Rimworld is a massively detailed and expansive colony-builder simulation game available on PC, Mac, and Linux. With so many variables in play, getting an edge can mean the difference between an organ-harvesting kingdom and a berry scrounging cannibal camp. Below I’ve compiled a list of tips and tricks to get you ahead of the curve without ruining the surprises that make Rimworld so addicting.
Scout your landing spot
After you select your scenario and storyteller, a world is generated to grow your colony in. Scouting your landing spot is a crucial factor in how difficult your game will be. Make sure to have the Terrain tab in the bottom left expanded to fully inspect potential colony sites. The Terrain tab will show you the average temperature and its range, which will dictate how much work you will need to put in to keep your colonists comfortable by using heaters, fires, air conditioners, and weather-appropriate clothing. It will also tell you the amount and type of resources, like food and stone, available on site. The most crucial piece of information is the growing period, which will shape your overall schedule since farming is the easiest and most abundant source of food. True to reality, landing closer to the equator will extend the growing period and can allow for pretty much year-round food availability.
Pause immediately
The game speed controls are another important feature that can give you the upper hand in tense situations and while planning out your kingdom. As soon as you land, pause the game so you can take time to survey your new home. While the game is paused, identify possible food sources and a good place to set up shelter. This is also the best time to have your colonists equip any weapons you start with, because without shelter you are at your weakest and most vulnerable.
Four walls and a roof
Pretty quickly upon starting you will need to get shelter set up for your colonists. Shelter will prevent deterioration of your items by keeping them safe from the elements and give your colonists a good amount of comfort compared to sleeping outside.
Research always helps
Whether you set priorities for your colonists manually or not, every colonist should be assigned the duty of researching. Unless you are so strapped for space that you can’t fit additional research benches, you should always have a few extra so your colonists have something to do that adds to the settlement’s progress.
Queue up multiple orders
With so many tasks to complete, sometimes colonists can be prioritized to complete tasks that aren’t necessarily the right ones for the needs of the colony at that time. To manually order your colonists around you can select the colonist, and right click the job you would like them to perform. To make sure they don’t get sidetracked from individual tasks, like hauling a pile of stone rubble away, you can queue up multiple orders by holding the shift key while right clicking tasks.
Cleanliness is important
Rimworld boasts a lot of realism, and this realism lends itself to common sense solutions that are extremely satisfying to solve. A major example is cleanliness. Cleanliness can lower your colonists’ moods, make recruiting prisoners harder, cause infections in sick and injured people, and cause food poisoning. Cleaning is handled as an individual task without a skill level, though some colonists have backgrounds that prevent them from doing it. To avoid the negative effects of a dirty colony, make sure cooking, medical, and living areas (including prisoner quarters) are clean at all times. Colonists can have their allowed areas reduced (so that cleaning is the only task left to complete within their range), have their assigned tasks reduced so that cleaning is one of the only tasks left for them to do, or have cleaning prioritized to be a “do this first” type of task.
Insulate your cold storage
Once you get your colony started, food is one of the most important areas to get stabilized, and refrigeration is key to accomplishing this. When building your freezer, allow for additional exterior structural layers to improve insulation and lower your power consumption. This can prove essential in maximizing space conservation later in the game as well, so it is best to plan for this early.
Focus on your passions
Depending on your colonists’ pasts before beginning their current journey in your settlement, they will be able to perform a variety of tasks that can benefit your colony. While it is tempting to have your colonists participate in every possible task to improve over time, it is best in practice to spread responsibilities out in order to move the colony forward as a whole. As in life, your colonists have certain activities they are more passionate about than others, and because of their passion, they will pick up on them faster which helps to accomplish all the tasks necessary to support the colony.
Arrest mental break victims
Your colony really is a family, and in line with the aforementioned realism, some members occasionally hit the wall. Extended exposure to a lackluster colony can lead some colonists to suffer a mental break. Sometimes this means they wander off for a while to collect their thoughts, and sometimes it means they systematically slaughter your pets. When these breaks fall on the harsher side of the spectrum it can be devastating for your sometimes fragile colony. To avoid this, you can draft a sane colonist and have them attempt to arrest the loony settler. Sometimes it can lead to a fist fight, which can risk an injury, but quite often, the mentally broken colonist will give up without a fight. Its important that you un-draft your arresting colonist before they reach a bed, this drops the mental colonist and stops the break immediately. If you don’t stop the arresting colonist, you will need to convince the new “prisoner” to join your team all over again.
Avoid raw foods
Finding food can be a tough task on its own in Rimworld, so how its consumed can sometimes fall by the wayside. It may seem like no big deal to eat raw food, but it’s important for healthy, happy colonists. Unless your colonists possess the ascetic trait, they will always prefer their food to be cooked in some way before being eaten. Luckily, cooking can be accomplished with any amount of food and with tools as simple as a campfire. After tackling the cooking challenge, the next focus should be on preservation.
Keep animals off the farm
When you are running a self-sufficient system on a faraway planet, chaos can tend to pop up. One easily avoidable setback can arise when plants and animals overlap. If you have animals that graze as a food source, they are going to set their eyes on your farmland if they’re able to access it. To avoid this, manage the area your animals have access to and make sure they can’t roam unrestricted.
Don’t let all trained pets follow their master
When you have animal friends in your colony you can train them to help and protect colonists; some can even haul items around. Your animals’ instinct to protect their handler can sometimes put them in danger if they get between an attacking animal and their master. Make sure your Yorkie and pet hare have their obedience set to “off” on the Animals tab to keep them safe.
Batteries go in the freezer
This one is simple and easy. Put batteries in the freezer to lower their chance of breaking down.
Cater to the individual colonists’ needs
Colonists come into the game with backstories that make them each unique. When you start to get basic requirements nailed down, start looking at individual colonists’ Needs tabs to see what to focus on next. They can tip you off to bad living conditions, dirty production areas, and future research project ideas.
Don’t be afraid to amputate
Most amputating occurs in prisons in Rimworld, as a method to profit from failed attacks on the colony by selling body parts. Another (sometimes overlooked) opportunity to perform amputations exists in a way that can actually improve your colony. When colonists get attacked by animals, pissed off fellow colonists, and raiders they can get long term scars and injuries that can affect their abilities without losing them entirely. When you’ve researched advanced technology, prosthetics and bionics become available. These can replace those now-useless limbs and organs to make colonists better than ever before.
Self-bandage
Sometimes colonists get injured while far away from home base. Infection can set in quick if they are busy fending off attacking enemies instead of tending to their wounds. In your colonists’ Health tab, there is a small check box that can easily go unnoticed that allows them to self-tend. This will not fix them up good as new, but it can definitely save a settler’s life in a pinch.
Sleeping spots in a hurry
This is quite possibly the most used shortcut in Rimworld to save a colonist’s life. When you send colonists out to hunt they can sometimes spark revenge in the target animal instead of successfully capturing it, and lose the ensuing struggle. When this happens, the downed colonist can often be too far away from home to make it back before they bleed out. To get them patched up in the field, place a sleeping spot next to them and change it to a medical sleeping spot. Lower the downed colonist’s allowed medicine level to “no medicine” while a fellow colonist comes to rescue them. The rescuing colonist will place the victim in the closest medical bed and immediately begin doing their best to stop the bleeding. This hastened patch job can be a difference maker in getting an injured colonist home alive.
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