Reaching Bufo is one of the first big progression checks in Winter Burrow. The game tells you to head northeast, but without clear landmarks, it’s very easy to get lost, run out of warmth, and assume you’re missing a tool or recipe.
The path to Bufo is actually straightforward once a few story flags are in place. The real gating is Aunty’s lessons and your ability to stay warm long enough to cross multiple areas.
Winter Burrow progression: what has to happen before Bufo
You cannot simply walk to Bufo from day one. The game locks the route behind Aunty’s tutorial chain and the bridge to the Gnarled Oaks.
| Step | What you need to do | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Stabilize your burrow | Repair key furniture like the armchair and stove using beech planks, twigs, pebbles, and flax fibre. | Gives you warmth (clothing), food, and basic crafting so you can travel further safely. |
| 2. Meet Aunty | Repair the broken bridge to the right of your home and cross it to find Aunty’s burrow. | Introduces Aunty’s tutorial quests and unlocks the wider map over time. |
| 3. Complete Aunty’s early lessons | Do the specific tasks she assigns (craft furniture, clothing, etc.), then talk to her again each time. | Each completed lesson advances her dialogue and removes progression blocks, including access past her house. |
| 4. Unlock the right-hand bridge from Aunty’s area | Keep following her questline until a cutscene removes the blockage on the bridge to the Gnarled Oaks. | This bridge is the only entry point to the forest where Bufo lives. |
Many players get stuck because they assume Aunty’s furniture and home requests are optional. They are not. Treat every blueprint and “lesson” she gives as part of the main quest, complete the objective, then return and speak to her again until she clearly runs out of new tasks.
Exact route: from your burrow to Bufo
Once the right-hand bridge near Aunty is open, you can finally reach Bufo. The level design funnels you toward him, but you still need to follow the right landmarks.
| Segment | Direction | What to look for |
|---|---|---|
| Your burrow → Aunty | East from your home | The repaired bridge over the stream; cross it to reach Aunty’s snowy grove. |
| Aunty → Gnarled Oaks | Past Aunty’s house, then right to the new bridge | After her cutscene removes the block, cross the right-hand bridge into a darker, twisted forest: the Gnarled Oaks. |
| Inside Gnarled Oaks | Work generally northeast | Follow the only viable paths through the gnarled trees toward a lonely campfire area. |
| Campfire → Bufo | Northeast from the campfire | From the campfire clearing, continue up and to the right; Bufo’s pond and house are in the upper-right of this region. |
In the Gnarled Oaks, the layout is more constrained than it appears. If you hug the edges of the screen, you’ll repeatedly hit dead ends. Instead, move between clusters of trees and look for these cues:
- Patches of disturbed leaves or darker shading that suggest walkable paths.
- Log tunnels and gaps between roots that form natural corridors.
- The scripted campfire area; treat it as your last checkpoint before Bufo.
From that campfire clearing, there is essentially one way forward: northeast. If you keep heading up and right from this point instead of looping around the edges, you will walk into Bufo’s pond area.
Staying warm long enough to make the trip
The trek to Bufo is long enough that warmth management becomes a real constraint, especially on your first few days when clothing is limited. You can absolutely reach him without special gear, but you have to plan your day and your inventory.
| Warmth tool | How it helps | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Clothing (sweater, boots, etc.) | Slows down warmth loss while outside. | Knit pieces once your armchair is repaired and you have yarn. |
| Beechnut biscuits | Restore a chunk of warmth when eaten. | Craft from beech nuts you collect near your burrow; useful early on. |
| Elder tea | Also restores warmth, using highly stackable berries. | Elderberries drop from twiggy plants with frozen droplets near your home. |
| Campfires | Let you warm up mid-journey. | Require kindling once you unlock that recipe or find some by digging snow tufts. |
Plan a Bufo run like this:
- Leave at first light so you have the full day’s warmth buffer.
- Eat once or twice on the way to Aunty and again in the Gnarled Oaks as the screen edges start frosting.
- Use the campfire halfway as a full reset before the final push northeast.
- Once you unlock the kindling recipe north of Bufo, you can relight that fire yourself on future trips.
What Bufo unlocks and why he matters
Bufo is more than just a new friendly face. His questline is a major progression pillar that ties directly into tool upgrades and late-game cooking.
| Bufo milestone | What you deliver | What you get back |
|---|---|---|
| Early repairs | Stacks of basic stone (pebbles) and flint from the area around his home. | Blueprints for pebble-themed furniture and, later, better tools like the Granite Pickaxe. |
| “An Axe for Bufo” | Materials to help him finish his own repairs. | Granite Pickaxe recipe, which needs granite, wool yarn, pinewood, and oak wood. |
| Later baking tasks | Blackberry pie and Rowanberry pie made with specific jams and nuts. | A key that you pass on to Pollywog, wrapping up their story arc. |
The Granite Pickaxe in particular is a hard gate. It lets you break granite boulders and unlock new regions to the south and southwest that hide more granite and rare mushrooms. Without pushing Bufo’s quests, you never receive that recipe, and progression in other questlines stalls.
Granite itself first appears in the forest between Aunty’s house and Bufo’s pond. Small pieces lie on the ground, and larger grey boulders can be broken once you have a basic pickaxe. That loop—reach Bufo, help him, gain better tools, open more map—is central to the game’s structure.
Common sticking points on the way to Bufo
Most players who feel “soft locked” on the route to Bufo are running into the same few issues. Each has a direct fix.
| Problem | Symptom | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Aunty’s gate never opens | You can’t walk past her burrow or access the right-hand bridge. | Finish every active task she mentions, including crafting her furniture blueprints, then talk to her again until she clearly has nothing new to teach. |
| Freezing before reaching Gnarled Oaks | The screen frosts over and you retreat home early every day. | Repair the armchair, knit at least one warm clothing piece, and carry several warmth foods (beechnut biscuits, elder tea). |
| Lost inside Gnarled Oaks | Circling the map edges and hitting dead ends, never finding the campfire. | From the entrance, move toward the central clearings and follow natural paths between tree clusters. Prioritize interior routes over hugging the edges. |
| Not spotting the Bufo path | You find the campfire but wander away from the northeast route. | Stand at the campfire, then push up and right in each screen transition until a pond comes into view; ignore side paths until you meet Bufo once. |
After Bufo: where the path leads next
Once Bufo is in your orbit, the game starts layering more complex questlines that still trace back to his corner of the woods.
- South of Bufo’s pond, you later track down Pollywog, his tadpole, once you have the Granite Pickaxe and can break specific boulder and granite barriers.
- North of Bufo, the map opens into pine forest and Shadow Pines areas, where you fight ants, find the scarfed tree and snail shell, and eventually meet Gnawtusk the squirrel.
- Gnawtusk’s stash quests send you back and forth between those landmarks and reward you with a lantern and, after additional steps, the Flint Axe recipe.
- Tool upgrades from Bufo and story quests from Moss and Willow together let you cut vines, break stronger rocks, and fully repair Aunty’s home.
That web of relationships is why reaching Bufo early feels so powerful: his pond is effectively the hinge between your starting valley and the rest of Winter Burrow’s world.
If the northeast woods have been a source of frustration, the fix is less about pixel-perfect navigation and more about finishing Aunty’s teaching moments, packing a day’s worth of warmth in your inventory, and trusting the level design once you cross into the Gnarled Oaks. With that in place, the path to Bufo—and to the rest of the game—opens up fast.
