Is Royalty DLC worth the money?

[マルコ]

I was trying to decide if I should purchase it but I've seen many negative comments, like "it doesn't add much" or "is a lazy money-grab not worth the price" or "the things it add make the game unbalanced and too easy" etc...

I wanted to hear some more opinions from the community that supposedly knows more than people than maybe tried it only a bit and then said those things, so what's the general consensus here about the Royalty DLC? Do I want to / should I buy it?

[Astasia]

I think it was debatable when it first came out, but after 1.2 I think there's no question that it's definitely worth it. It also has a very positive rating on Steam with over 80% of people who own it agreeing that it's worth it. Most of the people on the forums here that say it's not worth it haven't played it and don't really grasp how much gameplay it adds.

[Yaldabaoth]

If you are deep into the mod scene and use 100 different mods (especially those with magic or other special powers) at the same time, you will find Royalty lacking in content. If you don't mod, Royalty is a welcome addition. In the end, decide if you want to support the dev a bit more or not. With a new expansion on the way, you might want to wait for that to drop and get it instead.

[[WWN]_LapsedPacifist]

I like it, adds more options and mechanics to the game which in my opinion is always a good thing.
It also helps out the developers and means we should get many more DLC's down the line,
For the price I think it's a bargain. Your milage may vary.

[Hoki]

first off: a lot of the features of royalty can be substituted with the help of mods and this fact is also part of why many dislike the dlc.

due to the sheer amount of mods there obviously a lot of overlapping content.

another portion of players think the dlc is too expensive (for a lot of them you could say if it isnt free its too expensive)

yes the dlc is on the more expensive side but in itself provides an intresting twist to the game.
the dlc did recieve a couple updates in the past as well and now features way more content than upon release plus there are mods that expand the same content even further.

rimworld in the end is intended as a story generator letting you create your own experience and as such the dlc only acts as an additional tool at your disposal.

if you played with rim of magic and thought its too op then the psycasts of the dlc might be more to your liking.

Best thing you can do is look up whats included in the dlc and then decided based of wether or not you want those things in your game. the dlc isnt suited for every kind of story you wanna experience.

personally i got royalty on day 1 and never regret buying it (i had around 1200h playtime at that point so it is somewhat biased). especially in combination with DLC related mods the contentoption grow a lot.

[Hykal]

Yes, it is worth it. Not at the start perhaps but as Astasia said, after 1.2? Definitely.

Psycasts are also the best magic system in Rimworld. I've tried numerous magic mods, from other psy stuff to magic but psycasting is the best and and most balanced. Needing to be of high rank and the magic itself being utility is a boon, much more fun than a simple fireball spell.

The bionics are also balanced while keeping the vanilla tiers and specialist limbs. Ever since Royalty, I no longer install any other bionics mod.

The Royalty system itself is fun! It's fun brushing with the shoulders of nobles, fun to make a throne room, fun to do the quests. Mech clusters are fun to fight against and using the new weapons are also a great endgame goal to work towards to.

There are mods that make your pawns demigods. Royalty doesn't do that. Your fully bionic pawn with a nuclear stomach is still human. You can replicate bits of Royalty with many mods, but mods cannot replicate Royalty as a whole.

Source: 200+ hours with Royalty and I've never uninstalled it. Hope that answers your question, OP.

[マルコ]

I see, thanks for all the replies, I'm likely to buy it then.

The only factor I still have some doubt about, is if it fits the way I play.
To give you an idea, I have ~40 hours of play and all of them from the first minute where played on "Naked Brutality" with Cassandra set to "strive to survive" and "commitment mode", and everything else random, from the character to the starting location, I keep wathever hand it is given to me and see how it plays out.

Given that, I'm worried this psymagic powers will make it a lot easier than what I'm currently playing thus kind of ruin it, so I'm hesitant...
What do you think about that? You think it would still fit my playstyle?

[Astasia]

There is a lot of very powerful stuff in Royalty, but most of it is late game and/or requires a lot of work to reach. Royalty doesn't really change the balance of the core early/mid experience, unless you make an enemy of the empire in which case it can make things very difficult, most of the content blooms as you play allowing for new tactics later on. If you don't engage with the mechanics then they don't do anything, you don't just get high tier casters in your colony by accident, the only thing that really persists and always affects the game are mech clusters which are a lot of fun to deal with but can be pretty challenging sometimes.

[Yaldabaoth]

The psy power are pretty balanced compared to some mod stuff and to even use them, you have to have a certain level of wealth and/or spend time gaining psyfocus. It's not an automatic thing, it will hinder the pawn who has those powers.

[123]

I read that it adds more requirement for the pawns such as , before having a bedroom with 4x4 or 4x5 is enough but now with royalty will need 6x5. My pawn which is still a knight wants a space of 24 iirc for house and another one for throneroom.

And I think they will spend less time working because he'll also need to meditate

[Hykal]

You can play the game without psycasting, but the expectation is that you become a high ranking noble plus being a powerful psycaster. Mech clusters are a challenge, but totally doable without psycasting.

Worry not, psycasting is loads of fun. Not only that, but to have a warmage you need heavy investment in meditation too. I recommend you go to take a look at that old video on 1.2 and judge for yourself.

https://youtu.be/fNvMWicpizU

The only thing to say is that the new melee weapons are superior to longsword. But your persona weapons can have personalities of their own and it adds a detail of weapon customisation that doesn't exist in other mods.

[Astasia]

Originally posted by Nintendo:

I read that it adds more requirement for the pawns such as , before having a bedroom with 4x4 or 4x5 is enough but now with royalty will need 6x5. My pawn which is still a knight wants a space of 24 iirc for house and another one for throneroom.

And I think they will spend less time working because he'll also need to meditate

Colonists with higher titles get various benefits, and the drawback of those benefits is that they want more things like bigger fancier rooms and clothes. You don't have to give them these things, the only real requirement for progressing through the title system is a throne room (which can be shared by all your royals and usually works fine as your dining/rec room), they will get like a -10 mood hit for not having a nice enough bedroom or royal clothes but there are ways to make up for this.

Meditation at low levels doesn't waste any of a colonist's time, since meditation is recreation. They meditate to maintain a level of "psyfocus" you set for them, it defaults to 50% and this is pretty easy for them to maintain without wasting much time, if you drop it to 25% then it wont dip into their work time at all and you can set it to 0% if you don't need them casting then they wont meditate at all. If you want to cast the high level casts you may need to keep them at 75-100% psyfocus and that will certainly eat up a lot of their time every day, but that's the cost for casting those abilities and it's often worth it, situationally.

[This PC]

There's definitely a lot of debate over it, but even if I don't use most of Royalty's features, I still haven't regretted my purchase. If anything, I supported the team at ludeon and that's enough for me. The content I got is sort of a bonus to me. I do think Ideology is going to be a lot more significant however.

[Jully]

It's a great DLC and I always play with the Royalty features but don't worth the value in my opinion because it doesn't add many things and the price is almost the same of the base game.

[Lambda]

I can't say it's worth the price it's been given

[brian_va]

I didn't think so, the stuff it added really didn't interest me. Had it been something I wanted from the game, it would have been easy to get .multiple hundreds of hours out of it, making the price acceptable.

Read about it, watch some videos and see if it's something you want from the game and decide based on that.