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Choosing a brand when unlocking a technology often comes down to a choice between increased Squalor but a lower worker and heat demand requirement, or no squalor but higher worker and heat demand requirements. Workers and Heat are valuable resources, so a little Squalor is sometimes a necessary evil to avoid triggering a snowball effect that ends with you being ousted as steward.
Put simply, Squalor pollutes the air and spreads dirt and filth throughout your settlements. Left unchecked, it can lead to Disease, heighten Tension, decrease population growth, and increase the wear on and therefore the effectiveness of extraction, logistics, and industrial districts (and even shut them down), leaving you short on the supplies needed to survive the cold. Fortunately, there are ways to manage Squalor and even completely eradicate it. We’ll walk you through how to reduce Squalor.
How to lower Squalor in Frostpunk 2
The most effective way to lower Squalor is to ensure you’re producing enough Materials to demand and keep your city maintained. Materials are made by Extraction Districts positioned on top of Frozen Forest deposits in your city or transported back by Frostland Teams from colonies and settlements out in the Frostland.
Material production can also be increased with technologies such as Sawmills and Advanced Sawmills. It’s also worth unlocking the Melting Deep Deposits tech and building an Extraction District on top of a Vast Frozen Forest (which gives an almost infinite deposit to extract from) with a Deep Melting Drill installed. The latter costs cores but are well worth the investment.
You can check your Material production and demand by checking the little box icon at the top of the screen. This will indicate the demand, output, and any surplus you might have. To reduce Squalor make sure you’re always meeting or exceeding demand.
The second way to reduce Squalor is to research the Filtration Towers technology in the Idea Tree, under the Resources tab. The idea comes in three variants: Ventilation Tower, Filtration Tower, and Moss-Filtration Tower. The best is Moss-Filtration Tower because it requires 20 Heat Demand (compared to the 40 of the others) and significantly decreases Squalor. It isn’t always available though so opt for the faction choice that offers the best Squalor reduction benefits.
Invest in the Filtration Tower tech to reduce Squalor. Captured by VideoGamer
The best faction branch is the Moss-Filtration Tower. Captured by VideoGamer
You should only need a tower or two to keep Squalor in check. Captured by VideoGamer
Once the idea has been researched, you’ll unlock the Moss-Filtration Tower building, which you can build on a Housing District in your city, costing 400 Workforce, 100 Heatstamps, and 50 Frebabs. It costs 20 Heat to run. Tap Construct Building in the bottom right, select the Housing tab then Moss-Filtration Tower to build it. Depending on the size of your city, a single tower is more than enough to eradicate virtually all Squalor, but you may need to scale up as your population increases or if you invest in technologies that produce more Squalor.
Finally, the last way to reduce Squalor is to limit it in the first place by choosing Idea Tree technologies that don’t increase Squalor or only bumps it up lightly. For example, if you’re mining coal, go for the Advanced Shaft Coal Mine instead of the Advanced Blasting Coal Mine. The latter significantly increases Squalor for only a marginal bump in coal output.
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