Is the game frustrating ?

[vLabz]

Hi,
Do really bad event necessarily happen ?
I'll be building a nice settlement with love for more than 30 hours to see it destroyed in 10 minutes ?
I’m not sure I’m of the “loosing is fun” type. I want to play “casually”, a few hours there and there, in games that can last months.
I've read about the Cassandra Classic and Phoebe Chillax modes => does it guarantee that, provided I'm doing ok, I should not be afraid of loosing everything ?
Is Phoebe Chillax fun enough ? Can I change the story teller (or difficulty) during the game.

I’m wondering if this game is for me. I would like to be able to really make progress through my game without having to rebuild stuff periodically (I mean not too much).
Thanks for sharing 😊

[flu007]

I'm sort of the same. I usually play on Phoebe Chillax - Builder difficulty. My games usually last a long time and end because I get bored and move on, not because I get destroyed.

You can tweak the difficulty in various ways. With the storyteller, the difficulty setting, and with lots of mods as well, if that's your thing. You can change storyteller and difficulty during the game.

You CAN make the game really frustrating. And in the beginning, when you don't know what you're doing, it's quite possible you'll run into some frustrations even on easier difficulty settings. But once you get the hang of it, the easier difficulty settings are pretty chill, with an occasional wake up call which might cause you some losses, but to get completely destroyed would be really hard.

(Disclaimer: this is based on experience with the 1.0 version of the game. I think the 1.1 version made some tweaks with regards to the progression of challenging events over time, etc. But I doubt it'll be such huge changes to make my above assessment completely null and void.)

[Cat®]

The game is geared towards being difficult, such as feeding your colonists never being any easier or harder. But bad events such as invasions can be reduced in difficulty to almost insignificance. There is also a dev mode you can turn on to godmode your way through event starvation.

All in all though, this is not a pure colony management game. Having your best farmer be savaged by a megasloth, and requiring emergency medical treatment is more common than not.

[Poop King]

Why not try Randy chillax? You will get much more events with Randy than either other storyteller, and they will likely be more positive ones on the easiest difficulty.

[Thaumiel Class Autism]

the game can be a "losing is fun" kinda game but overall it's pretty chill just tap the breaks on difficulty play the easy storyteller and play with some quality of life mods

difficulty is scaled on how rich you are btw if you stay a small wooden hamlet you'll be fine
I'm no expert but don't feel like you shouldn't ask for help

[K]

I mean, there can be frustrating moments for sure.
Just recently I was getting raided and 2 of my dudes were in a daze for almost 2-3 days so the raiders just slaughtered the other two colonists easily

[Sayla Massochist]

I am a bit of the same way I suppose. Here would be tips and suggestions.


So the easier the setting the less events the Storyteller AI has access to. It also limits how many points the Storyteller can use to provide raids. Until you really get use to the game I'd suggest playing Phoebe Chillax and on the very easiest setting. Remember that you can change your AI Storyteller and difficulty at any time so feel free to use that feature and start off on the easiest setting in a game and bump it up slowly over time as you feel more and more comfortable. Don't think you absolutely have to start on normal or hard if you don't feel like you aren't ready or wouldn't like that.

So Builder mode is what I'd suggest. You can still get raided but the AI Storyteller has the least amount it can spend on spawning and equiping Raiders. It also turns off most of the hardest events to overcome. So you still get the bit of challenge from Raids while not having to worry about super overwhelming numbers or anything to devastating during a colony run.

[Justin Sellers]

It sounds like you need to reconsider your defensive posture. Research better weapons and armor, and set up a better defensive layout with supporting fire between colonists and turrets. Use hard cover any time you can for colonists, and add sandbags and overhead cover for additional penalties to hit your guys. If you leave the approaches to your base filled with trees, scrap, and rocks, you give them cover. Late game, I like to use a 2 wall defense system with the space between filled with turrets to discourage sappers. That's what I can suggest off the top of my head. Good luck.

[8faiNt ı♣ı]

Originally posted by vLabz:

Hi,
Do really bad event necessarily happen ?
I'll be building a nice settlement with love for more than 30 hours to see it destroyed in 10 minutes ?
I’m not sure I’m of the “loosing is fun” type. I want to play “casually”, a few hours there and there, in games that can last months.
I've read about the Cassandra Classic and Phoebe Chillax modes => does it guarantee that, provided I'm doing ok, I should not be afraid of loosing everything ?
Is Phoebe Chillax fun enough ? Can I change the story teller (or difficulty) during the game.

I’m wondering if this game is for me. I would like to be able to really make progress through my game without having to rebuild stuff periodically (I mean not too much).
Thanks for sharing 😊

If losing isnt fun, you just lost in the beginning.

You dont have to play Rough or Merc. go for medium or lower. Rimworld is a harsh world for those have no idea what they are doing.

If you're the type of player who just enjoys Ant Sim. type of games I would say that just go peaceful but raids and stuff are part of this game.

Modding community should help with whatever you're trying to achieve since there's a mod about Shia L. being a cannibal, I belive in everything.

P.S: You can change the storyteller and the difficulty at any time. You can also interfere the actions with DEV power and with some mods ofc.

P.S You can decide with what to start, whom to start in the beginning. so, you can either start from the scratch or literally with everything.

[Herr Morlock]

The more you savescum, the more the AI storyteller will crush your eggs, in the long turn. Seriously, by doing that, you will come to a moment, where you have to reload half a dozen times, only to get a randomized events, which you can still manage.

If you are a very experienced player and now the tactics and mechanics, you can manage to have hardly any killed colonists, most of the times. If you are a mid-experienced player, you will face losses but will propably relatively easy able to at least save the colony itself (which is the most important thing).

But you will fail a lot, before you really learn to play this game with experience... (who would have guessed?)

PS: Please note, I always play on medium difficulty and with standard storyteller and have never really tried easier difficulties as the one for peaceful builders...

[Chilli Dog Dave]

Originally posted by flu007:

I'm sort of the same. I usually play on Phoebe Chillax - Builder difficulty. My games usually last a long time and end because I get bored and move on, not because I get destroyed.

You can tweak the difficulty in various ways. With the storyteller, the difficulty setting, and with lots of mods as well, if that's your thing. You can change storyteller and difficulty during the game.

You CAN make the game really frustrating. And in the beginning, when you don't know what you're doing, it's quite possible you'll run into some frustrations even on easier difficulty settings. But once you get the hang of it, the easier difficulty settings are pretty chill, with an occasional wake up call which might cause you some losses, but to get completely destroyed would be really hard.

(Disclaimer: this is based on experience with the 1.0 version of the game. I think the 1.1 version made some tweaks with regards to the progression of challenging events over time, etc. But I doubt it'll be such huge changes to make my above assessment completely null and void.)

this pretty much nails it. with the right setting and knowledge you can have that chill out session you desire with only a slight bit of random skill checks or with royalty choose when you want to spice up the difficulty via quests

[pheanox]

This game was built with the idea that losing is fun, part of the drama. If you play on Randy Random you will definitely get frustrating, unfair events. There's no shame in playing on Basebuilder or Phoebe Chillax if you want to just basebuild though, back in the early alpha days that was what I tested the game on.

[Chilli Dog Dave]

Originally posted by pheanox:

This game was built with the idea that losing is fun, part of the drama. If you play on Randy Random you will definitely get frustrating, unfair events. There's no shame in playing on Basebuilder or Phoebe Chillax if you want to just basebuild though, back in the early alpha days that was what I tested the game on.

as randy puts it, "it's all drama to him", play it on base builder or if your feeling like pushing your boundries turn up the difficulty one notch during the session, or if you want to get REALLY spicy switch to randy base builder, it'll try be somewhat understanding but it'll still be random chaos.

and to add: if you really dislike the added randomness or challenge set by a setting, tone it back down, aint no shame, if its not fun, why suffer? your game, your drama, your rules!

[brian_va]

Randy on medium has been my home for the last couple years, maybe push to rough later game if I feel like it's too easy going. The events should still scale relative to your wealth, so keep things smaller and simpler and you likely won't have dozens of space Marines drop pod in and wreck the whole thing. However you go, you can just reload the last autosave if a bad event you can't handle pops up.


I tend to keep to 6-8 pawns and don't really keep full stockpiles of stuff, pretty much just what I need. Some events can be challenging, but once to get used to how the game works it's not too hard to overcome things.

Maybe watch some videos, there isn't a "story" to spoil.

[Roci]

No, not in general, provided you read description for difficulty options before you hit next button.

First few hours can be somewhat frustrating like any other not-so-casual game(no the game is not as casual as it looks), but after you have yourself basics covered, it's just "easy to learn, hard to master" game.

brief rundown of difficulties:
Peaceful = too easy. Many harsh events are turned off.
Medium = normal. I personally recommend it for anyone playing the game for the first time.
Savage = hard. When it gets too easy.
Merciless = you WILL suffer. Don't pick it if you have playtime less than a dozen hours or so, unless you are survival-management game genius.

With the royalty DLC, the game will be much harder on higher difficulty.

Originally posted by vLabz:

I've read about the Cassandra Classic and Phoebe Chillax modes => does it guarantee that, provided I'm doing ok, I should not be afraid of loosing everything ?

As you said, it's game "mode" not difficulty. Any storyteller, even Phoebe, can be unfair and brutal if you play on merciless difficulty.

Originally posted by vLabz:

Is Phoebe Chillax fun enough ? Can I change the story teller (or difficulty) during the game.

You can change storyteller at any moment in the menu. I don't think you can do that on difficulty setting though.

I think "fun" comes from unexpected challenge in survival simulation like rimworld, so I think Randy is the best among them in general.

[Hypnophage]

The problem with the 'losing is fun' mentality is that it should mean 'restarting is fun'. But it is not especially fun because you have to do the routine stuff all over again, and there isn't that much difference in the gameplay. Civilization has fun restarts because each time the environment is very different. ADOM has fun restarts because your chars are very different. Rimworld isn't too bad compared to some other recent 'losing is fun' games like Star Traders or Battle Brothers, but it is still not great in this respect.

The other problem is that losing usually comes from loss of concentration, not from challenge or an interesting situation. An example of a game where you lose because of challenging content is Pathfinder: Kingmaker. The combat is tough, so you have to reload a fair deal and you really need to plan out your builds. On the other hand, nothing is especially tough in Rimworld. You usually lose because you grew bored of micromanagement and the colonist did something inane or because you were unaware of some mechanic (e.g., quest Thrumbos not defending themselves when attacked from range). Instead of being an interesting in-game story, it's just a story of poor UI and pathfinding.

So I keep playing rough ironman because I have no willpower and I am easily goaded into wasting hours fruitlessly just because someone tells me a game is challenging.

I would recommend playing with saving, even though I don't. Some people erroneously call re-loading 'savescumming', but that is because in roguelikes you generally die for a good reason, not because you lost concentration. Rimworld is not a roguelike but is, rather, a traditional strategy game. As it stands, not reloading is mainly an artificial way to increase hours played because you keep repeating the same lengthy process ad nauseam.