Quests
The Last Caretaker Bring Back the Heat Quest: Heat Up North Bastion
Short answer: Bring Back the Heat is the first North Bastion story quest in Update 6. When you come through the Transfer Gate into the cold, find the heating system and use the Boiler to send steam to a heater: the Boiler makes steam and a connected heater turns it into heat. Unlock both in the skill tree first. The story then moves on to Reach North Bastion, Find the Laboratory and I Know This Place.
Game version: Early Access, Update 6 (October 19, 2026); evidence from the public beta (October 9–18) to October 22, 2026
What Bring Back the Heat Asks
What is the Bring Back the Heat quest?
Bring Back the Heat is the first quest of the North Bastion story in Update 6. It starts when you come through the Transfer Gate into the cold: look for the heating system, then get the Boiler sending steam into a heater so the heater gives off heat.
Update 6, The Jump, came out on October 19, 2026. In deep cold the Caretaker moves more slowly and starts losing health, and a temperature readout appears on the HUD once conditions turn dangerous. North Bastion, the new frozen mountain region, is where the cold matters most.
See also: getting through the Transfer Gate · North Bastion guide
How to Finish It
How do you supply steam to a heater?
A Boiler produces steam, and heaters connected to it turn that steam into heat.
The Boiler and the heaters are skill-tree unlocks, so unlock them before you look for them in the build menu. It is easy to miss that the heating modules were added to the skills.
To survive the cold you can build small, medium and large heaters, a Boiler and the Methane Extractor, and use single-use methane canisters. Each heater type has its own output, reach and efficiency, and a warmed area no longer cools back down.
See also: heating guide · skill tree planner
What do the Boiler and the heater need?
The FLO TH-30 Area Heater takes Steam 30.0 kW and unlocks at tier 20 of the skill tree for 3 skill points.
In the public beta, the tooltip shows the FLO BH-60 Boiler taking Methane 10,000 L/h and Fresh Water 10,000 L/h and making Steam 30.0 kW.
Not confirmed yet
See also: methane and gases
Where do you connect the heater?
In North Bastion the steam pipes on the walls have their connection points in groups of three, and you run hoses from them to your heaters.
Too many heaters on one Boiler can leave some of them without enough steam pressure; a room heater needs less steam than an area heater, and a second Boiler gave enough pressure to heat the bunker harbor.
Not confirmed yet
A single Boiler can keep every room of a first base in North Bastion warm.
Not confirmed yet
What Comes Next
What comes after Bring Back the Heat?
Bring Back the Heat is step one of four. Next comes Reach North Bastion (get up the mountain and into the base), then Find the Laboratory (find and enter the laboratory deeper inside), then I Know This Place, where you rebuild Anna’s Reconstruction Unit.
See also: I Know This Place and the six modules
Is What the Ice Holds part of it?
What the Ice Holds is a separate quest: restore a Methane Extractor and use it to extract methane from under the ice.
