Steam Cores in Frostpunk are used in the construction of Factories, Coal Mines, and other buildings, as well as Automatons. This makes Steam Cores quite an important Resource in this city building game, but some players may be unclear about exactly where to obtain them. Fortunately, the process for earning this Resource in Frostpunk is quite straightforward, though fans will find that they do not have a great deal of control over their acquisition.
To put things simply, the primary way to get Steam Cores in Frostpunk is through scouting, which can be performed after a strategy game fan has established a Beacon. For the uninitiated, scouting is the act of sending scouts into Frostland, and they will return from their expeditions with various Resources. Those Resources include the very-desirable Wood, Coal, and Steel, and indeed scouts will occasionally come back with some Steam Cores in hand.
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While scouting is typically how players will go about procuring their Steam Cores, there are a few other acquisition methods that are worth mentioning. One comes up in the A New Home scenario, where establishing an Outpost in Tesla City will award one Steam Core every day. Another appears in The Refugees, as a small quantity of the Resource can be harvested from two Destroyed Steam Core Transports in that scenario. And finally, fans can collect as many Steam Cores as they want from the Army Warehouse in Frostpunk's On the Edge scenario.
One other thing to mention about Steam Cores is that they are not destroyed when they are used to build an Automaton or structure. Indeed, destroying one of these constructions will return any of the Resource that was used back to the player. This means that while Frostpunk fans should be reasonably thoughtful about how they spend their Steam Cores, they need not be too concerned if some number of them are used in a way that is not optimal.
In summary, city building game players that are in need of Steam Cores should get a Beacon, which can be built within the Tech tab for 20 Wood and 35 Steel, up and running as soon as possible. When that is done, they should make sure that they are consistently sending out their scouts while they work on other tasks. All that is left to do at that point is exercise a bit of patience while waiting for those scouting expeditions to bear fruit.
Frostpunk is out now for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.