1670

Good question!

I’m curious after this last DLC what people would consider must have mods for the game.

1671

Yes, sometimes the QoL stuff gets patched into the base game. For this DLC, those changes came with patch 1.4.

For example, there are:

  • Performance improvements
  • Painting and color customization options
  • Styles moved out of Ideology DLC and into base game
  • New mod manager and optios
  • No overlays and tile inspector
  • Other new features and changes
1672

QoL mods? or gameplay additions?

It plays fine out of the box. I’d play it until something annoys you then look for a mod for that. There are usually several “mods for that”.

Rimpy once you do more than a few mods (a mod manager)

Initial UI mods:

  • Numbers (let me make my own with the stuff I want in each panel)
  • a pawn inventory screen manager (there are several)
  • a pawn info manager (again several, I like RimHUD)
  • a job assignment UI overhaul, imho [FSF] Complex Jobs is the winner
  • “Ruined by temperature filter” *

I still want some pathing/building convenience mods, there are many from light weight to strong overhauls. You can play w/o but eventually you will feel like you want to address specific pawn stupidities. There are so many choices, it is better to just play until you figure out which stupidities bother you most. The stronger reworks are, unsurprisingly, more likely to break other things.

A blueprint/planning UI mod which is not a UI overhaul of an existing element but a new thing. Again, more than one good choice.

After that is is usually content mods, … and mods to manage the content mods. The first content mod want after an update is:
Dubs Bad Hygiene

Eventually you may want combat mods. They come from light weight, Simple Sidearms to Combat Extended, which is a near complete overhaul.

Most of my mods are just adding more of things I want. More hairs, traits, backstories, names, memes, animals, plants, biomes. And the fact fishing is not in the base game bugs me since they generate water features. But none of that is needed, just extends the shelf life.

"* mystifies me why this isn’t in the base game. Lets you sort, then cook the eggs that were fertilized but now won’t hatch. But can start w/o, no need until you farm an egg laying animal.

1673

I’m curious now that it is been out for a what do people think of biotech? Ideaology looks a little overwhelming but that’s just my impression by skimming the Rimworld Wiki.

I love the based game, and I like Royalty a lot.

1674

I’m actually playing right now!!!

Ideology is a must have, IMO. I like Royalty because it adds so much more to the mission structure. Ideology just makes the game play wildly different from game to game with so much uniqueness to each run. It really drives lots of decisions.

Biotech so far adds mostly to ideology. Now, you don’t only manage your culture, but how the genetics of those folks fit into that culture. I’m currently running a colony of folks who prefer to live in the dark mountains and eat mushrooms.

After you do the game setup, it is mostly locked into the mid and late game. I haven’t gotten very far honestly - but I REALLY like how you develop children, and there are lots of new gene modifying things that i still have to figure out.

For me, this is just another layer of ‘stuff’ to put into my ant-colony lab experiment, and I’m loving it so far.

1675

I’ve been playing with Biotech a bunch since it’s release. It’s a nice expansion in that it adds a lot of flavor to mid-game raids (raiders are often weird mutants, like neanderthals, or pig-people, etc.), and you can choose to engage with its systems as much as you want. I haven’t messed around with the major other systems yet, like mechanitors or vampires yet, but I’m sure the new starting scenarios will add a bunch of replayability.

Unlike Ideology, which kind of forced you to engage with its systems when you captured or gained new colonists, you can ignore the genetic modification system more easily if you want.

And it just makes sense to have children represented in this sim, and that adds a lot of storytelling potential. So overall, I don’t think the expansion is necessary or anything, but its generally a nice content add.

1676

I’ve been playing and generally agree with what supergork wrote. I’ll also add that mechs are much more interesting now even without the bosses. Human raids are more varied now as well with all the new races.

For raising kids, I always put them in a vat till they turn 3, then have them focus on education till 13. Since kids age faster than normal pawns, it goes quickly and hand picking passions and traits is powerful. I haven’t done anything with the genes yet, but stacking those on raised pawns could make for some super pawns.

1677

Ok, I’ll pick them up on Fanatical since there is a small sale.

One question do they change how marriage works, it is rare for a marriage of my pawns to last more than a year or two. Or is there a lot of out-of-wedlock births, or are most kids born in a test tube?

1678

I haven’t noticed a change to the marriage mechanics. All my couples broke up before getting married in my latest run (and my neo-calvanists are space prudes, so they won’t sleep together until they are married). There is a new toggle in the social tab that will let you set if the couple should try for children or try to not have children, if you want to manipulate the odds.

1679

I’ve had this game since forever but I haven’t really played it. I just went and bought the DLCs and am looking to jump in. Anything I should know to help get started? Player resources, getting started guides, etc?

1680

I’d suggest a few basic mods which are QoL only ie don’t affect the difficulty/balance of the game. This is based on my experience where I jumped back in a few weeks ago with all three DLCs after a good year+ away from the game:

  • RimHUD - shows a pawn’s stats when you click on them. Indispensible.
  • Achtung - makes ordering a pawn to ‘do a lot of something’ easier ie it queues up jobs that are adjacent.
  • Allow Tool - adds another work priority for ‘Haul Urgently’ (as opposed to ‘normal’ hauling priority).
  • Medical Tab - adds a medical tab showing the medical status of all your pawns. Makes it way easier to find who’s sick, who is moving slowly due to an injury (that you might be able to fix with surgery), etc.

I’d also suggest enabling all the DLC, but not actually ‘using’ Ideology for the first couple of runs. When starting a new game there’s an Ideology screen which allows the related features to be turned on but without your colony actively using them. With Royalty and Biotech I found more than enough to keep me busy!

In terms of guides, the wiki provides a solid summary of what you should be focusing on early - Quickstart Guides - RimWorld Wiki. After that, if you hit any events/features that you don’t understand, just search the wiki.

1681

Be ok dying a bunch

1682

Sound advice. But hey, I finally made it past my first winter! But then had a firestorm lit everything on fire right as I had back-to-back raids that I just wasn’t equipped to handle. They sent four people with molotovs, which I hadn’t encountered before and didn’t have an answer to. :(

1683

Ooof - Yeah, firestorm + molotovs attacks in early game when everything is made of wood?

Classic Rimworld experience

1684

I had been relying on some barricades and traps for defense up until then and it was working well. By the first year, should I have upgraded to some better defenses? Any suggestions on making bunkers or anything like that? One molotov/grenade basically took out my two people that could fight, since they were fairly close together shooting over the barricade. :)

Any idea how many people I “should” have had by the first spring? I had my 3 starters, only one of whom was a good shot (another was decent but not great, he had the pistol). I had managed to recruit two other people as well, one a prisoner I took after an attack on my base and another from an event. Neither could hit the broad side of a barn, though, although they were useful for getting work done around the outpost.

Right at the end I had just unlocked the ability to make guns and had just discovered that the billiards table increased shooting skill. Both of those happened right as the game ended, though, so maybe I should have prioritized them instead of researching bows and such early on?

1685

A lot of it is a bit random, if I’m being honest. And map dependent.

For the early game raids, a simple stone wall might have slowed down the assault enough for you to kite/chip away at the attackers. You usually don’t need to kill all of them. If they attacked with 4, then killing 1-2 will likely make the others flee.

The other things is that discretion is sometimes the better part of valor, and lots of times the raiders will eventually just destroy a bunch of stuff, then steal a few things (or colonists) and flee. The molotov attacks makes that a bit more aggressive then typical, because the fires will get out of control compared to just normal smashing.

Ultimately, as you develop, you will want to create chokepoints and kill boxes. There are a variety of models for this, but traps are a key component and very effective throughout the game.

  • Pawns rarely move at the same speed, so if you can create a long path for the raid to get to your base (via walls), then they often get strung out with slow folks in the rear. Litter the path with traps and stone chunks to amplify this.
  • Turrets will be helpful in the early game, but they do take some research to get there. IEDs are super effective and there are all kinds of creative things you will eventually learn to help with defense

Plate armor is pretty useful early game… but again, a molotov account is just tough to manage.

You can also make allies with some factions, and they will often show up to help you defend when attacked.

Later raids will bypass all those defenses, but that is learning for another day :)

1686

I didn’t know that raids sometimes just raided, I assumed it was fight to the death. That’s good to know!

A question that I had during the game: I had some tunnels I mined through a mountain and those were littered with traps, which were awesome at stopping incursions since it seemed like only raiders would go through that way. There was another point to the east where I could have set up something similar, but I noticed neutral/friendlies would use that area all the time as they came and went. If I put traps down there, would that kill them and make them hostile towards me? Ultimately, that’s what made me put off building better defenses up that way, and that was the direction that the molotov raid happened to come from. Boo!

1687

I don’t remember exactly, but I don’t think it will make the friendlies hostile towards you. Someone correct me on that

Injured friendlies on your map are a great way to farm reputation. If one goes down, you can rescue them, heal them, and then when they exit the map healthy you get a reputation bump. Conversely, if you don’t care about friends, you can capture them, then recruit/enslave/harvest them. Choice is yours :)

One other early game strategy, if you can’t fight the raid is to lock your colonists in one building. You can disallow the door so no one can get out. Then if the raiders are trying to break in you just keep colonists at each breach point constantly repairing the damaged door/wall. Eventually the raiders will leave (or your colonist will have a mental break and you’re screwed!)

Soon you will start looking forward to those first few raids, because they are a great source of pawns to capture and add to your colony!

1688

Friendlies can see your traps and mines and will avoid them.

Raid size is tied to wealth, so keep wealth low early game.
Always use cover, in the early game this should be rock chunks in a 2 deep line where you can hide behind (and clear the area in front of it so they don’t have any cover).
If you have a strong melee fighter, use doorways or structure edges to let the raiders in close and then attack at close range. Place shooters behind them but within 4 tiles to avoid friendly fire.

1689

Oh that’s good to know. This includes friendly traders and other non-hostile NPCs?

Is wealth measured in Silver or does it tally up a value for all your items/resources?

Oooh, I didn’t know that was a thing. So if I have a shooter close to a melee guy they can shoot past them? I haven’t been successful working in a melee guy, so that will probably help.

Thanks for all the tips!