Winter

## Winter Hardships

File:Snow.jpg
Winter weather creates several additional hardships that do not occur during warm weather.

* Various scavenging locations will be inaccessible due to snow; Franko may be the only one available. He will visit less often and his prices will be higher for all goods, especially Wood, Fuel, and Books. All traders will charge more for these.
* The Rainwater Collector will not work, due to freezing weather. To make Clean Water, a survivor must shovel Snow and melt it at a Stove at an additional cost of Fuel in addition to the normal cost of a Filter.
* Loot outside buildings will only produce "trash and dust" when looted. The general rule seems to be that there must be a roof over the loot pile - the walls can be open - but there are exceptions both ways.
	+ Advanced players will try to hit locations with a lot of external piles before winter and save some locations that are almost exclusively inside for winter.
	+ Move loot you can't bring home yet to an inside pile when possible (always empty outside piles; don't use them for storage). Matey in the Garage is tricky here; he has one pile "inside" at the start of the map, and another above his front door. If you leave stuff in the pile above him, wait until the thaw to access it again, and it should be okay. Checking it during winter could destroy it.
	+ The City Hospital may be bugged; all locations (inside it) seem to become winter trash loot. You may want to avoid it in winter if possible, or if you go and find the first one or two inside are trash, don't do the rest. Wait for warm weather.
	+ If you wait for the cold spell to end, some outside loots will be retrievable again, but some won't.
* Characters can freeze to death if the temperature drops too low during the night. Keep your eye on the temperature and fill your Heater with copious amounts of Fuel when it's real cold.

## Extremely cold

There are period of time that it's extremely cold in Winter. The temperature is about -1°C and there will be no raids happen at all due to it.

This can only be informed by the Radio Weather FM channel.

*"Winter hold us firmly in it icy grip. Many people froze to death in recent days. The only upside is the decrease in crime, as even the bandits huddle in their home."*

## Coping with Winter Weather

To cope with the additional Fuel costs, survivors can use a Hatchet to chop furniture, converting it into a resource pile containing Wood and Fuel. Furniture can be chopped at the Shelter or at scavenging locations.

The Heater and Stove can be upgraded to be more Fuel-efficient.

Clean Water in the inventory will not freeze.

* To save fuel and avoid having to shovel snow, survivors can try using several Rainwater Collectors during warm weather to obtain a large supply of Clean Water to last throughout the Winter.
* However, each Rainwater Collector costs 15 Components, 5 Fuel, and 3 Parts (much of which could have been used to make water anyway), and making lots of filters with multiple Collectors early in the game stresses your Component inventory at this crucial stage. Whereas making water from ice essentially only costs 1 more fuel per amount of water (see the very bottom of  Profitability table here). Therefore, one might choose to simply keep one Rainwater Collector running as much as you can at first, and not make extra Collectors.

## Bugs

While all dump outside the building turn into dust and trash before loot, they still re-appear after loot with dust and trash.