Snowstorms in Permafrost do more than cut your visibility. They push the temperature down far enough to beat your clothing, drain your Body Warmth, and eventually threaten your Health. A Makeshift Heater is the quickest portable answer when you are caught outdoors, and equipping one takes only a few seconds in the inventory.
Quick answer: Equip a Makeshift Heater to gain the Heated effect, which doubles your Body Warmth gain rate and halves its loss rate, countering the Low Temperature a snowstorm applies.
How to spot a snowstorm before it hits
A snowstorm announces itself on the HUD. A snow-cloud icon appears to the right of the clock, and the thermometer sitting next to the temperature readout switches to a blue snowflake gauge.
On Story difficulty, an ordinary night already read -27°C, and the starting clothes (rated [-27°C]) held up against it without chilling. Once a storm set in, the readout slid to -29 and then -30°C, which is enough to put you below that protection.
When the weather breaks, a banner reads “STORM IS CLEARING: Temperature will rise, Visibility will increase”. On Story difficulty, two storms each ran for roughly two to three in-game hours.
What Low Temperature does to your Body Warmth
Once the storm’s temperature drops below what your gear can resist, the effect “Low Temperature” appears and your Body Warmth starts falling. On Story difficulty, Body Warmth dropped from 300 to 197 in roughly two minutes of real time during one storm.
The equipment figure lists a rating for each of your five clothing items: boots, trousers, hat, jacket, and gloves. Their average appears beside a shield icon. With the Hunter background’s starting clothes that figure was [-27°C]; the Hunter’s wolf hat rated [-35°C], while each of the remaining four items rated [-26°C]. A lower average lets you withstand colder areas before Low Temperature kicks in.
Severe cold can also announce itself with a “BONE-CHILLING COLD” banner. A second storm produced “BONE-CHILLING COLD, Feels like: -29°C”.
Where to get a Makeshift Heater
The Makeshift Heater has a durability bar and a tooltip VALUE of 40. Its tooltip calls it a rough option for survivors unable to pay for a dependable alternative, so it provides warmth but has a limited lifespan.
One place that had one early: the Medical Supply Box in Horizon’s kitchen, on both difficulties. Its recipe is listed under QUEST RECIPES in Blueprints, a page whose recipes “must be earned through quests”.
How to equip the Makeshift Heater
You know it worked when the “Heated” effect appears in your active effects panel. The Heated effect reads, “Under warm embrace of a heater,” and lists its modifiers.
What the Heated effect does, and how long it lasts
With the heater equipped, the Heated effect gives you two changes:
- Body Warmth Gain Rate +100%
- Body Warmth Loss Rate -50%
That is enough to flip a losing fight with the cold. On Story difficulty, after the storm pushed Body Warmth down to 197, the heater brought it back up to 263 over three minutes while the character was still standing outdoors, and the Low Temperature effect dropped off.
The heater runs down. Its icon on the equipment figure eventually shows a red mark, and when that happens the Heated effect disappears, leaving you exposed again. Watch the durability and your active effects, not just the warmth meter.
What the heater will not fix
A storm also locks down travel. The Fast Travel tip states that travel is unavailable during severe snowstorms, so you cannot simply jump to safety mid-storm. Wait for the clearing banner, or ride it out with the heater equipped and your clothing rated as low as you can manage.
