Rimworld: Naked and afraid

I figured it was time for a new blog series on Rimworld, documenting the travails of a fresh colony. And it might be a short series, seeing as how I’m going to tackle “naked brutality” mode — starting with a single naked, defenseless colonist lacking any starting resources. On “strive to survive” difficulty and with commitment mode (no reloading) activated.

My starting colonist is Hammer, who has fairly good stats, especially in construction, mining, and plants. I am worried that he’s shaking his way through a drug withdrawal (which takes a long time) and is already a pessimist. Here’s hoping that his Steadfast trait will counter some of that.

Hammer crashlanded on an island in an arid shrubland region, which will help with his nudity and some basic food sources (agave fruit grows well here). The map is a lot of desert, not many minable hills, a few patches of rich soil, and a couple existing structures. I’m going to move him into the largest of the latter.

His first day’s priority is to chop down a bunch of trees and harvest fruit, then build shelves and a bed for a starter base. Happily, he’s really fast at all of this. By the end of day 3, most of the walls and doors of this one large room were finished, and he even mined 277 silver from a nearby node. With any luck, a trader will come by with stuff to buy.

Later on in the week, I began planting crops — strawberries and cotton for quick food and clothing, respectively — and built a spiked trap corridor to protect Hammer from any raids. Oh, and some healroot needed to get planted because this map didn’t have any natively growing.

There was a wild man who wandered into the area — couldn’t tame him, but I thought I could capture him if I built a prison cell. But just as I finished making the cell, I got raided and ended up capturing the raider instead. Hopefully I can spin him into colonist #2. Not too soon after, a gutshot transport pod victim crash landed right outside the base. I saved him too, but I don’t have much hope in staving off his infection with no healroot. Until I get at least one more colonist, researching any better tech is going to be next to impossible.

And then… a mad emu attacked Hammer. Despite a valiant battle and one dead emu, Hammer couldn’t bandage up himself fast enough to overcome the blood loss. Just like that, my one and only guy died. That stinks, because I think he would’ve had a good shot to keep the colony going if I had survived long enough to get a second guy.

To add misery to defeat, a raider came by and torched the whole place. Then burned himself and the one starving prisoner I had to death. The end. Hope you enjoyed my failure!

Why Rimworld keeps me coming back to its story generated setting

So I’ve been playing this ongoing game of Rimworld for a couple weeks now, and I had to share this story with you. The colony was nothing of great note, but it was solid. Good location, abundant resources, and a team of characters who could get stuff done. I’d been working to carve out rooms in a mountain, build up the infrastructure, set up a huge food chain with crops and hunting, and generally made my cast very happy. It eventually grew to nine colonists, all decked out with heavy submachine guns and a hearty outlook on life.

Cue an early winter day when two of my colonists get married. Everyone’s assembled in a bedroom for some reason, and the ceremony begins. Right at that point, something happens I’ve NEVER seen in this game to date, which is that I was raided via drop pods. These transport pods crash through the ceiling of the bedroom where everyone’s at, and six raiders emerge firing guns all willy nilly.

I’m trying not to panic — I was playing commitment mode, so no going back to an earlier save — and I tried to pull my pawns out of there and into one of the two security nests I’d set up with gun turrets. One of my guys gets killed during that retreat and a bunch others wounded. Then the raiders set a giant fire to the room in which they’re looting, gutting four rooms in total.

Eventually the raiders emerge — some ON FIRE — and are gunned down by my turrets and run away. But the damage is done. Half the base is on fire, and my guys are dropping like flies from wounds and burns. Out of the nine that I started with, only one is without any wounds. She drags a few people to one of the remaining beds to try to tend to them, but infections start setting in. Within a day, I’ve lost six colonists, with two more bedbound. It’s not good, but I can recover, right?

I almost just quit and restarted, but I do try to keep playing until there’s no colonists left, and that wasn’t the case yet. So I kept going.

My healthy colonist almost immediately snaps, partially because her husband was among those killed. She then tries to outright murder one of the surviving colonists, so I drag the other one from bed to arrest her and throw her into prison until she calms down and I can reform her.

By the next day, we’re out of prepared meals and nobody is available to cook. Half the power is out, the snow is blowing into the holes of the walls, and I have characters sleeping in rooms with piles of corpses because I haven’t had anyone available to bury them.

Day three, my prisoner/former colonist breaks out, grabs a gun lying on the ground, and goes nuts again. This time, she sets fire to the common room, which guts most of the other half of the base and kills another character.

I really thought it was over then, but the game threw me a lifeline — a Man in Black and a wandering nomad, both of whom join the colony. So I’m down to just three characters, but they’re clothed, they’re fed, they have heated bedrooms, and there’s more than enough food to last the winter. Now I’m crossing my fingers and hoping that the bad events stay away long enough for us to repair and clean this mess…

The Rimworld colony that will not die

I haven’t been blogging about it, but over the past few weeks, I’ve been playing this ongoing game of Rimworld that’s turned into something pretty interesting. Initially, it was a simple Boreal Forest permadeath scenario that I’d pick up here and there. Unlike some of my previous colonies, this one kept growing and growing.

I’d lose one settler and gain two more as converted prisoners. I hollowed out a massive cavern for storage. I set up two forts with turrets and cannons as defensive measures. I harnessed the power of geothermal energy, planted vast swaths of crops, assembled machine guns for everyone, and so much more.

It’s been a rollercoaster of a colony, with tragedy striking often — just not so hard that it breaks things. I had a cave-in (a first for me) that crushed two colonists to death and taught me the value of mining responsibly. I’ve accrued so much wealth that decent-sized raids are now showing up. I killed a couple of rare thrumbos, cracked open the ancient evil chamber (without losing a single guy), and killed every apex predator on the map who dared show their face.

My biggest challenge with this biome is making sure I have enough food for the winter, especially with 11 colonists (more or less). I do stock up during the growing season, have a hydroponics bay, and an indoor farm, but I still have to supplement that with doing a lot of herd hunting.

Even with a haphazard approach to keeping everyone alive, generally the colony stayed pretty constant, around 10-12 colonists. Year after year passed, people got married, people died, and what were once huge leaps in progress became tiny incremental improvements.

What I found out through this is that, strangely enough, Rimworld’s appeal might be strongest when you’re losing. When it’s the early game and you’re scrabbling for survival. Once you can overcome that and gain enough protection and self-sufficiency, not even most of the special events will pose much of a threat.

Rimworld Reborn Part 6: Space or Bust!

Forget Rimworld — I know you all want to hear about how Duckworld is going! And it’s progressing quite well, thank you. Lots of chickens, a couple of frisky ducks, little babies, the usual.

You’d think I would learn my lesson about taking on quests to attack bandit camps, but… no, I fell for it again. And like last time, we lost five good colonists in one horrible afternoon. Farewell Squint, Latch, Nego, O’Donovan, and Lumpy. Lumpy! I’ll miss you most of all.

Garry takes it the hardest — Squint was his daughter, and Lumpy his fiance.

So Garry finally snaps and takes out all of his frustrations on El during an “insulting spree.” El takes maybe two seconds of this before she hauls off and punches Garry’s leg (!), driving him away (Garry’s non-violent, so his default mode in a combat situation is to flee). After this, he goes on a punching spree against the prisoners. C’mon, Garry, you’re making us look bad!

The worst event yet hits the colony — toxic fallout from some far-off chemical fire. It bastes the landscape in poison, requiring me to get everyone inside and keep them there as long as it lasts. Suffice to say, this is going to kill all our crops and keep us from doing anything outside.

It is a pain. A huge pain. I have to cancel a whole bunch of projects, harvest as much as quickly as possible, create some new doorways to wall off the hallways from the outside, roof the chicken pen, and start installing coolers in all of the rooms to replace the wood-hungry passive coolers. My goal was to take the colony to wood-free dependence within a day or two.

Apart from that, it became a game of keeping everyone inside. I disabled planting and harvesting crops, destroyed the horseshoe, and basically reduced the need to go outside at all. I also disabled cooking so that everyone would use nutrient paste (which only uses up half of our stored food) for the time being.

This marks the start of a long, terrible time in the colony. We run out of building materials to work on the coolers and vents. Garry snaps yet again and slaughters half of the ducks and chickens. And most of my colonists have early signs of toxic poisoning.

We do survive, and after a while, the colony gets back to normal. With new prisoners converting, we’re up to nine people pulling their weight.

What I learned today: Whenever colonists get into fights with each other, there’s a beat-by-beat log that’s created so you can read through the whole fight later. It’s educational!

I’m further into a Rimworld run than I ever have been so far with this game. Our research and technology level is rocketing up, and we even built a comms station to talk with traders and other factions.

The only bad thing is that we’ve completely run out of steel and components on this map. That leaves only a few options — wait for some to fall from meteorites, trade with others, or head out for other lands and strip mine.

So a rat self-tamed and joined the colony — and I wasn’t paying attention to it. That was my folly, because the animal people took it and threw it into the animal pen with the chicken. Then, yup, the rat ATE ALL THE CHICKENS. Suffice to say, I was peeved and killed the rat. Shortly thereafter, a whole flock of ducks up and joined the colony, so I am now flush with duckies.

A psychic ship crash-lands nearby and starts sending out horrible psychic waves to upset everyone. Instead of sticking around to deal with it, I decide on a bold — and probably stupid — course of action. I’m taking the whole colony (9 colonists), loading them up with bedrolls and food, and making for a spaceship on the other side of the planet. I’ve never done this quest, but presumably if we can get there and survive, we’ll take off and win the game. Honestly, even making it to the spaceship would be a big win. It’ll be a 16-day journey, and that’s the longest journey I’ve ever taken in Rimworld.

One last look at the homestead before we abandon it. I’m really proud of this colony, it did quite well over four years of game time:

Whoops, I accidentally left a prisoner in his jail cell with no food. Well, guess he’s a goner. Then a fire breaks out and guts a quarter of the base due to a lack of anyone actually there to fight it.

And despite two breakdowns and one ambush, the whole crew makes it to the ship! Now comes a new challenge — enduring 15 days of attacks. To prep, I build a smaller base, hunt for more food, and start setting up defenses.

Unfortunately, everyone pretty much has a massive meltdown and there’s no recovery from multiple tantrums, Dezi’s shooting spree, and Garry’s complete destruction of the ship’s reactor. I’m going to end the series here, at least having accomplished a big base and a trip to see the ship — you know, the one we destroyed. Thanks for reading!

Rimworld Reborn Part 5: War and peace

Life continues somewhat peacefully for our little tropical colony. After a lengthy prison stay, Mansfield finally agrees to join up with the group, bringing the population to eight. At this point the colony’s biggest problem is cooking food fast enough to feed everyone! Soon after, another prisoner — Nian — becomes our 9th.

Let me tell you, I do not regret investing a lot of research into guns. Between everyone’s machine pistols and automated turrets, a raid of four pistol-toting cannibals were slaughtered without my colonists suffering a single scratch.

Meanwhile, I got a quest to attack a bandit camp. Putting my crew at harm’s way for your reading enjoyment, I selected for colonists to pack up as many potatoes and guns as possible and make the two-day trek over there.

It goes horribly, thank you for asking. All four of my raiding party get knocked out and captured. Everyone back at the base is majorly bummed at this development. The bandit camp disperses, and we don’t even have the option of going to rescue them. Dezi is the most devastated, as she lost her husband Mauci.

Sigh.

The only good news is that recovery was possible. Two recovered enemy raiders eventually came over to join the colony’s side, and — I am ashamed to admit — we kidnapped a guy who fell down in a transport and held him prisoner until Stockholm syndrome kicked in. When a guy named Lumpy (seriously) joins up, we’re back up to seven colonists. It’s not over yet!

Instead of fighting all the time, how about a stab at peace? We get the opportunity to engage in some peace talks with the Hider faction (who is miffed because of aforementioned kidnappings), and Nian does a great job helping to relieve some of the tensions.

It never rains but it pours! In the same evening, half of the colony’s potato crops are lost from the blight, a transport pod crashes with a survivor, and a tortoise goes mad and does a suicide run into my security turrets.

Oh noes! The local panther, fresh out of food, decides to stalk Negocan for a delicious meal. Garry, our latest recruit, freaks out and runs away at this. Everyone but the panther comes out of this all right — Nego gets a couple of cuts, nothing horrible — but a day later, I swear, ANOTHER panther starts stalking him again. Must have some sort of alliance pact among the animal folk.

The colony crosses a major threshold as enough research is done to build geothermal generators. Now, power issues will be a thing of the past with these beauties!

And then, just because she’s a pyromaniac, Lumpy starts a fire in the research room and gloats as everyone rushes in to put it out.

Here’s a Rimworld first for me — I made my own chicken coop! Breed, you crazy chickies! Lay all the eggs for daddy!

The biggest raid against the colony to date was handily defeated with minimal injuries. Even so, it wouldn’t be a horrible thing to research up to more powerful auto-turrets.

I get a quest to retrieve some items from a stash a couple of days away, and when my team gets there, they get ambushed… by bunnies. Killer rabbits, even. Thank you, Rimworld, for keeping it weird.

As year three for the colony winds down, Squint and Negocan finally tie the knot. Seems like a good place to end for this week!

RimWorld Reborn Part 4: Boomalope goes the dynamite

For those of you waiting and hoping for a colony collapse, I hate to disappoint you, but it hasn’t even remotely happened yet. This may be one of the best colonies I’ve ever had, in fact. The tropical setting gives me the ability to focus on year-round agriculture (rather than dangerous hunting), and we have an endless supply of trees for various needs. With four research tables, the colony is pushing forward on getting defenses beefed up for upcoming conflicts.

A transport pod crashes nearby, and the colonists capture the sole survivor — a thief named Toni. Join our cult, Toni! Join us!

Dude, it’s a chair. I think you’re overselling it a bit here.

Another raid — this time against three spear-wielding tribespeople — netted us another prisoner. So far, the raids haven’t been challenging at all, but I would like to arm everyone with machine guns all the same.

The good news? Two more recruits — Toni and Negocan — join the colony, bringing our population up to seven. The bad news? A wicked flashstorm ignites some major forest fires not too far away. Our colonists get busy working on a firebreak to stop the spread. I won’t lie — it gets really hairy there for a day or so as the fire ends up spreading to a fifth of the whole map. Fortunately, a rainstorm came before my firebreak could be tested.

A psychic wave drove a small herd of boomalopes mad, which made for a very messy situation indeed. These critters explode in fire when killed, and so they lit up a good portion of my crops and poor Negocan.

Don’t worry — Negocan survives, and in fact, he woos Squint by describing her “beautiful aura.” Aww. I may need to retch, here.

RimWorld Reborn Part 3: Mawwage is what bwings us together today

While I appreciate traders coming by my humble outpost, I really could’ve done without three elephants and a goat casually stampeding through our recreation room. Unfortunately, while they were there, a mad capybara attacked — and one of my guys accidentally shot a trader instead of the animal. Relations kind of took a dip south on that one.

Life goes on as usual for a while until a disease springs up. I don’t know what “fibrous mechanites” is, but it doesn’t sound pleasant. Thank goodness we have a back-up doctor at this point!

A raid from an enemy tribe gets tricky when an elephant wanders across the field of fire, gets shot by one of my guys, and goes on a rampage. The three melee fighters quickly move in to stab and bludgeon the poor creature to death, and we come out mostly unscathed.

The colony takes a break from the routine for a joyous occasion — Mauci and Dezi are finally tying the knot. This grand ceremony is witnessed by all, including, for some reason, a rhino and cobra.

Compared to my last RimWorld playthrough, this colony has been downright tranquil. Most of the threats so far have been mild — a fire here, parasites there — and nobody’s been seriously hurt. The colonists are working on researching up to guns and gun turrets, but in the meanwhile all of them have at least a bow or a revolver on hand for raids.

Squint and Dezi, who are never the best of friends on good days, get into a row after Squint makes fun of Dezi’s accent. I guess a bit of a fist-fight is good for them, since they worked it out in the end.

Rimworld Reborn Part 2: Party in the freezer!

Summer, year one. All things considered, my colony is doing exceedingly well — almost suspiciously so. We have food, power, some defenses, a lot of farms, herbs, and even two prisoners that we’re slowly but surely trying to convert. As we wait for the other shoe to drop, the colony begins tunneling out some bedrooms to make people happy.

Huzzah! One prisoner — Carcam — converts to the colony, and the total population count goes up from 3 to 4. She’s a pretty good all-around colonist with an affinity for medicine, although she is a bit slothful.

We do get a whole lot of powerful storms, although most of the lightning strikes result in fires that are quickly extinguished by the rain. I just hope one doesn’t hit our generator. Probably should move that under the mountain. You think?

During this particular storm, Dezi decides it’s a great time to throw a party. Inside the freezer. Which is completely dark. She’s a daft one, that Dezi.

Tired of fussing with cooking meals, I switch over to a nutrient paste dispenser (which, incidentally, uses half the amount of food per meal). I got a laugh out of this, because it meant that our poor prisoner not only is stuck in a storage room but now has to contend with people tromping in and out all of the time to get a meal.

A gang of slavers travels through and offers to trade. Yup, RimWorld lets you engage in some slave trading if you so desire. I didn’t really have enough money to free any of them, wasn’t going to start a fight I couldn’t win, and wasn’t about to sell my prisoner. Good thing, too, because after a couple of days O’Donovan joined the colony and brought our population up to five.

Rimworld Reborn Part 1: A new beginning

I had so much fun documenting my last (and sadly truncated) Rimworld run a while back that I thought I might do another blog series. Is that OK with you? I got some good responses from it, so why not!

The rules for this story will be as follows:

• Crashlanded mode with three survivors
• Phoebe Chillax storyteller on “Strive to Survive” difficulty with commitment mode (no reloading)
• I’ll let the computer choose a random colony spot (as long as it’s not sea ice, which is an automatic death sentence)
• I’ll pick my crew from the eight computer-assembled NPCs without any rerolling

All right, let’s see what hand I’m dealt here! The site chosen for me was tropical rainforest, which I don’t think I’ve ever played before. Lots of plants and growing potential (good), as well as aggressive animals and disease (bad). At least I won’t have to worry about winter and cold this time around.

I also had really good picks for a crew. I settled on a logger named Dezi (super high planting skills and tough as all get out), Mauci the policeman (great at combat and medical), and a space marine named Squint (also good at combat and crafting). The only stat I wanted that I didn’t get in abundance was construction — 3 is the highest among any of them, although Squint is a fast learner, so I’ll put her on that task. No major drawbacks to any of them, so here we go!

The map is also very accommodating, with plenty of places to build a base. But there’s one spot that has most of a room already made that’s perfect for this — plus I can build into this mountain area for added protection. Dezi pukes her guts out due to cryosickness, Mauci begins hauling up the supplies, and Squint gets to work turning these ruins into a new home.

At the end of the first day, we’re in as good of a position as I could’ve hoped for. The initial base — with living quarters and a sealed storage area — is built, everyone has a bed, we’ve got most of the supplies hauled in, and there are lots of berry bushes for food before I grow anything. I think I’m going to focus on farming over hunting for this colony — crops can’t fight you back, and the year-round growing season is perfect. I’ll need to get a freezer set up before I bring in too much food, though.

And now prepare yourself for the GREATEST LOVE STORY EVER TOLD:

Yup, nothing like “board games” to stir the affections of two middle-aged folks! Probably was Settler of Catan, that game is responsible for more marriages than I can count.

As Squint was smoothing out some walls, a mad monkey burst into the base and started to attack. I assume poop was flung everywhere, even if the game didn’t say. In any case, a monkey vs. a space marine isn’t much of a battle at all, but it was entertaining.

An early raid netted us one prisoner — a healer! — without any injuries or casualties on our side. Fortunately, I had just finished building a spare room, which I hastily converted in to a jail cell. We try to recruit her as a transport pod crashes with yet ANOTHER prisoner. At this point, I’m stuffing prisoners in the storage shed because we don’t have any bedrooms yet. This also presents a problem for our food stores, since we ran out of prepared meals and are only now just spinning up farms. To berry bushes we go!

A flash fire burns off a good chunk of the jungle to the south of us, but fortunately it rains and the fire gutters out.

My completely useless cat got the flu. Kind of hopes it dies, because cats don’t do much other than gobble up your food. Can’t train them for anything useful, alas. Then, and I’m not joking, the cat gets the plague. Head toward the light, Nathan!