For me it’s been overcoming the epic adversities that the game throws at you especially when you have never seen them before. i.e. the different raider behaviors like the sapper that did me in or the weather events that make food management so tough (hydroponics is a huge help there). I just had a volcanic winter blot out my entire growing season. Even when you know the dangers sometimes bad luck, bad choices still dooms you. I always play permadeath. Only forced quit once to avoid a" friendly fire grenade in a hallway" result because the game really needs a HOLD FIRE button in combat.
Definitely slow the game down at parts and check in on your pawns especially the social tab and the health tab. For example Snake was supposed to be the colony leader but now everybody hates him. -50 hate levels. Even Pearl broke up with him. I think it might be because he lost his nose in a fire fight. He also had a marriage proposal rebuffed which was probably due to the missing nose.
It’s also fun to set some skill goals and try and micro their skill levels. One great skinner boxian design choice is to have skills over 10 start slowly deteriorating. I’m always looking for opportunities to train some of the tougher skills to bump up. In my current game (my longest yet) I regularly take my best shooters out for training as a group. I call them the hit squad. 15, 14, 14.
My favorite moment so far was when my last colony was over run by raiders and I watch them swoop in and carry off my last two colonist into slavery. Guess they were probably thankful for not bleading out. Who knows maybe they escaped and I’ll see them again. :)
When my guys are eating the simple food they made, there’s a green leaves icon coming from their mouth. Did they just barfed or something? I checked the Social tab and see nothing.
And woot! They just defeated an ancient evil - a mechanical Scythe and a giant Centipede yielding a mini gun! now I have the mini gun!!
I don’t have a lot to add from what others said. I rarely speed things up, except at night. I think it is best to approach this as a Dwarf-Fortress-like, in that the focus is ‘losing is fun.’ Things will go haywire. And you will find yourself rooting for your colonists to make it through.
I also love designing bases.And complicated traps to ensnare raiding parties.
I’m slowly discovering the joy of this (slow) play style. So my colonist which somehow managed to defeat that Giant Centipede wielding a mini gun, now have in their hands, a cool 99% good condition mini gun. Unfortunately my best shooter, who was wounded in the battle, died later and now my next best shooter, who has a skill of 5 in shooting, bears sole responsibility of that mini gun. My colonist was later raided by two raiders and this guy was covering behind a sandbag with a mini gun and he should be able to decimate two pistol yielding raiders, right? Nope! He was killed instantly despite firing salvo after salvo of stray bullets. I fear for the end of my game.
I don’t think it was mentioned but I just realize that the sun does move from one east to west in this game, as illustrated by the shadow cast by the buildings. That’s pretty cool.
On another side note, so I was just leaving the game running on the second fast forwarding as two of my colonist have to trek north to retrieve some cargo and all of a sudden, one of them died! Turn out, as they were trekking northward, they both started arguing and got into a fight. One of them got into a rage and killed his fellow colonist. WTF!
You should have an option to “unforbidden” her. It is assumed to be a good, as anything else, and most default to “forbidden” (which just means the benevolent entity you are incarnating is preventing the settlers from interacting with such and such through some intangible mean).
This really is my ultimate game. 250 hours on Steam, and I’ve never gotten anyone off the planet. I just keep starting over with different colonists and starting conditions.
Combat kills are forbidden by default, I assume to keep your haulers from running into a firefight crossfire. As left_empty mentioned, you just have to unforbid the corpse. I believe it is “f” by default.
I dunno man, this game is like comfort food to me. It’s like Civ where you just choose between the Warrior or the Granary then hit End turn a bunch. Except the beginning in Rimworld is 100x more complex than that, but all the choices feel like Warrior vs. Granary to me, and that keeps me clicking.
As far as the AI Director goes, it’s hit or miss, but when it hits, it’s pretty amazing. Like when my fairly evolved base was attacked by a single boomrat. Well he somehow made it through the wall of fire and blew up near my base, which was made of wood, setting a large patch on fire, and I found out that only one of my 5 guys was able to do firefighting. So there’s my one guy against impossible odds putting out 1 fire while 4 more spring up when suddenly - it started raining. Colony saved.
The base game has three AI directors and five difficulty levels for each. Then within each created world, you can choose the climate and geography of your starting position, which change things up greatly, and you can re-roll your starting party endlessly for crazy combinations of colonists, who may end up killing or falling in love with one another.
If you’re new, may as well see how the developer balanced the game first, no? Having said that, here are my must have mods that leave the base game more or less intact:
JTReplaceWalls - Just draw over your old walls, the peeps will tear down the old ones and put new ones in its place.
Where is rich soil? - makes it easier to see for your farms.
Crafting Hysterisis - Lets you set minimums and maximums for your crafters. For example, your cook will work until he has 15 simple meals in stock, but won’t do it again until supply drops to 5, freeing him up to do other stuff.
More Floors and More Furniture - Ahhh, just get them.
wow. I’m still holding off on picking this up but really looking forward to it. I’ve recently picked up Prison Architect and have been having a blast with that one (and I’m not getting that into the prisoners really at this time) but the design aspect of the game is great. I’m really looking forward to micromanaging a small group in RimWorld. Based on what I’m reading here it sounds like I shouldn’t wait for the official release?
This is one of those rare early access titles that keeps on giving. You can play what feels like a complete, polished game and have a ton of fun. Then the next alpha update drops and it’s like you get a whole new game to play for free.
I’d immediately recommend it to anyone that enjoys simulation/management/building games.
I usually refuse to buy early access games on principle, been burned before, but I picked this one up, because it is one of the few early access games that is basically feature complete, and worth the price of admission.
