Is RimWorld the survival sim you just can’t stop playing? Or are you ready to hop onboard this incredibly deep game and want to take a few shortcuts? We don’t blame you — a run-through on RimWorld can be very challenging, and learning how all the pieces fit together can take…well, we’ll get back to you on just how long it takes when someone actually does it.
Fortunately, there are ways to make things easier. Check below for all the information you need.
RimWorld Summary
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RimWorld is a space colony simulation game that grew from a Kickstarter project (by Ludeon Studios) to a massive success. It can truly challenge any sim lover looking for more to do. In this game, you are put in charge of a colony project and assigned a certain number of “pawns” or player characters. Each one has a randomized list of attributes and characteristics that affect how they behave and what they can do.
Your goal is to direct the pawns to help each other survive, build shelter, and eventually develop technological capability. The end goal is to construct or salvage a spaceship that can help them contact others (or get of a hellish world). However, that goal is often far in the distance, due to how RimWorld’s mechanics work.
In RimWorld, an incredible number of factors come together to influence difficulty in the sim, including randomized events. The landscape, climate, how the settlers arrived, what the terrain is like, and much more matter. Certain setups will almost always end up in defeat. Even the best offer a slim chance of success for experienced players.
Overseeing all this is the storytelling AI. This AI is in charge of generating events and challenges to put together a loose narrative for what happens to your colony. Players have the ability to pick between a few different AIs depending on how difficult they want a playthrough to be or what kind of story they want to experience. It’s basically a difficulty slider with added nuance.
RimWorld is designed to appeal to player who love details and don’t mind starting over when things go wrong. It’s inspired a devoted community, plenty of memes, and endless discussions on the random events it can generate.
RimWorld Premise
Humans have finally made it to space! But it’s hard. Lightspeed travel means that humans have to launch new civilizations all on their own, separate from others by time and space. That means each colony is a test in human endurance and capability…and none are guaranteed to survive. You are in charge of a colony setting out for a rim world, or one of the outer worlds where they have no chance of help and no guarantee human civilization will remember them. Can you make it?
Well, that depends on the planet and the scenario you pick. The scenario varies, although the default is “Crashlanded,” where only a handful of survivors live with limited resources. Other scenarios include landing as a single rich explorer, landing as a mechanical specialist with robots, or building as lost humans who’ve almost forgotten they came from the stars. You can even choose to crash with a hungry vampire! The world also assigns you biomes and landscapes to deal with. Some have more wildlife, some more predators, some more diseases, etc.
Many familiar sim rules apply. You need to build a base, gather resources, assign pawns to important roles, and more. Your original capabilities vary based on what talents your pawns have, indicating good starting places and create immediate challenges. For example, a scientist may excel at technical knowledge but won’t have any expertise in making food or dealing with diseases. Over time, you can recruit or capture other pawns to add to your expertise as the colony grows.
RimWorld then throws a variety of events and challenges at you based on the AI you have chosen for the story. Aliens or rebels may attack. You may have to develop great diplomacy to deal with surrounding tribes, or excellent medicine to stave off diseases in a jungle. Sometimes trade will be important, and sometimes you’ll need guns to fend off threats. And don’t forget about managing colony relationship status and psychology, or people may give up entirely.
Ultimately, you want to expand your research capabilities and reach the point where you can build or reclaim a spaceship and reach toward the stars again. If even one pawn can make it aboard and take off from the planet, you’ve technically won the game. Depending on your setup, this can take generations of pawn work — or eons of civilization development. Or your scientist could catch a cold and die in the first couple of days. That’s part of the fun!
RimWorld Main Characters
RimWorld’s pawns are largely random, so you need to start a game to see what attributes and skills you end up with. You give them identities, but you’ll be doing most of the narrative work for them. The closest thing RimWorld has to characters are the AIs you pick to govern a playthrough. These AIs help control the difficulty and the sort of things you can expect to happen as you play. They have distinct “personalities” beginners should know about, which add a bit of flavor to the survival experience.
- Cassandra Classic: Cassandra is designed for a standard story experience that ups the stakes as time goes on. She can throw very challenging events your way, like alien attacks or horrible storms, but she always gives the colony time to recover and rebuild. You’ll need to stay on your toes with her around, always pushing to build and recover as quickly as you can.
- Phoebe Chillax: Phoebe wants everyone to have time to stop and smell the roses. She gives colonies lots of breathing room and relatively few disasters. But when disasters occur, they can still be extremely dangerous, so it’s important to make the most of your time.
- Randy Random: Randy doesn’t really care about being fair or creating narrative tension. He’ll make whatever events he wants and throw them at you whenever he wants. That can create a whole lot of unforeseen events. Some will completely obliterate your colony and there’s nothing you can do about it. Or you may find yourself running into an unexpected streak of luck. Know what you’re getting into with Randy!
There’s always a possibility that RimWorld will get more AIs in the future, but for now that’s it. Note that after you choose an AI, you’ll be able to pick an additional difficulty setting to further make things easier or harder.
Is There a RimWorld Series?
Not exactly. This crowdfunded game is the only one of its kind, and there doesn’t seem to be any plans for any kind of sequel. However, there have been several very important DLCs, which function as mini-sequels of their own.
Royalty
Royalty added a new backstory of sorts — the Empire. This Empire is so advanced that they don’t have much in common with other humans…except disaster. Something horrible happened to the Empire, and now their refugee fleets are arriving at the rim worlds, desperate for survival.
This creates lots of new opportunities for trade, but makes it challenging if the Empire decides to fight you. You can also gain honor, titles, and more to improve your colony. But be careful: Those who are treated like royalty start to expect certain benefits…and may turn against you if they’re unhappy. Advanced weaponry and abilities (including psychic powers) make the Empire a tempting ally. However, trying to steal this technology can be very difficult and may make enemies for life.
The DLC also introduces new threats like mechanoids, robots that will quickly overwhelm colonies unless they are destroyed upon discovery.
Ideology
Ideology adds a bunch of new society-based options for the game, all centered around beliefs. That gives you the ability to manage religions, social structures, ancient relics, and more. You can influence this by using “memes” or broad beliefs about humanity, “precepts” about specific kinds of behavior, and “rituals” to help cement and spread beliefs.
Ideology is noted for its emphasis on creativity and variance. Rituals and beliefs can involve basically anything, from clothes and food to sex and violence. Things can get very weird, depending on where you want to guide your colony.
Not only is this a whole lot more to manage in the game, but it also adds a new win state in addition to escaping the planet. You can form an archonexus, a type of ascendancy that removes the need for space travel. Oh, and there are new creatures called dryads that can help colonies manage their nature-based resources more easily.
Biotech
Biotech doesn’t have as many story elements as the other DLCs, but it does add important new capabilities. That includes the option to create and raise children who can specialize in certain attributes. Players also get control over mechanoids with a new specialty that allows for lots of robot work. While mechanoids can be hard to develop, they can also deal handily with many threats the colony faces. But rely on them too much, and they’ll start leaking toxic pollution into the environment, potentially destroying the colony.
Biotech also adds the ability to manipulate genes with sufficiently advanced technology. This can lead to the creation of supersoldiers, or maybe adding a trait for arctic colonists to grow fur for warmth. Of course, you want to be careful you don’t create anything too dangerous or powerful, like immortal vampires that could easily take over your colony…
RimWorld Cheats & Codes
RimWorld can get frustrating, especially when bad disasters hit or if your survivors never even had a chance. Sometimes, you may just want an easier playthrough for once. There are a few ways to do this. One is with settings, and one is via the Development Mode that enables console commands. We’ll go through both.
First, Know What Settings Are Easier
With so much setup, RimWorld gives players plenty of ways to adjust the difficult before they even begin. If you’re looking for an easy run, give yourself a break and keep these changes in mind:
- Pick one of the easier scenarios. Crashlanded is the standard scenario and generally one of the best to start with. The other scenarios are primarily designed for players that have already “won” a few times and are looking for interesting challenges. Or you can even customize a scenario to give yourself advantages before you start.
- Pick Phoebe Chillax. She’s the best AI for an easy playthrough that gives you plenty of breaks to recover from events and build up your colony.
- Pick an easy difficult setting like Adventure Story to avoid hard challenges.
- You can also choose your own biome and landscape if you want. Some biomes are much more difficult than others. Pick a temperate biome with a forest for resources and constant growing periods. Avoid terrain that’s especially rocky or mountainous.
RimWorld Console Commands
You can access console commands for a whole range of inputs in RimWorld. Do this at any time by heading up to the Menu, and choosing Options. Look for the choice to enable Development Mode and make sure it’s turned on. You will now have access to a panel of commands separated by category, allowing you to control circumstances.
The full panel of commands is worth a browse through, but we’ll highlight a few important options if you’re interested in giving yourself some advantages:
God Mode: This lets you build any structure you want without the need for resources or research. It doesn’t get much easier than that!
Do Trade Caravan Arrival: Create a trading instances to get supplies whenever you want.
Add Slave: Adds a slave. The rim worlds are harsh places.
Finish All Research: Instantly enables you to build anything, although you’ll still need the materials.
Change Weather: Get rid of bad weather on demand.
Force Enemy Flee: A great option if you get attacked at the worst time and are completely unprepared for it.
Resurrect: Let’s you bring a pawn back to life.
Grant Immunities: Give pawns immunities to deal with their environment.
There are lots of other commands too, including ways to manage the traits of your pawns, but these will help give you an advantage when you need it most.
RimWorld Cheats FAQ
I Play RimWorld on Console. Can I Activate the Development Mode?
Unfortunately, no. Playing on a console system somewhat ironically means that PC console commands are unavailable. You can only use these when you’re playing on a computer. However, many or our other tips about adjusting the difficulty should still apply.
Does RimWorld Have Mods That I Can Use?
Yes, although that’s a separate, lengthy discussion. If you play on PC, you can access a number of mods to do all sorts of things. Many of those mods also count as cheats. However, they aren’t quite as reliable as console commands, since compatibility can be an issue and they may introduce bugs or support issues.
How Do I Get More Pawns for My Colony in RimWorld?
Adding more colonists is a key activity in the early days of survival. When you first start playing, the AI should naturally add plenty of events to find, rescue or take other pawns and add them to your colony, so watch for alerts about these events. Once you reach around 18 colonists in one colony, events to gain more will quickly fade away. You can still add more colonists after this point, but this is generally considered a complete roster for a colony. It’s a sign you may want to establish a new colony – you can have up to five colonies at once.
Can I Change My AI After I Start a Game?
Yes. You should be able to go to the Settings menu and choose a different storyteller at any time during a playthrough. You can also change the overall difficulty if you want to.
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