RimWorld has come a long way since its initial launch in November of 2013. Back then, a lot of what made the game great today was simple and barebones. Through regular content updates and multiple expansions, the team at Ludeon Studios has crafted one of the greatest story-generating colony sim games in this niche genre. But it’s the modding community that carries the torch forward. They’ve introduced the community to total overhauls, eyebrow-raising inclusions, and, of course, the ever-beloved quality of life mods. Let’s explore a few of those that many of us long-time players can’t do without!
Neat Storage
One of the earliest rooms you’ll construct for your base—or, at the very least, that you should construct—is a storage room for everything you brought in the crash landing. If left outside in the weather and the fauna, your packaged food will quickly deteriorate. But no one wants to walk over junk on the floor, right?
Neat Storage enables clean, aesthetically pleasing storage solutions for everything from raw resources to clothing to weapons to body parts. The shelves are simply, mwah, gorgeous to look at.
Character Editor
You’ll encounter a wide variety of pawns during the creation process, most of which feature an abundance of quirks, high and low skills, passions, and even injuries. It’s random, and you could very easily get screwed over by the in-game character generator.
If you’d rather have a little more agency over your colony, a tool like Character Editor will allow you to completely resculpt a pawn into anything you desire. From a pyromaniac god-like character with maxed out abilities to a child warrior turned scientist incapable of cleaning or menial labor, it’s all up to you now!
Smarter Construction
Let’s be honest with ourselves, pawns in RimWorld aren’t the sharpest tools in the shed. Sure, they’ll satiate their basic needs if left to their own devices, but for everything else, you need to take an active hand in ordering them about. If you want something built, it’s up to your planning expertise. Need a food source, yep, it’s up to you.
Pawns tend to construct entire structures randomly, sometimes leading to roof collapses that wipe out whole colonies or trapping a pawn inside an airless room. With Smarter Construction, those mishaps are a thing of the past. They’ll build smart, leaving paths open for trapped pawns, and construct walls and supports in such a way that solidifies the building.
Filth Vanishes With Rain and Time
Occasionally, as in rarely, I’ll play a peaceful colony that focuses on farming, ranching, or selling crafted resources like a merchant. But more often than not, RimWorld devolves into its usual dangerous, destructive planetary war as always. When a fight happens, all the blood, mud, and scorch marks remain until you send out your pawns to clean the place.
But not anymore! With Filth Vanishes With Rain and Time, the next time those rain clouds appear overhead, they’ll help cleanse the land and leave your settlers feeling content and devoid of dirty, germ-ridden thoughts.
Color Coded Mood Bar
Every minor and major incident in the game affects your pawn’s disposition. From a lack of food to too few recreational devices to a raid to discovering an underground network of tunnels leading to the ultimate bug hive beneath your base, your pawns will either roll with the punches or roll on the floor. But you can’t take steps to help them overcome such challenges with a clear head if you don’t understand their mood better.
Sure, you could just go into the mood tab of their character HUD, but who has time for that? With Color Coded Mood Bar, a glance at the top of the screen will tell you everything you need to know. If your pawn’s portrait is red, look out!
RimWorld is available now on Windows PCs, and its latest expansion, Odyssey, launched on July 11.
About the Author
