Frostpunk lets you play different scenarios, like "The Refugees" or "The Last Autumn." However, the game's main storyline happens during "A New Home," a scenario where you'll be in charge of leading a group of Londoners into a new place where they'll build a new city to survive the area's challenging conditions.

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This scenario lasts around 48 days, during which you'll have to explore, save people from starvation or the weather, rescue people from the outside, and make all sorts of hard decisions. Eventually, you'll have to give some purpose to your citizens, so they have something to live for. To do that, you'll have to choose between Frostpunk Order or Faith paths.

These paths will open purpose trees, meaning the laws you can choose from in the Book of Laws will vary depending on your chosen path. While you can survive following either one of these paths, some differences between the two of them could make things easier or more challenging for you, depending on the one you choose. Here are the advantages and disadvantages for both of them.

Updated September 11, 2021, by Miguel Amaro: There isn't a proper way to play Frostpunk. Sure, you'll have objectives to complete, and the ultimate goal is to survive the Final Storm, but how you achieve that is entirely up to you; succeeding or not will depend on the strategy you take and the choice you make. One of the first choices you'll have to make is deciding between Frostpunk Order or Faith paths. The main goal of this guide is to help you choose this in the way we found most effective, and it has been updated with even more info into why each path is better in certain areas.

Differences Between The Two Paths

faith vs order Frostpunk

The Order path focuses more on giving your people purpose by maintaining the order in your city. You'll be able to achieve this by guiding them through a more militant style. So, in general, the Order path focuses more on productivity and obedience.

However, the Faith path focuses on giving your people purpose through spirituality and good intent, so you'll be able to pass laws that will make people feel good and mend their ways. It doesn't matter which path you choose.

Frostpunk order or faith path will follow the "A New Hope" scenario. However, this doesn't mean that whatever you choose won't make a difference since each path will have advantages and disadvantages. So here they are:

Better For Warmth: Faith Path

 Field Kitchen from frostpunk

The main way you're going to be able to keep your citizens warm is by researching technologies in the Workshop that focuses on heating. Things like building Steam Hubs, upgrading the Generator efficiency, or having buildings with heaters will be essential to surviving the final storm.

Still, there's only so much you can do, and the further a building or house is from the Generator, the colder it will be. However, if you're following the Faith Path, there's one building that can fix this heating issue — the Field Kitchen.

  • Building Field Kitchens costs five wood and ten steel.

You'll have to sign the Field Kitchens law before building this place, but once you do, you can employ workers, engineers, or children to serve hot meals during the workday to help people stay warm. Basically, what Field Kitchens do is raise the heat level of all the work buildings that are in its AoE by one. To do so, this building will consume five food rations per day, however, despite its name, this building will not make people less hungry.

  • Tip: don't use field kitchens around workplaces that operate outside the typical schedule (like buildings that are working 24 hours) because the kitchen will only work from 8:00 to 18:00.

Better For Discontent: Order Path

londoners group description frostpunk

Since the order path has a more militant nature, you'll be able to deal with high discontent levels more efficiently. For example, you can use Patrols and Prisons to deal with people. Having buildings that can lower your discontent is really useful since high discontent levels can cause you to lose the game.

So if you need to use emergency shifts and are struggling with discontent, choose the Order path.

Better For Health: Faith Path

House of Healing from frostpunk

Besides gathering resources and finding food sources, you'll have another big problem to deal with: sick people. Since this game takes place during a Volcanic Winter, temperatures are super low, and people will start to get sick very soon if you don't provide them with a warm environment (both at work and in their homes).

Having a lot of sick people will complicate things very quickly; they'll need to be treated as soon as possible or they'll become gravely ill. At that point, you can build a Care House to take care of them or cure them at Medical Posts at the risk of leaving them as amputees.

Not only that, but health buildings require engineers to operate, and finding engineers is a lot harder than finding workers.

That's why following the Faith path is a good choice since you'll be able to build a House of Healing. This building costs 35 wood and ten steel; you'll also need to sign the House of Healing law.

Once all of that is done, you will be left with a hospital-type building that doesn't require engineers and can heal both the sick and the gravely ill while also raising the patient's hope. However, they'll heal them at a slightly slower rate than an infirmary would.

Better For Efficiency: Order Path

Foreman menu notification frostpunk

This game is all about decision-making, and choosing between Frostpunk Order or Faith paths can help you when it's time to gather the game's precious resources. You'll need resources to survive. Coal will keep the Generator working while wood and steel let you research new technologies and build new buildings, while raw food and food rations help prevent your people from starving to death.

This is where the Order path shines since it lets you use Foremans. These people will ensure that everyone is working "to the best of their ability," meaning having a Foreman will increase the efficiency of nearby workplaces by 40 percent for 24 hours (but it has an 18 hour cooldown).

  • To allow Foremans, you'll need to sign the Morning Gathering law and then the Foreman law

The best part is that this boost affects humans workers as well as Automatons - which is huge considering these robots will only work at 60 percent efficiency unless you upgrade them, and even then, you get a 10 percent increase with each upgrade.

  • Using this ability will cost you ten food rations.

Better For Hope: Faith Path

Low Hope frostpunk with city at night

While deciding to follow the order path helps you control discontent, the Faith path is a better choice if you don't know how to keep your Hope levels high enough. The reason why this happens is that the Order path only has one building that can increase Hope levels which is:

  • The Propaganda Centre: There can only be one in the city, and you'll need engineers to make it work. Note that passing the Propaganda Centre law and owning this building will trigger the Propaganda Centre arc, which will result in some citizen's death.

However, the Faith Path has more, like:

  • House of Prayer: This building doesn't need any workers and has an AoE. What it does is raise hope via two abilities, sermons and evening prayers. The first has a 2-day cooldown and will cause hope to rise slightly; the second costs 20 food rations, also has a two-day cooldown and will increase hope while also decreasing a little bit of discontent.
  • Temple: The downside to this building is that there can only be one in the city; the Temple will rise hope while also slightly decreasing discontent. To do so, you can use one of the Temple's four abilities. For example, using the Ceremonial Service will raise hope while also positively affecting discontent people. This ability costs 20 food rations; Evening Prayers makes hope rise and causes discontent to fall; Sermon will raise hope levels by a little bit, and it costs 20 food rations; Finally, Captain's Words will make discontent decrease.

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