Permafrost: How to Get Wood Fast and How Much Each Tree Gives

Wood is the first material you need in Permafrost, and it is the only thing the earliest building pieces are made from. You can pull it from bushes with your bare hands, break it out of plank stacks and pallets with an axe, or fell whole pine trees. Each source gives a set amount, and a tree is where the real stacks come from.

Quick answer: Chop a tree with a Stone Axe until it falls into four Trunk pieces, then press F on each piece. That is 12 Wood per tree on Story difficulty and 16 on Survival.

A pine being felled with the Stone Axe at night in Permafrost, the “LEVEL UP! Axes” banner, the trunk lying in four pieces and each “Trunk, Press F to pick up” piece adding 3 Wood.

Wood sources and what each gives

Five things around the starting cabin and the pines west of Horizon put Wood in your bag. Bushes need no tool at all. Plank stacks and wooden pallets need an axe in hand, and a felled tree is the biggest single haul.

Source	Tool	Wood
Bush	None (press F)	1 each (plus Edible Root)
Stack of planks	Axe	3–4 per stack
Wooden pallets	Axe	About 4 per stack
Tree	Axe	12 (Story) / 16 (Survival)
Trader	5 Bucks each	Buy only

Plastic pallets look similar but return Plastic Junk, not Wood. Hit a wooden pallet or a plank stack with an axe equipped and the axe icon in the prompt turns white; with empty hands it stays red and nothing breaks.

How much wood a tree gives

A standing tree gives nothing while you are chopping it. The Wood count only moves after the tree falls and you pick up the logs it leaves on the snow. Those logs are named Trunk, and a felled tree breaks into four of them.

On Story difficulty each Trunk piece gives +3 Wood, so one tree is 12 Wood. On Survival a Trunk piece gives +4, which comes to 16 from the same four pieces. Hitting a Trunk after it has fallen does nothing. You collect it with F, not with the axe.

Chopping also trains the Axes skill. A full tree will usually push through a “LEVEL UP! Axes” message before it drops.

Felling a tree with the Stone Axe

Craft a Stone Axe from 2 Stone and 4 Wood in your inventory, then put it in a quick slot and select it. The axe prompt on a tree turns white once it is in hand.

Move up to the trunk and use left-click light attacks. The tree topples after about 15 to 20 hits from the Stone Axe.

Stone Axe aimed at a standing pine in the snow, ready for the first light attack — The Stone Axe lined up on a standing pine, about to start chopping.

The tree drops and splits into four Trunk logs lying along the line of the fall. White interaction circles mark each one. Do not keep swinging at the stump, since that returns nothing.

Stone Axe in hotbar slot 5 aimed at a fallen log on the snow — After the tree falls, the logs lie on the snow where they can be picked up.

Walk along the fallen trunk. At each log, wait for the “Trunk, Press F to pick up” prompt and press F to add the Wood. Collect all four, then move to the next tree.

Trunk log highlighted with the Press F to pick up prompt during wood collection — Each Trunk log shows a “Press F to pick up” prompt that adds the Wood.

The pieces can scatter up to 8 metres from the stump, so follow the direction the tree fell rather than searching around the base.

Bushes, plank stacks and pallets

When you do not want to chop a whole tree, the smaller sources top you up fast. Bushes sit around the starting cabin and its clearing and among the stumps west of Horizon. Press F to harvest and you get 1 Wood every time, usually with 1 Edible Root as well. No axe is needed.

Plank stacks lean against the cabin stairs, and wooden pallets sit by the kitchen steps and around the square in Horizon. With an axe equipped, left click to break them. Each hit adds 1 Wood, and a wooden pallet breaks in roughly 10 light hits for about 4 Wood. If Horizon’s trader has Wood in stock, it costs 5 Bucks a piece, while selling your own only pays 1 Buck back.

What the wood is for

Wood is one minute of campfire fuel per piece, and a single Wood crafts three Wooden Arrows. It is also the material for your first shelter, so a tree or two covers a starter base.

Piece	Wood	Other
Foundation	5	—
Wall	3	—
Floor / roof	3	—
Door	2	—
Workbench	10	—
Bed	5	5 Cloth
Small Wooden Chest	2	—

A basic shelter is enough to keep the cold off while you gather more.

Survival HUD showing the building tutorial prompt to press B while facing a snow-covered surface — The build prompt on the survival HUD, ready to place your first wooden pieces.

Does a better axe help?

A Flint Axe’s tooltip lists 14 damage against the Stone Axe’s 10. The Stone Axe wears slowly on this work, dropping from 100 percent to 94 percent across one batch of plank stacks, and you repair it at a Repair Bench for 1 Stone.

Common mistakes

Clicking planks or pallets with bare hands, which shows a red axe icon and breaks nothing.
Hitting the fallen trunk with the axe, which gives no Wood.
Watching for Wood as you chop, with the tally changing only when you collect it.
Remaining by the stump, while the logs may land as far as 8 metres along the tree’s fall path.

Stone Axe aimed at a fallen log that returns nothing when struck — Swinging the axe at a fallen log does nothing; the logs are collected with F instead.

Once you know a tree is four logs and a bush is a single press, planning a run is simple. Harvest bushes and break pallets on the way out, fell a pine or two when you need a real stack, and you will leave with enough Wood for both fuel and your first walls.