newbie woes....blight right off the start.

[mintavia]

So I am only an hour in and already ready to tear my hair out. I started on almost peaceful chillax ....and I can not get the pawns to do much. A blight has hit and I can not figure out how to make them cut the blighted plants. I have put cutting at 1 priority for them all buy they cut all the stuff I told them to cut earlier. all my crops are going to die if I can not make them cut the blighted plants. I clicked and selected everything I can but can not find the right combination to make them cut the blight...any advise???

[Astasia]

You need to assign a cut plants order to the blighted plants, they wont deal with it on their own. If you did already, cancel your other cut plant orders, or create an area around the blighted plants and assign your colonists to it, or just manually order them to cut them.

[Razor 2.3]

Welcome to RimWorld, you found blight! No one likes blight.

1. There is no blight cutting job, only plant cutting. If there is any other plants designated for cutting, cancel them for now.
   
2. Pawns will take care of their needs before working. This includes plant cutting. You can schedule work hours, where they'll strongly prioritize work.
   
3. If any other work priority to the left of plant cutting is also at one, drop it down to at least 2.
   
4. Not sure if you've done this, but pawns don't automatically cut blight. You must select the blighted plants to be cut, and then babysit the field to make sure it doesn't spread past your designations.

[mintavia]

how do you cancel all other plant cutting....is there some way to clear the previous commands. there were a lot of plants selected to clear a fertile area and other parts of the map. The controls to this game are ....legion . Soooo many.

[Astasia]

There's a cancel tool you can drag to quickly cancel any orders over large areas of the map. For future reference, you don't need to clear fertile areas in advance, if you place a grow zone there your growers will automatically clear anything in the way when they go to sow.

[Kittenpox]

One thing you can do, if your pawns are being stubborn and you need them to focus on a specific thing, is to use Zones to control their location.

In my colonies, everyone capable of doing plant work has that job active, even if it's only at priority #4. (If you're using checkboxes on the Work screen, toggle it over to numbers- its very helpful.)
Then I'll set up a zone to cover my fields - I normally label it "panic fields" to differentiate from other zones.
Then when there's a Cold Snap or similar event where I need them to focus on harvesting/cutting crops, I can set the pawns to be restricted to that zone, and the only job present is working the fields - which is a better solution for me than changing the work settings for those emergencies.

It's worth noting that if the plants in your field are at least 2/3 grown, you may still be able to get some resources out of it - and on fast-growing crops like Rice that doesn't set you back very far.
So, depending upon your starting biome, you can harvest wild berries or hunt for meat in the meantime to help carry you through before the food shortage becomes a serious issue.

Tip: If things get disastrous and there's no more food on the map, your tamed animals are made of meat.
(And if things hit rock-bottom, your pawns are also made of meat.)

[sk_ape]

Just get the mod (Autocut Blight or something, if you write Blight and sort by most popular). I understand that you may not want to do that just yet, but blight is obscenely frustrating to deal with vanilla.

[Kittenpox]

Originally posted by monkeconnoseur:

Just get the mod (Autocut Blight or something, if you write Blight and sort by most popular). I understand that you may not want to do that just yet, but blight is obscenely frustrating to deal with vanilla.

I had thought about linking that mod, but I also feel it's important for newer players to know how to succeed without relying on shortcuts like that.
Otherwise, as soon as the mod breaks or becomes obsolete, they stop knowing how to play the game as it is - and that doesn't help them in the long-run.

[Breadzzy!]

Honestly I just not allow sowing, cut all the plants (Not harvest, cut), and when they are all cut I allow sowing again then regrow