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CoMiGo's ZARS Core Enhanced

This mod rebalances, enhances and expands ZARS Core mod, allowing for fun and pretty balanced walkthroughs with zero resources in extreme conditions!

Though the nerfes in this version may seem overkill, I assure you that playing on an ice planet (-80 deg Celsius) on Blood and Dust was actually a breeze (Vanilla + ZARS content only, no other mods), and the current balance state actually provides interesting economical challenges.

Supports Cookie's Copper mod! 🎉

Short manual for new players:

This mod is oriented for extremely hot/extremely cold walkthroughs. For true experience, change the temperature of the planet to extreme. You will need at least one good crafter and one good farmer.

• Build a room from snow/dirt/sand walls. Add additional wall cells to later put doors into them for easier expansion.
  
• Start gathering mineral dust on crafting spots.
  
• In ice sheets or similar cold scenarios, make tiny campfires.
  
• In California, make evaporation holes to save you from heatstrokes.
  
• Mineral dust can be turned into mineral water — your first food source. Boil it at tiny campfires.
  
• Then, switch to farms. Desert scenarios base their walkthrough on fibrous haygrass. Arctic walkthroughs base their progression on glittery crystals. Both can be planted with special harvest spots that cost no ingredients but require sand/ice to build upon.
  
• Proper crops will need at least bonfires to grow stuff indoors, and those will need wood. You can make wood by compressing fibrous haygrass at the crafting spot.
  
• Both arctic and desert conditions can plant fibrous haygrass in harvest pots.
  
• Your colonists will have hard time surviving outside. Avoid long trips. For defence, set up traps around the colony and lure enemies inside your base.
  
• Fibrous hay can be used to make clothing that provides a bit of insulation.
  
• Advanced materials can be received by smelting nuggets received after shaking dirt with sieves. Sieves are tiered, and you will need better sieves for more rare resources.
  
• You can smelt nuggets on a campfire, but you will get higher yields with specialized buildings like electric smelter or fueled smithy.

Tips for ZARS veterans:

• This version of ZARS is obviously balanced towards vanilla experience, and requires using vanilla structures and materials for survival. Glittery crystal will not be your go-to building material anymore.
  
• You will need bigger farms — old sowing pots were simply broken in sense of their balance. But now you're more flexible in what you sow.
  
• Campfires are your friends! Especially for a tribal start.
  
• Wood production, alloy making and other manufacturing requires smart logistics. And these materials are essencial for progresion.
  
• Deserts and ice sheets are perfect for the cheapest power source on RimWorld: Wind turbines!
  
• Wood generators heat enclosed areas and generate stable energy needed for sunlamps.

Changes compared to the original ZARS Core:

• New scenario: Abducted. A tribal start for ZARS experience.
  
  
• Less OP glittery crystal material — slower growth, small HP and reduced beauty of items buil with it. Simple crystal tiles do not provide cleanliness boost. But glittery crystal can also be refined into a much better material!
  
• Reinforced steel + crystal material: glittery alloy. A material that is a bit better than steel and puts a better use for it.
  
• New mid-to-late game flooring: carefully cut glittery tiles and metallic plates made of a special alloy. Both are considered as quality flooring by royal asses, and both provide small boost to cleanliness.
  
  
• Less OP glittery crystal net campfires (the ones that don't need a refill): they produce less heat and support at best +5 Celsius, are more costly, and are now merely a tool to light corridors and survive solar flares.
  
  
• Less OP harvest pots. 70% fertility for harvest pots, 100% for slag boxes.
  
• Fibres & crystals are not sensitive to fertility
  
• Harvest pots and slag boxes use vanilla crops instead of fake ones, resulting in vanilla production speed. Harvest pots and slag boxes support more crops, though: smokeleaf, hops, and rice.
  
  
• Early game sieves produce fewer kinds of materials.
  
• The finer the sieve, the harder it is to collect resources.
  
• Sieves now produce copper from Cookie's Copper mod (if enabled). Copper may be resoldered from scraps similar to other nuggets.
  
  
• Fusion cores and bonfires now have a lit radius helper.
  
• 2 research projects for fusion cores. Rebalanced fusion generators to make them mid-to-late power sources, not the starting point of your colony.

Enjoy, luberfoot! (⊙ヮ⊙)/





[comigo.itch.io]
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