---
title: "RimWorld: Survival & Colony Guide"
game: "RimWorld"
game_url: "https://qna.gg/games/rimworld"
author: "Qloud"
author_url: "https://qna.gg/players/Qloud"
topics: ["Maps"]
summary: "A colony survival guide for RimWorld 1.6: your first days, food, power and research, keeping colonists sane, defending against raids, and a quick primer on each expansion, including Odyssey's gravships. Researched…"
url: "https://qna.gg/g/rimworld-survival-colony-guide-674fc524"
published: "2026-09-27T16:25:27.829Z"
updated: "2026-09-27T16:25:27.829Z"
source: "QnA.GG"
---

# RimWorld: Survival & Colony Guide

A colony survival guide for RimWorld 1.6: your first days, food, power and research, keeping colonists sane, defending against raids, and a quick primer on each expansion, including Odyssey's gravships.

*Researched September 2026 — current as of version 1.6.4850 (June 2026) with DLCs through Odyssey. Check the linked sources if something differs.*

## Quick Start

1. **Pick Cassandra Classic on a lower difficulty** for your first colony. "Community Builder" or "Adventure Story" give you room to learn.
2. **Crashlanded is the standard start.** Three colonists with supplies. Look at their skills, and at their **passions** (flame icons), which make them learn faster and enjoy the work.
3. **Day 1 order:** stockpile zone, growing zone, shelter with beds, a cooking spot, then a research bench.
4. **Food is the first crisis.** Plant rice (fast) or potatoes (tolerates poor soil), and hunt carefully. Don't hunt animals with a high revenge chance, and skip boomalopes near your base.
5. **Build a freezer early.** Raw meat and meals rot fast without one.
6. **Wealth drives raid size.** The storyteller scales threats to your colony's wealth, so don't hoard junk or build pointless luxury early.
7. **Moods matter as much as hit points.** Colonists with bad moods have mental breaks. Private bedrooms, a dining room and recreation keep them stable.
8. **Set work priorities.** Switch the Work tab to manual priorities (numbers 1-4) so your best cook cooks and your best doctor treats.
9. **Save before risky moves,** or turn on Commitment Mode only once you're comfortable.

## Setup Choices

### Storytellers

| Storyteller | Style | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| Cassandra Classic | Rising tension with regular pauses | First games |
| Phoebe Chillax | Long gaps between threats | Building-focused play |
| Randy Random | Anything can happen at any time | Chaotic stories |

### Difficulty

**Peaceful**, **Community Builder**, **Adventure Story**, **Strive to Survive**, **Blood and Dust**, **Losing is Fun**, plus a Custom option. Start at Adventure Story or lower.

### Scenarios

| Scenario | Start |
|---|---|
| Crashlanded | 3 colonists, supplies, weapons |
| The Lost Tribe | 5 tribal colonists, low tech, slow research |
| The Rich Explorer | 1 colonist with good gear |
| Naked Brutality | 1 colonist, nothing. For veterans |

Expansions add more scenarios. Odyssey lets you start with a gravship.

### Biome and map

For a first game, pick a **temperate forest** or **arid shrubland** tile with a long growing season, next to a river (for watermills) or rich soil, and preferably in a **hilly** area so you can dig in. Avoid **ice sheet**, **sea ice** and **extreme desert** until you know the game.

## First Days Checklist

1. **Stockpile** near where you'll build. Haul the crash supplies in.
2. **Growing zone:** rice (fastest), potatoes, and later corn (slow but huge yields). Add **healroot** once you have a grower with the skill.
3. **Shelter:** One room with beds (a barracks is fine on day 1). Wood walls go up quickly, but they burn. Stone blocks are better.
4. **Cooking:** Build a **campfire** or fueled stove and cook **simple meals**. Raw food and bad hygiene cause **food poisoning**.
5. **Research bench** early. Start with **Electricity** unless you have a clear reason not to.
6. **Freezer:** a small room with a **cooler** venting to the outside and double doors or an airlock to keep the cold in.
7. **Medicine:** Keep herbal or industrial medicine in a stockpile near beds. Assign a doctor.

## Core Systems

### Colonists, skills and work

- **Skills** go up by doing the work and decay slowly at high levels. **Passions** (one flame = interested, two = burning) boost XP and give mood when they do that work.
- **Traits** matter: **Pyromaniac** (random fires), **Abrasive** (starts fights), **Industrious/Hard Worker** (faster work), **Tough** (takes less damage), **Kind**, **Iron-willed** (fewer mental breaks), **Wimp**, and others.
- **Incapable of** (for example "incapable of violence") can't be changed. Check it when you recruit.

### Mood and mental breaks

| Mood source | How to help |
|---|---|
| Sleeping in a barracks or on the ground | Private bedrooms, even small |
| Ate without a table | Dining room with a table and chairs |
| Ugly or cramped rooms | Space, floors, art, cleanliness |
| Lack of recreation | Horseshoes pin, chess table, TV later |
| Darkness | Lamps in work and sleep areas |
| Pain, injuries, dead colonists | Medical care, funerals, time |

Low mood causes **minor, major and extreme breaks**, from food binges to fire-starting and berserk rampages. Watch the mood bar and fix problems before they cascade.

### Power

| Source | Notes |
|---|---|
| Wood-fired generator | Early, needs constant wood |
| Solar generator | Daytime only, cheap and reliable |
| Wind turbine | Needs a cleared area; output varies |
| Watermill | Needs a river, steady output |
| Geothermal generator | Needs a steam geyser, very strong |
| Batteries | Store power for night and eclipses |

Keep batteries in their own roofed room away from anything flammable. A "Zzzt" short-circuit event can discharge them in an explosion and fire. A **solar flare** knocks out electrical devices for a while, so keep non-powered backups for food and heat.

### Research priorities (common path)

1. **Electricity**, then **Batteries** and **Solar panels**
2. **Air conditioning** (coolers for the freezer)
3. **Stonecutting** and **Complex furniture**
4. **Hydroponics** if your growing season is short
5. **Gun smithing** and **Machining** for weapons and armor
6. **Microelectronics** (opens comms console, TV and more), then the **multi-analyzer** tier

### Temperature and events

- **Heat waves / cold snaps** kill without climate control. Coolers and heaters (or campfires) save lives.
- **Toxic fallout** poisons anyone outside. Keep colonists indoors and grow indoors with sun lamps if it lasts.
- **Volcanic winter** blocks sunlight for crops and solar.
- **Manhunter packs** and **infestations** (insect hives under overhead mountain) are common threats. Don't mine deep under overhead mountain without being ready for bugs.

## Defense

- **Wealth management:** Raid points scale mostly with colony wealth, and also with your colonist count and combat-capable animals. Sell or destroy useless stockpiles.
- **Choke points:** Wall the base and funnel raiders through a defended entrance. A **killbox** uses cover and walls to force enemies through a line of fire.
- **Cover:** **Sandbags** and walls reduce hit chance. Use the Draft command and place colonists behind cover.
- **Turrets:** Mini-turrets distract and chip damage, but they can explode. Keep them away from colonists.
- **Weapons:** Assault rifles, sniper rifles and chain shotguns become available through research and trade. Put good shooters on long-range guns and brawlers on melee.
- **Armor:** Flak vests and helmets early, **marine armor** later.
- **Doctors and medicine** decide whether a raid costs you colonists. Build a hospital room with clean floors and hospital beds.

Common threat types: **raids** (tribal, pirate, outlander), **siege** raids with mortars, **mechanoid clusters**, **drop pod raids** and **sappers** who dig through walls.

## Endgame: Leaving the Rim

- **Ship to the stars:** Research the ship parts, build a ship and survive the launch countdown.
- **Journey offer:** A quest to reach a distant ship.
- **Royalty:** Host a High Stellarch to leave with the Empire.
- **Ideology:** The **Archonexus** ending, a multi-colony journey.
- **Anomaly:** The **void** ending, reached by studying the monolith.
- **Odyssey:** The gravship doesn't win the game by itself, but it opens new ways to explore and relocate.

## The Expansions

| DLC | Released | What it adds |
|---|---|---|
| Royalty | 2020 | Titles, psycasts, the Empire faction, quests, persona weapons, techprints |
| Ideology | 2021 | Ideoligions with memes and precepts, rituals, roles, slavery, styles |
| Biotech | 2022 | Children and families, genes and xenotypes, mechanitors, pollution |
| Anomaly | 2024 | Monolith, entities, containment, void study, psychic rituals |
| Odyssey | July 11, 2025 | Gravships, orbit, new biomes, landmarks, fishing, unique weapons |

### Odyssey: gravships

- **Getting one:** A quest drops a **grav engine** onto your map early on, or you can start with a gravship scenario.
- **Minimum ship:** grav engine + **gravship substructure** (the floor it builds on) connecting a **pilot console**, at least a **small chemfuel tank** and at least a **small thruster**.
- **Fuel:** chemfuel, 10 per tile traveled with a 50 minimum. Each **fuel optimizer** cuts that by 30% (two max, 60% total), but the 50 minimum still applies. Set up chemfuel production (a biofuel refinery) before planning long trips.
- **Size:** The engine starts supporting up to 500 tiles of substructure. Each **grav field extender** adds 250, up to 2,000 with six.
- **Useful parts:** **Grav anchor** (keeps the tile you left instead of deleting it), **fuel optimizer**, **gravcore power cell**, **signal jammer** (for defended orbital sites).
- **Orbit:** Fly to asteroids, orbital platforms and satellites for loot. Vacuum and oxygen matter, so keep your ship sealed.
- **Biomes:** Glowforest, Scarlands, Grasslands, Glacial plains and Lava fields.
- Update **1.6.4566** (August 2025) improved gravship quality of life. The launch interface now handles loading animals and mechanoids and removes visitors.

### Which DLC first?

- **Biotech** if you want families, genetics and mechanitor play. It's the most-recommended system DLC.
- **Ideology** if you want roleplay and custom colony rules.
- **Royalty** for psycasts and a fighting-focused power curve.
- **Anomaly** for horror and a tougher threat mix.
- **Odyssey** if you want mobile colonies and exploration.

## Common Mistakes to Avoid

- **Hoarding wealth early.** Raids grow faster than your defenses.
- **No freezer.** Meat rots and colonists starve.
- **Cooking without hygiene.** Food poisoning in a small colony can wreck a week.
- **Barracks for too long.** Mood penalties cause breaks.
- **Wood everything.** Fires spread quickly. Use stone for key walls.
- **Mining under overhead mountain carelessly.** It invites infestations.
- **Recruiting everyone.** Bad traits and "incapable of" cause problems. Recruit with care.
- **Fighting in the open.** Always use cover and chokepoints.

## Advanced Tips

- **Separate work areas with zones** (Allowed Areas) to keep colonists out of danger during raids and to stop long hauling trips.
- **Build a single central hub** with the kitchen, freezer and dining room close together to cut travel time.
- **Use schedules:** Give night owls night shifts and set recreation time so mood stays up.
- **Prisoners** are colonists, organ donors (morally questionable), or trade goods. Recruiting good prisoners is the main way to grow early.
- **Caravans** reach trade settlements and quest sites. Pack food and bring pack animals.
- **Mods:** RimWorld has deep Steam Workshop support. Popular quality-of-life mods include **Harmony** (a dependency), **Allow Tool**, **Common Sense** and **Pick Up And Haul**. Check each mod supports 1.6 before adding it.
- **Performance:** Late colonies can get slow. Fewer animals, smaller maps and performance mods help.

## FAQ

**What's the current RimWorld version?**
1.6.4850 (June 8, 2026). It's a small patch compatible with existing saves and mods; among other fixes, it made heavy bridges immune to explosions and gave new ancient bridges zero market value to avoid wealth spikes on ruin maps.

**Which storyteller is best for beginners?**
Cassandra Classic on Community Builder or Adventure Story.

**How do I stop raids from getting so big?**
Manage wealth: sell junk, don't overbuild luxury early, and build defenses that scale.

**What's the best DLC?**
Biotech is the most commonly recommended. Pick based on the playstyle you want.

**How do I get a gravship?**
With Odyssey, a quest drops a grav engine on your map, or you can start with the gravship scenario. Then build substructure, a pilot console, fuel tanks and thrusters around it.

**Why do my colonists keep having mental breaks?**
Check the Needs tab. Usually it's shared bedrooms, no dining table, no recreation, darkness or bad food.

**Can I play on Steam Deck/console?**
Yes. The PC version runs on Steam Deck, and a separate console edition exists with its own version numbers.

## Sources

- [Steam News — RimWorld (Update 1.6.4850, 1.6.4566)](https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/294100)
- [RimWorld Wiki — Main Page (current versions, DLC list)](https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Main_Page)
- [RimWorld Wiki — Odyssey](https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Odyssey)
- [RimWorld Wiki — Gravship](https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Gravship)