RimWorld – Beginner’s Guide: How to Start, Tips, Tricks

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RimWorld can be a very difficult game for new players. The game doesn’t explain its mechanics properly, and you will have to face incredible dangers all the time.

If you make the wrong choices when choosing the game’s settings, you can find yourself losing all your colonists in a few days. There are many aspects of the game that most beginners will find overwhelming.

Recommended Read: How Do Batteries Work in RimWorld?

Luckily, once you understand what everything means, you can start choosing the best settings for your playstyle and actually survive to see your colony thrive.

To help you actually have fun playing this game, here is an extensive beginner’s guide for RimWorld, where we will tell you how to start the game properly.


Table of Contents


What is RimWorld and What Is Your Goal?

RimWorld is a colony-building simulation game where you have to control a few unlucky survivors and help them survive.

The planet you have found yourself on is called a RimWorld, and it features some of the worst things you can find in the galaxy.

There are also planets in the universe, called glitterworlds, that are utopias. Technology has reached its peak, and nothing bad ever happens there.

Your main goal in RimWorld would be to build a spaceship and leave the RimWorld in search of a glitterworld.

Building this spaceship will seem like a far-to-distant goal since you will need one of the most advanced colonies in the game to complete it. Before you can reach that point, you will need to know how to start the game properly.


How to Get a Good Start in RimWorld (Best New Game Settings)

When you select to start a new colony in RimWorld, you will be faced with a lot of settings and choices. These will influence everything regarding your playthrough.

This is why we will go through each part of the new game settings and guide you to set up the perfect start for a RimWorld beginner.

Best Scenario to Choose as a RimWorld Beginner

If you are still getting used to the ropes of RimWorld, then you should always choose the Crashlanded scenario.

This is the basic RimWorld starting scenario, where you get 3 colonists and a lot of resources to get you started. You will already know industrial-level technology, which will allow you to build some of the most useful things for your pawns.

However, if you have played a few times through the Crashlanded scenario and you have found it to be overwhelming, you can also play the Lost Tribe scenario.

This one is a lot more difficult than the Crashlanded scenario, but it will start you with less technology. You might wonder why this would be less overwhelming.

Well, having less technology means that you have fewer things to build. Every time you research something new, you will immediately put it to use.

Playing the Lost Tribe scenario also gives you more people, allowing you to experiment more and learn how to use a decent-sized colony from the start.

Best Storyteller Settings for a RimWorld Beginner

The way difficulty works in RimWorld is that you choose one of three storytellers who have very different personalities.

What the storyteller represents is the way the game will process and give you events, raids, illnesses, and so on.

Though you might think that Cassandra Classic might be normal difficulty, Phoebe Chillax easy, and Randy Random hard, they actually don’t work that way.

Cassandra Classic will send you challenges that get from really easy to extremely hard in a balanced and steady way. In many ways, Cassandra Classic can be the hardest storyteller since she is completely consistent in the rise of difficulty in the mid to late game.

Randy Random can actually be either extremely easy at times or horrifyingly hard. Since the general difficulty and consistency of raids are random, your experience might be confusing as a beginner.

The best choice would be Phoebe Chillax since she will give you enough time to learn how to build your base, while also giving you tougher and tougher challenges.

The difficulty that could be considered fair and normal in RimWorld has to be “Strive to survive.” In many ways, it offers the best experience since you don’t get any real buffs or debuffs.

However, as a beginner, you should choose “Community builder” or “Adventure story,” based on your experience with strategy games.

Last but not least, you should not play the commitment mode (ironman mode). Since you will fail very often and make a lot of stupid mistakes, you will need to play the reload anytime mode.

So, to summarize, these are the best storyteller choices for a beginner in RimWorld:

  • Phoebe Chillax
  • Adventure story
  • Reload anytime mode

Best World Settings for a RimWorld Beginner

This might be the point where most new players get confused. In general, you should not change anything here.

Though you might be inclined to increase the globe coverage to 100%, you will most likely not last long enough for that to matter.

Just leave everything as it is, as these settings are the most balanced and efficient for a beginner.


How to Choose a Great Colony Location on the World Map in RimWorld

Your next step will be choosing a starting site for your colony in RimWorld. This is where most beginners make mistakes without realizing it and find out only after the game has started.

When you select a tile on the world map, you will also see a lot of details appear to the left. That is very important information that you will need to use to choose your starting location.

The first thing you will see is the biome type (temperate forest, desert, tropical rainforest, etc.). This is the most vital part when choosing a location.

For beginners, the best choice for a starting location in RimWorld is the temperate forest. Always choose a location that has this biome.

Temperate forests are very normal, the temperatures are usually ok, the resources are abundant, and there are many animals to tame and hunt.

Since getting food will be a huge problem for a beginner in any other biome, temperate forests are a must.

The next thing you should look at is the average temperatures and the growing periods. Don’t choose a location that has incredibly low temperatures in the winter or incredibly high in the summer.

Preferably, you should choose a tile that has a year-round growing period, since this way you can grow crops all the time. Otherwise, you will have to stockpile and refrigerate food to prepare for winter.

The last thing you should also look for is rivers. A good river going through your colony will help you handle electricity a lot better than most other sources of energy.

So, the best starting location in RimWorld for beginners should have these attributes:

  • Temperate forest
  • Average temperature: around 16°C or 61°F
  • Growing period: Year-round
  • River

How to Choose Your Colonists in RimWorld (Essential Skills)

The last step before you can begin playing RimWorld is selecting your colonists. You will have a list of 8 random colonists and you will have to choose 3 (Crashlanded scenario) of them to be your colony’s starting crew.

You can also randomize these colonists to change their skills, health status, gender, and so on. After checking through the 8 colonists, you would be better off randomizing rather than keeping the best.

Usually, as long as they don’t have horrible traits or age, everything should be good. What matters most is their skills.

Colonists will have a starting level in every skill and some flames next to them. The flames represent their passion for that skill and how fast they will learn how to become better at it.

One flame means that they have a minor passion for that skill, and two flames mean that they have a burning passion.

With minor passion, they learn that skill 100% faster, and with a burning passion, they will learn it 150% faster.

Usually, passion represents how good a pawn will be in a skill, not their starting level. A colonist with level 10 in Medicine but no passion for it is worse than a level 3 Medicine with a burning passion.

Colonists can have passions for more than one skill at a time, and these passions will never change or disappear.

Here is how the skills of your colonists should look like in RimWorld:

  • 2x Colonists with passion in Medical
  • 1x Colonist with passion in Intellectual
  • 1x Colonist with passion in Plants
  • 1x Colonist with passion in Construction
  • 1x Colonist with passion in Mining

If you have a crew of colonists at the start that has passion in these 5 skills, then they will easily survive until you can recruit more.


Tips to Survive the Early Game in RimWorld

Now that you’ve chosen your starting colonists and have started the game, it is time to go over some tips to survive in RimWorld.

Tip #1 – Don’t Try to Build Too Much, Too Fast

You will start building a beautiful base for your colonists, but since there are only 3 or 5 of them, they won’t be able to build some kind of sanctuary.

Most likely, they will build one room in a whole day. Try to plan your base out over a couple of days, while doing your best to offer mediocre shelter in the first days.

Tip #2 – Build Defenses and Get Weapons Fast

RimWorld will throw a lot of dangers at your colony. It’s best to build walls and defenses as soon as your pawns have a nice place to sleep.

If you don’t have good defenses, at least make sure you have weapons for each one of your colonists. They will surely need it when the raiders will start flooding in.

Tip #3 – Start a Farm as Soon as the Playthrough Starts

Though there will be many moments when you think that you have more food than you need, that is something you should appreciate.

If you don’t plant some rice right from the start, then you will wonder why your pawns are all starving. You need a constant supply of food from somewhere, and farms do just that. Berries and wildlife will only get you so far.

Tip #4 – Keep Your Colonists Happy

You should do your best to keep your colonists happy. At first, it might not seem like a priority, but you will see how annoying mental breaks are once they happen.

Angry colonists can stop working for days, beat up other people for no reason, or even burn down the whole base. Make sure to set up a work schedule where they have enough free time.


That’s everything you need to know about how to start as a beginner in RimWorld!

Have any input or suggestions for this guide? Let us know in the comment section below.

Adrian Oprea

Based in London, United Kingdom, Adrian Oprea is a Guides Writer. As a professional single-player RPG player, Adrian has often been stigmatized. He has decided to pour his frustration into writing guides!

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