Sea Ice on Extreme Difficulty - How to Bear Grylls like a Boss (addendum updated for Patch Beta 18)

Ever feel that Rimworld is too easy for you? Do you actually like the pain? Is your dream job to drink urine on reality TV? Unfortunately, I can't get you your own TV show, but at least you can virtually experience the challenge with the Sea Ice map. In this guide, I'll walk you through Rimworld's "most difficult mode", so you can rub it in to the normies on the forum.

The scenario

So both Ice Sheet and Extreme Desert hardly cut it for you anymore, and Extreme difficulty doesn't even make you break a sweat. Now what? You could try going outside, but why do that when you can experience the harshness of life from your computer?

PLEASE NOTE THAT SOME OF THIS INFORMATION IN THIS GUIDE IS OUT-OF-DATE. SEE ADDENDUM FOR UP-TO-DATE CORRECTIONS FOR PATCH BETA 18

Here's the scenario (We're gonna crank everything up to the max):

Difficulty Level: Extreme (it hurts so good)
Map Type: Sea Ice
Storyteller: Cassandra Classic or Randy Random (none of that Phoebe Chillax shenanigans)
Scenario: The Rich Explorer (3rd Default)
Temperature: Turn that **** real low, cuz the default is too easy
Rainfall: Max that puppy out, cuz more water = more Sea Ice
Map Size: Ludeonicrous 400x400 (160000 cells) (more ice = more fun)

Bonus Objective / For Even More Challenge: Cannibalism, eating pets, making human skin hats, and all other crimes against humanity are PROHIBITED (wouldn't look good to the producers)
*My goal was to do a run without resorting to anything sadistic

How to pick your colony:

-90% of the world generated should be covered in either Ice Sheets or Sea Ice, including much of the equator. Select any tile of Sea Ice, but I recommend somewhere closer to the equator for your first run (you can try your hand at the poles once you get the hang of it)
-This will increase probability of nearby settlements you can raid/trade with
-Tiles closer to the equator may have an average temperature of -26 degrees Celcius instead of <-30 degrees Celcius (honestly it's not going to help but it's the thought that counts)
-Tiles closer to the equator seem to spawn more starting wild animals (idk for sure)
-You may choose to pick a tile near the poles, but the general strategy will be the same with the exception of more heaters


Example of a good ice sheet starting position (blue)
*Note the nearby settements that can be a source of trade / raids, rather than relying on RNG to give traders

Choosing your colonist:

-Try to go for Sanguine or Optimist
-Try to go for Iron-willed or Steadfast
-Otherwise, try to roll some other positive trait
-Make sure that you avoid any +% chance to break traits, or you will be screwed
-Make sure that your colonist can do all categories of jobs, even if terribly
-Optional: have decent Construction stats (mine had neither and was still fine for me; just makes the beginning harder since many materials may be wasted


Example of a good starting colonist (click picture to enlarge)

Let the suffering begin

Day 1:

First 5 Hours:

-Do not pick up your pulse rifle yet (will only decrease how much you can carry and slow you down)
-Build 7x7 wood walls and a door, leaving out the 4 corners
-The missing corners will not interfere with "indoor" status
-Ignore building the floor
-Build a roof
*Note that my colonist only had Construction Level 1 and somehow managed to mess up constructing the door 5 times, but I still made it in time


Approximate progress by noon (contrary to popular belief, the 4 corners are not necessary for "indoor" status and only minimally increase heat loss (addressed later)

Noon until Nightfall:

-Construct 1 wind generator
-Construct 2 heaters (1 should be enought to get by, 2 if you have the time)
*Note that power conduits will not be necessary since they should be within 6 tiles of the generator
-Construct 1 battery outside (remember to roof it)
-May be necessary to use power conduits to connect battery to generator (but not to heaters)
-Try not to block windmill "wind collection" spots (not like what I did)
*Note that on this difficulty, the battery will likely start blowing up a lot (happened twice on the first day)
-If you have time, start constructing the floor
*My colonist was able to get halfway done with the floor plus all the above on the first day, all with only Level 1 Construction


Approximate Day 1 progress

Day 2:

The Great Hunt (PETA disapproved):

-Locate any animals (should have at least a couple on 400x400 sized map, verified on multiple playthroughs)
-Most maps should have enough animals to last you a couple weeks, at least enough to allow you to start producing things you can trade and appropriate clothing to caravan and raid other settlements
*My map had one polar bear, one hare, and one small muffalo herd


Muffalo make all the difference

-Pick up pulse rifle and draft the colonist


-Manually hunt any animals eating your supplies first (a Hare was eating my food)
-Then move on to muffalo or polar bears in that order, if available (shoot Muffalo at point blank to save time)
-Don't bother killing the animals; just down them and move on to save time


RIP muffalo (note that most of them are just downed; don't worry, the winter will take care of them)

-Hunt as many animals as possible or available before the evening (or the remaining animals will likely ragequit the map from hunger
-Be careful about hypothermia (make sure you get back before you lose digits)
*I was unable to get some of the muffalo before they left / I started to get hypothermia, so it is okay if you don't get everything
-Zone a stockpile next to your house and drag one animal victim on your way back (only zone up to 6 tiles from your house or you will not be able to roof it
-Do not bother walling your stockpile (leaving food out in the open isn't a problem for these temperatures, plus food in the open will attract any wildlife (assuming you are lucky enough to get any), which is good

The 2nd Night:

-Start to roof your stockpile (will serve as a freezer since temperatures will never go above freezing)
-Remember that you can only roof up to 6 tiles away from your house
-Finish building the house floor and walls

Day 3:

-Hunt anything that still didn't ragequit the map
*In my game, polar bear ate my food during the night, but it was a good trade to make him stay another day


A decent killcount should sustain you for the next few weeks until you can create enough trading goods to sell

-Finish any sort of roofing / repairs from battery explosions / house constructions

Living Life on the Edge in Style:

-Build a bed out of silver (most beauty for your silver + saves wood)
-Build horseshoes pin out of silver (same logic)
-Build table out of silver (same logic)
-Horseshoe pin must have at least 5 spaces of room, so if you place it in a corner with a door facing it, you should have just the right amount of space (also must not be obstructed by workbenches, although regular tables and chairs are fine
-Build a butcher's table with steel (you should run out of wood and sufficient silver at this point)
-Build an electric stove with steel
-Try to fit everything inside to avoid temperature and outside penalties (example of possible arrangement below)


Everything can be fit into the 7x7 (5x5 interior) space

-Do NOT bother to build a chair yet (we will return to this later)
-If your colonist did not fail too many constructions, use whatever material you have left to build a hand tailor bench (electical tailor would be too expensive; do not worry if you cannot construct it now)
-You may chose to fill in the 4 "corner walls" with remaining material should you choose / have any material left (will marginably improve insulation)

It hurts so good

Day 3 Onwards:

-Finish up whatever construction work you have left
-Drag your remaining resources under your roofed stockpile to prevent deterioration
-Start hauling whatever animal corpses you were able to down previously
-Do not haul too many at once since you will get hypothermia if corpses are far plus corpses deteriorate VERY slowly in this weather
-Do not interrupt your colonist's horseshoe practice if possible (it trains shooting skill, which you will need shortly)
-Begin the butchering process to harvest resources
-Make sure you clean up the bloody mess
-Use harvested materials to build an armchair (muffalo or polar bear)
-Probably Day 4 or later, start cooking simple meals with the meat

Some Random Suggestions / Tips / Notes:

-Be ready for any raiders (usually starting raid will be 1 or 2 people only)
-Remember to haul before stripping if dead
-If downed but not dead, strip before killing to avoid "worn by a corpse" penalty


"I'm going to need your clothes, boots, and motorcycle." ...But I'll settle for clothes for now

Optional: Prison Tycoon:

-You may alternatively choose to capture them to sell them into slavery if you're into that kind of thing
-If you choose to be a slaver, you may have to build a 2x1 walled spot as a makeshift prison atttachment to the door (example below)



*remember to hold the door open so the heat transfers to the "cell"
-Keep prisoner feeding to a minimum
-He/she will likely have a lot of mental breaks until you recruit/sell/kill him/her, but that can help train medical skills (just don't use any medicine)
-If you like performing crimes against humanity, you may also harvest organs from them
-After you recruit/sell/harvest your prisoner, the double doors serve as an airlock to furher increase insulation, so keep them there (google "Rimworld airlock" for more details)


In my game, I chose to recruit the raider since I needed help raiding settlements, and he had Level 14 shooting (compared to my colonist's Level 2)

Traders:

- At some point, traders will show up


*Unfortunately, the first trader I got had absolutely nothing worthwhile to trade, so they should consider themselves lucky that I did not strike them down on the spot (subsequent traders were equally worthless)

-TRY not to eat them (remember Bear Grylls would never resort to eating another human)
-Instead try to trade extra non-raw resources (clothes for example) and gold for wood and steel (assuming the correct trader comes by)
-You can also sell raider gear to them (try to not sell them human meat and skin if you have any humanity in you)
-If you get tired of waiting on RNG, you can take a caravan to nearby settlements (assuming you've correctly picked a location as previously noted)

Other Stuff

-Always be alert for battery explosions (happened multiple times a day for some reason in my game despite roof, probably due to "outside" status) but the cold should help with putting out the fire (yaaaaaay Sea Ice)


At least the fires help keep you warm...

-You may choose to save any escape pod survivors (did for RP purposes) but beware of the extra food consumption)
-Survivors won't survive anyways unless they drop right next to you, so don't bother saving anybody too far away since you won't make it in time anyways


Edge of map + naked? Uh... literally dead before I even stepped out of my house. Thanks storyteller...

-If you get lucky, you may get cargo pods (remember that only some things will deteriorate so you can leave blocks out forever until you need them)


(this cargo pod drop helped me replace some wooden walls, which I could cannibalize into other wooden structures, such as making a research table)

But wait! There's more!

From Pauper to Prosper:

-Remember to butcher and cook meat before eating if possible (greatly increases nutritional value, which extends food supply)
-Use harvested resources to create clothing to sell to traders
-Now you may build an armchair using harvested resources instead of wood
-If you do not want to wait, you can form a caravan to actively trade with / raid other villages.
-If you're experiencing food shortages, you may sell your pet when visiting another settlement, which will probably allow you to buy more food than the actual meat value of the pet while not being as traumatic
-When resources become available, build a simple research table and research hydroponics ASAP for a sustainable food source
-Once you have sufficient building material, be sure to put all resources into increasing hydroponics output and keep farming food production / hunting ahead of population growth
-Sometimes enemy settlements will have trees (especially if they're built in the tundra)
-Remember to take/harvest any building materials you can when raiding


Found a few trees to harvest during one of my raids

How to Get Food Without Resorting to Cannibalism

-If you have "multiple colonies" enabled, you should consider "settling" nearby tiles for short periods of time to find more animals to hunt / materials to harvest (especially if there are Ice Sheets nearby, which have *relatively* more resources to build with)
-Remember to raid nearby settlements (you can take all their animals in the process)
-Butcher the meat of any dead animals before hauling them back to save weight
-Manhunter packs will sometimes attack your settlement, meaning easy food source
-Sell crafted items to trade for food from traders
-Doing all of the above should allow you to hold out indefinitely even if there are no animals naturally entering the map (as was in my game)

How to Make a Defensive Stronghold with NO MATERIALS ... Click here to learn the truth!

-Defenses are too expensive to build, so you will have to use debris for now (debris still gives 50% cover compared to 65% from sandbags, which is better than nothing)
-Make sure to haul all debris from cargo pods to a dumping stockpile zone in the shape of the defense you want (set it to only accept "chunks")
-You can also place all dead raiders bodies in a series of graves parallel to your defensive chunk line 2 tiles behind
-Graves CANNOT be stood on, which means that anybody trying to melee your colonists CANNOT stand behind you, limiting them to attacking you from the side only


Defensive line example

-When your body count starts to skyrocket, you can also choose to put graves in front of the chunk line to further limit where the enemy can stand (raiders cannot stand on graves so it can potentially force ranged units to get in even closer than their ideal range)
-If you see an enemy raid being prepared, you can preemptively exhume all dead bodies and place them in the path between you and the enemy (will give all enemies the dead body debuff)

Enjoy the "hard" Sea Ice challenge! (and laugh as everybody else claims that cannibalism is the only way to survive)


Seems appropriate...

Hopefully this guide helped shed some insight on surviving the "impossible" sea ice. It really isn't has hard nor masochist as many make it out to be!

Guide Update for Beta 18 (some of the above information may be outdated for current patch)

I have revisited the Sea Ice challenge due to recent patch changes. Please note that the recent patches have seemed to decrease the amount of starting animals that spawn in Sea Ice. This hydroponics strategy will also ensure that migrating on the world map is unnecessary (for all of you super hardcore people out there)

-As such, it has become more pertinent to research hydroponics as soon as possible (WIth a Skill 7+ Intellectual, it should be easily done in about 7-9 days.
-Therefore, if no herds spawn at the start, you can ignore my recommendation to build a Butcher's Table + Electric Stove and instead opt for a Simple Research Station
-Remember that the sun lamp cannot be left on indefinitely, or it will be too much of a brain on the battery
-You must manually switch the sun lamp on and off to ensure that the battery is not used up (which will remove your heating ability
-The hydroponics bay can be constructed as follows (notice the double door design with the upper door set to "hold open" to ensure that the hydroponics setup is heated)




Also note that additionally, the new patch added the requirement that heaters can only be constructed by Skill 5+ construction colonists. Therefore, you must pick either a Skill 5+ colonist to start with or a Skill 4 colonist with an interest in construction (which will allow the colonist to level up to Skill 5 by the time the heater is being constructed.

Moreover, to compensate for the lack of starting animals there seems to be a higher frequency of "herd migration" events of up to 50 animals. You just take advantage of this and try to gun down as many as possible (charge rifle or any rapid-fire weapon you capture is best since collateral damage is good in this case.) As with the Muffalo mentioned above, you do not need to kill them or haul them yet; simply downing them is good enough. Try to figure out the path they are taking, and intercept them (they will run the opposite of gunfire.) Your objective is to keep them on the map as long as possible to max out the chance of them bleeding out. Once they touch the edge of the map, they will disappear forever.


Example of a herd migration.

Additional tip: Construct a single wall square to get more roofable stockpile

Asparagustasty's Sea Ice Challenge

Here are restrictions I set for my own playthough (not recommended for first run):

Personal Restrictions:
-No cannibalism or butchering of humans
-No selling of prisoners and their body parts or otherwise harming them
-No leaving starting tile (no access to world map / caravaning, regardless of circumstance)
-No savescumming to avoid disasters
-No construction of killboxes or other "gimmicky" setups abusing AI pathing; open bases only
-No eating pets
-No attacking of neutral or friendly human parties
-No purposeful production of hard drugs to sell for profit
-Must be played on vanilla with no mods whatsoever
-Must start with 3/5 Factions as enemies (I had 2 pirate, 1 tribal)
-Must not rely on starting animals on map (can't reroll the map to use my above Muffalo trick)
-Must win by constructing a ship that can fit all colonists (no partial evacuation)


Map Setup:
Difficulty Level: Extreme (it hurts so good)
Map Type: Sea Ice
Storyteller: Cassandra Classic
Scenario: The Rich Explorer
Temperature: Minimum
Rainfall: Maximum
Map Size: Ludeonicrous 400x400 (160000 cells)

[Syrett]

no cannibalism?

[MeowKitty]

As if bear grylls has ever survived alone in the arctic,. this fraud films his shows like 100 yards away from the highway with catering, U mean how to les stroud like a boss

[(>♡.♡)>]

So Im not sure if it was just bad RNG or if its a change in the game, but I had zero animals spawn the entire 14 days it took for me to starve, and I only got one event the whole time, which was a single raider. The no animals and the no battery research, I think the game has changed enough this guide is just no long applicable.

[(>♡.♡)>]

This guide needs updating. The start has gotten a lot harder because the rich explorer no longer starts with batteries researched, meaning you have to spend time researching as soon as you can spare, and you dont have enough wood to build the floors if you make a research table.

[Euli die Eule (PR✪)]

Very nice gameplay, really :D I have experienced a lot of drops (meteorites, supplies, people) were landing on my "ice plate", so it was a good idea to go for an electric smelter early because of the debris. Thats a lot of extra steel and this thing payed out after maybe 3 or 4 ingame days! Even a stone workbench can be useful, depending on the kind of meteorites falling on your ice plate.

[Luna]

I did it in a simlar manner, excluding the house, i would choose mountainous terrain and dig a hole into the mountain for a home

[Littlejon_LJ]

episode 2: One Man Caravan : Iceworld Escape.

[Coral ♦]

Piss-drinkers faction! This gets a like. :) This is great and in-depth guide of a lone survival artist.
When in doubt drink your pee.

[asparagustasty]

Yep, a recent patch has made it so that there are minimum construction requirements for heaters and win generators. See the addendum for the updated details, as this original guide was written a while ago.

[MajikBean]

Lol when I did this my construction was too low to make the wind gen.