Beginners Guide to DLC's

In this guide, I'll go over the basic concepts of each DLC. Rimworld on it's own is a very, very complex game. I DO NOT recommend purchasing DLC's / using them as you are just learning how to play. It'll make this already overwhelming game even more so.

I'll rank each DLC on when to get it, not whether I personally like it or not.

(Obviously, as a guide this is subject to my opinion. Do whatever you want with your money, and I can understand different points of view on each ranking.)

Royalty is the first DLC I recommend you purchase.

Royalty on paper sounds really simple, and that's because it is. Royalty adds a new faction that features nobility, new high tech equipment and new mechanics such as psychic powers. There's also new recreation types (meditation), research tasks, music, a new ending and new quests. Most of the content comes from broad additions to the game like these new equipments, making it the best choice for a first DLC.

When to buy: After a few large colonies / when it's on sale after a considerable amount of playtime (> ~50 hours). It's still best to fully make sure that Rimworld is a game you enjoy, so I recommend holding off on all DLC purchases until you have played enough.

Biotech is the 2nd DLC I recommend you purchase, and is the most worthy of your money.

Sure, Biotech is relatively complex, but the amount of variety it provides lets you cherrypick which mechanics you want to interact with. There's children, xenotypes (Various human species / types? Whatever you want to call them.), sanguophages, weapons, friendly mechanoids, even more quests and pollution. While each of these sound fairly basic, they end up opening a huge level of depth that Royalty could never compete with. This DLC is also extremely mod supportive, so I recommend looking at the workshop to find even more Biotech related content. Want some drug dependant pirates that thrive in the pollution? You can do that. Want an overpowered soldier that's also drug dependant? Sure. Want to make your own strange colonist? Go right ahead.

When to buy: After a "completion" of a game, like getting a proper ending. (80+ Hours). After getting Royalty, you need enough time to experience all it has to offer properly, so it may be worth waiting even longer.

Ideology is the third DLC you should purchase, simply because of how game changing it is.

I'm serious, Ideology has the power to completely flip the game on it's head. That sounds dumb, but the amount of control you have over what this DLC offers is really nice. Ideology's main feature is having a, well, ideology. Whether that be being forest dwelling pirates or more charitable people, it's really customisable. Outside of the ideology aspects, there is also rituals, ancient complexes, even more quests, artifacts, refugees, new colonist roles, new furnitures and different factions. You can always disable the religion aspect of ideology if you dislike the system. I don't really have much more to say about it.

On another note, this DLC is very "Ideology" focused and thus won't be for everyone since a good chunk of it's content is focused on it's main system: ideology itself. Anomaly suffers from this problem too. (This DLC requires playing a certain way, and doesn't fully support some playstyles. This can be a DLC to skip if you may be one of the people with one of the unsupported playstyles.)

When to buy: When it's on sale / 100+ hours. You probably won't be done experiencing Biotech fully when you may consider buying it, but that's okay. Biotech actually adds a tiny bit more content to Ideology if they are both enabled.

Odyssey is the 4th DLC to purchase, assuming you didn't skip over Ideology or anything like that.

Out of all of the DLCS, I have to say that Odyssey is by far the most complex, but that's from it's extremely huge additions that are varied all over the place. New animals, travel methods, q u e s t s, weapons, plants, buildings, fishing, biomes, tiles, drugs, factions, endings, spaceships, bosses, an entire working "orbital" system that lets you see various objects hovering around the planet and so many more things. If you have Biotech or Ideology enabled, they both add some new content aswell, a xenotype and "memes" respectively. I cannot even begin to explain the depth of how big this DLC is. The only reason that I find Biotech is better is because small bits of the content in Odyssey feels somewhat insignificant, but that's really not much.

When to buy: On sale, after large amounts of playtime (150+ hours). Odyssey adds so much content that you need the break of new content so that you can fully experience this DLC to it's core.

Anomaly... Where do I start?

At it's core, anomaly is actually a really good DLC that feels fleshed out and very polished. It brings many new strategies to play, and a decent amount of roleplaying if that's what you're in to.

The problem...

It adds nothing to base Rimworld. There's a few research items, and two new weapons, but that's it. If you aren't actively playing an Anomaly focused run, it will usually end up being more of an annoyance than anything.

It's really unfortunate too. I see the potential behind Anomaly. The developers had clear goals and intentions with new monsters, research, buildings, music, endings, plants, (are you tired of quests yet?), tools, weapons and a journal system for the entities you have encountered. Anomaly itself is decently big, and I'm sure that for a good chunk of people this will be money well spent, but for your average gamer, I would actually recommend skipping it due to how little it interacts with the core values of Rimworld itself.

(Obviously this will be the most opinion based entry on here. Again, make choices for yourself. Also don't argue with eachother over such opinions, mine or others.)

When to buy: It's okay to skip this one, but if you really want to, try and aim for ~250 hours. That might seem like a lot, but you need to really think on this DLC. You might still be discovering things from Odyssey anyway.

If you buy Anomaly, DO NOT WATCH VIDEOS ABOUT IT. Anomaly relies on having little knowledge on what to expect.

(I DO NOT OWN THIS "DLC". Personally, I find it too expensive for what it's worth. Take what I say with a grain of salt.)

The name of this "DLC" should be obvious about it's nature, but basically it lets you input a name into Rimworld that everyone can ocassionally see throughout gameplay. In the settings, one of the tabs (I think it was Gameplay Options) holds a search bar that lets you look for names others have submitted. Selecting them makes the characters much more likely to appear in game.

However, there are a decent amount of issues. It supposedly takes a really long time for inputted names to appear in game, and a decent amount of names have randomly disappeared over time. I don't know if these are true, most of my knowledge comes from reviews and discussion forums.

When to buy: Not required at all. Doesn't change gameplay, minus names and maybe backstories(?) Buy whenever you want.

Overall, each mod has it's ups and downs. Rimworld is complex, so I hope you atleast learned something from this guide.

I don't know what else to say.

Goodbye.