I played rimworld on and off casually for a few years. <100 hours in the game. I could never make it to the spaceship though I did have a pretty good colony or two.
Sorry here is the rant of my recent colony I tried playing for hours and hours:
I bought ideology and came back to rimworld because it sounded fun and wanted a simple tribal start. Everyone said arid shrublands is easy so sure. i picked pheobe on normal difficulty because I was looking for a relaxed time. Everyone says arid shrublands is the easiest.
Holy shit. 4 animals on the entire map + 1 herd of elephants. Almost no trees whatsoever, and researching is so damn slow that I have only had stonecutting and complex furniture done in 2 years. Electricity by itself would take 3-4 years of non-stop research…
Meanwhile, there is no way to heat or cool anything because campfires make a room boil (and there is no wood) and passive coolers don’t work (and there is no wood). I have a giant cactus farm, but don’t worry, somehow it takes 2 seasons to fully grow when it says 15 days on the card and it is 100% fert. So that doesn’t help much. So there is no way to cool except to go into the mountains. Fine, except oh wait, when it is 60C outside, it is still 50C in the heart of the mountain when everything has doors…
I have half the map covered in agriculture and the heat is so intense (35-60C and never ever ever drops below that) means that I have to use every bit of spare wood for cooking and every single day is a fight to have enough food. I have to rotate out cooks because they will pass out in the kitchen.
Then I am hit with heatwave after >70C heatwave. Crippling and incapacitating all of my colonists for a week at a time until everyone is starving. Don’t even think of cooking during a heatwave. Then it will get to over 80 in the room to cook one meal and the colonist will instantly go down. Not to mention the frequent heat storms during the heatwave to set everything on fire, but of course there I’d no technology like “a bucket of water” so my colonists have to let it all burn or die of heatstroke trying to pat it out lovingly with their bare hands.
2 raiders in 3 years, 0 chance to supplement my 5 colonists in any way at all. Each of those 2 raids had the people instantly killed, so no chance to recruit.
I can’t hunt because my tech is so bad and my colonists are so slow that shooting an elephant once means they charge across the map and wipe out all 5 colonists in 30s
I can’t raid because every single day is a fight for food for the day and the colonist tech is so bad they would get destroyed instantly.
I can’t research armor because that would take years and years and I need to sink every minute in every day trying to get electricity so the next heatwave doesn’t wipe me out.
Pretty much I am stuck in the most difficult fight for my colony every minute of every day and it simply isn’t fun at all. Not eventful at all either. There is no story, just a slow grind of no technology and brutal, never ending heatwave conditions. This is what I assumed desert would be like, not arid shrublands…
That isn’t even mentioning the weekly “mad hare”… some world that this is, 1 mad rabbit will beat 2 people, 1 with a spear and one with a revolver. What on earth. Then I am down to 3 people for at least 3 days while they recover. No way they will go down my completely open spike corridors either, they will just wait outside until I need someone to harvest agave outside of the walls where 1 single scratch takes your colonist down to 20% movement speed and it can just run them down…
/rant
Sorry, I hear people say that arid shrublands are the easiest biome, but holy hell would I disagree. If your farm isn’t churning out rice within the first few days, you are simply completely dead.
Sorry, I hear people say that arid shrublands are the easiest biome, but holy hell would I disagree.
As do I. For chill games here’s what I pick:
- biome: temperate forest for sure. Lots of wood, fertile soil, animals to hunt.
- temperature: hexes where crops grow all year but the max temp never goes above 30°C are the best
- terrain: large hills give you a great balance between defence and mobility. Or mountains for an underground base, as long as you bait the bugs to spawn somewhere else, but it’s great with the right ideology.
- rocks: marble (for sculptures) and granite (for building - more HP)
That isn’t even mentioning the weekly “mad hare”… some world that this is, 1 mad rabbit will beat 2 people, 1 with a spear and one with a revolver. What on earth.
I got a colonist once being incapacitated by a mad turtle. Yup. A mad turtle.
Interesting thing is, my average temp says 9C-41C, so a wide range with an average of 25C. It has yet to go below 30C in 3 years. Something about the tile temp vs actual temp (maybe just in this world gen or this tile) is waaay off lol. It’s strange.
Perhaps just bad luck? Like, as the temperature is supposed to go below 25°C, by coincidence you get a heat wave? Phoebe doesn’t do that much, but Randy does it all the time. (Or the opposite, sending consecutive cold snaps.)
Arid shrublands definitely isn’t easier than a temperate forest biome. Tons of wood and berries there. I think they spawn more fertile soil than other biomes as well.
And a tribal start also makes things more difficult because it cripples your research speed.
When I want a chill game, I have a custom start that’s basically the standard “crashlanded” but with 5 pawns instead of 3. Lets me cover more skills in the early game rather than struggling through until I can recruit to fill the gaps.
I agree that rimworld isnt an easy game at all - it’s quite the opposite. It also likes to get you in a deadlock - a situations similar to yours - where it feels like you are completely stuck despite the fact that the colony is running in non-stop overdrive mode.
I don’t want to sound preachy, but (and that helped me at some point to enjoy rimworld more) remember that it is a story generator, not a “classic” game. And although it has a win condition (ship) it’s much closer to minecraft - you don’t need to win/beat the game to enjoy it. More than that - you don’t need your colony to survive to enjoy the game :) I even think that deadlocks are a design choice - it incentivise you to make bold risky decisions.
In your case I’d either left (and caravan’d to somewhere good), tried raiding settlements around you or just started a new run.
Tribal start is meant to be exploring the early game tech, I would say most of my tribal starts don’t involve ever getting electricity full stop. This is inherently more challenging than a normal run. It sounds like you might like a standard start with a transhumanist ideology which speeds up research and focuses on late game.
I also am surprised you were recommended arid shrubland. Temperate forest is, IMO generally much easier. In either case you should look at the temperature range and growing season of your tile in addition to the biome.
Lastly from a purely philosophical POV unless you are the type to pore over the wiki/guides and min/max losing is going to happen and is part of the experience, don’t see it as a negative, see it as a lesson and a fun journey. Personally the story you tell seems pretty entertaining. IMO having a run where everything goes right is kinda boring.
This doesn’t really seem like a game issue though. If you want an easy game Rimworld provides every possible way to customize your start and game to make it easier. If you find your current game too difficult start a new one that is easier.
Yes starting tribal nukes your research speed. So don’t start as tribal or change your research rate. This can also be done via the ideology you have.
That’s what is great about Rimworld is how customizable it is.
I’ve never played arid shrublands, so the cooking problem described here got me curious. Would moving the kitchen outdoors under a roof keep a cook in cool clothing from passing out?
Echoing what others have said, I think temperate forest would be much better for a relaxed game. Lots of resources, easy weather.
Outdoors is outdoors; temperature will be the same regardless of whether there’s a roof. Also, cooking outside invites crippling all of your colonists with food poisoning because the outside is inherently dirty. To avoid the problem of the campfire overheating the room, I suppose you could remove the roof of the kitchen. No roof means you can’t control the temperature, but as long as you have four walls and a floored tiles, you can at least make the room clean. I’ve never tested that, however, because I hate playing in biomes without wood or food. And as long as you have wood, you can build passive coolers.
One thing i find a lot of people overlook is caravaning. You can run out to a neighbouring settlement to buy wood, and stock up for a heatwave.
Also in desperation you can also leave the tile temporarily until the temperature settles down.
Caravaning on default settings is the worst. I never did it again with Cassandra when I learned that moving even a few pawns off my tile would consistently trigger a raid.
Afaik there is no such mechanic in the game. Likely you just had bad luck
Skill issue
