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RimWorld

A story generator disguised as a colony sim. An AI storyteller reads your colony and sends the raids, disasters, and wanderers that scale with your wealth.

Progression at a glance

# Phase Threat driver Goal
1 Crash-landing / start Little wealth, so tiny raids. The starting factor keeps threats light through day 40. Food security, basic shelter, and a first place to fight from.
2 Establishment Small raids grow once the starting-factor grace period fades. Reliable food, a defensible chokepoint, temperature control, and medicine.
3 Growth Mid-size raids, sieges, mech clusters, and the first serious diseases. A killbox or mountain defense, better weapons and armor, and early wealth control.
4 Wealth spike Wealth climbs past 400,000 and raids get large: drop pods, sappers, breachers, fallout, infestations. Deliberate wealth management, hardened defenses, power armor, and charge weapons.
5 Endgame The exit you pick triggers its own scripted mega-threats. Ship-reactor raids start at a minimum of 500 points. Build and defend a chosen ending: ship, gravship, Royal Ascent, Archonexus, or the void.

Current PC build is the 1.6 update line, released alongside the Odyssey expansion on July 11, 2025. The five expansions are Royalty, Ideology, Biotech, Anomaly, and Odyssey.

Top tips

  1. Grow lean. Excess furniture, huge stockpiles, and luxury materials pump wealth and summon raids you cannot yet beat.
  2. Secure food first. Plant a fast crop, set a hunting zone, and build a freezer so food does not rot.
  3. Never skip a temperature plan. Colonists die to heatstroke or hypothermia, and food spoils, without coolers, heaters, and a freezer.
  4. Keep a medicine buffer and a skilled-enough doctor. Infected wounds kill unprepared colonies.
  5. Watch mood, not just food and defense. Ugly rooms, darkness, bad food, and no recreation trigger mental breaks.
  6. Do not rely on one killbox. Keep interior fallback positions and anti-siege tools for drop pods, sappers, breachers, and sieges.
  7. Cross-train pawns. If your only doctor gets downed, the colony can spiral.
  8. Do not poke mechanoid clusters or Anomaly entities before you are ready. Many late threats stay dormant until provoked.
  9. Sell surplus rather than stockpiling it, and build with cheap stone and wood where possible, to hold raids down.
  10. Start with Crashlanded, Cassandra Classic, a middle difficulty, and a temperate forest tile with hills.

Guides

setups

  • Starting Scenario quick

    Scenario, storyteller, difficulty, and biome choices at colony start. The recommended first run and the harder options.

  • Killbox and Defense quick

    Defensive setups and weapon loadouts. Killbox, mountain base, and what to arm pawns with by tech tier.

  • Base Layout quick

    Room and base layout priorities. What to build first, why single bedrooms beat barracks, and how layout feeds mood and defense.

progression

  • Colony Phases quick

    The arc from crash-landing to endgame exit, and the wealth-to-raid relationship that drives it. One cheatsheet.

threats

  • Raids and Events deep

    How the storyteller delivers raids, mechanoids, infestations, fallout, and Anomaly threats, and how they scale with your wealth.

systems