Despite its simplistic art style, RimWorld is a complex yet exceptional strategic survival game designed to keep you on your toes at every turn. You’ll follow a group of stranded colonists, or a tribe of what are essentially cavemen, as they advance through a tech tree and survive on a strange planet. But before you dive in headfirst, what do you need to know before starting RimWorld? We have a few RimWorld tips and tricks to help you start your journey!
Let’s begin with a few essential in-game tips, then move on to more practical advice before launching the game.
Choose the Right Colonists
Before you crash land, you’ll have an opportunity to select a few randomized colonists. While random, you can roll to find a suitable colonist with capable skills. For instance, you’ll want someone talented in the construction, crafting, medical, and intellectual skills.
Ideally, if you can manage one, a pawn with a high shooting skill will prove helpful. Before long, your colony will come under attack.
Set Manual Priorities
Not every pawn is skilled at every job. As such, you’ll want to immediately pause your game when you load into your world, then maneuver over to the ‘Work’ tab to assign manual priorities.
Your top priorities should include Firefight, Patient, and Bed Rest. If you have a pawn with high medical knowledge, set their Doctor priority to the max. Otherwise, arrange your work priorities based on skill levels and passion.
Forego the Mods
RimWorld enjoys an active modding community, with new releases occurring daily. But for your first few playthroughs, I would recommend playing completely vanilla. You’ll have a chance to learn the intricacies and mechanics of the game without additional construction materials and modded mechanics clogging up your experience.
Once you have time in RimWorld, head to the Steam Workshop. You’ll find new quests, new skills, quality of life upgrades, weaponry, races, and so much more.
Explore the DLC
RimWorld currently features two expansions: Royalty and Ideology. Both offer unique game mechanics, new constructibles, and more to the experience. It’s a lot of flavor and content for a relatively small price tag.
Royalty
Released in early 2020, Royalty is the first official expansion for RimWorld. It features The Empire, royal titles, psychic powers, a quest system, mech clusters, imperial technology, and 13 new music tracks to enhance your experience overall.
If you fancy yourself a roleplayer, which is a lot of what RimWorld is all about, then Royalty is a must-own. The quests alone add a lot of flavor to the game, with unique rewards based on the challenge and length of the quest.
Ideology
Ideology, released in 2021, is the most recent expansion to RimWorld. As of this writing, it is also the last DLC. Instead of introducing extensive gameplay mechanics, Ideology provides more roleplay options to the game.
Here, you’ll construct an extensive belief system for your pawns. You can choose to customize everything, including social roles, temples, rituals, beliefs, likes and dislikes, and so much more.
For example, if you want to play a race of animalistic druids who shy away from modern technology and become one with the planet, you can. Or, you could enhance your pawns with innovative technology by replacing limbs and organs with cybernetic components to live out a transhumanist dream.
Look Up Guides
As previously mentioned, RimWorld is a large and complex game. You will make mistakes and lose the occasional pawn and entire colonies at times. It’s okay.
Don’t be afraid to look up the occasional game guide. The community is extremely welcoming and happy to help if you have a question.