So, the time has finally come. The grass has turned from hues of green and orange to a slight pale hue. Rain turns to fine particles of snow at night. Crops seem to be taking longer to grow and the bees seem to hide in their skeps for longer. That can only mean one thing: Winter is coming.
This is no famous line from Game of Thrones, or the meme born in 2011. Vintage Story worlds run on a four-season cycle, which means for 3 months of the year, Winter arrives to deliver a bitter cold and thick layers of snow. Once winter arrives, you are left to survive with what you have left.
How do you survive this ordeal? What about preparations to make before the season arrives? What can you do on this frozen land? Let’s find out.
How long does winter last?
Basic education tells us that winter lasts for 3 months of a year. In the case of Vintage Story, this is December, January, and February, and each month lasts 9 days, a total of 27 days. However, Winter isn’t contained to just those three months. There’s the period in the later half of Autumn and the early period of Spring where it’s no longer winter, but the cold continues longer. That means you may be preparing for 5-6 months of stagnation.
Depending on how far away you are in the world can depend on the temperature. Above is a warm region, the middle is temperate, and below is a cold region.
Of course, it doesn’t have to be this way all the time. Depending on where you live in the world, your Winter may last longer or shorter, where areas close to the polar equator will experience the cold for longer, while areas close to the tropic equator will experience little to no snowfall. What you will have to do is simply gauge the weather in your vicinity. The snow might start in November and lift by March, it might only be in and around January, or it might just never let up.
Before the arrival, make your preparations
The best thing you can do in winter is to do everything you can before winter arrives. This means stocking up on food, snow-proofing livestock farms, and making sure your house is, well, a house.
I made a blog all about how to optimise food growth and making good use of your harvests. It also goes into detail on how you can continue to grow during the cooler months, how to preserve food so it lasts longer, and what crops to grow at what time. Check it out here.
Enclosed spaces such as rooms will keep the cold weather out. As long as you are in these kinds of places, you shouldn’t freeze in the winter cold. As such, make sure you have a house that’s a bit more structurally sound than a few walls, put up some doors, and make sure there is enough room to move around.
What to do during Winter
The time has come, the outside temperature is now so cold, it doesn’t go above 0C, and in some cases, the temperature is so low, not even a greenhouse is producing enough warmth to continue crop growth or bee production. So, now is the time to settle in until it all blows over.
What not to do during Winter
One of the first tips I can offer is to not go outside too often if you do not have warm gear. All clothing you wear has a maximum warmth value, and this value depletes over time as those clothes get more tattered. At a high enough warmth, you can safely explore the wintry world outside, but if the warmth is below 0C, you will start to freeze. Unless you have the temperature tolerance, don’t spend too much time outside.
Pay attention to your body temperature around winter. If the temperature drops below temperature hardiness, your body temperature will drop. Beware as well, your hunger will deplete faster in the cold.
Beyond making sure your fingers don’t freeze off, the low temperature conditions can also increase hunger depletion. Cooler temperatures means more energy to warm up, so spending less time outside also means conserving hunger and nutrition.
Forging and smithing new equipment
Got all that ore that you have been meaning to smith into gear? Now is the time to get onto that job you’ve been leaving behind while performing every other task. All you need is some fuel for the fire pit, bloomery, or forge, a Hammer, and whatever materials you need to form into gear. This will keep you inside your nice and toasty base, and you’ll be getting some jobs done. At the end of all this, you’ll have some nifty new gear to go out and explore in.
A basic setup for forging operations. Use this time to make the new gear you have been meaning to forge.
If you have a Helve Hammer set up, you can easily automate smithing and refining as winter doesn’t stop the wind. Plus, with less farming to do, you can get all of that done without any distractions.
Cooking the remaining produce into food
If you stock up properly, food management will be no trouble for the winter. After all, it’s just 27 in-game days of winter, and there is a wall of crocks filled with 4 servings of stew. However, if you had a bountiful harvest, you may have some extra ingredients left that can’t be preserved any longer. Throw all of that together to make soup, stew, or porridge, or bake it into a pie or some bread, and you have yourself quick meals on the go.
Spare food? Perishing food? Do something about it now before it turns to rot. A cellar will help extend the life of what you have cooked so you can toughen out winter for longer.
Having spare food is a good idea if you plan to go out for any reason. With the cold temperatures increasing hunger depletion, having extra food means you can stay out just for a little while longer without worrying about wasted resources.
Mixing, soaking, and fermenting
There are going to be a lot of days where nothing will happen, so why not pass the time with time-consuming tasks, like using barrels to create more materials? Some recipes make use of throwing items into a barrel of liquid, while others require sealing away for a few hours to a few days. Lengthy tasks such as making leather can take over a week to complete with all that soaking, so now is a good time to make more leather.
Sealing and fermenting can take days to complete. Use that time to mix up all those crafting ingredients, maybe even use that to create gear you are still meaning to craft.
If you have spare grain, these can be fermented into alcohol. Now, it’s ideal that you keep grains for eating or feeding livestock, but if you really have no further use, you can use grain to ferment into alcohol. While you could leave it as a liquid you can drink, further processing with a distiller can produce more potent alcohol, including Aqua Vitae. This powerful alcohol is great for soaking bandages in for a quick heal. It does evaporate quickly, so only take what you need from a barrel or bucket of Aqua Vitae.
Interior redecorating
You’re going to be spending a lot of time indoors. The same walls, the same floor, the same ceiling. Perhaps it’s time to do a bit of renovating. Check out what materials you have gathered and take a look at the state of your base. Dirt is a quick and “dirty” way to build a house, but at some point, it’s going to look a little garish. This is where wood planks and cobblestone can make quite the change in appearance, turning a small hut into a rustic home.
Build for something more aesthetic, or build for more space. Whatever the case, now you have time for that.
That being said, interior decorating doesn’t just have to be replacing the floor and walls. After all, during the winter, you will want to reduce contact with the outdoors for too long. You might have a base that is nothing but a giant cube, no real floor plan except some storage containers scattered around with some functional blocks. Why not create a floor plan for your base?
It’s not just about the base that’s already there, it’s also the space below the base that can be used. Remember those Cellar rooms I have mentioned before? These are a good place to have a room like that as having a door that leads into an enclosed room is how a Cellar can remain nice and cool for preservation. For more aesthetic options, you could also move some operations underground, like crafting with barrels.
Bunker down for Temporal Storms
Just because it is winter, doesn’t mean that everything has come to a standstill. Those Temporal Storms will continue to form during winter, so while you might be safe from the cold, you might be less so from the horrors of the rust dimension. It’s nothing more special than any other Temporal Storm, but it gives you something to do while waiting for winter to pass.
Hunker down for hibernation
Okay, but let’s say we have nothing we can do, and all we have left to do requires more warm temperatures. What can we do to pass the time? Well, it’s to pass the time. We have at least 27 days to get through, and the fastest way to pass the time is to make use of beds to skip time. Different beds will skip a different amount of time, and sleeping is only possible at certain intervals of the day.
Different tiers of bed can extend the time you can skip.
A little winter warmer
It’s going to be long, arduous, and probably boring, but it will all come to an end once Spring arrives. The crops will start to grow again, the bees will start buzzing again, and you can get back to exploring the world around you once more. Congratulations, you have survived your first winter - or maybe it’s not the first time and you just needed a tip or two.
Your fellow players could do with a tip or two in surviving their first winters. Why not share that knowledge around, perhaps show off what you know? It’s easy to set up a Vintage Story server, and we make that process simple! All you need is one of our affordable plans, then start up a new Vintage Story server. If you need any help setting up a server, check out our help articles.