Anyone have an essential list of mods?

[Desolate Eden]

I'm looking for recommended mods or must have mods that leave the game as vanilla as possible with maybe extra weapons, outfits, furniture, but nothing too game changing. I suck at picking out mods and doing it all myself and was wondering if there was a collection someone would recommend or something

[Neopolitan]

All of the Vanilla Expanded mods are great! adds more plants, weapons, armor, power options, cooking things like soups and bakes (using flour, from the new wheat), and a ton more

[Kittenpox]

There aren't really many 'must-have' mods, and there are a couple of prominent* members on the forum who play with zero or minimal mods at all. :-)

If you're relatively new to the game, best to learn the game as it is - rather than getting used to mod support and then finding you're not sure how to do stuff if a mod becomes obsolete or breaks.

If you're thoroughly familiar with the game, then the question becomes: What parts of the game do you WANT to change?

For me, the first mod I added was https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=708455313 because I didn't want to have to keep re-designing my buildings at the start of the game, over and over.

Since you are looking for suggestions, I'll recommend these two: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1507748539&searchtext=Mod+manager + https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1399212509

* By "prominent", I mean that those people I've noticed who are long-time regulars on the forum, who provide informative insights on things & are generally nice people to have about. :-)

[Kittenpox]

If you're looking for furniture, the Vanilla Expanded stuff - as mentioned - is generally good.
If you don't mind a different art style, then some of the "Gloomy" mods are pretty neat too. ^_^
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1558635181&searchtext=Gloomy
Note that the Gloomy Hair and Gloomy Face mods both have a "mk2" release that is for the current (1.2) version of the game.

[Desolate Eden]

Thanks guys :)

[VoiD]

I'd say only look for the ones that fix nuisances you find in your game.

IE: The one that stops them from droping stuff on doors keeping a full freezer open all the time, that's annoying and it's more of a patch/fix than a mod.

Maybe some interface changes if you're not satisfied with how things look or the data.

But other than that mods really aren't essential, even the most innocent ones like adding an extra need, or making dirt disappear by itself will give you a massive advantage over time and make the game a lot simpler/easier.

IMO players delude themselves thinking that cluttering features add to the game, most mods reduce the experience more than they enhance, IE: Being abtle to craft any body parts makes it so you'll never really have to worry or seek a certain rare body replacement for your colonist, maybe he had a shattered spine and is now permanently down or something, and you're traveling the world looking for a bionic spine, but the mod could just give it to you.

Or in a real game you may even reroll characters a lot, but you'll never have a "perfect dude" and will have to learn with that great resistant brawler guy you got and his pyromaniacal breakdowns from time to time, while the modder just plays with perfect dolls that never even have breakdowns.

Or the anguish of trying to hurry back to a base under attack while you were selling stuff while the modder just zooms through the entire map very quickly and gets to every city within a day.

Or you usually need to actually manage your inventory and space, create optimal solutions for a massive freezer, then worry about storing space for all the junk you've been collecting, or just cheat with a mod that stacks everything to 10k in a single tile and never manage anything, also, free temperature

IMO most mods don't have the attention the gamedev had, they don't care for balance and often ruin it, there are some good ones, often the big ones that work like one big expansion pack and are not compatible with anything else, visual ones and bugfix mods are often great too, but the cluttering "add needs, add weapons, add armors, add crafts, add features, add junk" mods are something I personally tend to avoid.

[VoiD]

That being said, if you're not in for the "rimworld experience" and don't care about being challenged at all, then that's fine too.

It's similar to playing GTA, spawning a tank and an army of space marines and just blowing ♥♥♥♥ up, that's not really the GTA experience, but the explosions are pretty.

[Jibbles]

Why are ya'll going on this whole spiel about 'game doesn't need mods' when they're literally trying find some new mods to play with?

I could also recommend quality of life mods if you want.
I think mods that add new traits are fun to play with. Nice variety and changes things up in miniscule ways. I wouldn't ever turn those back off unless I'm adding more :)

Rimfridge.. Gotta have that rimfridge.

The 'vanilla expanded mods' can be a bit off balance tho the textures are vanilla like. I think most of the animal mods are solid tho. Check em out

Biome mods are quite fun too.

[Kittenpox]

Originally posted by Jibbles:

Why are ya'll going on this whole spiel about 'game doesn't need mods' when they're literally trying find some new mods to play with?

Because a couple of years back there were multiple threads, by people who didn't learn to play first - either complaining that the mod was broken and so now the game was literally unplayable, or that the entire game was ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ because a specific animal was killing all of their pawns & was overpowered and needed to be nerfed... except that it was an animal they added in via a mod, and didn't have the self-awareness to be like "oh, this {insert creature here} isn't a part of vanilla rimworld. Maybe I can remove that mod rather than rage on the forums about it!"

Which is why I tend to caution new players against filling their game with mods, until they know what's going on first.
It's not clear how much time this player has with the game, and I haven't seen them about here - so I decided *not* to assume they had 300hrs so far, and instead give them more useful advice than flooding the thread with 50+ "must-have" mod Collections.

[Jibbles]

I didn't mean to come off harsh, You did help. I've just seen thread like these where they go a similar path with people not recommending mods and reminded me of that I guess. lol I suppose we should build a "collection" at some point so we can tackle these threads a bit quicker.

[AngleWyrm]

Originally posted by Desolate Eden:

I'm looking for recommended mods or must have mods that leave the game as vanilla as possible

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2432210596

[ROE]

As you can see, everyone had their own opinions of "essential".

I would add rimfridge because it helps me organize my kitchens.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1180721235

Wall lights because it helps to keep floors uncluttered.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1423699208

Hide conduits for ascetics.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2013416365

Medical tab for keeping up with disease, etc.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=715565817

Rim Hud for info.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1508850027

Mood bar
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2006605356

Armor rack
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1875828205

Some game changing ones.

No mech raids because it gets old at the endgame.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1557017785

Turret fix.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2028662113


Dub's break mod because it makes it more better.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1722398508

[brian_va]

1-3 and 5 that ROE listed are staples I wouldn't want to play without. Vgp suite as well, better workbench management (not 100% on the name for this one or the rest for the most part), simple search bar, stockpile presets, one of the meal management mods, reclaiming fabrics. Some of the vanilla expanded mods, like the animals, weapons and furniture. Allow tool (think that's the one that also allows setting an entire vein to be mined). A minify mod. Probably a few dozen more.

[Firestorm]

Pretty much every Vanilla Expanded mod is essential barring a few of them. The wealth of new content each adds is fantastic.

[Hoki]

well.... what mods are essentiell? for that only 2 absolut must haves: harmony and hugslib simply because the other mods will always rely on at least one of the 2 mods.

'i wanna add mods but i wanna keep the RW-feel' - thats still an enormous group of mods we're talking about.
If its just about adding more content then vanilla expended definitly is a good place to start. but not everything of it preserves the vanilla feel to be honest.

if you can provide some pointers what you want modded we can more specificly provide suitable recommendations.

Originally posted by VoiD:

I'd say only look for the ones that fix nuisances you find in your game.

this is the best start when looking for mods.

i usually play with something around 200 mods with about 80 of them being my always goto 'coremods' containing frameworks, changes to AI, tools for detailing colonies and for troubleshooting (and a lot of textureswaps).

Originally posted by Kittenpox:

Originally posted by Jibbles:

Why are ya'll going on this whole spiel about 'game doesn't need mods' when they're literally trying find some new mods to play with?

Because a couple of years back there were multiple threads, by people who didn't learn to play first - either complaining that the mod was broken and so now the game was literally unplayable, or that the entire game was ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ because a specific animal was killing all of their pawns & was overpowered and needed to be nerfed...

who doesnt like shrimps?

[brian_va]

Originally posted by bearhiderug:

Originally posted by bearhiderug:

simple search bar yupyu
=D

should be noted minimy mod add alot of bloat to your game

Yeah, sometimes sacrifices must be made