RimWorld — Step-by-Step Walkthrough (v1.6 / Odyssey Era)

RimWorld is a sci-fi colony sim — think Dwarf Fortress meets Firefly. You manage colonists ("pawns") stranded on a frontier planet, building a settlement that survives raids, mental breaks, weather, and each other. There's no single "correct" path, but this walkthrough covers the optimal progression from day 1 to every ending type.

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Phase 0: Game Setup (Before You Land)

Choose Your Storyteller

Choose Difficulty

• Strive to Survive (3/6) — the intended first-run difficulty. Challenging but fair.
• Blood and Dust (4/6) or losing is fun (6/6) — for veterans of the genre. You will lose colonists.
• There's also Custom — you can tune raid points, disease frequency, etc. individually.

Choose Scenario

• Crashlanded (default) — 3 colonists, mixed supplies. The classic start. Start here.
• The Rich Explorer — 1 colonist with lots of gear. Higher difficulty, more personal.
• Lost Tribe — 5 colonists, tribal tech level, no electricity. Harder early game.
• Naked Brutality — 1 colonist, no clothes, no items, no food. The ultimate challenge.

Choose Your Landing Site

The world map is procedurally generated. Key factors:

• Biome: Temperate Forest or Arid Shrubland are the most forgiving. Avoid Extreme Desert, Sea Ice, or Ice Sheet for your first game.
• Terrain: Look for a tile with:
• A river or coast (fishing, natural defense)
• Mountains nearby (mining, defensible base)
• Fertile soil (farming) — look for brown/green patches
• Growing season: year-round or at least 30+ days
• Roads nearby (trade access)
• Factions: More nearby factions \= more trade and quest opportunities, but also more potential enemies.

Generate Your Colonists

You can randomize indefinitely. Prioritize:

Must-have skills (at least one colonist with high level):

• Construction (8+) — building is constant early game
• Medical (6+) — injuries and disease are inevitable
• Cooking (6+) — food poisoning is a real killer
• Shooting (6+) — defense
• Plants/Growing (6+) — farming

Nice to have:

• Intellectual/Research — tech progression
• Crafting — tailoring, smithing
• Melee — last-ditch defense

Trait red flags (avoid on first run):

• Pyrophobia (firefighting panic)
• Chemical interest/fascination (drug binges)
• Abrasive (social friction)
• Incapable of: Dumb labor, Violent, or Skilled labor (limits what they'll do)

Tip: You can keep hitting "Randomize" until you get a team you like. Don't settle for colonists with "Incapable of Dumb Labor" — that's a death sentence for a small colony.

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Phase 1: Day 1–3 (Survival Mode)

The first few days are about establishing bare survival. Speed is critical.

Step 1: Pause Immediately

Hit Spacebar. RimWorld is a pause-and-plan game. You should spend more time paused than running.

Step 2: Zone Your Starting Area

• Designate a Stockpile zone near where your supplies landed. Set it to "Critical" priority so colonists haul supplies first.
• Designate a Dump zone (1x1 or small) for rubble/rocks, set to low priority.

Step 3: Build Shelter (First Day)

• Build a barracks: a simple 9x7 (or larger) wood or stone building. Include:
• 3 beds (or sleeping spots if short on materials)
• A fueled stove \+ butcher table (or a campfire \+ butcher spot if tribal)
• A horseshoe pin or chess table (recreation — colonists need this!)
• Build wood walls and a door — walls matter more than a roof for early defense.
• Don't overthink layout — this is a temporary shelter. You'll move to a proper base later.

Step 4: Secure Food

• Hunt any nearby wildlife (select a colonist, right-click animal, "Hunt"). Prioritize larger animals like deer/muffalo — more meat per effort.
• Zone a growing area: Plant rice (fastest growing, 3-day cycle in good soil). Start with at least a 10x10 plot.
• If you have packaged survival meals, ration them — they're finite.

Step 5: Set Work and Restrict Tabs

• Open the Work tab. Ensure each colonist is assigned to the tasks they're good at. Pay special attention to:
• Patient — keep enabled for everyone (they need to go to bed when hurt)
• Firefight — enable for everyone
• Flick — enable for everyone
• Haul — enable for everyone
• Clean — enable for everyone
• Open the Schedule tab. Set everyone to "Anything" with 1 hour of "Recreation" in the evening and 2 hours of "Sleep" at night. The default schedule is fine — just make sure they have recreation time.

Step 6: Build Basic Defenses

• Build a wooden spike trap corridor or at minimum, position your colonists behind cover (walls, trees) during raids.
• Designate a defensive position — a choke point where enemies must approach from one direction.

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Phase 2: First Week (Establishing the Colony)

Step 7: Research

• Build a Simple Research Bench (requires 50 wood). Assign your best Intellectual colonist to research.
• First research priorities:
• Stonecutting — convert stone chunks into usable stone blocks (better walls than wood)
• Electricity (if not already available) — unlocks solar panels, batteries, electrical devices
• Sterile materials — for a clean room (medical/research bonus)
• Machining — unlocks machining table, components, and eventually guns

Step 8: Upgrade Walls

• Replace wood walls with stone block walls (especially exterior walls). Wood is flammable. One fire raid can end your colony if everything is wood.
• Build a perimeter wall around your base area with a single choke-point entrance.

Step 9: Establish Power

• Build a solar panel (or wind turbine if you prefer).
• Build a battery — critical for storing power overnight (solar panels don't work at night).
• Wire everything with conduits or just place devices adjacent to the power source (shorter \= fewer points of failure).
• Warning: Batteries can short-circuit in rain. Keep them indoors, and build a roof over them immediately.

Step 10: Improve Food Production

• Expand your growing zone. Add corn (longer growing time, higher yield) alongside rice.
• Build a cooker stove (electric) if you have power. Set it to cook simple meals.
• Build a freezer: Enclose a room, put a cooler in one wall pointing inward (blue side \= cold), set target temperature to -2°C (28°F). This prevents food from spoiling.
• Butcher table → process animal corpses into meat \+ leather. Set a bill to "butcher creatures" with "Do until you have X" targeting \~100 meat.

Step 11: Set Bills and Production

Every workbench uses a "bills" system. Click the workbench → Add bill → configure:

• Stove: "Cook simple meal" → "Do until you have 10" → repeat for 20, 30 as you grow
• Crafting spot / tailoring bench: "Make apparel (pants, shirt)" → enough for everyone
• Smithing (when available): "Make weapon (bolt-action rifle)" → at least one per colonist

Step 12: Mood Management

This is where new players lose colonies. Colonists have needs:

• Food — they eat when hungry. If you're cooking meals (not raw food), they get a mood bonus.
• Rest — they sleep in beds. Better beds \= better rest.
• Joy/Recreation — they need recreation daily. Build a horseshoe pin, chess table, telescope, or TV.
• Beauty — they're happier in clean, beautiful rooms. Put floors down, clean up blood, make art.
• Comfort — chairs/armchairs at workstations and dining tables help.
• Space — don't cram them in tiny rooms. Give them some breathing room.

If mood drops too low → Mental Break:

• Minor break: insulting spree, sad wandering
• Major break: fire-starting spree, destroying items
• Extreme break: berserk rage (attacks everyone), catatonia

Prevention: Keep mood above 35% threshold. Check the Needs tab on each colonist regularly. A "mood bar" on the colonist bar shows their current state.

Step 13: Get More Colonists

You start with 3\. More colonists \= more work done. Methods:

• Capture raiders: Down (don't kill) an enemy raider → capture → recruit. Build a prisoner bed and set a colonist to "Warden" work to chat with and recruit them.
• Rescue crash survivors: Watch for "A refugee is being chased" events. Help them → they may join.
• Slave trading (Ideology DLC with appropriate memes) — not recommended for first run.
• Children (Biotech DLC) — colonists can have and raise children naturally.
• Naturally wandering in: Occasionally, a wanderer will arrive and ask to join.

Population note: The storyteller scales raid difficulty to your population. More colonists \= harder raids. Don't expand too fast.

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Phase 3: Early-Mid Game (First Quadrum to Year 1)

Step 14: Build a Proper Base Layout

By now you should have stone walls, power, and food. Time to think about base design:

Recommended layout:

• Central courtyard with paths
• Bedrooms — individual 3x3 or 4x4 rooms for each colonist (mood bonus from personal space)
• Dining room / recreation room — a shared space with a table, chairs, recreation items, and art
• Kitchen \+ Freezer — adjacent rooms with the cooler between them
• Hospital — a clean room with a vitals monitor and hospital beds
• Workshops — crafting, smithing, tailoring, machining rooms (keep them separated to manage beauty/temperature)
• Prison — 1-3 prisoner beds with a door
• Storage — central stockpile (use shelves when available)

Key principle: Build into a mountain if possible. Mountain bases are:

• Immune to drop pod raids (enemies can't drop into your base)
• Natural insulation (stable temperature)
• More defensible
• BUT: Risk of infestations (bugs spawn in dark, underground areas). Keep mountain rooms lit.

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Step 15: Defense Upgrades

• Perimeter wall with a single entrance
• Killbox: A designed choke point where raiders are funneled into:
• A narrow corridor with spike traps
• Sandbags for your colonists to shoot from behind
• Turrets (when researched) covering the approach
• Mortars (when researched) — for sieges and large raids. Build 1-2 mortars and keep shells stocked.
• Defense in depth: Multiple layers — traps, then turrets, then colonists behind cover. Don't rely on a single layer.

Step 16: Temperature Management

Critical, and often overlooked by new players:

• Cold biomes: Build heaters, insulate walls, use wood/stone (not metal — it conducts cold).
• Hot biomes: Build coolers, use ventilation (vents in walls between rooms).
• Base rule: Keep living spaces 17-25°C (63-77°F). Outside that range, colonists get mood penalties and eventually hypothermia/heatstroke.
• Freezer: Keep at -2°C or below for food storage.
• Power outages: Heaters and coolers stop when power is out. Have backup campfires/wood fires ready.

Step 17: Expand Research

Key mid-game research priorities:

• Microelectronics — unlocks hi-tech research bench, components
• Gunsmithing → Precision Rifling — bolt-action rifles, then assault/charge rifles
• Mortars — for siege defense
• Geothermal power — constant, weather-independent power (if you have a steam geyser nearby)
• Medicine production — craft your own medicine instead of buying it
• Plate armor / Flak armor — better protection than cloth

Step 18: Animal Husbandry

• Tame animals by setting a colonist to "Handling" work and designating a taming target.
• Good starter animals:
• Muffalo — pack animal for caravans, wool, meat, milk
• Dogs — hauling, guarding, companionship
• Chickens — eggs, rapid breeding
• Build a barn or animal area (zone with roof, hay storage, animal beds).
• Warning: Over-breeding can cause food shortages. Cull or sell excess animals.

Step 19: Trade and Caravans

• Build a comms console and orbital trade beacon to trade with passing ships.
• For ground trade, caravans will visit if you have roads nearby.
• Forming caravans: Select colonists → "Form Caravan" → choose destination → pack food and a pack animal.
• What to sell: Excess food, clothing, weapons, sculptures (art is high-value), drugs (if you have the right crops/research).
• What to buy: Medicine (always), components, advanced weapons, AI persona cores, books (v1.5+).

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Phase 4: Mid Game (Year 1–2)

Step 20: Advanced Medicine

• Build a hospital room with:
• Hospital bed(s)
• Vitals monitor
• Sterile tile floor
• Medicine stockpile nearby
• Train a dedicated doctor — assign one colonist high Medical skill and keep them home during raids.
• Bionics: Research and craft bionic parts (eyes, arms, legs) to upgrade colonists. Each bionic part improves a specific function.

Step 21: Advanced Combat

• Equip every colonist with a rifle (bolt-action → assault → charge rifle as tech improves).
• Flak/plate armor for everyone — even a simple flak vest dramatically improves survival.
• Designate a militia: In the Assign tab, set all adults to a "militia" loadout. They'll grab weapons when drafted.
• Sniper team: 1-2 colonists with bolt-action/precision rifles for picking off enemies at range.
• Melee block: One colonist with a club/sword and shield in a doorway to block attackers while ranged colonists shoot past them.

Step 22: Quests

Watch for quest notifications (blue envelope icon top of screen). Quests offer:

• New colonist recruits
• Rare items (persona cores, advanced weapons, bionics)
• Wealth and faction goodwill
• Warning: Read carefully. Some quests are traps — defending a crashed ship part can spawn mechanoids, and some "guest" quests can bring dangerous entities.

Quest types include:

• Hospitality — host a group of visitors for X days. Keep them happy → reward. Let them die → faction penalty.
• Prisoner rescue — go to a site, rescue a prisoner, they may join.
• Item stash — raid a location for valuable items.
• Peace talks / Deserter / etc. — various diplomatic missions.

Step 23: Ideology (If You Have the DLC)

• Choose or design your colony's belief system (ideoligion).
• Each ideology has memes (core beliefs) and precepts (specific rules).
• This affects: building style, clothing preferences, food rules, rituals, social roles, and what makes colonists happy/upset.
• For first run: Choose a simple, permissive ideology. Avoid extreme memes like "Cannibal," "Rancher" (if you can't support it), or "Nudist" (unless you want the challenge).

Step 24: Royalty (If You Have the DLC)

• The Empire faction will offer quests. Completing them grants your colonists royal titles.
• Higher titles \= more psychic powers (psycasts) but also more demands (throne rooms, fine food, bodyguards).
• Psycasts include: focus, painblock, berserk, invisibility, skip (teleport), and more.
• Royal title progression: Freeholder → Yeoman → Acolyte → Knight → Praetor → Baron → Count → Duke → Stellarch
• Each title requires specific room quality, apparel, and food for the holder.

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Phase 5: Late Game (Year 2+)

Step 25: Advanced Infrastructure

• Geothermal generators on every geyser — constant, free power
• Deep drill \+ ground-penetrating scanner — for mining resources you've depleted
• Fabrication bench — craft advanced components, bionics, and late-game gear
• Multi-analyzer — boosts research speed when placed next to hi-tech bench
• Autocannon / Mini-turret upgrades — automated defense
• Transport pods — launch colonists and supplies across the world map

Step 26: Mechanoids (Biotech DLC) or Mechanoid Threats

• Without Biotech: Mechanoids (centipedes, lancers, pikemen) are endgame threats. They raid in clusters, are hard to kill, and drop from ship parts. Use armor-piercing ammo, EMP grenades, and concentrated fire.
• With Biotech: You can build your own mechanoids. A mechanitor colonist can gestate and control:
• Light mechs: (lifter, constructoid, agrihand, miner, fabricor) — labor
• Medium mechs: (tunneler, legionary, militor, tesseron) — combat
• Heavy mechs: (scorcher, centurion, diabolus) — heavy assault
• Mechs produce pollution — you'll need to manage it (wastepacks, pollution-absorbing pods, or just spread it out).

Step 27: Children and Families (Biotech DLC)

• Colonists can form romantic relationships → get pregnant → have children.
• Children grow through life stages: baby → child → adult (you can tune the growth speed in settings).
• Children can do light work and eventually become full colonists.
• Gene extraction and xenohumans: You can modify colonists' genes to create super-soldiers, nocturnal workers, fire-resistant pawns, etc.
• Warning: Managing children during raids is challenging. Have a safe room.

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Phase 6: Endings

Ending 1: Build a Spaceship (Classic Ending)

• Research the Ship computer core (requires an AI persona core — found via quest, trade, or deep scanning).
• Research Ship reactor, Ship engine, Ship coolant, Ship sensor cluster.
• Build all ship parts in an open area (they're large).
• Launch the ship → 15-day countdown begins.
• During the countdown, every faction on the planet attacks you. Defend for 15 days.
• Board the ship with at least one colonist → credits roll.

Ending 2: Royal Ascent (Royalty DLC)

• Progress a colonist to the Stellarch title (the highest royal rank).
• The High Stellarch will request to visit your colony.
• Host them safely → they'll invite your colonist to leave the planet with them.
• Accept → credits roll.

Ending 3: Archonexus (Ideology DLC)

• Research and build the Archonexus structures (requires multiple stages).
• You'll need to sell your colony to other factions at intermediate stages and rebuild elsewhere — twice.
• At the final stage, complete the Archonexus → a new reality is formed → credits roll.

Ending 4: Void Awakening (Anomaly DLC)

• Capture and study anomaly entities (fleshbeasts, shamblers, void creatures).
• Progress the anomaly research tree until you can awaken the Void.
• Defeat the final entity → credits roll.

Ending 5: Odyssey (Odyssey DLC, v1.6)

• Build a gravship (player-built flying ship).
• Travel across the planet, exploring exotic biomes, ancient sites, and space stations.
• Find and defeat the mechanoid lair.
• This is more of an open-ended exploration endgame than a fixed ending.

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Ongoing Priority Checklist (Refer Back Anytime)

Always Be Doing:

• [ ] Researching (assign at least one colonist at all times)
• [ ] Growing food (expand farms as population grows)
• [ ] Making better weapons and armor
• [ ] Keeping mood above threshold (check Needs tab regularly)
• [ ] Building beauty (floors, sculptures, plants)

Seasonal Check:

• [ ] Winter is coming? Stockpile food, check heating, ensure warm clothes
• [ ] Growing season ending? Harvest all crops, replant indoors if possible
• [ ] Toxic fallout / volcanic winter? Move all animals and colonists indoors, seal the base

Raid Preparation:

• [ ] All colonists have weapons (assign in the Assign tab)
• [ ] Defensive positions ready (sandbags, cover, choke points)
• [ ] Traps maintained and reset
• [ ] Doctor and hospital ready
• [ ] Mortars and shells stocked (if available)

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Common New Player Mistakes

• Building everything out of wood. Fire raids will destroy your colony. Stone walls ASAP.
• Ignoring mood. A berserk colonist with a charge lance can kill 3 others before you react.
• Not cooking meals. Raw food gives mood penalties and food poisoning risk. Always cook.
• Expanding too fast. More colonists \= harder raids. Don't go from 3 to 10 in one week.
• No freezer. Food rots. A freezer room is essential by week 2\.
• No recreation. Colonists need joy. A chess table costs 30 wood and saves lives.
• No defenses before first raid. First raid comes around day 5-10 depending on difficulty. Have something ready.
• Not having a doctor. Injuries from raids, hunting, and disease need treatment. Untreated wounds → infection → death.
• Ignoring beauty/cleanliness. A dirty, ugly base tanks everyone's mood. Sweep, floor, and make some sculptures.
• Drafting everyone for every fight. Keep colonists undrafted and let them auto-fight unless it's a specific tactical situation. Drafted colonists won't eat, sleep, or seek cover.

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DLC Quick Reference

Recommendation for first run: Base game \+ Royalty \+ Biotech. Add Ideology and Anomaly on your second run. Odyssey if you want the latest content.

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Mod Recommendations (For After Your First Run)

RimWorld has one of the best modding communities in gaming. After your first playthrough, consider:

Quality of Life:

• Allow Tool — better stockpile management
• Camera+ — zoom further out
• Color Coded Mood Bar — mood indicators
• RimHUD — better pawn info display
• Better Pawn Control — manage work/pawn assignments more easily

Gameplay Expansions:

• Vanilla Expanded series — adds content that feels like official DLC (cooking, brewing, fishing, more, etc.)
• Combat Extended — realistic ballistics, ammo system, more tactical combat
• Hospitality — improved guest/visitor system
• Giddy-Up! — ride animals

Getting mods: Steam Workshop (easiest if on Steam) or the official RimWorld forums. Use the Mod Manager mod to help manage load order.

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This guide covers RimWorld v1.6 with all DLCs through Odyssey (July 2025). The game is actively developed by Ludeon Studios. Check the official site and RimWorld Wiki for the latest info.