Compare Desert vs Tundra in difficulty

[Captain Nerdiepie]

1. Warm desert vs 20/60 Tundra

2. 30/60 desert vs 10/60 Tundra

[Red Bat]

Colder biomes are going to average at being a little harder than their warmer counterparts in most cases.

[Wish Granter]

Deserts and tundras difficulty is mainly the amount of animals/ soil / max temperature.

Tundra hosts way more growable soil, increasing survial changes. It hosts therefore more often animals increasing the survival.
But it also more often has chopable wood, as there are actual trees growing, even if they only reach little states, it will still be WAY more yield then kaktee.
Just consider ALOT more hauling.
The max teperatures arent as high/ but lower.
Its WAAAAAAAAAY easier to deal with cold in rimworld then heat. Your pawns freezing to death? Slap a campfire.
They getting heatstroke? Passive coolers are only merly effective in smaller roofs for high temperatures and coolers need power and steel.
Lootet clothes such as parkas make your pawns themself almost immun even on Ice sheets.

Growing plants in cold is harder then in heat.

Desert makes hunting easier /harder depending on the animal as they all come to you to eat your crops, delivering food bring service to the house, exept for the fact that rimworld combat sucks and even lvl 20 pawns will keep missing the mid size animals about 500 ingame hours until it ate half the field.

So Tundra is easier for survival and waaaaay easier ones you got stable electricity.
Desert is a overall bigger challange.

Desert and tundra (during cold wave tho) have one big negative people forget all the time:
After reaching extrem(er) temeraptures trading will fully stop from showing up. You will alos be unable to call in traders, so settle near other settlments.
I have to lie, dont know the exact numbers... -20 / +40?

Caravans in desert are a bit slower (duo to sand everywhere) but ok if you got a ridable animal.
Caravans in tundra are a nightmare if it snows alot as it gets often split to only HALF movement abilities.
Colder biomes in my opinion are easier as there is more soil f.e a quick patch of rice, but also alot more animals, as there are more "cold resistent" animals as "heat resistent" animals.
Colder biomes also heavly decrease movement of raiders.

[Astasia]

Deserts are very easy. The growing season listed on the globe is misleading, the heat that is normally reached in a desert will not kill a plant, it just slows growth, effectively a desert that stays above freezing will have year round growing just some portion of that year growth will be slowed a bit. Cactus are also the best source of wood in the game, especially when farmed in a growing zone, and deserts tend to have some very large patches of soil which will be more than you need. Extreme desert is pretty different though and does provide some challenge, there is only stony soil and the heat can get so high as to stop growth for most of the year.

10-20 day growing seasons on cold maps is also pretty misleading, those maps tend to be cold enough that you get cold snaps or just normal temperature variance that prevents you from growing anything at all outside some years. Even growing rice it will often be killed by the cold before you get a harvest. 20 days is more doable, you will need a lot of space for farms and hope to get all the food you need for the year in a couple harvests of rice (or rely on hunting/raiders a lot).

Nutrifungus can make cold maps trivial though, as you just need to keep it warm with a campfire in an adjacent room. It's slower than growing rice in a desert, but not particularly difficult. You will probably run out of wood though, so you will need to prioritize getting indoor growing up pretty highly. It takes multiple years for trees to regrow even on a 20 day growing season tundra map, and if you are burning it in campfires as a tribal start you will end up clearing most of the map of trees.

[Spack Jarrow]

Cold bioms are always harder, even tho desert doesn't have big animals that provide much food AND not much wood. There's agave fruit all around that you can resort to, the most problematic is lack of immediate healroot.

The cold places become deserted in winter , there are months where not even muffalo stay back. If there were any Furits in the wild, well there won't be for much longer.
Also enemies come well dressed because it's cold

[Holce]

That is funny. Somes say that cold biomes are harder and others that hot biomes are harder. I think both are right.

At start in desert, you will lack wood and animals to hunt. The wood is needed to cook and protect you from heat. In cold biome at start, the camp fire can be used to cook and to protect you from cold. You have more animals to hunt.

Later it is easier to grow food on hot biomes and you will solve your lack of wood by needed less and growing cactus.

I feels that desert are easier in the long run but give you a more difficult start.

[Astasia]

A default size desert map is probably going to have like 50 cactus/drago trees on it, that's like 1000 starting wood and it regenerates every week or two. You have to travel a little more to get what you need if you are using it to build, but otherwise it's plenty.

Deserts do have slightly lower animal density compared to tundras, but you will generally have enough there to survive off of. You will probably spawn into the map with like 10 animals to hunt, it's not the 20-40 or whatever of other biomes, but it should last you long enough to get rice grown, you might even get some decent agave clusters.

Deserts aren't rich in these resources, but there's more than enough of them which is why they are still easy, even on day one. Unless you are starting with like 10 colonists and no food, then you are probably in trouble.

[Red Bat]

Originally posted by Holce:

That is funny. Somes say that cold biomes are harder and others that hot biomes are harder. I think both are right.

At start in desert, you will lack wood and animals to hunt. The wood is needed to cook and protect you from heat. In cold biome at start, the camp fire can be used to cook and to protect you from cold. You have more animals to hunt.

Later it is easier to grow food on hot biomes and you will solve your lack of wood by needed less and growing cactus.

I feels that desert are easier in the long run but give you a more difficult start.

It's a minority of people saying desert biomes are harder.

There's a number of gameplay factors to consider that makes it a bit muddy when determining which is easier. It does tend to converge on deserts being easier "in general". If you've gotten the hang of playing on tundra biomes where you hunt for most of your food and build campfires everywhere and give everyone a parka, it might seem a bit easier to some players, but you have to play around the things you can't really rely on if you were in a desert biome such as getting medicine from trade since you can't reliably grow it depending on the growing period. For the record, I preferred playing in Boreal Forests and Tundras for a while myself.

Both biomes problems end up massively easier to deal with if you live in caves on a mountainous region. The combination of the more temperate temperatures, reduced need for wood, and as of Ideology the ability to grow mushrooms and eat insect meat without penalty kind of kills around half the difficulty of both types of climates. Of course like with every "easier" option in Rimworld, they still have their own problems.

[Spack Jarrow]

Originally posted by Red Bat Media:

Originally posted by Holce:

That is funny. Somes say that cold biomes are harder and others that hot biomes are harder. I think both are right.

At start in desert, you will lack wood and animals to hunt. The wood is needed to cook and protect you from heat. In cold biome at start, the camp fire can be used to cook and to protect you from cold. You have more animals to hunt.

Later it is easier to grow food on hot biomes and you will solve your lack of wood by needed less and growing cactus.

I feels that desert are easier in the long run but give you a more difficult start.

It's a minority of people saying desert biomes are harder.

There's a number of gameplay factors to consider that makes it a bit muddy when determining which is easier. It does tend to converge on deserts being easier "in general". If you've gotten the hang of playing on tundra biomes where you hunt for most of your food and build campfires everywhere and give everyone a parka, it might seem a bit easier to some players, but you have to play around the things you can't really rely on if you were in a desert biome such as getting medicine from trade since you can't reliably grow it depending on the growing period. For the record, I preferred playing in Boreal Forests and Tundras for a while myself.

Both biomes problems end up massively easier to deal with if you live in caves on a mountainous region. The combination of the more temperate temperatures, reduced need for wood, and as of Ideology the ability to grow mushrooms and eat insect meat without penalty kind of kills around half the difficulty of both types of climates. Of course like with every "easier" option in Rimworld, they still have their own problems.

You can apply same logic to tundra "how cold" of a tundra how far up north? because the tippy top of the tundras are -15 all year round.

[Holce]

@Astasia
I agree, desert have enough ressources but harder to get. In hot biome you have less time to prepare for the more exterme temperature even if hot temperature are easier to handle in the long run. Because of that the start are still slightly harder in hot biomes. But cold biomes are easier in general.

I play brutality naked. Most of the time I get a heat wave the first summer. I need 50 wood to survive. Having one guy to get wood is harder if you have to get it far of your house. Agave give a lot of food but you have to cook it. Having a break down is often a death sentence. I need a camp fire that burns a lot of wood. So wood at start is a problem. I don't have enough man power.

In colder biome, I can eat berries without cooking them. I try to have a campfire as quickly as possible to not waste too many ressource but I can wait longer. The coldsnap comes later. I do not need more wood to handle it wood because my campfire is enough. That is why desert is harder the first year. Desert becomes easier after.