32 Top Tips and Tricks for Rimworld
Rimworld is a game of great gameplay depth. The learning curve is not too steep but the plateau is far away. Up your game faster with these top tips and tricks by veteran Rimworlder Solar Cross.
Animal Access Storage
It is sensible to restrict access to areas sensitive to cleanliness for animals. This however also makes animal haulers unable to access storage sites in those areas. If using animal haulers like dogs and elephants try to have at least some general storage that they can access. Put a hay floor down in it to manage animal filth.
Amputate Infections
Infections can be fatal. Scheduling an amputation of the affected limb using the operations menu under the health tab can prevent death.
Automate Harvesting Wild Plants
By default wild berries, trees and ambrosia have to be manually selected for harvesting. You can automate this by putting a grow zone down on the plant. When the plant is ready for harvesting you pawns will target it the same as any crop. Just make sure to forbid sowing so the wild plant is not replaced with a crop.
Beautiful Meadows
Plant dandelions in animal pens. They help with providing animal feed and also add a beauty bonus to the mood of colonists.
Berserk Prisoners
Very unhappy prisoners may go into the berserk mental state. They will batter down any doors in their way and attack anyone in view, even other prisoners. Once they get the cell door down there is nothing to do but club them down and recapture. This is risky situation that will likely result in injuries to both prisoner and captor.
A much safer way of dealing with berserk prisoners is to set someone to repair the door even while it is being battered down. A pawn can repair a door as fast or even faster than the prisoner can damage it. Eventually the berserk state will end and the crisis will be over with no injuries to either prisoner or colonists.
Pawns earn some experience points when repairing so try to get your construction specialist on the the job.
Boomalope Hunting
Boomalope and boomrats explode on death causing fires. Aim to hunt or cull them when it is raining. The rain will help put out the fires.
Cheap Crafting Trainers
You can set crafting bills for low skill crafters to use only wooden materials. Save the more valuable materials for your high skill crafters.
Cryptocaskets
Inside the ancient danger will be a number of cryptocaskets. They are hosting humans from an age ago in suspended animation. These caskets continue to work after they are opened. If you claim them you can freeze your own colonists in them. Can be handy for preventing death when your doctor is on a mental break or absent.
Cutting Corners
Corner walls are not needed to enclose a room. Leaving off the corners will save materials and provide a space for heaters, sculptures and other furnishings.
Decentralise Food Stashes
It helps to have a stash of long life food, like pemmican or packaged survival meals, kept somewhere secure and separate from other food storage. If your kitchens burn down, you have a buffer against starvation.
Deliberate Home Zones
The home zone is the baked in zone in which colonists will attempt to clean, repair and put out fires. By default the game will automatically lay down home zones wherever your pawns build something, even just a temporary sleeping spot or caravan hitch.
Your pawns may then waste their time cleaning bare dirt patches far from your real home. To prevent this, toggle off automatic home zone creation. Then you use the zoning tools to shrink and grow the home zones for maximum efficiency.
Just remember to rezone as you build out new areas.
Doctor Mengele I presume?
You can train up doctors by scheduling multiple operations on unwanted prisoners. Amputate limbs and then replace with cheap wooden ones.
Do Until X
Bills set to “drop to floor” do not play nice with bills set to “do until x”. This is because only items in a stockpile are counted.
EMPs
EMP weapons can stun mechaniods. They can also break shield belts and disable pawns with implants. Using an EMP on a pawn with a brain implant such as a learning assistant will give it brain shock downing them.
Feed Them to The Pigs
Cannibalism is not the only way to make use of the flesh of defeated raiders. If butchering and eating humans offends your colonists you can zone a corpse disposal site in your pig / boar pen. Pigs and boars will eat them up and then you can eat the pigs. Dogs, wargs and wolves will also eat human corpses.
Jelly Burglars
Insectoids sleep at night and will not notice insect jelly thefts then.
Hospital Gowns
Pawns that die in their clothing will taint it. Tainted clothing reduces mood for most pawns that wear it and has no value to traders. Pawns that go to hospital beds for injury, disease or surgery could certainly die there tainting whatever gear they are wearing.
It is wise to strip all hospital patients of their apparel as soon as possible, especially if they are wearing rare and valuable clothing or armour. To avoid a mood debuff for an exposed groin in your patients you can keep a stash of cheap cotton pants and t-shirts in your hospital for them to change into. Use the outfits menu to tell your pawns what to change into. Pawns that cannot walk will not do this however.
Losing Useless Pawns
You can rid yourself of unwanted pawns without picking up mood penalties by arresting them and then leaving the door open on their cell. Be sure there are no weapons or closed doors in their way. They will escape to the edge of the map.
Mechanoid Murder
Mechaniod enemies are resistant to sharp damage but weak to blunt. For maximum damage against mechs use uranium or jade maces. The Zeushammer will also deliver EMP stuns along with blunt damage. Smokelaunchers can be used to cover the advance of your mace wielders.
Mindscrewed Masochists
The mindscrew is seemingly a useless implant. All it does is increase the pawn’s pain by +20% and can not be removed (at least not without killing the pawn). Pain lowers mood and reduces consciousness by 4% which affects many skills.
In combination with the masochist trait however this becomes a bonus to mood although it still reduces consciousness. If you also install a psychic harmoniser on the masochist they can radiate their mood bonus to others too.
Picnic Tables
There is a small mood penalty for eating away from a table. Hunters and miners will often be far from your main dining area when they stop to eat. You can put up small tables with chairs at strategic locations around the map for them. These tables will also be a target for raiders which can help distract some attackers so your pawns can deal with them in smaller groups.
Power Insulation
Power conduits can cause fires. However stone walls are not flammable. Try to run your conduits under stone walls to minimise the risk of fire spread from electrical events.
Redundant Battery Banks
Overcharged batteries cause fires. If you install battery clusters with a switch you can isolate them from the grid when full to prevent this. This will also give you an back up supply of energy you can switch back on at need.
Rename Colonists
You can change the nickname and title of a pawn under the bio tab. This can be used to keep track of pawns’ main skills or quirks.
Room Shape and Size
Rectangular rooms use more materials to enclose a given space than square rooms. Also few larger rooms are more material efficient than many smaller rooms.
A square room can be up to 12×12 in size before needing columns for roof support.
Self Service Trading
You can put down temporary stockpiles under items left outside to sell them to traders when they visit. This saves hauling them.
Solar Powered Sunlamps
Sunlamps use lots of power but only in the day. This overlaps very well with solar power generators that only produce power in the day. As a rule of thumb two solar power generators will power one sunlamp.
Straw Floors
Hay floors get dirty very slowly and are very cheap and quick to install. Generally this is used for animal quarters but can also be used elsewhere to save on cleaning labour. It is especially useful for tribals without access to sterile or steel flooring for kitchens and hospitals.
Hay floors are slightly uglier than most other floors but a lot less ugly than dirty floors.
The Prisoner’s Dilemma
Happy prisoners are easier to recruit while miserable prisoners are easier to convert. Try to have a comfortable prison cell for recruitment purposes and an uncomfortable one for conversion purposes. A comfortable cell will have a bed, a light source, some recreation, sculptures and a table to eat at. An uncomfortable cell will be small and have only a sleeping spot, no light or tables.
You can move prisoners between cells by switching on and off the prisoner status for the beds or sleeping spots.
You can also use food as a tool to alter a prisoner’s mood. If converting you could feed a vegetarian prisoner raw meat for example. Or if recruiting, give the prisoner lavish meals, assuming they are not ascetic. You can set a prisoner’s diet using its health tab.
Stripping prisoners is another thing you can do to lower a prisoner’s mood for conversion purposes.
Lowering a prisoner’s mood to rock bottom speeds up conversion but also increases the risk of inducing berserk states. See the entry above on how to safely deal with berserk prisoners.
Trick Raiders with Ruins
Raiders will attack and start fires on any owned structures as well as go after your colonists and animals. You can use the claim tool to turn ruins and other map detritus into owned objects, giving worthless targets for the raiders fury.
This is handy trick for when raiders are too strong or your defenders are incapable or absent.
Walk Speed
Most natural floors such as soil and sand slow movement. Water and marsh slow movement a lot. Consider putting floors down along high traffic routes even outside to speed up travel times.
Venerated Animals
Disallow venerated animals for your slaughter table and kitchen bills. This way when they die they do not end up causing even more mood penalties.
If you choose a venerated animal through a custom ideoligion then it is best to choose an animal that is more useful alive than as food. Cats, dogs, horses, elephants and dromedaries are ideal. Wool and milk producers may also work. It is best not to venerate animals used for attacking as they are more likely than most to die.
You can control the population of venerated animals using sterilisation and / or selling to traders.
There we go, I hope these tips will be useful to you. Share your own tips in the comments and they may be included with citation in future updates.
Discover more of my Rimworld stories and articles by clicking here – Solar Cross’s Rimworld articles.