Is there a guide on what i should be doing for the first few hours when starting a new game?

[Mittens the Maleficent]

super new to this game/genre but this upcoming DLC looked really interesting and i want to learn how to play this game and was hoping someone could give me an idea or a guide/video of what i should be doing in the first few hours of playing! thank you!

[Veylox]

There should be plenty of starter tutorials on youtube. There's an in-game tutorial that covers some basic, not much but you can start there. Mainly you want to have a basic understanding of the menus, zoning, drafting, and generally how to give orders/create bills

The first steps in a new game usually involve making a big room with beds, tables and chairs, putting a torch in, making a stockpile zone inside, and starting cutting trees and growing food.

[Serious]

There are tons of videos on YouTube on this topic. But to be honest, I would recommend just playing and having fun and not watching any guides until the game breaks you. In-game tutorial is really good for basics.

[Judaspriester]

To be honest, I wouldn't reccomend spending to much time in reading guides, watching videos etc.
Use the ingame tutorial for the barebone basics, take the first hours to fail forward from there and then you can start looking for stuff you still don't understand or struggling with. Rimworld is meant to be detailed and sometimes hard or unregretting for failures.
Still I think it's part of the experience to do mistakes and learn from them.

Besides that, I would reccomend to learn the basics of the game without any dlcs. they offer tons of fancy stuff, but also add new threats and other things you should take care of. If there will be a sale, you can still buy the DLCs but disable them ingame.

[Hoki]

what to do depends on what techlevel youre starting and what kinda biome you start in but in general you start by locating where you you wanna settle down on the map and identifying what youre food options are shortterm (tribals have to scavenge or hunt a lot early on given they cant preserve food, industrial has access to power and nutrient paste and therefore require less worktime but higher skills for the same effect).

with a basic shelter, storage and food sorted you can start expanding the base and start farming. at that stage you also start thinking about how to defend the base. do you have access to chokepoints, do you wanna make your of a killbox, do you have ressources available to make traps.

how you approach the game is up to you. everyone has their own preferred playstyle.

the game tells you most of the things you have to do via tha pawns need tab. you want to keep them fed and happy. anything besides that goes either into improving or into defense

[Bryan=0101]

There is an in-game learning helper, it should be in the upper right of the screen by default. If not go into options and tick it on. It's a essentially beginner advice codex. Wanna know how to make a fire break? Look it up in the codex.

The codex will also detect events and recommend relevant entries.

I recommend just experiencing and learning the game for yourself.

[Thijn]

I recentyl got more in the game (tried it before but was not really happy with it). I followed this guide: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2779784000 and have to say it's been great fun!

[starkmaddness]

The key to Rimworld is... avoiding death.

So always be working towards addressing your greatests threats. Secure food production, then defenses. Then secure happiness so your people don't snap. Then food storage so you can handle winter and bad events. Then more defenses. Realize wood buildings are bad and start a new colony (Probably your 3rd of 4th by this point).

[Judaspriester]

Originally posted by starkmaddness:

Realize wood buildings are bad and start a new colony (Probably your 3rd of 4th by this point).

What against wood buildings? I always love a good BBQ! :D

[Archias ℞]

I wanna pitch in and say you learn smaller things as you go, dont expect your first few colonies to be all too amazing or efficient just have fun and look stuff up in the overlay as you go

[Casapa]

Francis John does a nice 2 part beginners guide. A lot of the basics that help. Rimworld starter guide Pt1: Rimworld Tutorial Nuggets

[TSense]

Rimworld is a story generator, not a skill test.
3 guys crashland on a planet, try their best, don't get along with each other and then starve to death in winter
is just as valid of an ending as any other.

Also, do not play on Cassandra Classic.

Also, you might want to get onto modding early and small, as unmodded Rimworld is more of an Demo of the Real Experince you paid for. Do it once, and then try a run with a small modlist. Since you are new, each run should be rather short. Don't grow attated to your colonist this early on, as soon as you dislike a run you can just start over. Don't like your guy? New world. Don't like your biome? new world. Died on a rat bite? New world.

Once you got the basics in and have a small modlist you want to keep, then you can try to make it over your first winter.

On the lawless Rim, everything goes, and the same applys to modding. We got combat mods, we got waifu mods, we got factory mods, we got bloody everything. No matter if you want to live in a golden palast full of cute maids and take care of a garden, or play a grimdark last stand as you mow down hordes of alien spiders with a plasma-minigun, Rimworld got it all, all at once if you are into that. Small group of cowboys hunting down caveman? We got it. Medival castles getting blown up by spaceships still in space? We got it. We got it all.

And your first and for some time only mod should be Pick Up and Haul.

I am 5300 hours in, still loving it, and that mod is the only one I can't play without. You may take my word for it

[Illaoi Bot]

looking up guides is good for a few games however in rimworlds case it isnt it is a story that you build in your own way and if you you do mistakes it can shape your own story in an interesting way

[starkmaddness]

The mistakes are actually one of the most fun parts. Sad and frustrating, but fun. My failures are some of the most memorable times playing this game.

[Mittens the Maleficent]

thank you everyone, i've been having a lot of fun with this game! Once i started to look at it as a " story generator" i started to have more fun and just a better understanding/grasp of what i should be doing. THANK YOU EVERYONE for your tips, suggestions, links, everything.. thank you.