Survival games have always been a challenging genre of their own and among its communities, you will never find yourself in scarcity of guides. Whether you’ve played games like Don’t Starve, ARK: Survival Evolved, LifeAfter, or even Minecraft, you’ll certainly find yourself at home when you play Kefir’s newest entry called Frostborn.
The makers of Last Day On Earth: Survival have released a game that touches on the rich Norse mythos while taking a spin of its own in the survival genre. Unlike some other survival games out there, you aren’t in an alien, eldritch, or post-apocalyptic world where the dead have come back to wreak vengeance on the living. In Frostborn you are a Viking; an immortal Viking that will not fall prey to the curse that Hel had rained down on all of Midgard. While the Valkyries no longer descend to claim the dead, you, yourself keep coming back to the world of the living even though the Bifrost calls you to Valhalla. You are Frostborn.
Frostborn prides itself on its complex crafting systems and its design encouraging players to work together. The game possesses tons of options for base building, resource farming, battle tactics through a class system, dungeon crawling, raids, and many, many more. But with so many things to consider, you’d wonder: “How can I make the most of it?”
Well, dear reader, one thing that Frostborn doesn’t tell you but also prides itself in is for each Viking to explore their personal efficiency.
That’s right! There are so many things to consider in Frostborn, but only the most efficient of Vikings survive the Draugr-infested plains of Midgard. If you’re already in-game and you’re wondering how you can make yourself a more efficient player, then be sure to read our detailed Frostborn beginner’s guide below!
1. Use A Spear Early-Game Or While You Farm
When you start out, the game gives you a weapon for your particular class. While it’s nice to wield it and kill a few enemies with, you will notice that its durability wanes rather quickly. This is why you should ditch this weapon and put it aside for later (we will talk about that later, too).
Behold, the humble spear. With two logs and two limestone pieces, you can easily put this handy weapon together and farm without having to worry about finding a new sword. It isn’t as glamorous or powerful, but it certainly gets the job done when you’re faced with Green Zone enemies.
If you are having a hard time scoring kills and if you keep having to make new spears all the time aside from your tools, you may have to practice backstabbing your enemies by sneaking up on them. A backstab deals thrice the damage if you pull it off and can save your spear a few more stabs before it breaks.
When you exclusively go out to farm for materials for your camp, take a spear. If a giant appears to be guarding a chest, stab him in the back once, run, and then wait for him to reset. You should be able to do this again after you sneak up on him.
While the spear can be among the most efficient of weapons out there, we do not recommend you bring them to tombs or other players’ bases. Read on and we will tell you why.
2. Find A Good Family
Because Frostborn is an online multiplayer game, you will definitely be able to interact with other players through chat or a variety of emotes. Other players can be encountered through visiting Districts, entering zones or events, or even through the Family Search menu.
By joining a Family, you may be able to expedite the advancement of your progress by using some of the tools they have that you don’t or through sharing materials. Using such materials and tools can be used to make your own workstations, more advanced tools, or even help develop your District (more on that later).
But wait! This is assuming the players you have joined actually trust you.
Before joining a Family, you might as well get to know your Family members as well as those who wish to join your Family. After all, you wouldn’t want someone to take your stuff from everyone’s collective camps and leave, right?
While the above isn’t entirely against the rules, Kefir made sure that if you leave a Family, you won’t be able to join another one within 24 hours. This is mostly to prevent (or possibly mitigate or discourage) players from Family hopping, where they jump from Family to Family, taking valuable resources for their own benefit.
A good Family is a group of people you can trust with your stuff and a group of people who have your back while you farm, raid tombs, or even go toe to toe with another Family in a PvP Zone. We cannot stress it enough that it is highly recommended that you befriend and get to know the members of your Family before you help them or ask them for help.
If you don’t already have friends to play with, you can join the official Frostborn Discord server where tons of players are always looking for a Family to join.
3. Farm For The Basics
Every player can tell from the colors (Green, Orange, Red) of each zone that the difficulty varies. Because basic materials are the backbone of many a workstation or district upgrade, you will find yourself looking for these items time and time again.
When you are in your base, always make sure that you have spare chests as much as your current district level can allow. Your chests should mostly contain building materials or items you have found in the chests from any zone. Logs can be turned into planks or charcoal, limestone can be turned into stone blocks, iron ore can be smelted into iron ingots and so on.
It’s also wise that you keep these chests near their appropriate workstations just so you don’t need to run too much around your house. After all, we’re aiming for efficiency here.
If you happen to farm in an Orange or Red Zone and you encounter a rival player, do your best to run into the hordes of enemies as it will force your would-be assailant to fight them. If you’re lucky, you’ll get away with your haul. Your chances to survive an encounter like this would be greatly increased if your character is wearing shoes as shoes would always increase your movement speed, thus allowing you to outrun monsters or even some aggressors.
To make the most out of food in general, it is always wise to farm whilse using the Curer class. With the Curer’s heal and a couple of Lingonberries, you shouldn’t have the need for armor or bandages. That way, you can focus on cooking your meat in camp while you farm for other things.
Lastly, stockpile Fabric, Rope, and Plant Fiber as these can be easily turned into the simplest armor in the game. If you aren’t wearing anything, a set of this armor might save your skin in a fight with any monster while you are out farming. These three items can be taken from Draugrs and plants in any Green Zone.
While such materials can be changed into materials suitable for building things, it’s best that you only put them in workstations when you actually need them. That way, you won’t have a shortage of basic materials when you need to craft more chests, tools, basic clothing, or even extra workstations.
Speaking of extra workstations…
4. Make Multiple Workstations
It’s always good to have a duplicate workstation other than the one you already have. Not only does this save time for you, but it obviously nets you more processed material than usual. As you continue to upgrade your District, you will notice that each upgrade will be a bit more laborius than the last; what used to be just 5 or 10 planks is now a full stack of them or two.
At most, having two of each workstation is ideal but given that many of these workstations require advanced items to create, you’re better off saving these for the making of better equipment or even the Workbench (more on that below).
Similar to some other survival games, processing basic material into better items takes time in Frostborn. So while you’re busy making stacks of wooden planks, for example, you should be doing something else. By something else we mean farming for more material, raiding tombs with your Family, doing a chore in real life, etc. When you come back, all your farmed material should be processed.
If you cannot afford multiple workstations, that is all well and good. What should matter is you move yourself forward all the time through leveling your character up and more importantly through the development of your District.
5. Prioritize The Development Of Your District
One of Frostborn’s main features is your District; a place that contains advanced amenities like a bank, an altar where you can unlock new classes, and task givers to name a few. To further increase the number of amenities you have, you will need to constantly keep upgrading your District as it also helps you unlock newer and better features for your base camp.
At certain levels of District upgrades, you will be able to increase the number of chests or doors in your base, or you will be able to craft better armor or make better crafting material. The reason why this is so important is because by improving your District’s level, you also improve the efficiency of anything and everything in your camp and that’s not even counting the possibilities of new classes.
Another thing upgrading your District does for you is to increase the chance of you finding rare items out in the field. Whether these are equipment or material, the higher your District level, the more you will find items that you may most commonly find only in tombs.
As much as possible, work toward a better District and keep all your other goals secondary. Eventually, you will be able to create the most coveted workstation of all, the Workbench.
6. Dress To Kill (And Only To Kill!)
As we covered earlier, it’s wisest to farm with nothing but a spear and your underwear. This is so that you don’t lose anything valuable (and by valuable, we mean weapons and armor hard to come by). So if you are out there looking for some Maple Logs or Copper Ore in a Red Zone, it’s best that you don’t turn yourself into a target by wearing fancy gear only to get yourself killed. After all, nothing turns a rival Viking off than to see that his prey carried nothing but building material and several stacks of Lingonberries.
If you’re out to actually kill someone, then by all means don your best armor and weapons, or at the very least, equipment you are prepared to lose. Rushing at the enemy blindly is a terrible idea, however, as there are many ways to tackle rival Vikings or the monsters that roam about. Before you invest in a class, be sure that you know what each of your Family members specialize in so you don’t end up being redundant in a fight (like having two healers, for example).
As of this writing, the best PvE classes of the game are the Berserk and Sorcerer. The Berserk resists ranged damage and is an ideal character for one of the game’s most difficult dungeons, the Sanctum of Odin, and the Sorcerer deals bonus damage to any monster it comes across.
The PvP aspect of the game is a little bit more complex. The best initiator for a fight is the Thrasher with its mighty Leap skill which sends your character flying from a distance to stun some foes in a wide radius. If the Thrasher is too aggressive for you, your second choice would be a Protector. The Protector is the tank of the game and if paired with a good Healer, they definitely will not die immediately in a fight or at all.
A few excellent classes that fill the DPS role of this META are the Fire Mage, the Pathfinder, and the Assassin. As a PvP battle rages on, the Fire Mage can easily shut a team down for a brief moment whilst piling on lots of damage. This can be further accentuated by the Pathfinder’s marking skill which allows the Pathfinder’s Family to deal increased amounts of damage to the marked target and the Assassin whose skills can easily eat through any target’s (even the tanky ones) HP before they even know it.
But no matter the team composition, it’s always advisable for one member of the Family to be a Healer. While bandages and healing bombs are handy, Healers can easily turn the tide of battle by rejuvenating everyone with a well-timed Healing Wave.
Keep in mind that you will only be able to get the best equipment in the game if you finish the Sanctum of Odin. This dungeon by itself cannot be covered here in one go, but it is wise to always prepare for it if you want to be among the strongest.
While there are still more classes in the game that we haven’t covered here, there are many more ways you can conquer the battlefield with your Family and Kefir promises to add additional classes in the future, so keep a look out for them!
7. Raid Tombs And Other Bases
Half of the fun of playing Frostborn is to search its dangerous tombs. A tomb is built like a classic dungeon filled with loot, monsters, traps, and even a boss or two inside. Most importantly, you will be coming to these with your Family for the loot, of course.
The loot you can find in tombs are rare materials that can be used to build advanced workstations, better equipment, or even further develop your District. If you enter a Popular District, you can interact with the statue in the center of town that will allow you to open up an Orange Zone that only you and your family can access. It has a great amount of resources and a tomb but it only lasts for an hour. You can do this once a day. Stockpile on anything weird or new you come across and you will thank yourself for going on such an adventure when you needed some spare Metal Parts or Leather Strips.
If you’re feeling more confident, you can try your hand at raiding another Family’s base camp. In addition to this, you will want to make Raider’s Hatchets and Lockpicks to make the raid not painfully difficult, but such tools are quite expensive to make. Raider’s Hatchets allow you to break walls down and Lockpicks allow you to open chests. If your raid is successful, you should have a good haul of material, supplies, or even equipment. After raiding another Family, your base will be protected within a 48-hour window. Be warned that the defender always has the upper hand and the more you raid other Families, the more likely you will be raided, too.
8. Control Your Base Through Passages
“But how do I discourage people from raiding my base?”, you ask. Let us answer that question for you in the most succinct way possible!
Because the defender of a base always has the upper hand in a raid, you can choose to control the passages of your base. Corridors and cramped spaces can make for dangerous places for enemy raiders especially since they will either need to fight or flee. If you’ve been busy raiding tombs, you might have already built up an arsenal for yourself in the Vault or in one of the chests lying around your camp.
Wall everything up as well. The more layers of walls you have around your house, the better, as it can wear down raiders equipped with Raider’s Hatchets (you need one Raider’s Hatchet with full durability to break down a single wall). Most definitely, they will be after your chests.
If you are able to upgrade your chests, do so, as any chest cannot be opened by other raiders without a lockpick. The more your chest is upgraded, the more advanced the lockpick needed so this, too, is a simple yet effective way to deter would-be raiders.
9. Work Towards A Workbench
We’ve mentioned this workstation a couple of times in this guide, and you might be wondering why it’s such a big deal.
The Workbench is one of the most useful workstations in the game as it can help create more advanced walls for your house using metal plates and at the same time allows you to turn such plates into one of the most important items in the game: nails.
Most of the advanced equipment and tools in the game require nails to be built. Without a Workbench, you will only be relying on the nails you and your Family found in tombs and these are quite the rare find. But making a Workbench isn’t that easy of a task:
First, you will have to get your District to Lv40. This is why we strongly encouraged you earlier to prioritize the upgrading of your District.
Secondly, you will need Maple Planks and Copper Ingots. Maple Logs and Copper Ores are commonly found in Red Zones. A speedy farm using a Strong Pickaxe and a Strong Hatchet should do the trick, but you should always beware rival players in those zones.
Thirdly and lastly, you will need Oil and Pliers. At a level without a Workbench, you will definitely need to stockpile these from tomb raids and save them for this specifically.
Once your Workbench is made, you will definitely be able to have a smoother and easier game experience. After all, this workstation is the benchmark (no pun intended) of an experienced player.
10. Don’t Forget To Have Fun
Our last tip to being efficient in Frostborn is admittedly a bit corny. Sure you will find yourself in a bind with a dearth of material, but pick yourself up and get your Family to aid you. Or maybe you’ve rushed into an Orange Zone looking for a friend only to be steamrolled by an enemy player with hundreds of HP more than you and you happened to lose the one Cursed Bow you left in your vault.
That’s all okay because it is part of the game. The PvP aspect of this game is usually the one aspect that drives players out but do not be discouraged. Just think of the thrill of hiding from a lurking rival or outrunning them in a horde of monsters. Or even look forward to a time that you will be victorious after conquering the Sanctum of Odin. It’s all about looking forward.
If you’ve fallen in battle and you’ve lost your stuff, be patient and learn how to rebuild with your friends. The strongest of players have most certainly gone through defeat and loss time and time again, but that never stopped them from marching onward. Cooler heads will always prevail and it’s never a bad thing to have a backup plan.
All things come to an end, but your soul as a warrior will burn with the flames of courage forever. Midgard needs you. If you’ve come across other tips and strategies for Frostborn, that we might have missed out or if you’ve got tricks of your own, feel free to leave us a message in the comment section!