Mods / Arctic Survival
- Tags:
- Author:
- Faeldray
- Side:
- Both
- Created:
- Sep 5th 2025 at 4:51 PM
- Last modified:
- Sep 1st at 6:15 AM
- Downloads:
- 9703
-
Recommended download (for Vintage Story 1.22.0-pre.1 - 1.22.7):
arcticsurvival-2.0.0.zip 1-click install
Confirmed to work with ConfigKit by both its dev and myself
I started a Snowball Earth Challenge playthrough and was unsatisfied with the existing mods that made surviving in a cold climate viable, so I made my own. I may make more changes as I figure out what I like and don't like (although world gen is likely to stay the same).
As of V1.2.0, all temperatures and other changes are configurable if you have ConfigKit/Config lib installed. Otherwise the default values/settings will be used.
Changes include:
- Red, blue clay, and fire clay can now be found down to -25. In addition, red and blue clay now can spawn in barren soil (which is pretty much all there is at that temp).
- Cattails can now be found down to -18. They also now keep growing down to -4 and reset their growth timer at -9.
- Peat can now be found down to -25 and can spawn in barren soil.
- Horsetails can now be found down to -15.
- Bees can now be found down to -15.
- Flax can now be found down to -2.
- Rare oak trees can be fround from 2 to -18 so leather can still be made. Be sure to get some saplings before you cut it down!
- Removed the min temp from traders.
- Flint deposits now generate in all types of stone, which causes loose flint to appear on the surface. Since loose stones don't generate on the surface at low temperatures, previously you needed to rely on flint deposits or finding rare stone spawns inside caves just to make your basic tools. And since flint used to only spawn in certain rock types, you probably needed to either travel long distances or just getting lucky with the rock type around spawn.
- Lakes (and rivers if you have a mod that adds them) now have muddy gravel as their bottom layer instead of plain gravel. This is mainly so I could still pan for seeds using Wild Farming.
- Mudbricks can be made out of barren soil. Not sure why this wasn't an option before.
- Seaweed can now be found down to -20. If the Inuit had seaweed in their diet, I think it's safe to say it can grow in cold sea waters. Not edible on its own but is with Long-Term Food and Expanded Food. It's also cultivatable with Wild Farming.
- Hornwort, muskgrass, milfoil, watercrowfoot, sea lace, irish moss, and bladderwrack can now be found down to -20, mainly to make lakes and oceans look a little less barren.
- If Salt and Sands is installed, scallops, clams, and freshwater mussels all spawn in small patches down to -18. They still grow at their regular temperatures (stopping at -6 and resetting at -8 for scallops, stopping at 2 and resetting at 4 for the others) so don't expect much mid-winter food from them!
- [1.1.0] Elk can now be found down to -18, which isn't much of a change from -14 but it means less distance to travel for a mount. And historically they were found pretty far north.
- [1.3.0] More mushrooms! It was very hard to find mushrooms before so I made some changes. I'm no mushroom expert by any means, I just googled which mushrooms would be in an arctic/subarctic environment. Keep in mind that you might not see much changes if it's too cold, mushrooms don't stick around in temperatures below their minimum.
- Tinderhoof, chicken of the woods, witch's hat, and voilet web cap already spawned at low temperatures...but they were only spawning under decidous trees. Now they spawn under any tree types.
- Earthball, puffball, chanterelle, king bolete, and common morel had their minimum temp adjusted down to -15.
- Dryad saddle, tinderhoof, chicken of the woods, funeral bell, elfin saddle, earthball, devil's tooth, puffball, green cracked russula, king bolete and common morel have all had their chances to spawn increase. There still shouldn't be a crazy amount but you'll be able to gather quite a few when it's warmer so stock up! (This is similar to what Strelitzia's Nature Tweaks does but specifically for cold climate mushrooms.)
- [2.0.0] Cloudberries and raspberries have been changed to pause their growth at -4, reset their growth timer at -9, go dormant at -14, and leave dormancy at 4. Raspberries also spawn on barren soil now.
Removed changes
Removed for 1.22.0
- Salmon can now be found down to -15. (Different cold water fish now exist)
- Cranberries and blueberries spawn in small patches from -2 to -18, and have been changed to stop growing at -4, reset their growth timer at -9, and revert (go from fruiting/flowering to empty) at -14. This is to mimic bilberries and arctic cranberries which grow in cold climates IRL. (Cloudberries and raspberries now exist and are cold climate)
Also check out my other mods:
| Mod Version | Mod Identifier | For Game version | Downloads | Released | Changelog | Download | 1-click mod install* |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2.0.0 | arcticsurvival | 4157 | Apr 30th at 6:06 PM | arcticsurvival-2.0.0.zip | 1-click install | ||
| |||||||
| 1.3.0 | arcticsurvival | 2371 | Dec 21st 2025 at 10:26 PM | arcticsurvival-1.3.0.zip | 1-click install | ||
| |||||||
| 1.2.0 | arcticsurvival | 2594 | Oct 3rd 2025 at 2:09 AM | arcticsurvival-1.2.0.zip | 1-click install | ||
| |||||||
| 1.1.0 | arcticsurvival | 421 | Sep 6th 2025 at 9:24 PM | arcticsurvival-1.1.0.zip | 1-click install | ||
|
Elk now spawn down to -15 | |||||||
| 1.0.0 | arcticsurvival | 160 | Sep 5th 2025 at 4:53 PM | arcticsurvival-1.0.0.zip | 1-click install | ||
|
Initial release | |||||||
So examining the red clay more, I don't think I'm going to change the spawn rate. Since it doesn't spawn in snow/ice, forest floor, or sand/gravel, it is possible to get a bad spawn where you have to travel a few hundred blocks to find clay. But it's not impossible to find, just look for plains-like areas. Also, in 1.22 they added small patches of red clay specifically in cold climates so this mod already makes clay more prevalent than it would be otherwise. I don't want to remove the challenge from cold climate play, that's the whole point of it lol
till cant find cattails or red clay. Its mostly blue clay and only reason I can find it is because block overlay :\ how can I fix this?
I just tested it on 1.22.6 and I found both cattails and red clay. The red clay can only spawn in soil, not gravel or sand, so you may have just been unlucky. Or the mod may not be properly installed, redownloading could fix that.
It does feel like the red clay is more sparse than it was before, I'll play around with the spawn rate.
Here i go torturing myself again with extreme cold settings.
Is this safe to remove mid-playthrough? I'm troubleshooting some mod conflicts.
It should be, it doesn't add or remove any new things, just changes where they can spawn
Tehc Good to know! I'm going to be working on updating this mod for 1.22 soon
Mod seems to work so far in 1.22, just need to disable the berries in the mod settings though because it spawns the berries from 1.21 instead.
Glad you all are enjoying this mod :)
You are a godsend, this is EXACTLY what I've been looking for. Same as Mawcii below, with it getting colder irl, I've been wanting to cozy up and try my hand at some arctic survival. I would have thought something would be more fun and rewarding and vanilla, but I pretty quickly discovered otherwise. This is perfect for making the endeavor a lot more fun!
I cannot thank you enough for making this, now that its winter season, i just want to play on an arctic world and struggle to make ends meet, just to be rewarded with the coziness of having a hut, but quickly found out i couldnt even find flint, or any other stones to knap with, im also really loving the other changes <3 Thank you for making this
Big fan of this!! Thank you!!
Love this mod, thank you very much!))
Ikaahi Took me a while but I made all of the settings configurable in the latest release
I wanted to play snowball earth so this is great. Thanks!
I once wanted to make exactly the same mod to survive in Arctic conditions. Thank you very much for your work (and for the Long-Term Food example😄)
Faeldray I will try using it then, thank you! 🙏 though i will also humbly a request a 1.20 version if you're willing to do so, no worries if not
Lich I actually was using this on a personal game in 1.20 before I moved to 1.21. I think the only changes that wouldn't work are the elk and salmon patches because they changed where those files are located. But you could still use something like Primitive Survival to get fish.
Sorry to be that guy, but does this mod work for 1.20.x? I'm prolly gonna be on 1.20 for a while
Ikaahi There's no config yet but I did think making one would be a good idea. I just need to figure out how to do that since I've never made a mod config before.
Is there an option to configure these individually? Will you plan for one? Im also doing an arctic spawn but Im trying to keep it as realistic as I can.
V7I Glad you like it! Yeah, clay was what lead me down the road to make this mod. Other mods change the min temp for clay...but don't fix the fact that it can't spawn in barren soil by default, so you never see it anyways.
I love this!!
im currently playing an Artic survival and even though i can find a lot of this with some of my mods i have, a lot of stuff is very hard to get because stuff just dose not grow and Clay is a PAIN because if dose not spawn. . .so i can only get small ammounts from traiders, cracked vessles or sometimes rivers!
i need some LARGE green houses to get almost anything to grow.
i mostly play nomatic so i can get the resorces i need but with this it might be easer to settle down!!