In a survival sim such as RimWorld, having more people to work for you can make or break your campaign.
However, getting new survivors to your colony might be harder than you expect, especially if you are at the start.
Recommended Read: How to Get Steel in RimWorld
Some people will just hate your guts from the moment they meet your settlers, so recruiting new colonists requires some knowledge.
Here is how you can get more colonists in RimWorld and turn your settlement into a powerful, unstoppable faction.
Table of contents
Ways to Recruit Colonists in RimWorld
There are quite a few ways to get new colonists in RimWorld:
- Recruit Prisoners
- Rescue Hurt Wanderers
- Quests
- Buy Slaves
- Tame Wild Colonists
How to Capture and Recruit Prisoners
The best way to get more colonists in RimWorld is through prisoner mechanics. You can get dozens of new pawns easily using this technique.
As you know, there are occasional raids where raiders, pirates, and generally hostile factions, will want to destroy your camp or steal some of your goods.
If you manage to beat them and find out that one or two of them are alive, you can capture them and, while they are in your prison, select to recruit them.
Your warden will then spend time befriending these prisoners and try to convince them to join your colony.
Not only can you capture and recruit the occasional raiders, but you can also capture wild humanoids that are wandering around your colony, traders, random fallen colonists, and basically anyone.
The beauty of this technique is that it works almost every time, and you just need to have patience.
To recruit a colonist that you have captured, just click on them, select the Prisoner information tab in the bottom left corner, and then toggle the Recruit option.
By capturing colonists, you can also convert them to your Ideology, giving you an easier chance to befriend them and work together long-term.
Also, if there are random settlers on your map, you can always go raiding and capture one of the locals where you went raiding.
This is the easiest way to get recruits if you are in dire need of one.
Rescuing Wanderers
Another way to recruit colonists in RimWorld is to save hurt wanderers that either fall from the skies or are part of a random event.
The problem with rescuing these wanderers is that often the game will tell you that it is their choice if they will join you after you save their life.
This is why, most often, it would be better to just imprison them, since you will help them out anyway and can control if they will join you or not.
However, this is the morally correct way to get colonists in RimWorld, so if you care about being a good guy, you should always save wanderers and see if they would like to join you afterward.
Getting Colonists through Quests
There will be many various quests where the game will hint that you can gain a colonist by doing a random task.
You can go on an adventure to save a random person, keep someone in your colony for a while, and then they will join you, or you will have to fight some raiders that are following the colonist to kill them.
With so many quests, depending on your storyteller, you will easily get a colonist here and there to join your settlement.
The problem with this technique is that it is completely random. If the storyteller isn’t kind to you, you might not get a recruiting event for weeks.
Purchasing Slaves
There are caravans that will come from time to time to visit your colony that may sometimes bring slaves with them, which you can buy.
If you really need to get some people urgently, you can always start a caravan yourself and head over to a close settlement that might have slaves for sale.
To start a caravan in Rimworld, you just need to:
- Click the World button in the bottom right part of the screen.
- Select your settlement.
- Choose the settlement you want to go to.
- Select the team and resources you want to bring with you.
- Once the specified time passes, you will reach the settlement and will be able to trade with the locals.
Taming Wildlings
The last way to get recruits in RimWorld is to tame the wild pawns that are living around your settlement.
The problem with this technique is that you need a really high Animals skill for one of your colonists. You will need level 10 Animals skill to even start recruiting a wild survivor.
If you want to tame a wild humanoid easier, you can also capture them and tame them in your prison. This makes taking care of them simpler and will allow you to avoid getting beaten up in the woods.
That’s everything you need to know about how to get more colonists in RimWorld!
Have any input or suggestions for this guide? Let us know in the comment section below.
