RimWorld - a game about worlds on the rim of the galaxy, not licking buttholes

[Anonitolia]

I have put in some 200 hours into this fucking game and never beaten it
I pirated legally acquired all of the DLC after buying the base game years ago, I still feel like I know nothing and am constantly having to use the wiki
Only just started a save outside of forever-summer constant growing zones (purely because I am beginning to really hate the temperate background and want to see snow) a few weeks ago before Mewgenics sucked up all of my gaming time, I'm kind of surviving in a hunter-gatherer way but getting somewhat sick of being too shitty at my custom difficulty to do anything other than perma-summer temperate forest/crashlanded/ideal traits and stat balance without choking in the first month or two

Spoiler: said custom difficulty, for reference

This is slightly outdated, as I made it before the most recent DLC came out, but it's approximately what I use. (Assume any setting at 101% is supposed to be 100%.) I think I only tweaked it a tiny bit after the new DLC, anyways.

The main reason that I have a custom difficulty, other than the obvious "all the premade ones aren't my thing for one reason or another," is just that anything below normal tends to make me drop off of a save once I have a stable colony and anything above normal assrapes me to death (before I ever get far enough to have a working colony, let alone a stable one). My general goal with the difficulty is to keep things dangerous but manageable, with a lot of unpredictable shit toned down for the sake of easier progression and lots of optional stuff being amplified to allow for quicker submersion in it. (eg Anomalies are something I actively avoid; if I ever get far enough to consider taking them on, I want most of the game to revolve around them from that point on.)

Am I missing something important? I know I'm probably not giving research enough time of day, but otherwise a lot of my failures seem down to random luck or poor timing. Or spending way too much time building large rooms (because building smaller versions of them is impractical to outright detrimental).

Spoiler: general overview of how I start games

In order:

• Crashlanded -> Phoebe Chillax -> aforementioned settings. I used to do Cassandra Classic, but over time I've been wanting fewer world events in general since I give myself enough trouble just by trying to play normally so Chillax has become preferred.
• Start rolling for pawns. This usually takes 1-2 hours. I am insanely fucking anal about good team composition, especially since I know I won't have anywhere near this level of luxury in choosing recruits later on, so this takes up like 80% of my pre-game prep time. (The other 20% consists of finding someplace to live.) I generally refuse to use:
  • anyone with any injuries
  • anyone with any dependencies (this was not always the case; I learned the hard way why you might want to exclude these guys)
  • any non-Baseliners (saving this for more specialized runs/whenever I start knowing what I'm doing)
  • anyone with flatly bad traits (Slow Learner, Slowpoke, etc.)
    • depending on the individual pawn, I might accept some "good with bad downsides" traits like Neurotic or Too Smart... but rarely
    • misandrists/misogynists are counted here, if only because every time I haven't counted them a colony has gone to shit due to gender war sperging. I'm still more likely to accept these guys than any other flatly bad trait, if only because it can be easily mitigated, but I try to avoid them
  • the vast majority of pawns with disabled skills
    • Extremely context-specific. I'll sometimes accept really good pawns with completely disabled skills if it doesn't interfere with their daily routine and is mostly irrelevant to early-game (I won't give too much of a shit if the construction/cooking specialist can't be artistic, for example), but I generally try to avoid disabled skills entirely because of how small my colonies tend to be
  • I will prioritize Construction first, Cooking second, Medical third, and fighting stats fourth. Everything else borders on an afterthought, but I do try to aim for mining/intellectual/crafting to be high if I can.
    • I've recently begun reevaluating this, as I've found high Social to be very good for trading (which makes a good supply of medicine much easier to come by much sooner) and prisoners (which allows your colony to grow much faster), but it's still generally my M.O. to not prioritize it much.
    • Plants is also decently important, but I really don't prioritize it much since a good Shooting guy can just hunt for a while and feed the colony fine.
    • Two big flames > one big flame > abnormally high stat > two little flames > one little flame
      • If the stat is of priority importance, all types of flame take absolute priority
• Most-recent colony's pawns, for reference of what I generally aim for:
• 
  • note that I obviously don't look for pawns with 10+ in any given stat (just pawns with the little/big flames in important stats)
• Try to find someplace on the map that doesn't suck.
  • I generally aim for someplace with granite at minimum (granite/marble/sandstone is preferred but rare enough to not be essential), and I tend to really like mountains so I'll likely shack up in or near one.
  • Perma-summer used to be a requirement, but I'm trying to get out of my comfort zone and never see a temperate forest ever againso I just try to make the growing season as long as possible now.
    • Still avoiding basically every biome that isn't boreal forest or arid shrublands. Ice sheet is lol.
  • I land somewhere with natural geysers 99% of the time. I don't actively seek them out, I just stumble upon them pretty much always. Are they part-and-parcel with mountains? Or am I just getting really lucky?
  • Really started paying attention to neighbors after getting buttfucked by the pigskin clan. I used to ignore them entirely, but I realized far too late that setting up shop between three mortal enemies is a bad idea.
• After landing, I immediately pause the game and spend the next hour tweaking manual work priorities and planning out the basics of a base. I will always start with a storage area and kitchen, then expand out to a freezer and "main room" (just a catch-all for every room I haven't built yet). Bedrooms come afterwards and are almost always 6x6-10x10 (depending on wants/needs/space).
  • Growing fields and stockpiles happen whenever. I won't unpause the game before they're set up, but there's no set order I really do them in (unlike the rest of the base).
    • Growing fields tend to consist of (three different fields of) ~6x6 rice, potatoes, and corn. If I have someone with good Plants, I'll throw Healroot in there too... but I very rarely do, as it's low on my priorities, even if I'm probably going to change that in the future.
    • Growing fields are decided entirely by where the rich soil on the map is. If there isn't any, I tend to place them south of my base for whatever reason.
  • I also tend to go to "assign" and get rid of any social drugs/drinking policy, because the last time I didn't do that some retard brought along a bunch of those hyper-addictive steroids and half my colony came down with an addiction after a bad night.
    • Medics are always set to carry 2 medkits at first. I increase it to 3-4 once I have a steady supply of medicine going... which I've only managed to accomplish once or twice out of 20+ saves.
  • I've recently begun trying to implement small prisons into the beginning of my game starts, but I just haven't been able to manage it. All the rooms I begin with (which I consider absolutely essential) are already so unwieldy that they take a week+ to finish (with a Construction/Mining guy at 8+, as well as outside help) if I'm lucky. I have no idea how people can get to day 3 and have full bedrooms/kitchens/storage areas/freezers/etc. set up without making them so small that they're basically useless (or actively detrimental).
  • Some kind of workshop/crafting room is almost always the first room to be added after all of these rooms are completed.
    • I would go for a med center if the research tech for that wasn't ridiculously fucking expensive, but it's like 4000+ points just for basic med kits and sterile tiles so it takes me like 30 hours to get to.
• Some references for bases I've built/tried to build.
• 
  • Left is my most recent base on my most recent save, only about 10 hours in, very early game boreal forest and a lot of things have gone wrong (because I'm not used to playing with actual growing seasons). The plan was haphazardly created in about an hour and a half while sleep-deprived. I'm currently kicking myself for making it.
    • More typical of what I try to do. Lots of interconnected rooms at the center of the map that slowly sprawl outwards.
    • This is one of maybe two or three times I haven't just built into a cave or mountain to make rooms, and I'm remembering why I started doing that in the first place. Such a comparative pain in the ass to build from nothing.
    • The prison is new. It's basically just a cave right now because I could afford nothing else and needed a prison on very short notice.
    • This is maybe a bad example, but the rest of my saves were lost a while ago so it's the best I can do. All of the central rooms are too small and nothing really fits together outside of the colonist bedrooms. It's bothering me.
  • Right was an attempt to try and make a "town" instead of a base, thwarted by my (then-different) difficulty settings which accidentally meant I was getting shitty world events nearly every single day. A series of unfortunate events lead most of it to never be built, but I spent 3 hours on that plan and was proud enough of it to take a screenshot before nuking the save.
• This is a general idea of my work priorities:
• 
  • Firefight/Patient are ALWAYS #1, no matter the context, because pawns are like retarded autistic children who will ignore a broken arm if their work priorities dictate that they should spend all their time on hyperfixations instead.
  • Doctor will be #1 for the pawn with the highest Medical stat no matter the context. If that pawn's stat is a 3 and everyone else's is lower than 3, tough shit. He's still doing doctoring.
  • Bed rest used to be #1, but it made hunting anything with a chance to counter basically impossible. I just leave it on 3 now and prefer to manually force particularly sick idiots to rest if Patient doesn't make them do it first.
  • Everyone always has Research on #4 (at minimum) no matter the skill. I'd rather the world's biggest troglodyte contribute a bit to the development of bionic body parts than remain idle.
    • Plant cut works on similar principles, especially while building, because I cannot stress enough how infuriating it is to have rooms unfinished for days due to one or two saplings being ignored.
  • Basic is on #2 for everyone after having multiple colonies wherein basic power switches would be left untouched for days until I noticed.
    • See also: Haul, which I didn't realize also applied to cremating people and emptying egg boxes until I looked it up in the wiki.
  • Any given pawn's 2-flame interest will always be set to #1, any 1-flame interest/stat above 6-7 will be set to #2.
  • I generally don't touch these after a pawn's recruitment unless there's an emergency and/or I need all hands on deck for something. Construction is the most likely to be fudged, usually in the really early days where I need shelter NOW NOW NOW.
• Schedules are untouched. I haven't ever found the defaults wanting. The only reason I haven't customized them is just because I'm already super meticulous about everything else, and it's very rare that a pawn needs an individualized schedule before non-Baseliners start appearing.
• Research is almost always on Geothermal at first. Sometimes I'll do smaller projects in-between, depending on the situation, but geothermal power is always my highest priority because it solves any energy problems for the entire rest of the game. Everything else comes afterwards.
  • I've been considering trying to aim for medicine/sterile materials/microelectronics first instead, but I've found those near-equally taxing in terms of research points (and even moreso in terms of materials; if I start on sterile tiles especially, I'll often be broke for months before I manage to get any silver again) and not nearly as worth it in terms of payoff.
• After all this is done, I'll unrestrict all the stuff that fell with the colonists and get to work mining any necessary materials/letting the pawns build for a while on x3 speed.

It probably says a lot that I'm still quite fond of the game, even despite my constant ineptitude and very repetitive playstyle, but I really am getting sick of my usual routine and want to shake things up without immediately fucking choking. I don't know anyone else who plays it, so the Farms is my best bet for advice. I refuse to indulge sloptubers or discord servers under any circumstances.

Aside from the DLC, I'm playing pure vanilla. No mods whatsoever. I want to change that, as I've heard the modding scene is rife with cool stuff, but I refuse to allow myself to touch mods until I've beaten the vanilla game at least once. The vanilla game is already ridiculously expansive; if I add mods to it, I'm convinced I'll get overwhelmed and just stop playing entirely. I've already gotten close with some DLC stuff-- it's why I'm saving a lot of DLC content (anomalies, spaceships, ideologies) for after I get a colony to at least mid-game levels. Nevertheless, I'm considering adding a few QoL mods to the interface/pathing if I can. The pawns are aggravatingly retarded and probably my primary source of frustration with the game.

The biggest colony I've ever had consisted of... maybe eleven people. Nine or eleven, I can't remember, and I'm certain at least one was a literal baby who couldn't do anything. I've never really used the traveling features in the game, primarily because most of my colonies have never gotten to a point where they can survive without a pawn or two, and caravans/quests have remained mostly untouched as a result. (The only exceptions have been those quests that force you to host randos for money/materials/etc. or the occasional "you will be raided immediately" quests that reward the same kind of stuff.) 90% of my colonies barely get to have a functioning hospital, and I've never reached anything especially advanced in the tech tree. Most weaponry, all machinery, and a good third of the Electricity-derived stuff is just alien to me. I've never reached it. I've spent more than a full week of my life on this game, I'm pretty sure that's unacceptable.

I want to stop sucking. Any advice/QoL mods/mockery of my skills is welcome and appreciated. I'm not sure if there are any graphics mods that can make the temperate forest look less fucking ugly, but they'd be appreciated too.

 

[Susanna]

The key to Rimworld is happiness management. Beauty of rooms is a major aspect of this. Make art and place it in rooms where people spend a lot of time (prisons, hospitals, workshops, dining/rec room). You can leave the bedrooms ugly, since colonists are unconscious basically the entire time they’re there. Use pretty materials, a marble dining chair sounds awful but Rimworld colonists love them.

 

[Kane Lives]

I want to stop sucking. Any advice/QoL mods/mockery of my skills is welcome and appreciated. I'm not sure if there are any graphics mods that can make the temperate forest look less fucking ugly, but they'd be appreciated too.

I tend to play my games vanilla plus (only QOL mods, no gameplay altering ones unless it's for convenience, like a 1-tile fridge or bigger gene banks), and I already have all the DLCs.

The ones I always get are:
- Animal Control and Animal Logic -> basically lets you control the animal side of things easier, and setting up shit like auto-slaughter after a certain threshold makes shit much less tedious.
- Quick Stockpile Creation - As it says on the tin, makes stockpile creation easier.
- Categorised Cleaning - Lets you have more control on the cleaning pawns, essential for me to avoid them sweeping some corner of my base when my kitchen/hospital is filthy as fuck
- Bed Rest for Food Poisoning - also as it says on the tin, prevents your food poisoning pawn(s) from shitting up the base, at the cost of some efficiency
- Choose Your Recipe - lets me just remove any recipes I dont care to see, essential for long games

Gameplay adjustment mods I typically run:
- Live With the Pain - Not a fan of scars giving a permanent -5 mood debuff so this is mostly to reduce that shit after a sufficiently long time has passed
- Simple Utilities: Fridge - one-tile fridge. Just as it says on the tin, lets me do more aesthetically pleasing bases without digging a bigass fridge or run the risk of food spoiling where I dont want them. (Big fan of the Simple Utilities group of mods, but this is the only one I actually use, the rest are just convenience.)
- Graze Up - Makes grazing actually viable

As for gameplay: Rimworld isn't a difficult game (controversial to some, I know). But it does require you to understand the systems first. As the poster above said, a lot of the game revolves around happiness control, but you probably want to at least master the basics as well first.

Assorted thoughts from your wall of text:
- Phoebe is ironically considered to be one of the harder storyteller, due to how she dumps on you a megaraid to make up for all the time chilling. Don't fall for the (wrong) description. Go Cassandra if you want the proper vanilla experience.
- Medicine isn't necessary to research most of the time. Just trade for it. Drop to herbal for most injuries, and save medicine for actual surgery. That way you have more than enough for anything.
- Geysers are part of every map, yes. They're usually placed at the edge of the map, but are free power once you get the tech for it.
- Note that for growing in particular, keep in mind that corn has highest yield per tile, rice the fastest grow rate and potato is only notable for being middling in everything but can be grown on stony soil (only really relevant to certain starts).
- It's usually easier to just start with a huge common barracks (that you can stuff with art and keep clean), than individual rooms.
- Don't dismiss pawns with low skills btw. Those make for great haulers and cleaners. Only applies to prisoners and newcomers, obviously.

 

[Cnidarian]

I like these crack-addicted goblins. I haven't used any Xenotype mods beyond them, though.

I guess that I should have also specified 'no fantasy races'. The corpse-crack is a great fit however, that alone is a reason to download.

 

[Greedy Fly]

Not an expert opinion, but here are a few notes if it helps:

I will prioritize Construction first, Cooking second, Medical third, and fighting stats fourth. Everything else borders on an afterthought, but I do try to aim for mining/intellectual/crafting to be high if I can.

When I'm doing a 3 pawn start I'll go for Cooking, Plants, Medical and Int. I like to have someone decent at shooting (for hunting) but I'll be relying on traps and walls for the early game defense rather than combat. Intellectual is so I can lock someone up in the research room as soon as we've stabilized the food situation for the first winter, usually I try to get Med and Int on the same person because I put research and the hospital in the same area to save on sterile materials, making it convenient to give one guy both roles.

I don't worry much about Construction stats at the start; everything is going to made out of wood anyway (so no big deal if they fail and waste some mats) and my pawns will get tons of practice.

This is a general idea of my work priorities:

I have a dedicated researcher set to 1 as soon as the colony is slightly stable, because getting things like geothermal power, sterile tile, and better gear/weapons is important. Like I said above, I like to make this guy my main doctor too.

Everybody constructs. You don't need to worry about skill level when they're just throwing up wood walls for the barracks. If you need fancy furniture you can designate a specific pawn to make it or limit it to high skill levels.

Schedules are untouched.

I like to give everyone a couple hours of rec time to keep their mood up, I don't actually know if it matters.

Miscellaneous comments on colony design:

• Nothing wrong with starting out with barracks. Individual rooms are for later.
• If you are doing individual rooms, use shared walls + vents. It'll save on components when you start making coolers/heaters.
• Clean kitchens are essential for preventing food poisoning.
• Beds can be at the edge of the colony because they don't need to go there often. Hospital should be super central and accessible because time is off the essence when your pawn is bleeding out.
• Storage should also be very accessible or it'll take your guys all day to put away a stack of wood.

 

[UtadaWasabi2]

The key to Rimworld is happiness management. Beauty of rooms is a major aspect of this. Make art and place it in rooms where people spend a lot of time (prisons, hospitals, workshops, dining/rec room). You can leave the bedrooms ugly, since colonists are unconscious basically the entire time they’re there. Use pretty materials, a marble dining chair sounds awful but Rimworld colonists love them.

wtf I thought the meta is living like a hobo to keep the wealth&expectation moodlet down then go researchmaxxing.

 

[Counterfeit Obol]

wtf I thought the meta is living like a hobo to keep the wealth&expectation moodlet down then go researchmaxxing.

Get the Floors Are (Absolutely) Worthless mod. You'd be surprised how much simple wood flooring to improve travel speed contributes to colony wealth. Just be aware that smoothed stone isn't included in that mod due to hardcoding on Ludeon's part.

 

[Sheriff Mike Chitwood]

Schedules are untouched. I haven't ever found the defaults wanting. The only reason I haven't customized them is just because I'm already super meticulous about everything else, and it's very rare that a pawn needs an individualized schedule before non-Baseliners start appearing.

set your people up so that they go do rec at 23 - 0 and then go to bed at 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 and then are up doing anything for 6 hours after - 5678910 then another 2 hours of rec at 11 - 12 followed by another 4 hours of sleep, with another 6 hours, and just keep them sleeping in those 4 hour shifts coupled with shared rec time and they will almost never get bummed out

 

[Susanna]

wtf I thought the meta is living like a hobo to keep the wealth&expectation moodlet down then go researchmaxxing.

That’s for the very high difficulties. I tend to prefer small colonies on medium difficulty with Phoebe, that way I still get difficult raids, but I’m not constantly interrupted by sixty rabid walruses or whatever.

 

[Sedan Hussein]

The key to Rimworld is happiness management. Beauty of rooms is a major aspect of this. Make art and place it in rooms where people spend a lot of time (prisons, hospitals, workshops, dining/rec room). You can leave the bedrooms ugly, since colonists are unconscious basically the entire time they’re there. Use pretty materials, a marble dining chair sounds awful but Rimworld colonists love them.

Plant pots are very underrated for the amount of beauty and the miniscule amount of work to build compared with art.

 

[Kane Lives]

Plant pots are very underrated for the amount of beauty and the miniscule amount of work to build compared with art.

They do have a pawn work cost though iirc. A plant assigned pawn need to water them every day or something.

Plus, art is something you can sell later.

 

[Counterfeit Obol]

A plant assigned pawn need to water them every day or something.

The flowers inevitably die, so they have to be resown every now and then depending on the flower selected.

 

[Cnidarian]

(This is from Vanilla Anomaly Expanded: Insanity)


What kind of queer demands to leave suicide out of his high stakes psychological horror game?

 

[Gorilla Milk]

I've got to start playing Rimworld again. My computer is kind of old (201 and I need to upgrade because my modlist was making it slow down...

Last I was playing I had a mod conflict or something that was causing my pre-created colonists to not spawn, unfortunately, and I couldn't figure it out.
Love this game, though. Been playing since the beta.

 

[Pedophobe]

You can leave the bedrooms ugly, since colonists are unconscious basically the entire time they’re there.

They still get a constant mood buff just for having a high quality bedroom though, and room beauty is a big contributor to that.

 

[Susanna]

They still get a constant mood buff just for having a high quality bedroom though, and room beauty is a big contributor to that.

That's true.
When I'm trying to squeeze out every bit of happiness I can, generally I prefer making a single nice barracks rather than a dozen kind of nice bedrooms. Sleeping in a barracks is only -3 versus sleeping in a bedroom.

 

[Pedophobe]

Personally I avoid barracks as much as possible because of the "disturbed sleep" debuff that seems to happen every time someone walks in or out.

 

[Susanna]

Make sure you set a sleep schedule so they all go to bed at the same time.

 

[Kris]

I want to get back into this but getting the mods sorted is always a herculean task. I wish there was just a solid but huge modpack to go off of or something.

 

[thejackal2]

Toxic fallout. One of the worst mechanics in any game, all time, amirite?