Overview
Intermediate to advanced Rimworld game tips and help for players looking to expand their game knowledge. Tips and tricks for playing Rimworld, strategies and opinions from a fellow Rimworld player.
Introduction
Welcome,
I wanted to make a guide to share things I have learned over my years of playing Rimworld. Although I am by no means a “pro” I do plan on talking about things that may be “Beyond The Basics”. Although these things may be general knowldge to some of you.
Rimworld brings alot of content and challenges with endless replayability. I consider it to be one of the best games i have played in decades. I hope the Dev continues to support this game for many years to come.
Since the game is still in development it can in some cases be tricky to find information on it. As with most games that are still in development, the information that is available online can quickly become outdated or incorrect.
It is good to keep in mind that Rimworld is always going to win eventually. People who play thinking their colony is going to last forever are going to need to constantly save (aka savescum) or turn the difficulty way down. For me this difficulty is what keeps me engaged and coming back for more.
I don’t generally take the time to do alot of writing so please ignor any punctuation or spelling errors. This guide will likely take me weeks/months to complete.
You can find me on my Discord [link]
[link]
Hope you all enjoy.
Kopz.
Picking The Right Colonists
Picking the right colonists to start with can obviously help alot when it comes to a new colony. It is also worth being selective later in game so you dont accept any bad apples to your group. Although I tend to be a bit lazy and just randomize my colonists when starting a new colony, I do have some preferences and things that I look to avoid.
Generaly I like to look for a few things in a new colonist.
A shooter, a Doctor, and a Grower/Cooker are my early game preferences. These people should have at least one if not two flames in their specialized skill. Having someone who can grow Healroot from the begining is very valuable. Also make sure you have someone who can research so you dont get stuck in early game.
A good idea is to avoid people who cannot do certain tasks such a dumb labour. It is important to have people who are very well versed at the beginning to help make sure your colony can progress at a good rate. Although tasks such as “Hauling” may not seem to be of initial importance, It can cause alot of headaches if things are not being put were they need to be.
As far as things that I avoid, Pyromaniacs are a No No. Nothing worse than a person who tries to burn down your base when they get upset. Especially if it is still made out of wood. Anyone who effects the global work speed in a bad way should be avoided aswell.
Lastly the age and medical conditions of each colonist are very important. You dont want to inherit any problems because that amazing doctor you thought you had actually turns out to be 90yrs old with dementia and a bad back. No matter how high a persons skills are, if they have a medical condition that prevents them from preforming it well your screwed.
Work Priorities
Work Priority is an extremely important part of the game and can be confusing to new players.
You always want to be manually adjusting work priorities. Your options are 1-4 or leaving it blank.
Work prioritys may need to be updated from time to time as things change in your colony. Knowing when to change them can be the difference between life and death. I do have a basic starting format that I use which I will talk about in a moment.
For those of you that are not familiar, basically your colonists try to figure out what to do in sequence from left to right. They will start at left (Firefight) and work their way right down the list looking to complete all the assigned #1’s. Once all the #1’s are completed in their restricted zone, they will then start again from the left of the list but this time looking for the assigned #2’s. This process repeats all the way through the #3’s and #4’s. After the #4’s are done the cycle will start over again. If you leave a box empty it will be skipped.
Two important things to know:
1) The cycle can be reset by drafting and then un-drafting a colonist. What I mean is everytime you draft/undraft, your colonist will be starting with #1’s on the left again. This trick is essential when you need your colonist to stop whatever they are doing to deal with fire/medical issues.
2) Zones work hand in hand with work priorities. The work priority search is limited to whatever zone your colonist is currently assigned to.
Soo… If no one seems to be cleaning their room’s you can assign them (for example) to an indoors zone only. This gives them the opportunity to get further down their work priority list because they are in a smaller area. Instead of getting stuck on a never ending job they will actually get some cleaning done. When you have alot of colonists you will have more opportunity to make labour work a higher priority for select individuals. I recommend using properly delegated zones to accomplish tasks rather than constantly adjusting work prioritys.
Jobs like hauling can also be outsouced to animals when your colony starts to get big. I prefer to use boars, but you can use any animal capable of hauling.
The format I use is very standard/basic for ealy game or when you need to do some priority housekeeping. These will change as you specialize your colonists.
1’s are put on anything lifethreating including:
-Firefight
-Patient (sometimes #2 if I want people to doctor before they patient)
-Doctor
-Bedrest
-Flick (Usually If I want somthing flicked it is important that it gets done right away)
2’s are put on any job that has two flames on it
3’s are put on anything with one flame and:
-Cook
-Hunt
-Grow
-Plant Cut
-Haul
-Clean
4’s are put on everything else
Once you have lots of colonists you can start to tweak and remove/add jobs for colonists that really good or really bad at specific jobs. I recommend using this basic format as a starting point until you become comfortable with the system.
Always keep in mind that some tasks are important to the survival of your colony regardless of how good your colonists are at doing them.
Getting ahead of your colonists.
Getting ahead of your colonists is basically were you issue so much work to do that your colonists can’t keep up.
We all know about work priorities and how important they are to your colony. These priorities go hand-in-hand with how much work your colonists have to do. When we have these grand ideas of what we want to do with our colonies, we tend to just start placing stuff onto the map like madmen. It is important to keep in mind how much work you have issued and how busy this is keeping your people. Have you ever tried to put an addition onto you colony but found that days were passing without completion, despite having the materials and properly prioritized workers? Staying in relative close timing with your colonist is important to keeping your ability to respond to the ever changing situations that come up. I sometimes have to remind myself to stop issueing work to do so that my colonists can “catch up” with me. This becomes especially important when you loose colonists. The amount of work that 8 colonists can keep up with is obviously not the same as what 5 colonists can. Everytime you loose more than one person it is important to re-evaluate work priorities and the work thats outstanding.
Here’s an example:
Lets say you have a large grow zone, this grow zone is feeding our 3 colonists. Now lets say you lose 2 of these colonists to malaria. Since we lost 2 colonists we now have to decide, do we need such a large grow zone to feed the remanding 1? If we don’t change the size of the grow zone this means that the remaning colonist is now trying to complete the work that 3 colonists were doing before. Obviously this has a ripple affect on all the work or bills that need to be done in the colony. The issue of having to much work to do becomes very apparent when you have alot of colonist die. The amount of assigned work should be constantly adjusted to the amount of workers.
Keeping Colonists Happy
Having happy colonist is essential and effectively takes the edge off of a difficult colony. When colonists are upset they have tantrums and dont work well. This can make our life hell trying to deal with them and the entire colony will suffer. Luckily its not very complicated to keep these little guys happy. Rimworld has an abundant amount of mood modifiers as Im sure you know.
The big 3 I look after:
1) Food
2) Shelter
3) Cleanliness
You maintain these 3 things or people will get upset and everything will go to hell.
Beyond this its as simple as making sure all the rooms look nice and are a decent size.
For those of you that may not know there is a handy little tool in game that allows you to check the stats to see how nice the room is that your mouse pointer is on. This tool is very handy and should be used often. It can also show you how clean a room is and which tiles are messy.
Sculptures and floor tiles play a huge role in how nice a room is. Sculptures are absolutley worth the time to invest in. They can be built out of a variety of material so just choose whatever u have lots of to start with.
Most items in game have a quality stat. When it comes to furniture and sculptures you need to make sure they are at least “normal” quality. Otherwise your not going to be helping make rooms nice. Rooms also get a modifier based on size so dont have your rooms to small.
Lots of things will upset your colonist that you need to avoid including:
Visible dead bodies
Canibalism
Wearing dead peoples clothing
Murdering someones pet whom they are attached to
The death or murder of a fellow colonist
What is a KillBox?
I’m sure many have seen the word kill box used alot on various forums.
Using a killbox in Rimworld is basically a strategy of using the raiders pathfinding to your advantage by forcing them into a tunnel/trap or box. Inside this tunnel or box is were you setup your guns and traps to take out the raiders as they try to pass through. This can be successfully accomplished by basically enclosing your base with a fence or wall and leaving one opening for the raiders to enter.
Keep in mind that there are raiders known as “sappers” that may try to shortcut by breaking through a wall. Needless to say I like to make compound walls at least two walls thick or more. Any opening were you have doors exiting the compound need to be given some extra love by putting additional doors infornt of each other. The concept here is simply to control how the raiders enter your base, and once you have control of that to try and kill them at your entry point.
Yes Raiders and Mechs when travelling will look for the easiest way to enter you base, so you need to play around until you control that point. Be aware that this is not always a sure thing. Although this is extremely effective strategy, there maybe be times when they simply spawn or drop into your base.
I wont say anymore on the topic as the use of Killboxes is a widley discussed topic with many opinions to be found online.
Dealing With Disease, Sickness & Infection
Disease, sickness and infection can be a tricky thing to overcome. Once you are setup properly these issues will no longer provide the same degree of worry that they once did. You should be micro managing health issues. YOU are the doctor.
The game provides you with everything you need to overcome health issues.
This is what works for me:
Build dedicated individual hospital rooms for you colonist. Not to small because keeping your colonist happy while they are sick is very important. In these rooms make sure to have good lighting a couple plants and any nice decorations/furniture that will give you a beauty buff. Also obviously you want to monitor the temperature in these rooms and keep them at acceptable levels.
Use sterile tiles as the floor in these rooms, and keep these tiles clean. You can check the cleanliness of the room using the handy little room inspection tool. After this you want to research and install the hospital beds. These should not be confused with the “medical bed”. A hospital bed is the one that requires research to create and costs medicine to build. Once you get to this point you can research “Vital Monitors” and then install one beside each bed in each room. There is alot of reading online about these monitors and how many beds that can connect to them and the positioning. I am not going to get into that, I will just say I use one in each room beside each bed and it works fine for me.
Once you have these rooms setup its important to make sure you tell your colonists to “rest in bed until healed”. You do this by selecting a colonist and then right clicking an unreserved hospital bed. It is also important to make sure these sick people are getting regular treatment from a doctor.
Blood loss kills. Anytime you see that your colonist is losing blood or injured you need to check how bad it is. Then you need to prioritze life threatening blood loss to ensure those colonist get bandaged immediately.
The process of dealing with medical issues is a race. This race is to get your colonist to become immune or healed to the disease/infection before it gets out of control. By creating the best enviroment and with regular prompt treatment you are helping ensure that you win the race.
I generally never see the need to create more than 3 or 4 hospital rooms even on my largest colonys. The reason I recommend doing multiple smaller rooms instead of a big one is to mitigate issues resulting from cleanliness. It can be benefical to seclude problems.
If you can afford it, make sure to keep your Doctors on a routine taking “Malaria block”. I set it to one ever five days. This is cheap and not hard to maintain at all. If you can, have a couple of your most important colonists on this same routine. Once Malaria hits I tell everyone to take a malaria block if I have enough (even the people who already have it). Its a little overkill but makes me feel better.
Following these steps I very very rarely lose a colonist to disease or an infectious issue.
Dealing With Mechanoids
Tips for taking down Mechanoids.
Dealing with Mechanoids at first can seem like a real headache, but there are some decent strategies that can make interactions with them very managable. It is good to keep in mind that Rimworld is always going to win eventually. People who play thinking their colony is going to last forever are going to need to constantly save (aka savescum) or turn the difficulty way down.
My two stratagies for dealing with Mech’s:
Strategy #1
Sniper rifles, sniper rifles, sniper rifles. Yes sniper rifles are the “paper to the rock” when killing Mechs. These weapons grant your colonist the ability to stay out of range of the Mechs and fire at them. If you add this to a colonist/s with a decent shoot skill then you have a recipe for Mechanoid destruction. The trick here which I am sure is familiar to some of you, is to micro manage your shooters. Bring your shooters just within firing range with your sniper rifles and start shooting the mechs. If the Mechs decide to aggro your snipers simply move them away until the mechs stop chasing them, repeat this process until the Mechs are dead. You also have the extra warning time of when the Mechs start to take aim or “warm-up” for their shoot. If done properly you should be able to reliably take down Mechs without your people getting hurt.
Strategy #2
Mortars and a Kill box or with a decent firing setup.
This strategy is also very straight forward. Mortars are a great tool for getting Mechs from poison ships and seige raiders to engage your base. This is most effective when you have at least 3/4 mortars. Basically by firing mortars at them you can encourage these group to charge your base once a couple of them have died. When they charge your base, you can then deal with them in your killbox or in whatever way you have your defences setup. Since the mortars do splash damage, it is advisable to send someone to shoot the poison ship before starting your barrage. Once you shoot the ship the Mech will jump out and then you can retreat your colonist and go back to hitting them with mortars. It is important to have a couple storage spots close to your mortars to store shells. I have also noticed that it is good to have one spot with shells for each mortar. This way 2 colonists dont try to grab from the same pile at the same time, which causes issues with items that are reserved by another colonist.
Dealing with a Siege
Dealing with sieges can be accomplished many different ways.
I have always found the method that worked best for me was to simply counter with mortars. Have 3/4 mortars setup with a stockpile of munition beside it.
As soon as the siege lands, rezone your colonists to their safe/fighting zone. After you have rezoned you can grab 3 or 4 colonist to hop on the mortars and let them fire shells until the siege breaks. The siege should retreat before they even finish setting up.
I should also mention that although this can be done with only 3/4 mortars, I would recommend using 5/6 just to help ensure everything goes smoothly. You should be able score some wounded prisoners and free resources from this encounter.
If for whatever reason you dont have any mortars setup than you could always go for the rush play or some traditional sniper kiting. Remeber that its better to be proactive with this encounter rather than waiting around for siege to start.
I believe sieges were the #1 cause of the mountain building trend. I have built many mountain bases but still prefer the freedom when building on open grounds.
If you are struggling with siege issues but dont want to fully commit to a mountain base, you can always do somthing that is only partially inside a mountain.
Dealing with a Poison Ship
Dealing with a Poison Ship
Dealing with a poison ship is essentially the same as dealing with mechanoids with a couple differences. Since the mechanoids don’t attack initially, you have a little time to decide how you want to handel the situation. Remember, the longer the ship remains on the map the worse its effects on your colonists mood.
I usually break this encounter down into a couple stages.
1) Damage the ship enough for the mechanoids to pop out of it.
2) Kill the mechanoids that poped out.
3) Destroy the ship before your colonist all go crazy.
If your setup with a few mortars than this gets alot easier. Just fire the mortars at the ship till the mechs pop out. Then you can choose to continue to fire mortars until the ship/mech’s take enough damage that they attack you base. This is usually prefered because then you have the assistance of your base defences to help you kill them.
If you dont have the mortars setup than I would recommend kiting the encounter with snipers. Again they should attack your base once they take enough damage. Sometimes the mechanoids will start to run at your base but then turn around and return to the ship. This is because they have been aggro’d but have not taken enough damage to fully commit to the attack.
Another way, (that I dont recommend but it still works) is to quickly go and booby trap the ship.
You can build or place flammable materials and explosives around the ship. This can help you damage the ship and mech’s once then pop out. When done properly this can be effective but it requires alot of micro managing and materials.
Dealing with Migrating Herds
Lots of options exist for slaughtering the passing herds. The most effecient way I have found thus far is to use your mortars to fire at them as they pass. You will have to manually target them.
I will usually pair this tactic with choke points I create on the map. Since the herds travel in tight groups it is possible to create some funnels on your map to “catch” the herd. This makes it easier to get some good strikes in with your mortars. Although its unlikley you will get all the animals, it is possible to stock your freezers with lots of extra meat. Since the mortars keep your colonist out of harms way, you can safely attack any type of animal. Obviously use caution when dealing with boomaloops.
Dealing with a Manhunter pack
If you find yourself dealing with a manhunter pack before your prepared, you can wait them out indoors.
Once the animals have a chance to sleep it off they should relax. Nothing is worse than watching 5 gun wielding colonists get slaughtered by a bunch of angry deer.
If you decide to build an emergency safe room, I recommend using a secure medical room with enough things to keep everyone happy and healthy. I like to make sure I have joy,beds,medical,food.
You can also put injured or upset colonists under anesthetic in an emergency until it is safe to leave the room.
Know your zones.
Zones are an important part of managing were your colonists can go. For instance having a zone specifically setup for “Inside Only” can help when dealing with Raids, Manhunters, Cold weather, Toxic Fallout ect. Personaly I like to keep my primary doctors inside or close to the base so that they dont risk getting hurt. Often times when my base gets real dirty or full of materials to be moved, I just tell everyone to stay home until the base is cleaned and organized. This is very quick and easy to do using the “restrict” tab.
When it come’s to setting up zone’s the sky is the limit. I would imagine a person could setup huge production lines using properly zoned colonists.
Pets and Zones:
Animals eat a ALOT of food. It can somtimes be hard to keep up with feeding them. If you let your pets they will slowly bleed you of your food reserves.
Creating zones specifically for animals can help you keep them under control and safe if need be. You can also make sure your animals are not allowed in your fridge or food storage area, by removing these places from their “allowed” area. I highly recommend having at least 4 zones setup. These zones include, Unrestricted, Inside only, Home & Animals without fridge access.
Make sure you are constantly updating and adjusting these zones as your colony and needs change.
Save Scumming
Save scumming.
Dont be hard on yourself if you need to save your game and load after a colony wipe. Although save scumming is generaly frowned upon in the community, its important to remeber the game can be played many differnt ways. Rimworld has alot of content and some of it can take time to get to. I personally spent a long time were I would only play permadeath because I thought of saving as cheating. I used to play Rimworld as a punishing hardcore survival game, now I play more casually and usually set personal goals everytime I start a new colony. Sometimes I will allow myself to load a save on a colony wipe as long as I follow my own predetermined rules that I set. The primary reason I do this is because I dont have the time for or the interest in the early game anymore.
Incase you may not have noticed, you can change the difficulty and the story teller at anytime in game. This can be very helpful to adjust the flow of whats happening based on you own mood and gameplay desires.
Toxic Fallout
Random Tips.
1) I seem to have found a handy way to help speed up the rate at which I can aquire new colonists. I have recently started sending out a lone colonist early to settle a couple local settlements close to my original town (within two tiles). I leave these settlements empty (for the most part) unless I need to do additional mining. These new settlements provide additional opportunity to prompt the event in which you offer a chased colonist protection and shelter. When I recieve these messages I immediatley form a caravan and have them run to the original settlement. If you react fast enough the colonist should arrive at your settlement within 30 seconds (because they are so close together). Generally this avoids the raiders completley. It is important to note that the colonist must be set to ignor combat so that they head straight out of the zone.
2) If you have a couple “ancient danger” buildings on your map, a good time to open them is when you have a large group of traders that show up to visit. Make sure the traders are well armed. With a little luck you will end up with a ton of free supplies from the traders that die and the “ancient threat” should be significantly weakend.
3) Use walls to seperate your crops so that a blight does not wipe out everything at once.
Thanks for reading
Thanks for reading 👍
I will continue to work on this guide as I have time. Please understand Rimworld has an overwhelming amount of content and scenarios. I could never hope to cover everything and I’m sure my content will become outdated in time because the game Dev is awesome and constantly releasing new content.
