How easy to learn is this game?

[Dradiuz]

[Cat®]

Pretty easy. Everything is done with left and right click. It has a bunch of management options like allowing\disallowing certain things, and zoning and such. Very familiar if you've played management sims before; but not necessary to enjoy the game. As long as you can draw conclusions such as "fire bad" and "the pointy bit goes in the bad guy" you'll do alright. The game does throw a lot of mechanics at you in the first few hours though, so it might take you a few attempts to get a colony off the ground.

[Hedgie]

Pretty easy to learn how to do some stuff, but surviving takes knowledge and skill, but people are definitely willing to help, if you have questions watch tutorials or ask.

[Dradiuz]

Ok thanks

[Cat®]

Originally posted by Dradiuz:

Ok thanks

Enjoy the game. Remember that there are plenty of information sources online, the wiki is also very well-furnished.

[Dradiuz]

Originally posted by Cat®:

Originally posted by Dradiuz:

Ok thanks

Enjoy the game. Remember that there are plenty of information sources online, the wiki is also very well-furnished. :slimehappy:

Yep I just bought it, I suspect I'm not going to sleep very early tonight

[crutch1974]

Embrace failing, but learn from it. Also watching a play though on YT might help with some of the mechanics that the tutorial misses. The tutorial misses a lot.

[Raven]

Originally posted by crutch1974:

Embrace failing, but learn from it. Also watching a play though on YT might help with some of the mechanics that the tutorial misses. The tutorial misses a lot.

yeah my first colony lasted pretty long due to watching a stream of it

[Twelvefield]

The tutorial is okay for getting you started, but brace for failure. The help topics popup isn't all that helpful, I find, but it at least puts names to things that you can look up for yourself. Some of the things in the game are counter-intuitive, some are flat out illogical, and then there's the random stuff that somehow makes perfect sense. It shouldn't take long for a new player to be able to handle the game, but it will take quite a while to discover what you need to learn about the rest of the game.

[johnboy898]

The game does take some dedication to learn. The tutorial is almost useless. You'll start to build and realize the tutorial didn't teach you how to do this or that... so you'll have to spend some time. To be honest I still haven't quite figured out the nutrient paste yet and I have over 1000 hours playing this game.

[Vile Sentry]

Originally posted by Dradiuz:

Originally posted by Cat®:

Enjoy the game. Remember that there are plenty of information sources online, the wiki is also very well-furnished. :slimehappy:

Yep I just bought it, I suspect I'm not going to sleep very early tonight :2017stickycrab:

That's the spirit.
Been spending most of my time not spent working or sleeping playing rimworld.
On my current run, I actually thought I would have to start again after I lost all but 1 pretty unskilled colonist, but I stuck with it. A stranger in black and a few recruited visitors later and I now have a thriving colony with plenty of food, research, and the ability to generate money through housing travelers for a small cost.
Playing with a few mods including hospitality btw. I recommend playing vanilla first but the right mods really can improve your experience.

[Vile Sentry]

Originally posted by johnboy898:

The game does take some dedication to learn. The tutorial is almost useless. You'll start to build and realize the tutorial didn't teach you how to do this or that... so you'll have to spend some time. To be honest I still haven't quite figured out the nutrient paste yet and I have over 1000 hours playing this game.

Someone please correct me if I am wrong about any of this, because I haven't used it much myself:
Nutrient paste is not something you can store or stock up on, you are essentially stocking the hoppers and allowing colonists to get the paste as they need it. To keep the food in hoppers fresh, you will want to put them in the freezer. I believe the hopper needs to be connected to the dispenser, and I think this is why the dispenser is so big. You can have one half of it (the half with the hoppers) in your freezer while the dispenser end is in a warm dining room.

[Hoki]

@Driscol mostly true.

Paste is just like normal meals. The thing is you cant activly interact with the dispenser will say: you cant tell your pawns to grab paste in advance.

the NPD is a wallsized machine which means you can build it and it'll act like a wall. due to how the game works you can even use the frontline of the NPD to function as the wall (even though the sprite might not look like it).

as for why using it i can say that the NPD frees up a ton of worktime - be it either directly or simply by preventing foodpoisoning. in addition it'll also save a tiny bit of energy when used in combination with a freezer compared to the normal cooking station (simply because the pawns wont have to run in as often) and is more efficient in processing the raw food.

the only noteworthy downsides are that you cant activly stock up on paste (except for using a somewhat cheesy tactic) and that it provides a moodbuff thats between raw food and berries.


as for the main topic:
rimworld is a complex game but this is due to having many systems running at once. every system by itself is fairly straightforward.

[granada777]

There's a lot to learn, but you can start having fun very early on. You will learn eventually learn all the game systems.

Some advice for a gentler learning curve:

1) Lower the difficulty. There's a lot to learn to be able to stay alive on higher difficulties (combat, defensive structures, mood management, food management, etc), by making the difficulty lower you reduce the amount of things you have to learn at the same time. So you can learn the base-building and food mechanics, without getting a gameover cause you didn't master combat and crafting fast enough. Your next game, you can play on higher difficulty since you'll know more.

2) Make your first map one with no winter, so you don't have to worry about hypothermia/clothing or running out of food. It will say "Year-round planting" on the selected map tile. Once again, this reduces the amount of systems you have to be good at to survive early on.

[Praeceptorem Poloniae]

Originally posted by granada777:

2) Make your first map one with no winter, so you don't have to worry about hypothermia/clothing or running out of food. It will say "Year-round planting" on the selected map tile. Once again, this reduces the amount of systems you have to be good at to survive early on.

I think that for first colony settling in jungle is not necessarily good idea - sure, you'll never have problems with cold snaps and hypothermia, but at the same time it is compensated by heat waves and heatstrokes - if I were to advise landing location it would be 40-50/60 season - still plenty of food, but also introduction to how to prepare for harsher climates, especially when estimating needed size of growing zones dedicated for supporting colony with food for entire year

[Bozobub]

Hills in normal or boreal forest is a good starting biome. Decent resources and growing seasons, lower disease occurence, plus you still likely will experience all the game's seasons (important for later skill).