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

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

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

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

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

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)
• RimWorld Wiki — Main Page (current versions, DLC list)
• RimWorld Wiki — Odyssey
• RimWorld Wiki — Gravship