So, here is my early setup for Extreme Endurance. I think it gives as close to an optimal setup for further growth and setting up for the first storm that I can think of. I'm sure there are other ways, but this one offers above all early healing and flexible staffing options (most notably being able to put 100% of your engineers in workshops plus have terrific healing capability by Day 6). For the sake of having a starting map so that other people could reliably reproduce my start to the letter, I used Crater, and kept restarting until I got the exact resource layout for A New Home. Adjustments will need to be made if you have a different start, obviously.

One other thing to note, I would always turn on the Generator as people returned home, flip on the Overdrive for extra warmth, then turn it all off in the morning as people left for work. If you forget to do this, expect 20-ish dead people your first night. I won't repeat this in every section, so just remember to do so, or you'll end up with even more sick people.

With temperature variations on Endless, it's even harder to have a one size fits all strategy, but for the most part the basics of this start are still valid. I did another run through where I had a starting temperature of -30, which progressed through -20 Day 3, -40 Day 5, -50 Day 6, -30 Day 7. Should you get the dreaded -30 start, it's still doable, you just have to account for many more sick people on the first two nights, as several can worsen to Gravely Ill on Day 3 if left untreated. Further down is a walkthrough of how I handled the -30 start.

The basic build order is unchanged, as you still want everyone working in buildings and no one gathering directly from piles ASAP, which starting with Sawmills expedites. What worked for me is changing the Law order to Emergency Shift, Extended Shift, Radical Treatment, Overcrowding, Child Labour, Corpse Disposal, House of Prayer, Shrines, House of Healing. Having Overcrowding at 13:30 on Day 3, combined with 2 fully staffed Medical Posts, proved to be adequate to treat all the increased sick from working Cold piles on Day 1 and sleeping outdoors without tents on the first 2 nights, without having anyone progress to Gravely Ill. It was very close, but it worked. Without Overcrowding, I stated to lose people on Day 3 as they quickly progressed to Gravely Ill and died without adequate healing capacity.

Your other option would be starting with House of Prayer, Shrines, House of Healing, but this would mean not getting Extended Shift until 108 hours into the game at the earliest, or 19:30 on Day 5, which is far too much of a delay for your research and resource extraction IMO. It's 16 hours of lost productivity from Day 2-5, which is only approximately halfway mitigated by getting the +20% efficiency from Shrines earlier. Depending on your temperature variations, you may need to bump Steam Hubs forward if you have a -50 on Day 5 or 6 to be able to warm your Hothouses to Chilly as well.

You will start at 07:30. Immediately hit pause, select Emergency Shift, and start building 2 workshops just past your Stockpiles. Set your 15 engineers to the Steel Wreckage at 5 o'clock, 5 workers on the Coal Pile at 12 o'clock, and the remaining 45 workers split amongst Wood Crates. Unpause, and your workers will start construction automatically, and 20 will not go to their jobs until the Workshops are finished. As the Workshops finish, remove Engineers from the Steel Wreckage and put them in the Workshops. Hit Emergency Shift on a single Workshop as soon as it is built. Once you hit 15 Steel, remove the remaining Engineers from Steel Wreckage and put them on Wood Crates. Research Sawmills to start.

Around 16:00 or so, hit Emergency Shift on a single Wood Crates fully staffed with 15 Workers. The way Emergency Shift works, the first one won't kill anyone, but the second one will, unless they are gathering directly from Wood Crates/Steel Wreckage/Coal Piles. If you hit your Workshop and the Wood Crates at the same time, you'll probably lose an Engineer, but I've noticed if you hit Workshop first and then Wood Crates hours later, no one will die.

At 18:00 You should have just enough Wood/Steel for a Medical Post (put immediately south of the Stockpiles) and 3 Gathering Posts and the roads to get to them. Accept the Quest to Build Homes for all 80 people (you can do it, and you need the Hope). Once Sawmills finishes around 21:00, research Beacon, then build two Sawmills around 3 o'clock and 5 o'clock. The trickle of wood from Emergency Shift will also let you build two tents before everyone goes to bed. Here is my layout at 00:00.

As building completes, staff your Medical Post, 2 Workshops, 3 Gathering Posts, and 2 Sawmills. Leave your Emergency Shift Wood Crates workers on until 06:00, then move them all to buildings; they'll be more productive there. At 01:30, select Extended Shift. Put everyone on Extended Shift, no exceptions. You can complete 2 Tents and get started on 2 more with the trickle of wood from your Emergency Shift, but pause building at 06:00 so that your workers will go to production instead. Before 06:00, unstaff and restaff all Gathering Posts and Sawmills, doing the Sawmills first so that all your sick and out of work get bunched up in Gathering Posts.

Once Beacon is complete, research Drawing Boards. Before 18:00 and after Emergency Shift on your Workshop times out, also flip on Extended Shift. At 19:30, select Child Labour. Right before 20:00, Drawing Boards should finish, so select Hothouse.

At 20:00, start building. As long as you had both Sawmills fully staffed, you should have enough wood for this huge order. Build the Beacon next to the Sawmill at 5 o'clock and send Scouts when it is finished. Put up another Medical Post next to the first one, empty a Workshop to staff the Medical Post assuming you have more sick people overnight, and complete the inner ring of the Generator with Tents, unpausing the ones you stopped in the morning. Also put in a Cookhouse outside the inner ring next to the Workshops. Also drop a Gathering Post on the two Coal Piles at 12 o'clock. They won't finish all of this by morning, but it's all good, you have 10 spare workers to build next day thanks to Child Labour. Here is my setup at 00:00 on the morning of Day 3.

At this point you will need to start daytime building, which is what the 10 free workers are for.

Let everyone build what they can in the early morning. Go ahead and staff the second Medical Post when it finishes to get a few hours of healing, but at 06:00 empty it and restaff both Workshops unless you have a lot of sick, which you shouldn't.

At 06:00, you can switch the generator off for the day if you want again and save 72 coal, but you'll have the coal supply to keep it running continuously now, so it's not worth fiddling with anymore unless you want to IMO.

At 06:00, pause any remaining buildings (I had one tent and Gathering Post), so that everyone can go to work, then unpause them so your 10 free workers can complete them. Once both are finished, staff the Cookhouse and put 5 in the Gathering Post, then move the 5 Workers in the Cookhouse to the Gathering Post once all the food is cooked.

At 13:30, pass House of Prayer. Once Hothouse is done, select Heaters.

At 20:00, build two Hothouses around 3 o'clock. Build 2 Houses of Prayer wherever you want, but strategically place them to cover all your tents. Build a 3rd Workshop as well. Restaff the 2nd Medical Post until sick drop below 5, or 06:00. Hit Sermon once both Houses are complete.

Here is my setup at 00:00 Day 4.

Temperature is randomized, but I had a drop to -40 now, so if you had the -20 start you're more than likely going to see the same.

The Hothouses will be out of commission until Heaters is done, so for now leave them unstaffed.

I had just 1 sick at 06:00, so I staffed all 3 Workshops. Should you for some reason have more sick, use your best judgment.

Once Heaters is done, switch Heaters on for all buildings below Chilly, unstaff the Sawmills, and move the Workers to your new Hothouses. Woohoo, food is now covered for the foreseeable future, on Extended Shifts you make 67 Raw Food -> 134 Rations, more than enough to feed 80 people minus scouts. Next research should be More Scouts.

Move 5 Children from Gathering Posts to the Cookhouse around 16:00, it should be enough time with Extended Shift to let them eat for themselves plus cook the day's output from the Hothouses.

At 20:00, build a Resource Depot in a reasonably out of the way place, plus put up your last Gathering Post at the 2 remaining Coal Piles. Also restaff a Medical Post.

Here is my setup at 00:00 Day 5.

You'll have a lot more sick due if you also had the -40, so staff both Medical Posts and keep them staffed until 06:00. At 06:00, empty all Medical Posts to fully staff Workshops. Sounds crazy, but you'll be putting up a House of Healing (or two) overnight, so anybody sick will be covered, even if they dip to Gravely Ill, which they shouldn't.

At 01:30, select Shrines, and place one to cover your hothouses/sawmill/gathering/post/3rd workshop, one to cover both Medical Posts and 2 Workshops and Cookhouse, and the 3rd to cover your newest western Gathering Post (and later 3rd Sawmill). You can put up two more to cover a lone Sawmill and Gathering Post, but you're better off conserving your steel for now until you have a Steelworks.

Once More Scouts is done pick Drafting Machines.

You should have 3 Gathering Posts tap out today, so move people to empty Sawmills and Gathering Posts as necessary.

Once Drafting Machines is done pick Lighter Scout Sleds.

At 17:30, select House of Healing. Put one up in range of a Shrine, or two if you feel the need and don't mind finishing out all the steel you got from Steel Wreckages.

Here is my final screenshot, 00:00 Day 6.

Okay, so in 5 days, we're up to T2, we have food covered, 2 scouts out, Shrines for 20% productivity boost, Houses of Healing to heal without Engineers. The hardest part before the first storm is done relatively painlessly and there's a good degree of stability, so I'm turning you loose now to conquer the Frostland by yourself.

Next Law should be Corpse Disposal, as you'll get a scripted death from House of Healing. I also avoided Emergency Shift spam to avoid having to deal with that scripted death, but if you want to turbocharge your research going forward, just keep one Workshop running every night, suck up losing one Engineer, who should be replaced soon with survivors from scouting anyway. After that laws are up to you, but it's probably more worth your time to fill out Faith before doing Fighting Arena, etc. to work on Discontent.

To give you an idea of how I went based on my scouting results, here's my base at 00:00 Day 7. I found my first group of 40 survivors Day 6, YMMV of course. So my next tech was Steelworks, since I'd have the workers for them soon, and building two steelworks overnight. After that was Steam Hub, since I'd start to need housing past the inner ring. I also put up a second House of Healing, since my scouts were also returning with 41 steel and I'd have 2 Steelworks running. I also hit my first Emergency Shift on a Workshop the evening of Day 5 (not mentioned in the initial walkthrough since it's optional) and again on Day 6, since there were more Engineers incoming, and I was already committed to Corpse Disposal due to House of Healing anyway. If you're not fortunate enough to get survivors this early, you'd probably need to take a different approach. Next techs will probably be Steam Steelworks, then Coal Mine to use up my last Steam Core and have coal production ready once my Coal Piles tap out. I can get by with Sawmills for quite a long time, so Wall Drills should realistically wait until I have 2 Steam Coal Mines at least, and probably upgrade to 2 Industrial Hothouses as well. With Sawmill Upgrade and Steam Sawmills, they're precisely 93.75% as productive as a base Wall Drill anyway, plus a level warmer, and don't take up a core.

I tried again with a -30 Start. Same map as before.

Day 1 is actually unchanged, I didn't notice more sick from the Emergency Shift on the Wood Crates, and the wood did help out after all. I considered making a second Medical Post instead of tents, but given that that would constrain my production the next day, it didn't turn out to be worth it. 15 sick overnight with Generator + Overdrive at 18:00.

Day 2 is also relatively unchanged, same build order, same resources, just more sick people working this time. Third Law is Radical Treatment rather than Child Labour, however. Don't build the Gathering Post at 12 o'clock, though, as you won't have kids to staff it.

Day 3 is where the paths diverge. I ended up with a net 12 new sick even with everyone working in buildings, leaving 22 total, ouch. Also I had no spare workers to complete the housing projects, so I couldn't unpause at 06:00, just taking the slight production hit while everyone finished building tents, so that I could meet the housing quest quota. Go ahead and unstaff one Medical Post again to get a few hours research in the second Workshop. At 13:30, choose Overcrowding, but wait until 20:00 to restaff the second Medical Post. Once Hothouses completes, pick More Scouts. At 20:00, build two Hothouses as well as the two Gathering Posts to cover the last two groups of Coal Piles.

So now it's time for some hard choices. Compared to the -20 start, we're behind the curve and still need Child Labour before starting down towards House of Healing. On the plus side, we have more medical capacity now with Overcrowding, which is a good thing, as I'm scheduled to drop to -40 Day 5 and -50 Day 6 before letting up to -30 Day 7! The city must survive! Looks like we'll have to sacrifice a worker for the greater good, unfortunately, as all 15 Engineers will be sorely needed the next 4 days. Once a Hothouse is completed, staff it with workers and hit Emergency Shift. You should trigger the scripted death for Emergency Shift in the morning, in this case, you actually should end Emergency Shifts for the day, as the purpose was more to trigger the death on a worker rather than engineer rather than make a few extra food, and it's not worth more Discontent for the extra raw food you'd get at the end of the shift. Rather Machiavellian, but oh well.

Day 4, if you didn't see the value of Child Labour before, you will now. Thankfully you should be able to successfully heal everyone with Overcrowding; I had 14 sick at 06:00. Fully staff, in order, both hothouses, one of the new Gathering Posts with Coal Only, One Sawmill, and throw your remaining into a Gathering Post. If you're in my position, unstaff the Medical Post with 5 patients, if you have over 20 sick, it's probably better to keep both staffed. Running the Generator + Overdrive you should be 15ish, though. Today will mostly be a holding pattern for survival until your colony is back on its feet, making mostly Raw Food, enough Coal to keep the generator running and build a small surplus, and less Wood/Steel than usual. Having fun yet? At least nobody died (other than Emergency Shift guy), which is what would have happened without Overcrowding; the untreated sick overnight would quickly pass to Gravely Ill then die. Here's my base at 06:00.



Once More Scouts finishes, send another group out, then select Heaters. After Heaters, pick Steam Hub.

Restaff the Cookhouse as before around 15:00 from a Gathering Post with spare workers.

We've made it through the scripted Emergency Shift death, so now use Emergency Shift on a Workshop before 20:00. When you get the person asking off, go ahead and do it, again not worth the discontent at this point for what's coming up.

Build a Workshop close to the Hothouses after 20:00. Hard to believe now, but you'll need it soon.

You have a little time before having to do Corpse Disposal, so go ahead and pick Child Labour at 01:30. Wow, that sounded grim, but actually we're about to turn this around.

Staff your Hothouses, the 12 o'clock Gathering Post, both Sawmills and one of the other Gathering Posts. At 07:00 with the temperature drop (if you also had it to -40 now), use Heaters on everything as needed to bring to Chilly.

Later in the morning, you should actually end up healing all of your sick, so pat yourself on the back and staff that third Workshop. Do another Emergency Shift Workshop, and when the message pops up to give food to Emergency Shift workers, say yes.

When Drafting Boards finishes, select Lighter Scout Sleds.

The corpse will gradually increase discontent through the day to trigger a crisis with all the Emergency Shifts we've been doing if you have everyone on Extended Shift, too, which you should be doing. Whatevs, you got this.

The somewhat bigger deal is that you'll have so much discontent at 19:30 that you can't sign Corpse Disposal. Rather than sign Cemetery, turn off Extended Shift for everything except Workshops, and it should fall enough to sign it. Build the Snow Pit next to the Beacon, and Discontent will fall below 75% and end the crisis. Now as your people breathe a sigh of relief, remind everyone who's in charge and resume Extended Shifts across the board. Leave the Overdrive off tonight, you'll need to reduce the stress to run it all day tomorrow if you have -50 like me.

Also build a Steam Hub to cover your Hothouses and any nearby Cookhouse and Workshops you can fit it, and set it to 0600-2000, assuming you also have a drop to -50 tomorrow. It never ends, I tell ya.

My scouts found a group of survivors today, so this will be the last day of the guide, as your scouts may have found cores or just resources, and it won't be possible to make a guide applicable to everyone, even if you wound up with the same temperature changes I did.

Steel needs to be replenished at this point, so change up your workforce, once again removing all worker/children from workplaces before 0600 and then restaffing them so the sick get bunched at the end. Fully staff both hothouses, one of your Gathering Post with steel remaining, then cookhouse, then your Sawmills.

If you get the -50 change at 0700 like me, flip on Overdrive and run it all day and night, you should have bled off all the stress if you didn't run it last night, and it'll stop you from being overthrown.

Pick House of Prayer next, and if you have enough steel build them at night.

You should have just low enough discontent to be able to run another Emergency Shift on a Workshop overnight. It'll trigger another crisis, but that should be over by tomorrow with the temperature change and people gradually forgetting all the previous Emergency Shifts you forced on them. As a bonus, you're even building hope by passing these crises, go you.

Restaff the second Medical Post, you'll need it overnight with all the new sick from working Cold workplaces even with Heaters.

As I had survivors incoming, I built 4 tents to house them, if you don't have any you won't need them.

Temperature improved to a balmy -30 the next day to regroup, so the worst is over now, plus you have Overcrowding to handle medical crises in the future. I'd still go with Shrines and House of Healing next for productivity's sake, but it's less pressing with Overcrowding.

Happy trails!

For fans of Child Shelters, who think this could all be done without them and they'll be unnecessary going forward and I'm missing out on a sweet bonus (+20% to one specific activity for just 8 hours a day; ha, ha), now that a level of stability is achieved and my gathering posts are starting to tap out already, note that Cookhouses, Houses of Healing, and Hothouses are all safe jobs. Just at the current level of buildout, I have 35 slots kids can fill not including Gathering Posts! 5 Cookhouse, 10 House of Healing, 20 Hothouses. I will almost always need a House of Healing and Hothouse running in the best of times, so there's a baseline of 20 jobs kids can and should permanently station at this current low population and production level, and food and healing requirements only scale up as population grows. Any job a kid can do, an adult doesn't have to do, now and forevermore. I now have 15 in research, 10 scouting, 20 food production, 10 healing; 55 in total - nearly the size of my entire adult population. More importantly, I CAN have all 55 adults tied up in these currently critical tasks. Without Child Labour, there would be nobody left for other resource production, and there's no guarantee of finding many people early during scouting, or that they won't include a significant amount of children who would otherwise be mostly useless. I can always find a place for a child laborer until I'm so established with excess population that I'm leaving most of the people idle regardless (in which case I'm so far ahead I still don't really need Child Shelters, anyway).

For a mathematical comparison of a Child Laborer vs. Apprentices, consider that a Child actually working provides a base efficiency of 100% in a building with no efficiency upgrades, completely replacing a Worker or Engineer. An apprentice provides a 20% bonus to one Engineer for 8 hours a day (apprentices only work 10:00 to 18:00). In the absolute worst case, say a child working a 10 hour day in Gathering Post with no ugrades, the child laborer is going to provide 100% efficiency at their job vs. 20% efficiency as an apprentice, plus work 10 hours vs 8. 10/8 * 100%/20% = 6.25. This amounts to the laborer providing 6.25 times the productivity of the apprentice in the absolute worst case. Up this to a 14 hour shift, and the child laborer is instead 14/8 * 100%/20% = 8.75 times more productive. Put the child in a House of Healing which operates 24 hours a day and the child laborer is 24/8 * 100%/20% = 15 times more productive.

Again, this is with base efficiency as well. Safe jobs for children combined with always on efficency bonuses from Laws/Research are:

Cookhouse: 120% efficiency (Shrine/Agitator)
Hothouse: 135% efficiency (Shrine/Agitator + Hothouse Selection)
House of Healing: 140% efficiency (Shrine/Agitator + Organ Transplants)
Gathering Post: 150% efficiency (Shrine/Agitator + Faster Gathering + Efficient Gathering)

So with efficiency bonuses, 10 Child Laborers staffing just one House of Healing provide the same healing power as a whopping 210 Medic Apprentices. Plus the Medic Apprentices need Child Shelters, which need to be heated to at least Chilly, to function at all. Houses of Healing unlike Child Shelters get insulation upgrades, so they are easier to keep warm. During a storm like in Endless or the ending of A New Home, heating Child Shelters to Chilly will be difficult to impossible as well, taking out your Medic Apprentices the exact moment you really need them, too.

For Engineer Apprentices, again consider the Child Laborer can completely replace an Engineer rather than giving them a 20% boost for 8 hours a day, and Child Labor wins again. If you have your Workshops working 14 hour days, which you should unless discontent is completely out of control, you're looking at Engineer Apprentices only boosting Research by 8/14 * 20% = 11.4%. Once you have 3 full workshops, each additional full Workshop boosts Research Speed by 10%, so you only need to have Child Laborers replace 6 Engineers to boost research by 12% and beat the bonus they'd provide as Engineer Apprentices. If you do all your healing with Houses of Healing staffed by kids, you'll end up freeing a lot more than 6 Engineers, typically.

Note that you may get the Christmas update event soon, if it's the season. Luckily, you will have enough food and wood to get the best result. Just note that you'll need to boost Hope, so keep up with Sermons every 2 days, and Evening Prayers would be a Law to get sooner rather than later. You will also get a scripted death from House of Healing, so you'll need a way to dispose of the body. I prefer Corpse Disposal so that you can get Organ Transplants, but this might put your people in a not so Christmasy mood, so it may be best to put it off until after the Christmas event, unless you can tank the Hope penalty and still keep it over 50. In my playthrough I actually did successfully get hope over 50 and complete the Christmas quest with the best ending by selecting Evening Prayers before Corpse Disposal, but it was close. Any random event that made me lose hope probably would have lost the Christmas quest. Otherwise, tailor your future plans as needed depending on what your scouts find.