatever you paid stays there.

Growing the village

8. Hire help as soon as you can

The woodcutter's hut is a turning point. Once a woodcutter keeps wood coming in, you are free to fish, mine, sell and build. The fisher, the stonecutter and the carrier do the same for the lake, the quarry and the long walks back to the square.

9. Build the infirmary before you need it

When the fire runs low or a storm hits, villagers get cold, then freezing, and eventually fall ill. Granny Maud's infirmary is where they recover. Without it, a villager who falls ill may decide to leave the village for good. Nobody dies in EmberFrost, but losing people you rebuilt homes for still hurts.

10. Push the warmth outward

The fire can be upgraded right where it stands, from a campfire to a stone hearth, a great hearth and a beacon fire, each one warming a wider ring. The upgrade zone next to the pit shows a price once the village is big enough. Braziers carry heat to the forest edge and the lake so your workers can stay out there longer.

Storms and the Great Blizzard

11. Fill the fire before a storm, not during it

Storms are announced before they arrive: the sky changes colour, the wind picks up, an icon appears and Granny Maud warns you. During a storm, every fire gives less heat and burns wood faster. Top up the fire as soon as you see the warning. The wind screens halve what a storm takes from you, so they are worth building before the big one.

12. Get ready before you build the lookout

The lookout tower is the last building, and finishing it starts the Great Blizzard: the hardest night in the game, when the whole village gathers around the fire. Before you build it, fill the fire, stock up on wood, and make sure your workers and upgrades are in place. Everything you have built gets tested at once.

Bonus tips

• The lake is slippery. On the frozen lake your character slides, so give yourself room to stop. And maybe stay away from the thinnest ice in the middle.
• Normal or Hard? You choose at the start of a new game. Hard makes the fires hungrier and the storms longer. Start on Normal if you are new to the genre.
• The sled lets you haul much more at once, and the forge can improve it so it no longer slows you down.
• Achievements come along naturally as you play, and a few are secrets. They show in Settings and in Game Center.

Get started

EmberFrost: Survival Tycoon is free to start on the App Store. If you want to know more about the game first, read the launch post, or see how it fits the idle tycoon and cozy survival genres.