The Forever Winter guide: 6 tips for surviving the punishing wasteland

The Forever Winter, developed by Fun Dog Studios, is a co-op tactical survival shooter with a dash of horror. It's also punishing, through and through. Released in Early Access on September 24, The Forever Winter tasks you with trying to survive an ongoing conflict where the other parties are bigger and better equipped than you.

Playable solo or in online co-op, The Forever Winter takes inspiration from other extraction shooters like Escape from Tarkov. In short, you must loot what you can and explore while you can, and then make a swift escape back to the hub to avoid losing everything. It's not as easy as it sounds, and you're likely to fail quite a few expeditions before your first successful hunt.

With so many interlocking mechanics and the odds arrayed against you, it's easy to get overwhelmed. But don't fret—our The Forever Winter guide contains tips for surviving the punishing wasteland, which will hopefully make the learning curve a bit less steep.

 

Your water supply decreases even when you're offline

The Water Supply mechanic involves the water tank in your Innards (the name for the hub area). You need to have reserves to keep vendors and quest NPCs alive. If water completely drains, your Innards will essentially die, costing you all of your progress except for any experience you've gained with your characters.

The catch: Currently your water supply in The Forever Winter decreases even when you're not actively playing.

You need to have a decent supply of water. You can loot barrels during expeditions and, perhaps more crucially, you can also obtain water by completing quests. After a while, you'll be in a good spot and won't have to rush too much. But during the first few hours, you'll need as many reserves as you can.

You'll lose one reserve of water per day, every 24 real-time hours. If you're planning to be away from the game for a while, make sure to double-check what your reserves are beforehand. As an upside, high water levels will gradually unlock more NPCs for the Innards, if you need some extra incentive.

 

Keep an eye out for lockboxes

There are different types of lockboxes to find in The Forever Winter, but they're all helpful in their own way. Small lockboxes are great for gathering quick loot, including weapons, ammo, and medical supplies. Large lockboxes can't be opened, but you can sell them. In your Innards, the NPC vendor Heisenburg can trade around 15,000 credits for each of them, which is a hefty sum.

If you find a sealed Gacha Box, try and make it to the extraction point as soon as possible. You need to escape with the Gacha Box first, but once you're looking at the loot summary screen, you can open it to find a random assortment of weapons, ammo, and other supplies. Don't be scared off by the name—there are no microtransactions involved.

 

Manually turn in quests

It might sound obvious, but in case you missed it, you need to manually turn in quests in The Forever Winter. Whenever you've completed an objective, make sure to open the main menu with your Esc key, navigate to the Quests tab, and click on Turn In Quest on the bottom right. In return, you'll obtain your hard-earned XP, loot, and (when applicable) water.

In general, you should get used to doing the quest and vendor loop before and after each expedition. You can have up to three quests simultaneously, and tackling them will also increase the corresponding faction's reputation so you can eventually purchase better loot.

It takes time and effort, but once you're used to talking to vendors and turning in quests as soon as you've finished them, you'll only have to worry about survival in missions.

Bag Man is a great all-around character class

At the start of The Forever Winter's Early Access phase, there are five character classes to choose from, with the Gunhead "coming soon" in a later update. While all five classes might seem fairly similar at a glance, the perk differences between them are crucial for your survival and will complement your friends' picks if you band together in multiplayer.

Here's a quick glance at what each character class offers:

• Old Man: Survivalist. Skills focus on medical supplies and basic weapon usage. Average health and speed. Initially trained in Rifles (RFL), Shotguns (SHG), Heavy Rifles (HRF), and Pistols (PST).
• Scav Girl: Speed and Covert Ops. Skills focus on speed and small arms. Can see loot icons on HUD at 2x normal distance. Faster movement, lower health. Initially trained in Rifles (RFL), Shotguns (SHG), Pistols (PST), and Submachine Guns (SMG).
• Mask Man: Master at Arms. Sacrifices nuance for weapon skills. Can see extraction locations on HUD at 2x normal distance. Average health and speed. Initially trained in Rifles (RFL), Shotguns (SHG), Pistols (PST), and Submachine Guns (SMG).
• Shaman: Logistics Master. A hybrid of speed, carry capacity, and weapon skills. Can see loot icons on HUD at 2x normal distance. Average health and speed. Initially trained in Rifles (RFL), Shotguns (SHG), Pistols (PST), and Submachine Guns (SMG).
• Bag Man: Strength Training. Skills focus around carry capacity and heavy weaponry. High health, low speed. Initially trained in Rifles (RLF), Shotguns (SHG), Light Machine Guns (LMG), Heavy Machine Guns (HMG), and Heavy Rifles (HRF).

Of the five classes, Bag Man is an excellent choice. The class has expertise in heavy weaponry, decent health, and can eventually have the largest carry capacity in the game. It'll take some time to level up, like the rest of the characters, but Bag Man is great even from the get-go. The only downside is that Bag Man isn't a fast class—the Scav Girl is your best choice for that—but the pros far outweigh this single con.

 

When in doubt, let them fight

It's easy to forget that The Forever Winter is a game about scavenging, first and foremost. Regardless of which map you set out to explore, you're bound to find all sorts of tough enemies, from tanks to heavily armored patrols that surpass you in numbers. Foes don't circulate in isolation, though. Since the motif of The Forever Winter is one of ongoing conflict, you're bound to see them fight each other more often than not.

Especially during the early stages of an expedition, it's best to just find a good vantage point to hide out and watch the shootout ensue. Depending on your current equipment, it might be beneficial to jump right into the middle of things and finish the parties off when they're injured. But if you just want to play it safe, wait until the dust settles, and then loot any dead bodies lying around. There's not a ton of honor in doing so, but these strategies are necessary until you're better accustomed to the overall experience.

 

Tinker with graphics settings before diving in

One last tip, slightly unrelated to the game itself: The Forever Winter stands out visually, but as it stands, it's still in Early Access. Even with a powerful rig, you might struggle to get a stable framerate. In a game where landing a shot or sprinting out of a tough situation can make or break an expedition, you'll want to have the steadiest performance possible.

There are a few settings that can help achieve this. For Frame Rate Limit, stick to 60 FPS instead of picking Uncapped, even if you're used to it in other games, as the latter can be unstable. Aside from the usual culprits like Anti-Aliasing and Reflection Quality, which you should probably lower, adjusting the Resolution Scale can also greatly affect performance. Setting it down to 50.00 (or 50%) helped immensely on my end.

If you want to quickly test things in-game, the Training Mission is a decent bite-sized showcase—but I recommend doing at least one expedition to see how everything runs in an open space populated by multiple NPCs.

The Forever Winter is now available in Early Access on the Epic Games Store.