Winter does not add new objectives at first. It changes the arithmetic of every arrival you have already planned, which is why a week that was perfectly separated in autumn can collapse the moment the tiles shift.
When winter starts
The chapter walkthrough places winter at chapter 10: the campaign moves to a winter map, and the March 2026 devlog marks it as the point where the season arrives. The contraband line starts in the same chapter, so the final stretch asks you to run a slower road network and a new business at once.
The two road tiles
| Tile | Effect | What it does to your plan |
|---|---|---|
| Snowdrift | Costs one extra movement point to pass | Delays the traveller, which can separate a pair or break up a party |
| Icy Road | No extra movement cost, but the traveller effectively moves one extra space | Accelerates the traveller, which can create a collision you had avoided |
Both spawn on random rows each turn, and they never appear on adjacent rows. The non-adjacency is the only predictability you get: if a row has snow, the row behind it is clear.
The practical consequence is that arrival comparisons expire. The gap you measured before the tiles moved is not the gap after.
The Blizzard, rule by rule
Chapter 11 runs a blizzard for the chapter’s duration. The official design notes describe it as one of the toughest challenges in the game, and they list the rules precisely:
- One or two snowdrifts appear each turn, and icy roads stop appearing entirely.
- Every adventurer travelling outdoors gains one stack of Coldness at the start of each turn.
- Five stacks without shelter means they freeze to death.
- Adventurers with only two movement points do not spawn at all on blizzard days.
The last rule is the one that quietly helps. The developers added it because those adventurers could not reliably survive, and they also cut snowdrift generation from two or three per turn down to one or two for the same reason.
The chapter also introduces a new objective type: avoiding freezing. That goal reframes the week — the target is no longer “serve everyone”, it is “get everyone inside”.
Shelter order
The 1.0 guide’s advice is the sensible one and it follows from the rules: bring the adventurers closest to five stacks indoors first.
Two traps follow immediately. A snowdrift in the path adds exposure, and a prize wheel that holds someone in place extends it. Both tools you use to separate arrivals in autumn become ways of freezing a guest in winter, so the delay tool has to be aimed at someone who still has stacks to spare.
The difficulty detail most pages miss
On Casual difficulty the Chill cap was raised from four to five stacks by hotfix 1.0.0.261027, which means a Casual adventurer survives one extra turn outdoors compared with the launch build. The same patch made the character window’s Chill tooltip show both the current and the maximum number of stacks.
If you are reading a launch-week guide that says four, it was written before that patch or for a different difficulty. Check the tooltip rather than the guide.
A winter-week checklist
- Recheck the nearest arrival on each road after the tiles spawn.
- Identify anyone at three or four stacks before placing a delay.
- Reserve beds for the guild whose guests are closest to the limit.
- Budget AP for the character skills that get people indoors, not just for the road tools.
- Treat a party as its slowest member, because that is who decides when the group moves.
What is not published
Exact spawn weights for snowdrifts and icy roads are not documented, and neither is a per-chapter blizzard calendar beyond the fact that chapter 11 runs one. The page therefore gives rules and order, not probabilities.