Should I buy Rimworld + All DLC?

[WhereIsYourSaiyanPride]

Thinking about giving this game a solid try with the mod collection , Vanilla Expanded, and adding mods as I go.
Wondering if there are any immersion mods you guys can include, I plan on trying to add some cool races along the way probably related to magic/mystical creatures.

Is it possible to play the game with only 1-2 characters?

Any tips for a new comer would be appreciated as well

[Khan Boyzitbig of Mercia]

Rimworld + Royalty (the only actual DLC as yet) is a fairly solid start. Vanilla expanded is not vanilla friendly and can be very imbalanced.

You can play with 1-2 characters but it will be very dangerous and require a lot of priority juggling to survive long. Not to mention a single mad guinea pig will spell doom. (17kg rodents are common on the rim).

[Razor 2.3]

I'd recommend against going with VE for a first time playthrough. While they are high production mods, they tend to change and unbalance the game quite a bit.

On the rim, we don't concern ourselves with immersion. Mostly because the aesthetics are closer to a board game than real life. There are a few retexture mods out there, and there are mods that try to add more life to the game, like facial animations, but I personally haven't tried them. The only retexture mod I use makes gravel gray, but that's utility. It's easier to plot farmland when I can tell the bad soil at a glance. Plenty of race mods to pick from, though.

Possible? Sure...? Practical? No. Will it happen? Probably not. At some point the game is going to force more pawns on you, and replacing your fallen and crippled colonists with fresh meat is a major mechanic of the game. We call 'em pawns for a reason.

Tips? Don't be afraid of failure. As a newcomer, you'll have a lot to learn, no guidance, and the game doesn't care if your pawns live. When your colony gets wiped, remember what went wrong and try to mitigate it next time.

[KalkiKrosah]

I would buy it without the DLC first, the Royalty DLC adds in a bunch of complexity that is mostly late game oriented. Starting out you're going to want to focus on the basics of the game, namely surviving.

Play unmodded the first few times. Learn the basics of the game. Adding in mods often makes the game easier and will encourage bad habits.

There's a start based around only having one colonist: Wealthy Loner or something. Lots of rich starting gear but only one guy, which is a risky start. Sometimes RNG will screw you over by infecting them with plague on day 4 and that's a death sentence. But the game will try to keep your colony around 6-7 people at all times. The storytellers are programmed to reward struggling colonies and punish flourishing colonies. So if you only got 2 people and high wealth the game will send harder events at you and 2 people won't be enough to fend it off. I want to say that 12 people is a comfortable amount of colonists to manage.

Make some short term goals for yourself starting out: beat the first raid, learn the work prioritization system, make it through winter, etc.

Don't get bummed if your colony dies because a squirrel went rabid and decapitated your only doctor while the other two died of the plague. It's a learning experience and most everyone has hundreds of failed colonies under their belt on these forums.

As for tips, here's one for picking your first 3 colonists: the 3 most important skills starting out are growing, building (construction) and cooking. You can survive with only those 3 skills alone if you have to. Shooting, crafting and research are also important for long term survival too. Melee, animals, social and art are more niche in their application. They can make life easier if they got skill in those areas but it's not mandatory to do so.

There are 4 edible crops: Berries, Potatoes, Corn & Rice.
Plant Corn when you have long growing seasons (20+ growing days) and are limited on space or if you want the most efficient food per effort outcome. Do not plant corn in bad soil or if the growing season is shorter than 20 days.
Potatoes are the best crop for crappy soil as it is least affected by it. Don't plant potatoes if you have rich soil as it gains the least bonus from it.
Rice is the fastest growing crop but also the least efficient. Plant rice when the growing season is short (7 days minimum to grow), you got rich soil, if you need food immediately, or if you want to train growing quickly.
Grow berries if your cook died or if there's more important things you need to be doing. It can be eaten raw but the other three options are almost always better.
And plants don't grow if they're roofed and cannot get any sun. Sunlamps can fix this problem but use up a lot of electricity. It's simpler to zone an area to remain unroofed.

When hunting animals try to target the smaller solitary ones first. Each attack on an animal rolls the dice for a man hunter event. One manhunting raccoon is a minor threat. Multiple manhunting elephants can exterminate a young colony. And also keep an eye on predatory animals (foxes, wolves, Panthers, bears, etc) they tend to eat pets and dead bonded pets will make a colonist depressed and have mental breakdowns.

Try to build a room to live in on the first day. Place it somewhere defensible. Then fence in an area to expand into. Having walls up allows you to ignore some threats entirely.

Living in a cave is safer both in temperature and is often more defensible. The major trade off is that infestations only happen in caves. Bugs are very tough to kill, megaspiders especially. And they come in large numbers and reproduce rapidly. Should this happen the most effective way to deal with them is via fire. Try not to live entirely in caves until you get fire weaponry to deal with bugs.

I don't want to spoil too much of the game but those tips will come in handy for sure.

[Kittenpox]

Originally posted by KalkiKrosah:

I would buy it without the DLC first, the Royalty DLC adds in a bunch of complexity that is mostly late game oriented. Starting out you're going to want to focus on the basics of the game, namely surviving.

Play unmodded the first few times. Learn the basics of the game.

^ Seconded. :-)
You can always come back to buying Royalty later - it's good, and I'm glad to have it, but it's not a must-have for new players (and nor should it be.)

[sk_ape]

Even if you think you know all of it because you watched someone play I'd still recommend going for a vanilla playthrough first, then deciding what you like/dislike, want to improve etc. Rimworld is pretty complex and the learning curve may feel a little stiff.

[Diarmuhnd]

Originally posted by Phrosti:

Thinking about giving this game a solid try with the mod collection , Vanilla Expanded, and adding mods as I go.
Wondering if there are any immersion mods you guys can include, I plan on trying to add some cool races along the way probably related to magic/mystical creatures.

Is it possible to play the game with only 1-2 characters?

Any tips for a new comer would be appreciated as well

Yes, you can self limit yourself to only playing with 1 pawn if you wish, but unless you use a mod to make that 1 pawn an ubermench your not going to last long. Plus, you will need to use a couple of mods to make Rimworlds auto recruiting script to chill out if you don't want to be forced to kill off unwanted pawns that join.

My advice, BUY RIMWORLD if you liked what you saw when you watched some gameplay videos. Yarp. I suggest you play a few games on vanilla first, that will show you which QoL mods you do not want to play without. Then add more.

Some of my favorites were the Android race mod, Save our Shop 2 for spaceships and crazy stuff, the Glittertech mods and more stuff like that because I'm a sucker for scfi and horror stuff. Other ones I liked, dragons, rimwar, hospitality, rimatomics, there are so many more. Note: make sure you learn how to use mods, so a game update or mod update does not possibly break an old save game with auto updates. And sometimes mods don't work well together, so to enjoy a new mod list you may have to remove some old favorites.

I personally was not a fan of Rimworlds Royalty DLC, you can read my review if your want to know why.
But if money's not an issue, and/or you just want to support Tynan and crew more, grab it i guess, it does add stuff. Plus there are mods that add extra stuff for it now also.

Good luck and have fun.
Lets us know what you decide to do, especialy if you get Rimworld, lots of us like reading player stories about what happened to them.

[ichifish]

Originally posted by Phrosti:

Thinking about giving this game a solid try with the mod collection , Vanilla Expanded, and adding mods as I go.
Wondering if there are any immersion mods you guys can include, I plan on trying to add some cool races along the way probably related to magic/mystical creatures.

Is it possible to play the game with only 1-2 characters?

Any tips for a new comer would be appreciated as well

Tip 1:
There’s no reason not to start with the DLC. The DLC adds a couple of mechanics (royalty and psycasts), but you don’t need to understand these well to succeed as the game doesn’t scale difficulty in the expectation that you’ve got these mechanics mastered.

Tip 2:
Don’t add mods before you play, especially big, game altering ones like VE mods. The quality of the mods is good, but they 1) unbalance the game (making it easier in some aspects and harder in others), 2) will prevent you from learning the core systems, and most importantly, 3) don’t improve the core game unless you’ve played so much you’re looking for something new.

Mods are great and I wouldn’t play the game without them, but don’t add mods to add mods. Add mods to solve problems. I use about 40 core mods and they solve very specific problems I have with the game.

Tip 3:
Don’t spend a lot of time planning out your first several runs. Just play “crash landed” and enjoy the comic and tragic ways that your colony deals with threats. Expect to fail and enjoy the story.

Tip 4:
RW isn’t particularly hard, but there is A LOT to learn. The less you plan to do and the less committed you are to a particular run the easier it is to learn it.

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by Phrosti:

Thinking about giving this game a solid try with the mod collection , Vanilla Expanded, and adding mods as I go.

You will not enjoy that experience.

Play "vanilla" Rimworld first. Never in the history of ever has a brand new player purchased Rimworld, loaded up a bunch of mods, and then failed to run to the forums and start complaining "Y SUX GAEM BROEKED RAFUNDED...."

I'm serious. Play vanilla Rimworld, first. Do it. There's no better way to learn the game and to also be guaranteed that you'll have fun with it if you could ever possibly have fun with it. Later, when you know what's in the vanilla game, you'll have a much better time picking and choosing the mods you think will add to your experience.

..Any tips for a new comer would be appreciated as well

First, play vanilla Rimworld without mods and without the DLC if you've also bought it. Seriously. No joke. :)

This will be your constant companion for a very long time: https://rimworldwiki.com/

There are guides there to help you get started with your first playthrough. AND, that reminds me - Once you've gone through the Tutorial, do not continue your playthrough there. Start a new game. The Tutorial can also bug out, too, asking you to do something that is impossible - If you're told to equip the weapons and one pawn can't equip weapons... Well, that's the end of that particular tutorial for you. :) Restart it or just start a new playthrough. Rimworld has pretty intuitive controls and mechanics once you get a feel for them.

If you have a question then don't hesitate to post it on the forums - You will get help.

[Marcus]

get combat extended

[SereneK]

Originally posted by Marcus:

get combat extended

...but beware that Combat Extended mod is notoriously incompatible with many mods.
Still, what Morkonan said is probably best.

[King Wrynn]

I agree with Morkonan mostly, however I think that some mods can definitely be added even if it's your first time playing. I use the rocket man mod to improve endgame performance for example. And there is no reason not to add new hairstyles, speech bubbles, beautiful bodies, pretty and ugly, quality colors and mods like that. They change how your game looks, but don't have a big impact on gameplay.

However, I would advice not to start with big game changing mods (like alien races and such) and learn the game before you start adding mods that have a huge impact on the gameplay. Start simple, learn, survive and once you feel something is missing you can add it. That's how I did it anyway.

[Lord Autismo]

Originally posted by Phrosti:

Thinking about giving this game a solid try with the mod collection , Vanilla Expanded, and adding mods as I go.
Wondering if there are any immersion mods you guys can include, I plan on trying to add some cool races along the way probably related to magic/mystical creatures.

Is it possible to play the game with only 1-2 characters?

Any tips for a new comer would be appreciated as well

For sure, while i always recommend trying vanilla 3 colonist standard start to get in the game, for me the real fun comes in when you start modding, finding something you want a bit different, then seeing your mod list get out of hand over time, then finding new ways to challenge yourself

[ambi]

a playthrough with 1-2 characters is possible. you can use turrets and traps to increase your colony's defenses. i'd avoid putting them in combat because if they all get downed, no-one will save them.

[Kittenpox]

Originally posted by Morkonan:

Never in the history of ever has a brand new player purchased Rimworld, loaded up a bunch of mods, and then failed to run to the forums and start complaining "Y SUX GAEM BROEKED RAFUNDED...."

But what if OP *also* wants to ragequit because the Giant Eagles are too powerful? :-p

@OP - what Morkonan mentioned has happened far more times than I care to recall; which is part of why I'd also suggest avoiding mods until you're thoroughly familiar with how the game is intended to be played. ^_^