Frozen Flame Guides
Last updated
Last updated
Frozen Flame is set in the magical yet corrupted land of Arcana, which is plagued by harsh weather conditions and cursed creatures. You play as one of the lucky few inhabitants who have been mysteriously bestowed with the ability to harness the energy of powerful ancients.
Unlike traditional sandbox games, all crafting options aren’t immediately available. Instead, these are unlocked at a steady pace based on the player’s progression in quests. Additionally, what’s apparent about Frozen Flame is that it’s not as focused on survival elements besides living through the frigid weather brought about by the corruption. No catering to the basic needs of your character like managing their hunger or sleeping on time.
Creating Your Character
You start the game as a Skelly! Follow the tutorial and you should reach the door in short order. Be sure to investigate the surroundings! There are achievements in this game from finding special items! Step through the Giant Door, and you'll get into the game proper! Character creation in Frozen Flame is entirely about appearance. There are no stats or anything like that to figure out -- you'll take care of that stuff once you've actually entered the world.
Select your sex and other cosmetic features like your hairstyle, hair color, eye color, and skin tone. Once you're satisfied with the look of your character, hit accept and you'll immediately be deposited into the world.
Frozen Flame features a straightforward progression system that doesn’t rely on classes to define who you become. Instead, you’re in charge of your fate by deciding the skills to primarily invest in and the weapons to wield. Skill points are acquired by gaining enough experience to level up. This is made possible by slaying hostile creatures, chopping trees, mining ore, and cooking. But there’s also a special activity to engage in that ties with the game’s lore, and this is by completing Rituals.
Completing Rituals - Within a specific timeframe, you’ll need to scour the area for rune stones to gather their corresponding energy essences, which are said to have once belonged to the ancestors who created these magical lands. Once complete, you obtain additional experience, and eventually Frozen Flame upon leveling up.
Praying - Praying at the Hero’s Ancestry Shrines will give you access to a wide variety of passive and active skills. But note that in Early Access, only the first two concentric circles can be unlocked. For passives, there are abilities worth only 1 Frozen Flame each, meanwhile, you also have active skills like Healing, which lets you bless the floor with health restoration powers. And lastly, there are abilities dedicated to weapons to reduce their respective stamina consumption upon use.
A cool thing about Frozen Flame is you can easily swap from one weapon to the next via your hotbar. Currently, the three available weapons are the Sword, Bow, and Staff. Remember that you’re not limited to focusing on just one weapon. In fact, you can choose to equally distribute your skill points to specialize in every one of them.
Exploring the magical world of Arcana, which leans less on realism and more on classic cartoonish styles, one of the most enjoyed parts of exploration is traveling between the two available worlds, Cradle of Keepers and Broken Valley, as well as discovering the wonders of their unique landscape designs. Where Cradle of Keepers is your traditional setting that’s more attuned to nature in terms of the rivers you can swim and the forests you can hike, Broken Valley is comprised of multiple islands that are floating about in the air. Because of this, you’re given the option to build bridges or fly.
Flying - Should you attempt to fly within the energy barriers of either portal, you’ll get shot down by the gods above. This is one of the restrictions associated with the flying mechanic. Flight is VERY Stamina depleting! So traveling from one island to the next requires patience and potions if you have any, to avoid descending to the wrong location, or falling to your death (OOPS! Alphy tested but NOT approved).
More often than not, you’ll find yourself at the center of combat against multiple enemies, especially when you pass by their camps. You’ll also initiate fights against large corrupted creatures to access different worlds. These offer challenges compared to regular enemies because of the range of their abilities. Some unleash painful ice walls while others pelt you with arrows. They recently added target lock to the game, Thank Flames! So locking onto just the one opponent at a time in a cluster-@#$%, will allow you to kill the adds, so you can vanquish the Main Opponent!
Many of the Mini Bosses are quite spongy (soak damage) you have to adapt to their move-sets, often making it a case of waiting until you can completely deplete their health. Furthermore, unbalanced encounters also exist. For instance, the Stone Mace feels like you’re hitting paper even against an imposing boss while in similar fights, that same weapon functions and sounds more impactful.
Frozen Flame’s quests and crafting are integrated from the moment you take your first steps in the Cradle of Keepers. This is a great way to learn what you need to do to get started with crafting your first campfire, setting up your workbench, and so on, rather than completely leaving you to fend for yourself. As you progress further in quests, your knowledge in crafting also improves, allowing you to craft more complex structures.
Like with any survival game, gear and crafted items have corresponding durability. Note that when a weapon is completely damaged it won’t get destroyed. Repairs can still be done to save it. Blueprints are unlocked from the Workbench and by paying coins or rune stones to vendors, the latter of which is obtained through exploration. Some items can be crafted wherever you are in the world whereas complex ones like weapons and armor require advanced crafting tables. You can not realistically que crafts up all at once, though making sure to have several stacks of the resources to create your new resource, you can stand and hold "E" until you run out of the basic resources! (I was so happy when I figured this out!)
Cooking is also essential in Frozen Flame since cooked food will restore your health more effectively while granting additional buffs such as extra stamina and improved resistances. Simply starting the ingredients and leaving them for a few seconds to cook, while you engage in other activities is possible, and it won’t burn your food. Additionally, combining different ingredients will lead to new recipes and stat bonuses. Unfortunately queuing them up all at once, which has become a mainstay of most survival games, is not possible at this early stage of game development. (UGH!)
You’re able to grow plants by crafting a Garden Bed. Doing so will let you gather multiple essences, which are then used for more crafting and repairing of items.
Frozen Flame is distinct from other survival games in that you don’t have to be concerned with hunger, thirst, and exhaustion. Instead, you’ll need to be mindful of the day and night cycle. Between the two, nighttime is more dangerous since other creatures transform and become highly aggressive, much like the magenta jellyfish. It’s also the time when the harsh, cold weather appears, making a roof over your head, better pairs of clothes, and campfires necessary.
Should you die from the frigid weather, in combat, or from falling off a cliff, you drop Frozen Flames (used to gain experience), which you can reclaim at the place of death. Otherwise, you’ll lose them permanently. Although you don’t drop any of your gear and weapons, you do drop your inventory, and your health gets depleted and your armor’s durability suffers as a result.
In terms of base management, you’ll need to prioritize creating your home base even if the materials you’ll use are only basic, to begin with. Make sure you’ve closed off the house by building a roof! This is to protect you from the cold weather and to prevent the degradation of the structures you’ve crafted such as the Workbench and Artisan Table, there’s no other way of preventing them from decaying quickly over time.
The initial placement of floors and walls is done in free form before snapping everything in place. However, the options of what to build aren’t as many and varied as the ones you see in Valheim. You will need to practice with Building Stability (watch some Valheim Building Videos to learn how to frame a build). And should you wish to adjust parts of the building, you’ll need to destroy them first,(Demo mode is hard to find. Click hammer in the build menu, then click the RED hammer {rolls eyes})) and doing so will recoup 75 or 50% of the materials you’ve spent so it’s not all wasted.
