This might seem odd, but we're going to start with Frostpunk's Law system, rather than eg 'how does harvesting resources work?' or other more basic topics. So first: the Law framework itself. In broad strokes, Laws are like a traditional Video Game Tech Tree; you have foundational Laws you can pursue immediately, more 'advanced' Laws locked behind issuing specific other Laws, and issuing Laws provides new tools or alters the behavior of existing tools, with the whole progression heavily gated by time advancement. The detail-work of the implementation is pretty odd, though. First of all, where most tech tree systems -including Frostpunk's Workshop tech tree!- have the player select a desired result and then wait some period of time to complete the research, Laws operate 'backwards': you activate a Law, it applies immediately, but then Law selection goes on cooldown for a number of hours based on what Law was just activated. Second, Laws are completely free and unconstrained by external factors. Laws do not cost resources to pass, the Law cooldown cannot be modified by conditions on the ground, no Law is dependent on an existing research or structure being completed to make the Law possible to pass. (With... one special exception) Only the cooldown, Law tree requirements, and scenario-specific question of when the plot gives access to your secondary Law are relevant. Third is the factor my feelings are most mixed on: where video game tech trees generally endeavor to have researches be 100% beneficial, the Law system erratically attempts to make Law decisions complicated by them having negative consequences, and/or preventing the passing of a different Law, and/or having the benefit of the Law be itself a trade-off to benefit from. In theory, I find that appropriate to a system of 'lawmaking', but in practice I feel Frostpunk's design would be much better if it had stuck to Laws being clearly beneficial and hinged the design around the aspect of prioritization: which Laws to go for first, no questions about whether a Law should ever be taken. 'Adaptation' Laws are the starter Laws you always have access to unless you're playing The Last Autumn. (Which has a different tree that will be its own page) I'll be covering these in a somewhat-arbitrary conceptual order, mostly to let me introduce and explain a few other Frostpunk systems I don't really feel deserve a whole page to themselves. img Fighting Arena Enables the construction of Fighting Arenas. Initiates a quest to build one Fighting Arena within ? days. Failing this quest reduces Hope. Requires: Nothing. Law Cooldown: 36 hours. Note that the game doesn't mention the quest. This is actually a pretty annoying thing with Laws that unlock structures: they always trigger a quest to build the structure, they never mention this will happen, and most frustrating of all is that the necessary number of structures is not necessarily 1. Faith has probably the most egregious example of this, but in general it means all of these Laws have an inane 'gotcha' where a first-time player might get in trouble from not budgeting for the structures they will need to build soon because of the game hiding this information. The game does at least let you hover over the building within the Law screen to see its resource cost, but that's only partially helpful to the 'how many will I need?' issue. As for what the Fighting Arena is about... img Costs 15 Wood. 2x2 space An unmanned structure which slightly reduces Discontent for each person whose currently-assigned housing exists in its radius. No meaningful interaction with temperature. ... well, I have to explain Discontent. Discontent is one of two bars lurking at the bottom of the screen at all times, in every scenario, even The Last Autumn. As with many things in Frostpunk, you don't get much of an explanation of what this does and especially how it interacts with other systems, and enough stuff occurs without explanation on the regular that it's easy to think Discontent was causative of any number of events or whatever, but it actually does essentially nothing. More precisely, unless Discontent reaches 100%, it will literally never have any effect by default. Individual scenarios can and sometimes do have events affected by Discontent, such as not letting you select a specific event resolution if Discontent is too high when the event fires, but this isn't used much by the game. As for what happens when Discontent reaches 100%? Well, an event will fire that informs you everyone is very mad at you and you've been given an ultimatum of 3 days to make things less terrible, Or Else. Specifically, you'll have 3 days to reduce Discontent below 75%; if you fail, you... instantly Game Over, the community exiling you to die in the icy wilderness, which is not at all hinted at by anything prior to it actually happening. If, however, Discontent is ever below 75% for even a moment, the test is instantly over, all is forgiven, and Hope rises a small amount. This is true no matter how many times Discontent reaches 100%: at no point will your citizens decide you've pushed them over the edge too many times. In spite of what you might expect from the percentage framing and from how 100% Discontent results in the entire bar being filled up with red, Discontent can in fact continue to rise past 100%, and you can see exactly how far over 100% you are by hovering over the Discontent meter. So don't go 'eh, might as well spam Emergency Shifts everywhere' or the like because you're at 90% Discontent. Discontent itself broadly can be divided into two basic categories: 'eventful' Discontent, where a bad thing happens and injects some Discontent into the pool, but over time will fade away, and 'contingent' Discontent, which is tied to a specific problem and will reduce basically instantly once the problem itself is reduced, all the way down to being completely eliminated if the problem is completely gone. Note that 'eventful' Discontent is caused by all events (As in, Plot Things) that increase Discontent, but also by certain activated abilities, certain unpopular Laws, and of course by citizens dying. So all that said, where does the Fighting Arena sit in this context? It's crappy, that's where. The core problem is that Discontent going up is not actually a clear negative, and so reducing Discontent is not a clear positive. Discontent only becomes a problem if it reaches 100%, and even reaching 100% only requires temporarily backing off on Discontent-increasers like Emergency Shift activations. (Okay, and staying on top of food, illness, etc, but you should endeavor to do that regardless) In fact, since reaching 100% Discontent will produce a Hope increase upon getting back below 75% Discontent, it can be outright desirable to have Discontent high! The Fighting Arena's core function as a passive ward against Discontent is thus very dubious; Discontent would have to work very differently for the Fighting Arena to be valuable on a reliable basis. Indeed, I opened Adaptation Laws with the Fighting Arena because it's the 'root' to an entire branch of Discontent-management Laws that all suck first and foremost because Discontent-reducing tools are fundamentally low-value, independent of their internal qualities. The Fighting Arena is actually pretty inoffensive: it costs a low amount of Wood, it doesn't need to occupy a heat zone, it doesn't require citizens be assigned to it and so doesn't compete with other jobs, it consumes the minimum amount of space for a structure, and it has no esoteric disadvantages... ... which actually touches on a different bit of jank to the Fighting Arena; that its mechanics are wildly counterintuitive to its narrative concept! Conceptually, the Fighting Arena improves peoples' moods by providing an acceptable violent outlet for friction between people, which also acts as bloodsport entertainment for onlookers. Somehow, these fistfights never result in an injury severe enough to require medical care, and neither the fighters nor the audience are at any risk of getting sick from the cold or suffering frostbite even if their Thunderdome is nowhere near a Heat Zone and it's -70 degrees Celsius outside. This is especially wild since the Fighting Arena is only 'active' after the workday ends, meaning when the sun is down and so realistically things would be even colder! Anyway, returning to gameplay; while the Fighting Arena is largely low-value, I should emphasize it can be worth passing the Law and getting some Fighting Arenas built. Among other points, the Discontent reduction can go into 'negatives': the game won't do anything to communicate this is happening, but if eg you're at 0% Discontent, then get Fighting Arena coverage, then trigger a Discontent increase, you may still be at 0% afterward. An even more straightforward test is using two Emergency Shifts close together: you can see stuff like the first use bringing Discontent to around 5% and the second use to around 40%, even though Emergency Shift's Discontent 'price' is only affected by difficulty setting. It's also the most accessible 'quick fix', if eg you accidentally hit 100% Discontent shortly before something you didn't anticipate spikes Discontent still further and so actually do need Discontent reduction. I'm not 100% sure exactly how its reduction works, annoyingly. I think it has a fixed maximum value and delivers that value in proportion to how many citizens are currently covered, as it clearly doesn't simply scale to population size, but it's possible it's a different model I'm misinterpreting. The game itself certainly doesn't explain the details, and as far as I can tell, no internet resource exists that cares about this topic: this is one reason I decided to make this series, as Frostpunk has a fair amount of things like this, where the game doesn't explain itself and a person looking around online will find a smattering of detailed explanations of some mechanics sprinkled across a disconnected series of sites, alongside zero explanations anywhere for a great many other mechanics. Anyway, next Law. img Dueling Requires: Fighting Arena. Law Cooldown: img Public House Requires: Fighting Arena. Law Cooldown: img Moonshine Requires: Fighting Arena. Law Cooldown: img House of Pleasure Requires: Fighting Arena. Law Cooldown: