There is a mechanic that many RimWorld players won’t use for a very long time during their first playthroughs.
Creating caravans and traveling around the world map is one of the most profitable things you can do in your spare time.
Recommended Read: What to Do With Corpses in RimWorld
Caravans can help you find the exact resources you need and even get you to some incredibly easy raiding locations.
So, here is an extensive guide on caravans and traveling in RimWorld, to allow you to fully use the whole generated map.
Table of contents
- How to Travel Around the World Map in RimWorld
- How to Form and Send a Caravan Successfully in RimWorld
- Traveling on the World Map in RimWorld
How to Travel Around the World Map in RimWorld
To use and travel around the world map in RimWorld, you will need to form a caravan.
A caravan is a group of pawns that leave your settlement together and move around the world map tiles.
Going out yourself to trade on the world map will allow you to get rid of excess produce at your own pace and get exactly what you need when you need it.
Since you can also choose where your caravan will go, you can trade with friendly settlements that also give more resources and items to trade than normal random merchants.
How to Form and Send a Caravan Successfully in RimWorld
To form a caravan in RimWorld, you need to press the World button to open the world map and select your settlement.
You will then find an option in the bottom left side of the screen which will allow you to “Form caravan.”
Planning Caravan Route
The first thing you will have to do after you have selected the “Form caravan” option will be to choose your travel destination
You can also make your own route to the destination by placing waypoints where your caravan will have to go through.
Once you right-click to select a destination or waypoint, you will also see the amount of time it will take to get there, how much of the food needed for the trip can be foraged, and if the animals you take with you can graze.
Also, roads and paths on the world map will make your journeys quicker, as the difficulty of the terrains can be halved by them.
Choosing the Pawns and Items for the Caravan
Depending on the choices of pawns and animals that you plan to take with you, the formation of the caravan can take a short time or a really long time.
Having no pack animals with you in a caravan will allow your pawns to quickly prepare and leave the settlement. However, you will most likely have an incredibly low mass capacity.
If you want to carry a lot of items, you will need animals with you. However, you will have to go and lead each one of them to the edge of the settlement map, which can take hours.
Each being has a different mass capacity that will be relevant for your caravan in RimWorld:
- Humanoids: 35 kg
- Elephant: 140 kg
- Bison: 84 kg
- Muffalo: 84 kg
- Horse: 84 kg
- Dromedary: 74 kg
- Yak: 74 kg
- Donkey: 49 kg
- Alpaca: 35 kg
Once you have selected the colonists and animals, press the Items tab to select which items you want your caravan to carry.
On this screen, you will see their general prices and weight. The more mass the items you carry, the slower you will move on the world map.
You will also have access to another tab, the Travel supplies tab, which, in general, you won’t necessarily have to go into.
The game will automatically give your caravan the required amount of food they need for the journey.
However, if you want to micromanage, you can go in there and select the food that your pawns will eat during their trip.
The food will be chosen automatically based on the pawns’ diet, so if you want them to carry lower-quality food, just change their food restrictions.
Leaving the Settlement Fast
When you press Send, your caravan will start forming, and it will prepare to leave your settlement.
Depending on some things, this can take a really long time. The first thing you need to do is make sure your Caravan hitching spot (found in the Misc building category) is placed next to your warehouse or resource stockpile.
This is where your pawns will bring all the resources and animals for the trip. This needs to be close to your resources so everything can be packed more quicker.
The second thing you will need to do is to select the Work tab on the bottom of the screen, turn on “Manual priorities,” and set Haul as a number 1 priority for all your pawns.
If you want your caravan to leave fast, then you will want all your colonists to help pack and prepare.
Otherwise, the 3 to 4 caravan group will have to do everything themselves, and this can take more than 7 hours.
Before you leave your settlement in RimWorld, make sure you increase the recreation of all of the pawns that will leave.
They won’t have any opportunity to properly increase that stat during their travels, so maxing it out before leaving is a must.
Otherwise, you risk them having a mental breakdown during the trip. This isn’t as bad as it is at the settlement, but it will slow the caravan down.
Traveling on the World Map in RimWorld
Once your caravan has left the settlement, you can just control its course at any time by selecting it on the world map and then right-clicking to guide them.
They don’t necessarily have to head over to the chosen location. You can also tell them to stop one tile before their destination if you want to choose if they enter the location at night or morning.
There are a couple of actions your caravan can take in RimWorld:
- Move – Right-click to select a destination
- Enter back into the colony – Right-click the colony.
- Split – Click the Split button. Every caravan must include at least one colonist.
- Merge – Click Merge to combine two or more caravans that are on the same tile.
- Trade – When a caravan arrives at a friendly faction outpost, players can start trading by clicking the Trade button.
- Attack – A caravan can assault any faction outpost, regardless of their relationship status. This will worsen relations.
- Offer gifts – If your relationship with a faction isn’t good enough to trade, you can try to fix things by giving them presents.
- Settle – To start a new colony, click the Settle button. You may not establish a new colony if you are currently at maximum. The maximum value is one by default. Going into the Options in the main menu allows you to extend this to up to five. Players can’t settle right next to their own colony or any other community.
The caravan will stop at night to rest and will eat the food you gave by itself. You won’t have to do much as it heads for its destination. When the caravan reaches its destination, you will get a notification.
Ambushes
There might be some problems along the way, such as ambushes, where you will have to fight some raiders or animals. Make sure to send pawns on this trip that can defend themselves.
At your destination, if it is an ancient complex or a location that you can enter with your pawns, you will then have to reform the caravan to leave the place.
You can do this from the world map by selecting the caravan. However, if the option isn’t available, it means that your pawns are near enemies, and they can’t automatically leave.
Once you do manage to get rid of the enemies, you can now reform the caravan and set its destination to go back home.
That’s everything you need to know about caravans and traveling in RimWorld!
Have any input or suggestions for this guide? Let us know in the comment section below.
