Research and Economy

RimWorld’s economy has one feature that makes it different from most colony sims: the same wealth that lets you arm and feed a colony is the primary input to how hard the game hits you. Research, materials, and trade are the tools you use to build capability, and wealth is the meter that turns that capability into bigger raids. Playing the economy well means growing capability while keeping the wealth meter under control.

Research

Technology unlocks through a research tree covering buildings, weapons, medicine, apparel, and utilities. Research is performed at research benches by pawns with Intellectual skill, so a capable researcher accelerates the whole colony. Higher tech tiers gate behind a multi-analyzer, and advanced items can require special materials or techprints from the Empire (Royalty). Anomaly adds a separate dark-research track fueled by studying captured entities, running in parallel to the normal tree.

There is no fixed order you must climb. A sensible early path is power, then batteries and basic defenses, then whatever your biome demands: a cooler for hot maps, heaters for cold maps. Research is a means to capability, not a checklist to complete.

The wealth system

Colony wealth is the sum of the value of your items, your buildings (counted at half for raid scaling), and your creatures. Wealth is good in the sense that it reflects capability, but it is also the primary input to raid-point scaling, and that creates the central economic tension: you must generate and hold value to arm and feed yourself, yet every excess item, luxury, and hoard raises the size of the next raid.

Strong economies resolve that tension deliberately. They keep wealth in things that fight back, weapons, armor, and defenses, rather than dead decor and stockpiles. They sell off or avoid low-utility high-value items. They match wealth growth to defensive growth so firepower keeps pace with raid points.

Wealth habit	Why it works
Concentrate value in gear and defenses	The same wealth also improves your ability to survive the raids it causes.
Sell surplus instead of stockpiling	Stored items count at full wealth; silver and steel piles inflate raids fast.
Build with cheap stone and wood	Low-value construction holds effective wealth down.
Keep faction relations neutral or positive	Friendly nearby factions send fewer raids.

Materials

The economy runs on a handful of core materials, each with a clear role.

Material	Role
Silver	The universal trade currency. Counts as full wealth in stockpile.
Steel	The workhorse for structures, machinery, weapons, and components.
Components	Gate most advanced buildings and electronics. Basic ones are crafted, bought, or found; advanced ones gate top-tier gear.
Wood	Cheap early building material and fuel. Availability swings hard by biome.
Stone blocks	Cut from chunks into cheap, fireproof, low-value walls and floors. Great for wealth control.

Beyond the core, plasteel is a light, strong late-game material for high-end armor and ship parts, uranium feeds slug turrets and some weapons, and gold and jade are high-value decorative materials with a big wealth impact. Cloth and leathers make apparel, chemfuel powers generators, mortars, and gravship liftoff in Odyssey, and neutroamine feeds advanced medicine and drugs. Anomaly adds bioferrite, harvested from entities to craft anomaly gear and power containment, and Odyssey adds gravcores and gravtech tied to gravship building.

Food as economy and survival

Food is both a survival resource and part of the economy. Crops (rice for speed, corn for yield, potatoes for poor soil), hunting, taming and butchering, foraging, and hydroponics all feed the colony. Meals are cooked at stoves, and better meals give better mood while preventing food poisoning, which is more likely with an unskilled cook or a dirty kitchen. A freezer prevents spoilage, nutrient paste is ugly but efficient, and starvation causes mood penalties before it kills.

Selling crafted goods, art, clothing, drugs, and weapons, to trade caravans and orbital traders is the standard silver engine. It turns skilled labor into currency without piling up raw materials that would inflate your raids.

Running the economy well

The colonies that thrive under the wealth curve treat the economy as a balancing act, not a hoarding game. They research toward capability their biome and threats actually demand. They keep effective wealth concentrated in gear that fights, sell the rest, and build cheap where they can. They run a steady silver income from crafted goods rather than sitting on stockpiles. The result is a colony that can afford strong defenses without summoning raids it cannot answer.

Next: the raids and events deep guide for how wealth becomes raid size. For the people who research and craft, see the colonists and mood deep guide. For the fast version of the wealth-to-raid loop, see the colony phases cheatsheet.