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Biomes

Frozen tundra, glacier, ice forest, frozen city — what each one costs you.
Gear

Clothing, tools, weapons — described by mechanic, not made-up stats.
Systems

Cold, warmth, hunger, progression, co-op — each with an explicit "unmeasured" list.
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Original long-form guides, every number traced to a source.
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Four calculators that turn a decision into a number.
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Release

9 October 2026, Early Access.
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Sources

Where every number comes from, and what is still unmeasured.

Official description: your dog “scouts ahead, warns of danger, carries supplies, and keeps you grounded when the silence gets to be too much”. Three of those four are mechanical. This guide is about the three.

Scouting: a sightline extension

The dog’s scouting matters most where your own sightline stops early — ice forest cover, and the interiors of frozen city ruins. In open terrain like the tundra you can already see what is coming, so the scouting value drops and the carrying value rises.

That is the practical rule: the tighter the terrain, the more you should be watching the dog instead of the horizon.

Warning: early detection, not protection

Warning behaviour is information, not defence. It buys you the choice to disengage — which matters because official framing treats the environment as the primary antagonist and combat as a consequence of scarcity rather than the point.

Groups especially should designate whoever has the dog as the point player: the warning applies to the party, so the person with the best early-detection should be the one leading.

Carrying: the weight problem, solved sideways

Carry capacity is a real constraint in Permafrost — it is why the hunting advice on the beginner guide says to hunt on the return leg. Offloading heavy heating fuel to the dog keeps you mobile, which is worth more than the inventory slot it costs.

Loadout rule: put the heaviest, least urgent cargo on the dog and keep anything you might need to use under pressure on your own character.

Where it earns its keep, ranked

  1. Ruin interiors — scouting and warning both at maximum value, sightline at minimum.
  2. Long supply runs — carrying converts a two-trip haul into one.
  3. Hunting trips — warning before wildlife contact, carrying for the hides out.
  4. Open crossings — lowest value; you can already see, and there is nothing to carry yet.

Companion or progression reward?

Official copy says the dog is rescued from the ruins, which makes it part of progression rather than a pet you start with. Practically that means the early game is the hardest part of the game, and the dog is one of the things that changes that — which is worth knowing before you judge the opening hours.

See the dog companion system page and wildlife & hunting.

Unmeasured

  • Carry capacity bonus and whether it scales
  • Scout radius and whether it is affected by weather
  • Behaviour during whiteouts
  • Whether the dog can be lost, injured, or permanently killed

That last one is the one players will actually care about, and nobody outside the studio can answer it yet. It gets measured in the launch build and logged on the changelog.

Dog companion system → Co-op guide

Data version 2026.09.24 · reviewed 24 September 2026.