How hard is this game?

[Slaye1R]

I had a hard time on oxygen not included. Is it harder or similar?

[Markus Reese]

Rimworld? It depends on how you set your storyteller (difficulty) You can be very chillax colony builder, or hardcore no mercy randy random. Start in a nice and mild warm forest or an extreme arctic where you die in first couple days.

There is even a custom difficulty where you can adjust to personal tastes and you can change the storyteller any time. Bad things can still happen, but how bad and how often you have full control of.

Change what world is like, other factions, you can make your own start conditions and whatever you want without needing any mods. It can get overwhelming with all that there is mind you, but it is all there with default selectable options set for a relaxing time if that is all you want.

Tynan, the creator and developer considers the game a story generator by his own definition, so trys not to restrict the play experience.

[Grishnerf]

it can be boring or impossible. chose your destiny or settle somewhere inbetween.

[The Blind One]

Yeah it's completely up to you how hard it is.

But if you're one of those people who absolutely has to play at 'medium' difficulty (like me) or they will feel pathetic. I'll tell you ... It's not 'medium' like other games 'medium'. It's you're going to die medium cooked.

[CloudSeeker]

The game is not like ONI in that you need to care about heat management and materials. Is it hard to learn from the start? Kind of. The game does not hold your hand in the learning process but you can always change the storyteller to be what you want. It can be hard or easy.

[XelNigma]

Rinworld is advertised as a story generated. And thus just about everything is up to the player. And what isn't people quickly make mods for.

Furthermore if you don't like the difficulty you can change it at any time.
The game even has a dev mod option that can be used to mold the way you want to play even better. Some people use it to fix issues when mods break, others use it to test mods there making and some just want to start with an established settlement so they make it all first before they even unpause the game.

[boytype]

I stayed on the first 3 difficulty settings for literally years while learning to play the game. For months i was not even able to survive the first winter, and that was my self-set challenge to learn. I can still remember the first time I actually launched the spaceship. Very rewarding!

Now, I intentionally handicap myself with high difficulty, self-imposed limits, and difficulty enhancing mods to recapture that old feeling of insurmountable odds.

There are a lot of youtube videos that give pretty great "beginner rimworld guides" with advice about whats important to know and how to get a basic survivable colony up and running, but to me learning the game was a big part of the fun.

There is no better way to learn than to lose and lose over and over until you find out what works. Remember, its a run-based game so losing is part of the design!

[Slaye1R]

Okay, i bought it. Time will tell if i will like it enough to get the dlc's as well.
Thank you all for your answers, i appreciate it :)

[DarkWolf]

ONI is similar to Rimworld, but ONI is about 150 times harder.

[Kahri]

People have yet to ask the obvious question...

Do you like it hard? o<O

;)

[Markus Reese]

Originally posted by Kahri:

People have yet to ask the obvious question...

Do you like it hard? o<O

;)

I personally like it rough. Slow and relaxed then suddenly hits hard.

[Talesin]

As hard as you want it to be.
You can change the difficulty at any time and you can also use reloads as much as you want.
Or you can go hardcore with no reload and high difficulty.
Its all up to you.

[Defektiv]

Similar in different ways. ONI can require micromanagement of colonists at times or they'll get themselves in trouble. Rimworld will very often require micro, especially in combat. And not so much because the pawns get themselves in trouble but that the storyteller actively waits for opportunities to drop an event that creates problems for them. Like when you send them out hunting and something will almost always start hunting them when they're by themselves. But Rimworld definitely wins in the combat department.

I find ONI has pretty big growth challenges to overcome, but once you learn how to deal with them they are pretty much easy to mitigate. Rimworld has much more dynamic challenges that you can also learn how to deal with, but it deals them in such volume and unexpected intervals that it creates much more longevity and replayability.

I also think Rimworld has a WAY bigger world with much more open play options, especially if you play on 100% world and/or larger maps.

[dot]

Originally posted by The Blind One:

Yeah it's completely up to you how hard it is.

But if you're one of those people who absolutely has to play at 'medium' difficulty (like me) or they will feel pathetic. I'll tell you ... It's not 'medium' like other games 'medium'. It's you're going to die medium cooked.

When they wrote "Strive to survive" they meant it. We are not used to words meaning it, this is what happens when there is so many games with "Nightmare", "Hardcore",... difficulties xD, a lot of masturbatory bs.

[HidesHisFace]

In comparison to Oxygen Not Included - there is far less of the environmental tinkering - no complex management of waste, oxygen etc.

Just surviving is reasonably easy - you basically just plant some food, some basic healing item production, get basic accomodation, heater or cooler and you will survive on any non-extreme biome relatively easily.
The real threat comes from animals, raiders and various other events.

And virtually any aspect of the difficulty is customisable to almost ridiculous degree - raids getting too hard? Tone them down to bare minimum.
Problem getting food? Increase crop output to insane level.
You can do it - on the fly. You make the game as hard or as easy as you want it to be.

[X-C0brA-X]

Originally posted by Slaye1R:

Okay, i bought it. Time will tell if i will like it enough to get the dlc's as well.
Thank you all for your answers, i appreciate it :)

I would suggest builder mode or adventure story mode with Phoebe until you learn how the game operates and how it progresses. It is a story generator so every game will turn out different based on what you do. I would suggest avoiding Randy until you learn the game because he really is random and you never know what he will throw at you and usually it is nothing good.

Do not be frustrated if your colony burns to the ground because everyone regardless of time in the game experiences the overwhelming odds the game can and will throw at you. My suggestion is just learn from it and roll a new game.

I have had great starting games where everything goes perfect and I have had games where several pawns caught malaria on day one and ended up dying with my doctor being one of them.

If you get stuck do not be afraid to ask on here for help as there are many on here who will be glad to help you out.