Every time I open this game I lose all motivation. It's too difficult for me, even on easy settings. Obviously I'm still trying because....well here I am..
For real, it’s a struggle, I started with the tribe so I could get a couple extra people and started only building in 13x13 (counting walls) squares so my simpleton mind can manage 😂
That is how I feel with about pretty much every other colony simulator game. I'm always overwhelmed as fuck by the mechanics and lose motivation to keep going.
At first I turned on God mode and just built out crazy looking bases and then threw raids at them until they collapsed. Then I started playing the game normal but with character edit at the start and made God roll characters. Now I go back and forth from all the starting scenarios and biomes and play until the colony dies. Cheating here and there when it makes the game more fun to me.
FJ manages to condense the most important starting information into 1 hour. FJ: "I hope this was mildly informative for you." Um. Yeah ... "mildly" 😉 Seriously, though, well done 🙂 I watched the whole hour even though I do not consider myself a beginner anymore. And I still learned some new things 🙃
"From awful to, uh slightly less awful." Man, I love your videos for ONI and this game. I learn so damn much; and just the right amount of cheek to keep them fun too.
Instead of clicking on every tree and checking their growth level I prefer to create a growing zone containing some trees and disable sowing (as for ambrosia) so that pawns will go and collect wood when trees are fully grown
Even better: install the Colony Manager mod, create a manager's desk, and once a day (or whenever you set it to), one of your colonists will mark trees for cutting if you're below a certain a amount of wood. Same for ambrosia, hunting, etc..
@@RFC-3514 Last I heard Colony Manager has a sizeable TPS cost, so moderately to heavily modded colonies (or even just large colonies) might experience FPS drops with that installed. It might have been fixed. Also, it's extremely convenient - for many, the TPS cost is worth the QoL.
@@r3dp9 - I have no idea what you heard, but Colony Manager only runs while a pawn is at the desk, executing tasks (which is something that typically happens for a couple of seconds each day - or whenever you set the tasks to run, of course, but for most tasks there'no point in running more than once a day). It can cause a noticeable pause (when pawns go to the desk) if you select the "check actual path to objects" options (i.e., where it calculates the nearest trees to cut based on the exact path, instead of just the distance in a straight line). If you leave it set to the default method (straight line distance) even that pause is generally unnoticeable.
You don’t need mods to automate harvesting only fully grown trees. You can just set up a growing zone over a large area and deactivate sowing. Pawns will automatically harvest fully grown tree, similarly to ambrosia. A good place to put that zone is inside your animal pen. Grazing will clear space for trees to grow and woodcutting will clear space for grass to grow such that everything will be slightly more productive.
Yep, but it still requires setting up the areas, so might as well just research tree sowing and have them harvest _and_ sow trees in those areas. What some mods (like Colony Manager) do is add a task that makes pawns mark nearby trees on the map for cutting, if the amount of wood is less than some limit you set (ex., once a day your "manager" pawn will check how much wood you have and, if it's less than 300, will mark some nearby trees for cutting). That way they don't waste time cutting trees if you still have wood (as they would if you defined explicit areas). Basically, it gives your pawns a bit of common sense.
Did not figure out that zone for tree cutting trick, looks to also harvest berry bushes and heal root as well. Will be using that in future to save time.
I love your tutorials FJ. I learn something new every time, and your earlier tutorials helped get me into the game. Don't worry if it's too long, they're a joy to watch
I think a lot of people still have long memories of when caravans would get hit with raids appropriate to the colony's wealth and not the caravan's wealth, so your poor solo trader would get hit with an 80 enemy surprise attack and have to deal with it all on their own. It _seems_ like it's more reasonable these days, but I haven't looked at the actual threat scaling to be sure. I mean, there's a lot of additional responses in the DLCs too, but it feels like caravan ganking is a lot less of a threat than it used to be.
IIRC caravan raids scale to the caravan only, with a multiplier based on how "hidden" the caravan is. That's how it seemed to work last I played. That said, I haven't read of anyone documenting the feature, and the wiki is barebones as usual (likely on account of no-one having documented the relevant testing yet). I also play "lightly" modded, so take my experience with a grain of salt. In any case, 1 pawn caravans get incredibly easy ambushes, especially if said pawn has a gun, jump pack, armor, and consumables such as go juice or lances for emergencies. If sending more than 5 pack animals, it might be a good idea to send multiple pawns or have a combat team ready to be launched via drop pod or far skip. Far skip on a caravan pawn is an obvious get-out-of-ambush-free card.
Very enjoyable race through early Rimworld. As a beginner this video might have overwhelmed me, but a few hundred hours in, I’m able to focus on a few handy mechanics i haven’t experimented with yet. I’ll definitely be giving them a try next time through. Thank you!
"Analysis Paralysis" is 100% my biggest weakness, and I never had words for it until now. Looking forward to my next start of dwarf fortress with this newfound knowledge.
I to suffer from "Analysis Paralysis" trying to make everything perfect means you never get anything done. My coping mechanise is to give myself artificial restrictions like the 18x17 boxes and fit the best bedrooms you possibly can in there with mid game material. Before I did that I was looking at jade and weird shaped rooms, totally wasted hours of my time for no benefit. Hope you figure out how to mange it better, it never really goes away.
@@FrancisJohnYT You've hit the nail on the head. The biggest problem is the constant, "is this right?" When doing a layout, and, looking back, just deciding "this is my design, that's what I'm using" is the strategy I've gone with. Of course, with games like rimworld and dwarf fortress the possibilities just go on and on, so simply deciding to go with this arbitrary layout I think is the only option, lol.
Over a 1000+ hours of rimworld, and Francis can still teach me some of the basics of the game I was totally unaware of. Excellent video! Now I really need to catch up on the biotech series. I'm lagging behind by almost 10episodes now. XD
God, I complained on one of your other Rimworld videos that I needed to find a noob guide because I just couldn't keep up with the craziness of the DLCs.... and a month or two later.... Francis provides! So excited for these!
26:08 A little hint for new players: If you're planning on running on Simple meals for a while and don't have access to coolers, it can be useful to make 2 bills. First one on the list should only use meat, 2nd one can include vegies. That way, your Muppets will make sure to use the meat which goes bad faster, but will fall back to using vegies if no meat is available.
I'm a big fan of tribal runs and can go years without a fridge. Keeping the number of prepped meals reasonably low, and cooking the meat first, make it quite easy. My current tribal nomad run was about seven years in before we researched electricity and built a fridge.
I would also add that you should set bills to make 6x the number of colonists. This gives 3 days of food and simple meals deteriorate in 2.5 days. It does mean you will have food to feed prisoners, or if someone goes on a food binge. At worst you will lose a few meals to rot, but still not have a mass of food. Rice, potatoes and corn last an absolute age. You can have decent stocks of these and never need a freezer.
@@kerrymoore1961 tribal runs change the strategy a bit. You want pemmican made first, then make simple meals of the meat only. While pemmican does rot, it takes very long to, making it good food for caravans
I just started my journey a couple nights ago. Thank you for the effort you put into this. I've watched a bunch of guides that were really good but this was great.
Something I'd add, even in early game, make bedrolls for your caravan people. They're amazingly good at keeping their mood up by avoiding that 'slept on the ground' negative mood buff.
3:14 Marble's good for statues, but limestone's a better building material than marble. It's nearly as tough as granite or slate (one of those; forget which one) when making walls. 12:57 The expanding home zone is for firefighting so your buildings don't burn down at the start. :) it gives your pawns (and you) a wake up call if a wildfire is coming close to your base. For this reason, I like putting firefighting on a "1" priority in work settings. 22:55 Just hope there's no horse lovers viewing your video (~) 31:24 (also 49:10) You can also craft blunt weapons (clubs) out of stone to reduce the chances of death when attacking the enemy. (Since this is vanilla/no dlc, you don't have to worry about "Strong melee damage" gene.)
@@luzhang2982 With breacher and sapper raids now, I pretty much only want sandstone on a tile, anything else is a benefit, but the ability to rebuild walls fast is majorly important.
Awesome tutorial, I played a lot during the alpha and beta days and hopped in again yesterday and apparently forgot everything, twas such a sad short colony. Really made my day to see a part 2 video in the queue
I like how FJ does a compare/contrast of potatoes vs rice like that's the reason it's always his main food supply. Also, crazy. I've played this game for hundreds of hours and still learn new things from FJ. Truly a master of the human leather crafts
More of a pro guide than beginner, no mention of traps or keeping wealth low until you're prepared to handle the extra threat that excessive wealth can create. On the whole though, not bad. :)
One of the benefits of nutrient paste that you didn't mention is that it is the highest ratio of nutrition input to output of any meal in the game; If you focus on other things, like making each colonist their own little room instead of the statue'd barracks route, then you can offset the penalty to a degree. Separating out the butchery from the rec room would also give a mood buff on that front.
@@luzhang2982 Only for babies, young children that don't have an adult's nutrition capacity (and even then they suffer a -5 moodlet, so it's -1 mood worse, and it gets even worse for baby food if you have ideoreligion precepts that ignore nutrient paste quality, or ascetics), and small animals that find 0.9 nutrition to be too much for a single meal and thus waste a lot of volume (eg. chickens). At a 5:10 ratio it's consuming .25 nutrition to produce 0.5 nutrition in 0.05 doses (200% efficiency), while nutrient paste consumes 0.3 nutrition to produce 0.9 nutrition, or a 300% efficiency, and also doesn't need a cook to procure (such meals can also be mass-produced and stored in a freezer using the zoning/draft trick, too).
I should have mentioned that, it's just I suppose I never found nutrition hard to come by on a temperate forest tile. That nutrition saving could be useful during a toxic fallout. I much prefer having everyone on +5 mood meals all the time and I find it much easier to keep everyone stable.
coming back to rimworld after a while, this video is perfect for someone like me who has ADHD lol. i always appreciate when someone moves this fast while explaining.
I understand that feeling, I find myself watching most videos on x2 speed as they feel way to slow to watch. It's the reason I try and cram so much into tutorials as I don't want to waste peoples time.
"They'll plant animals slower." I did not realize this is how animals worked. I lived my entire life up to this point believing that animals were born. I WAS LIED TO!
Apols for the necro but one politely suggests that as Scandinavia has pidgeon fields there is nothing that we can take as writ from those lunatic scienceish folk.
Also, 13x13 with walls (meaning 11x11 room space) it subdivides nicely into useful sizes (3x3, 5x5, 3x7, 7x7, 3x11, 11x23, etc.) that connect with 3-wide hallways (creating good choke points that let 3 melee pawns hit a single enemy) and fit most buildings (except for a couple that are 4 or 6 tiles wide). No pillars needed, easy to organise, and easy to defend against infestations, etc..
I like 11x11 spaces (13x13 walls), but objectively speaking it's not very space efficient - at least not with central doors on all four sides. I'm currently experimenting with 11xN rooms, where N varies by room type, and 11x11 rooms with only a single entrance. I still haven't found a solution I'm happy with, but have learned to be fond of 3 wide main corridors.
@@r3dp9 - 11x11 is just the main "room grid". You can obviously knock down the walls between two rooms and make it 11x23 (as mentioned above), or any other size that still fits. And you don't need a corridor around _every_ room (nor does every room need to be 11 tiles wide in either direction; even 3x3 works fine for some rooms). The 11 is just the limit to avoid pillars (i.e., never more than 11 [13 counting walls] in both directions at the same time). 3-wide corridors (with choke points) are ideal because they let 3 melee paws hit 1 enemy stuck in the door (or provide cover for 2 ranged pawns, if the enemy stays at a distance). There would be a more interesting layout with hexagons but it would require ceilings to hold up 2 tiles further from walls than they currently do. With the current ceiling distance limit, hexagons won't work well with beacons or sun lamps.
@@r3dp9 Shockingly enough, I do not always place the doors in the middle at each side 🙃 E.g. my workshop has worbench - door - workbench - door - workbench on one side 🙂
make it a morning task to right click the allow button and hit allow all this will unset all the animals that had been killed by other animals if you do this every morning you almost never need to hunt
There are other buildings besides butcher tables with cleanliness debuffs: starting with machining tables with -2, smithies and hydroponic basins with -3, art benches and stonecutter's tables with -5, ending with crematoriums with whooping -20
I feel like this is a mechanic of the game that got forgotten about. Like the developers were going to have the clean stat affect more things but forgot about it after a while, like the plan changed.
I've played this game on and off since before the full release, but have always been trash. There's a lot I'm learning here, best practices I failed at. I'll be going through your content attentively, you're impressively concise and informative. Good stuff.
The core thing I have learned is, send a bloody trade caravan. I do not do that, I am as social ingame as I am in real life. I also don't mass hunt to get money. But in hindsight, of course that's the right strategy. Kill things, get loot, make money, make friends. Using dogs as meatshields does throw me off but it makes me want to give them cybernetics. I just adore the idea of a raider bursting into my home and seeing a beautiful chrome cyberdog, steel fangs driven with pneumatic strength.
Learning to Trade in the early game means you don't have to wait several years to research the tech necessary to make guns or get flak vests. A few decent guns and some armour in the early game make a huge difference.
Great stuff FJ. A couple of additional tips I like to use that I'll throw in here. 1. You can plant daylilies indoors to increase the beauty with just a torch or lamp. I usually do a 3x3 plot and it helps a good bit. You could do roses, but they live less time so are more time consuming to maintain. 2. For the kitchen, if you have a spot of rough hewn stone on the ground (I forget the actual name, but the slate ground spots on your map are them) you can build your kitchen there instead of on dirt and it will be naturally clean (0.0 cleanliness) to help with food poison chance.
2. point was true in the past - natural stone flours were always clean, but it was changed in 1.3 update and all natural floors get dirty outside the dirt itself
@@Jfk2Mr right. Sorry. Dirt can still be tracked in and they need to be cleaned but they’re a base 0 cleanliness when cleaned instead of the negative that dirt is
@@illegalotter Well, said -1 cleanliness is not an issue - dirt does not track on itself (thus it stays at -1), so to get food poisoning due to dirt (cleanliness
For anyone new to RimWorld, please keep in mind that this is only one way to ease into the game, it's certainly not the only way. There are many valid ways to start to learn the game. If you're interested in creating different kinds of stories, leaning into odd character traits and different biomes will yield very different results. However, if your primary interest is to dominate the environment and only see positive outcomes to actions (which is willfully missing out on large parts of the experience imo) then by all means, Francis offers largely solid advice. What makes RimWorld special is how many different things and ways you can find to enjoy the game, there's no right or wrong outcome, just outcomes. "Failures" are often far more memorable than successes.
Man you speak fast but clear also very informative and entertaining video you’re helping me a lot hopefully you can continue to make content on rimworld!
A part of me wants to get into Rimworld because the "story generation" aspect of it means it will give experiences and stories that other games just can't really do. However, I keep putting it off because I feel like there's so many things you need to be aware or mindful of at all times, especially before you've established things at the beginning that I fear that I'll forget or overlook a thing or two that'll cause problems and then I'll miss something while putting out that fire that'll start another fire and then end up in a death spiral and loose the colony before it feels like I've really even gotten started. Maybe watching this tutorial series will help clear some things up and demystify the game a bit more for me.
When I first started, I had similar concerns. However, Rimworld gives you plenty of ways to experiment. One option is to play your first colony at a really low threat level. Peaceful will throw almost no enemies at you, so you can play around with a ton of the game mechanics without as much pressure. Sure, you won't end up using the combat/defense mechanics, but you also don't have to worry about your first base dying while you're just trying to find your way through the basics. Or you can play all your colonies like that, focusing on base building and not fighting. Also, you can change the threat level at any time. If you start getting bored or just get to a place where you're interested in experimenting with combat, you can go into settings and raise the threat level whenever you want. Finally, if you play in reload anytime mode, when something goes wrong you can go back and replay the scenario differently, which can be especially fun and useful when learning combat. Play with positioning your pawns differently and using different weapons. Rimworld is complicated, and a lot of videos showcase people playing at high levels of skill and difficulty. If that isn't your comfort zone, don't feel pressured to leap in an play like that. Some people are fine with playing for days, having their colony implode, laughing about it, and starting over. Others won't enjoy that. For me, the beginning of the game isn't as interesting as the mid-game, so if I'm really enjoying a colony but it falls to ruin, I sometimes reload a save from days or weeks before (real time), one where the colony had gotten past early development, and then I restart its story and go from there. Other times I start from scratch. Everyone has different ways to enjoy Rimworld, and while FJ is showing some great, optimal ways to set things up, forgetting to do them won't doom you. Most people who play Rimworld don't set their game up nearly as well as this but still play well and have a blast.
If you remember just one rule, "dont amass a ton of useless wealth" then rimworld is quite forgiving on lower difficulty, and you can just rise it once you learn and start to feel that game is to easy.
Just go for it. Start on just the base game, even if you have the dlcs. Even a failed colony is fun, and starting new colonies is one of the best parts of the game. It does not take long to learn the basics, and you will just carry on learning as you play. I am many thousands of hours in and I still learn things. It is a game that is very, very worth the money and worth taking a chance on playing.
took only a few vids to make this a fave sub. nice work. I'm very glad I watched the part about the kitchen floor...omg was I mismanaging that. Some preferences for me: a) manage walkways and keep pawns and their dirt out of the kitchen. keep the butchery off the main path while still adjacent to the kitchen? bonus b) do not place tables/etc. where pawns could be under roofed locations dependent on a single wall segment. Try to avoid fully depending on single walls for large sections of roof if possible c) wake-up-grab-meal-eat-go is a key behavior that I want to minimize the walk time on if i can. d) i always place my horseshoe pit outside, and some distance away from early buildings, since IIRC it cannot be relocated and early buildings are subject to redesign/etc. However I now see the advantage of having it much closer and inside.
Adding a roof zone 3 tiles out from your walls acts as a firebreak that blocks plant growth, negating the need to fight fires outside even wooden walls.
Kitchen and food Tip: - a pawn needs 2 meals a day. Rice can last 40 days, Meals only last 4 days. Do not make too many meals. you want a 3-4 day buffer. more in lategame. - make sure to not make your fields too huge. you have a limited amount of time in a day, and rice is labour intensive per unit food. - in the Bill Details: Check "pause when Satisfied" and set it to 3-6 meals remaining: this prevents the cook sprinting for the kitchen every day because you have 19/21 meals. it basically forces the cook to be more efficient by making the bill cook in larger batches, being only active when you Start to run out. - the 4x Meals are also only more efficient when it comes to hauling: the cook will pick up only what he needs for a single item by default. Time/raw food is identical with four single meal orders. - you can make Kitchen efficient with 2 shelves at either side of the kitchen with raw ingredients, ordering the cook to "drop on floor", and most importantly! placing a low priority single square stockpile where he sits/stands. (so that the meal drops and is properly counted. Without it the bill is endless until haulers pick them up from between his feet.)
thing to note about the homezone. Is that your survivors will only put out fires if it reaches inside your homezone. If you're building stuff out of wood or building large farms its good to have the homezone go beyond the boundary of these a little bit so that your people will do some proactive fire safety.
I may be way late to the party and by no means an expert in the game, but when you shrink that home zone and there is a fire, they will not go put anything out outside your home zone. I actually expand my home zone to get a good jump on fires when they start close to my base to get my pawns putting out the fire before it gets out of control. As I said, I do not have alot of time in the game, but that is my understanding of it.
5:10 On addictions: Most addictions are absolutely horrific to deal for a starting colonist at best incapacitating them for the duration of the withdrawal and at worst driving their mood down so low that they try to kill another colonist, themselves, or your stuff. However, Ambrosia addictions are probably the one acceptation to that, as the withdrawal period is rather short and the negatives quite minor (a minus 10 mood and I think some other negatives), so that addiction is usually not a deal breaker you really want that pawn for some reason or another. 29:00 On downing and killing enemies: Rimworld has a built in system so that a non player controlled pawn will have a percentage chance on dying upon incapacitation via certain damage types like frostbite, burns, melee, and ranged attacks (but doesn't seem to apply for things like heatstroke, blood loss, malnutrition, psychic shock, etc) no matter how severe the injury was or how badly injured the pawn was. You will find enemy pawns with the wimp trait that die to a couple punches, and notice how you almost never actually destroy something vital that would cause a thrumbo or megasloth to just drop dead. This setting can be changed under the custom settings on the line "Enemy death on downed", but the thing to know is that it's pretty much a roll of the dice if you are going to kill or down the enemy weighted so that when you have fewer pawns you tend to down more enemy pawns compared to when you have more pawns. 38:12 The directions you send a caravan in relation to your tile do not correspond to where the caravan will leave the map, but telling a pawn to go to a specific tile will always have them choosing the same part of the map to go to in order to leave.
> but doesn't seem to apply for things like heatstroke, blood loss, malnutrition, psychic shock, etc I think that's related to the mechanism. The "death chance on downed" seems to apply to _injury_. Those cause pawns to go down through pain, which is also why go juice is "a hell of a drug" as our gracious host would say. However, heatstroke, blood loss, and the like are _effects_ that directly reduce consciousness. That doesn't seem to cause a "downed" state in exactly the same manner, and that's why the colonist heat acquisition tunnel is viable.
Actually there is still a mechanic in Rimworld where if you have one meal with food poisoning, when added to a stack a debuff is applied to that stack. There is then a chance of food poisoning from any meal in that stack; there is a mod that addresses this annoying 'feature'. I am surprised that machine pistol does not make a difference on downing colonists due to fire-rate, spread and damage, causing high pain over multiple body-locations. I have never done the numbers, but on my Ice sheet challenge it 'appeared' machine pistol was significantly superior on downing pawns over the likes of assault rifles and h/smgs.
It should be more effective at downing pawns (vs. killing them) simply due to the fact that it does less damage per hit (so it's less likely to get 1-shot kills). Francis often draws conclusions from relatively small samples taken in artificial conditions and with no variance / variability data, and Rimworld has a _lot_ of RNG. Simply repeating the same test (even if the test consists of killing 250 enemies) can show variations of + or - 20%.
instead of flooring or statues in the barracks. you can set a growzone inside of it growing Daylilies. They grow in lamp or torchlight and make it beautiful.
For automised tree choping I just lay down a grow zone and forbid it from planting, anything that grows to "100%" will be harvested by your planters without needing micromanagement. It works for ambrosia and everything else that grows
Regarding butchering small creatures first: See the "allow large corpses" thing? Just disable it, and that's it. No need to sort creatures individually
I would also add that in a barracks, if it is on soil, grow enough daylillies to make the barracks impressive(they only need 30% light and add zero wealth). You can make statues, but I do that later on, rather than at the start, plus it helps train plants skill, for those not so good. I would honestly add the 'complex jobs' mod, so you can turn off harvesting to those you are training up. I train up people for plants even if they have no passion, so I have a level of redundancy in my colony; similar with medical, where I get pawns with poor medical skills to install and uninstall legs on prisoners until they get to a point they can tend colonists if my medic goes down. There are many, many things that can be added as only so much can be said in an hour video for a game this complex. Oh and get your poor shooting pawns to always hunt as a primary task, I don't care if the meat rots, just that my colonists can hit a barn door if a raid arrives. Don't level that skill over 10 on a pawn with no passion in shooting though, as degradation of skills, gives a diminishing return on further training.
I have about 80 hours in this game. Which for me is high and I though I had a decent grasp on the basics... LLOOLL NO I DONT. This video is a gold mine.
Cooking Another reason to do by one instead of 4, is it takes roughly the same time if close the supply is close. But if you call a dupe due to raid well the cook by 1 is maybe done with 3, while the cook by four is not done. This can and will happen. Could also setup two meal preps, one with meat only and then one with everything. This allow us to not build a fridge, due to vegs last about 13 days and meat is about 3 days if indoors. Just means hunt when you need to and only make the meals you need to or about 2 to 4 pawn count. PS: I not use fine meals, unless I 100% need a buff to mood and 90% of the time you do not need it. FJ does not need it in this video.
I am nowhere near a veteran, I stopped playing near the 1.0 version and restarted recently. Personally, I think the tribal start isn't that difficult. Having 5 paws makes the job distribution easier, the early access to pemmican sidestep the lack of fridges and you get mostly self-sufficient foraging. If you have a good crafter, recurve bows are a surprisingly solid option. They only take wood to craft and you can easily craft them to a higher quality than guns. High-quality bows are competitive with mediocre guns. Always try to buy components. When your tech improves, you may need a lot of components quickly. Generally, the temperate/ boreal edge is rather mild. At low-tech, wood is vital for cooking, heating and crafting. Happy prisoners are easier to recruit and keep pacified. I like to draft a group to get rid of predators. Even bears and wargs can fall quickly to five shooters. And, if I simply manage to make them unconscious. I try to heal them. If they bond, I gain a pet warg, if I fail, I just finish it off. Corpse fridges are great at feeding guard wargs.
Handy . I was supposed to be doing a tutorial vid for my wife this week, who just started Rimworld and Star Dew Valley. I may still have to do it, with additional chapters for royalty, ideology and biotech, but I may be able to avoid that now... She doesn't appreciate me being there at the time since I am a massive backseat gamer. I may still have to do one, as our starts differ significantly, and my priorities are not quite the same. Still forwarded it to her to go watch, thanks :) Btw, it sounds like I disagree a bit. There are lots of ways to play Rimworld. This video is still awesome !
I thought i was on the equator, but I guess not because we had a long winter. Animals were dying of starvation and the pawns were down to 1 meal. I had no idea why they weren't making food out of the animals. Finally figured out you have to give the slaughter table bills.
Not sure if somebody mentioned this in the comments, but by default the game, probably expands your home zone area, in case of a fire. I believe pawns will only automatically extinguish fires, within the home zone. This gives it some time to keep from spreading, to your base.
You said you dont know why the home zone is expanded beyond the walls. I'm pretty sure it's for firefighting, so they can address a fire before it gets to the walls.
The thing about Randy is yes he can throw a bunch of bad shit at you at once, but unlike Cass or Phobe he doesn't really care how well you are doing and is just as likely to throw a bunch of good things at you at once. He is both the hardest and the easiest.
side note, whenever u copy craft say a a/c unit make sure u set temp on new united made........... i made 4 in a row kept wondering why room wasnt cooling, finally realized the new ones temps were not copied over lol. i was used to stranded alien dawn, copy a item it copied settings too.........
13:00 First time iv herd you say that lol. The expanded home zone is for fires to protect the home zone. If you have someone set to firefight and put a home zone over it they will run there and put it out
Thumbs up! Good tutorial with not using any mods. Too many hosts keep using mods. This games just needs more legitimate content that isn't using any mods and playing on default map size. Therefore, applies to everybody and less confusing. Would like to see more information for mechanics of each expansion. I would just not put the kitchen there. Bad enough if kitchen cooking in a main room. But putting it in a pathway? It's even worse. Put the kitchen just to the right attached to the refrigerator. So there is only one single way into the kitchen plus even closer to the stockpile. Only the cook will go in. Adding floor to kitchen is actually good for this as sims will not be walking through. Also this tutorial doesn't really explain how electricity works. This was a difficulty for me when first learning. Maybe the next part will go more into that. During combat sims are lined up. As far as I understand it, this game has a percent chance of friendly fire. It's not mentioned here what is going on with that. Would be good to know how that works as I never line my sims up like that. The only thing I would disagree with here is the beginning saying half research of tribe is terrible. Absolutely it is not terrible just because you don't get some research boost. In fact, I consider a basic custom scenario of a few naked tribe with nothing a good way to start the game for anybody. Start with a small group, naked with nothing, as tribe, and actually try to survive and build up from complete scratch. Research rate of Tribe makes the game less overpowered. I would never want the research boost of New Arrivals.
The kitchen makes more sense when it gets a bit later and you move the butcher table indoors. At that point you disable the external kitchen door and it becomes a dead end. I should have covered that. Early on dragging dirt in is less of an issue. Electricity shows up in the next episode, really should have covered it in this one. For friendly fire is 3x5 deep is perfect, but you can squeeze in 6 more around the edges. ua-cam.com/video/_yBBO3r55G0/v-deo.html Tribal start is one of my favourites but a toxic fallout means you pretty much have to leave the tile as without a fridge or solar you better have a big pile of pemmican around. For that reason I would recommend a crash landed scenario as tech gives your a better chance of surviving all the possible events that Rimworld can throw at you.
@@FrancisJohnYT Unlike soil, the stone ground next to the kitchen can be cleaned. I'd recommend building your kitchen over that instead, if possible. I also like to leave dirt floors in the beginning of my tribal run for bedrooms, with a torch inside. That way, I can sow flowers to boost the room's beauty.
I love your tutorials! Thanks, FJ! Could you do one on how to deal with mech cluster missions that spawn a cluster with toxicity or mood debuff and you have to caravan out to deal with them? I almost always die to those or lose 90% of my pawns.
Long story short, send one pawn and carry grenades in the caravan/transport pods if you want to be really safe. The cluster never seems to cover the problem causer so you just sneak in the back/unprotected area and destroy the problem causer. Then they leave the map via walking to the edge. Grenades can be used to destroy it quicker or to keep you out of range of any proximity sensors. You don't need to fight the mechs, let them sleep. Note : the grenades are not your primary weapon, you need a gun/melee weapon in case of ambush going to/from the site.
And then a volcanic winter. And then two toxic fallouts. And then, after you fill your base with heaters and hydroponics, some pirates set up a climate adjuster next to you raising the temperature by 10 celsius and you never lose a single crop to cold again. It's also great how cold temperatures make living plants evaporate but, if you cut the plant and leave it _on the exact same spot,_ it instead keeps the plant fresh forever.
how good is marble during raids? iirc, they break too easily when used as material for a killbox. so i often go with marble + granite maps. marble for living space. granite for killbox.
Marble is ok, but later on you upgrade the killbox mouth to plasteel even if you do have granite. For that reason I would say marble is necessary and granite would be nice. You don't really care about the strength of your walls outside of the kill box exit. Would be nice if your walls could take an extra hit from Thumpers or grenades but it's not nearly as valuable as being able to make lots of nice statues.
RNG can be a sod. Multiple high number raids, plague and high psychic drone can pretty much kill any colony, but that is mostly correct. I have played a naked brutality run where I got plague on day one and could not tend well enough with herbal meds...
Get hit by mechanites, then plague, then drone followed by breacher mech raid. If you are playing vanilla I'm not sure you can survive that. Everyone will be on the verge of mental breaks, no low shields they are Royalty. Unless you have lots of insanity lances to stop the centipedes you are in trouble and they will not stop until your entire colony is broken.
@@FrancisJohnYT I mean, you've played on 500% difficulty with some serious nonsense (getting two end game missions done at the same time) and were never close to really losing. I'm just saying, being able to pause and think means vanilla (i.e. no content mods) RimWorld is hard to truly lose at if you are anywhere close to a perfect player :)
@@FrancisJohnYT - Or just get hit by disease early on when playing in a tropical biome (no wild healroot). The game does get ridiculously easy once you have high-level psycasts, though. I routinely break 200-enemy raids using two pawns. That whole "worship trees and cast spells" expansion seems to have been designed during a very drunk night. It has nothing to do with the game's overall sci-fi style, and it makes no sense that the enemies can't use those same powers against you (especially if all it takes is worshipping a tree, and all tribals have the natural meditation type).
700+ hours of game play, 1000s of hours watching content on the game,
FJ drops a noob guide. I'm in
Yes Yes Yes!
Similar, watching this and am at an unknown number of 1000s of hours now starting around a17(?) ish... and only transitioned to steam in 1.3.
Me, too.
I'm approaching 900hrs and as soon as i saw he posted i clicked play. lol
i played rimworld like 100 hrs.
never finish any ending.
me who has played RW for almost 2k hours: hmmm interesting
Every time I open this game I lose all motivation. It's too difficult for me, even on easy settings. Obviously I'm still trying because....well here I am..
For real, it’s a struggle, I started with the tribe so I could get a couple extra people and started only building in 13x13 (counting walls) squares so my simpleton mind can manage 😂
That is how I feel with about pretty much every other colony simulator game. I'm always overwhelmed as fuck by the mechanics and lose motivation to keep going.
I always end up with a colony that gets bogged down with orders and priorities get screwed up. Hauling/cleaning/researching never get done.
At first I turned on God mode and just built out crazy looking bases and then threw raids at them until they collapsed. Then I started playing the game normal but with character edit at the start and made God roll characters. Now I go back and forth from all the starting scenarios and biomes and play until the colony dies. Cheating here and there when it makes the game more fun to me.
@@soggygrogbottomI always end up with one or two full time cleaner/haulers in the first 10 colonists.
FJ manages to condense the most important starting information into 1 hour. FJ: "I hope this was mildly informative for you." Um. Yeah ... "mildly" 😉 Seriously, though, well done 🙂 I watched the whole hour even though I do not consider myself a beginner anymore. And I still learned some new things 🙃
"From awful to, uh slightly less awful." Man, I love your videos for ONI and this game. I learn so damn much; and just the right amount of cheek to keep them fun too.
Instead of clicking on every tree and checking their growth level I prefer to create a growing zone containing some trees and disable sowing (as for ambrosia) so that pawns will go and collect wood when trees are fully grown
Nice trick! cheers for sharing
Even better: install the Colony Manager mod, create a manager's desk, and once a day (or whenever you set it to), one of your colonists will mark trees for cutting if you're below a certain a amount of wood. Same for ambrosia, hunting, etc..
@@RFC-3514 Last I heard Colony Manager has a sizeable TPS cost, so moderately to heavily modded colonies (or even just large colonies) might experience FPS drops with that installed. It might have been fixed. Also, it's extremely convenient - for many, the TPS cost is worth the QoL.
@@r3dp9 - I have no idea what you heard, but Colony Manager only runs while a pawn is at the desk, executing tasks (which is something that typically happens for a couple of seconds each day - or whenever you set the tasks to run, of course, but for most tasks there'no point in running more than once a day).
It can cause a noticeable pause (when pawns go to the desk) if you select the "check actual path to objects" options (i.e., where it calculates the nearest trees to cut based on the exact path, instead of just the distance in a straight line). If you leave it set to the default method (straight line distance) even that pause is generally unnoticeable.
You don’t need mods to automate harvesting only fully grown trees. You can just set up a growing zone over a large area and deactivate sowing. Pawns will automatically harvest fully grown tree, similarly to ambrosia.
A good place to put that zone is inside your animal pen. Grazing will clear space for trees to grow and woodcutting will clear space for grass to grow such that everything will be slightly more productive.
Yep, but it still requires setting up the areas, so might as well just research tree sowing and have them harvest _and_ sow trees in those areas.
What some mods (like Colony Manager) do is add a task that makes pawns mark nearby trees on the map for cutting, if the amount of wood is less than some limit you set (ex., once a day your "manager" pawn will check how much wood you have and, if it's less than 300, will mark some nearby trees for cutting). That way they don't waste time cutting trees if you still have wood (as they would if you defined explicit areas). Basically, it gives your pawns a bit of common sense.
Did not figure out that zone for tree cutting trick, looks to also harvest berry bushes and heal root as well. Will be using that in future to save time.
I love your tutorials FJ. I learn something new every time, and your earlier tutorials helped get me into the game. Don't worry if it's too long, they're a joy to watch
I think a lot of people still have long memories of when caravans would get hit with raids appropriate to the colony's wealth and not the caravan's wealth, so your poor solo trader would get hit with an 80 enemy surprise attack and have to deal with it all on their own. It _seems_ like it's more reasonable these days, but I haven't looked at the actual threat scaling to be sure. I mean, there's a lot of additional responses in the DLCs too, but it feels like caravan ganking is a lot less of a threat than it used to be.
IIRC caravan raids scale to the caravan only, with a multiplier based on how "hidden" the caravan is. That's how it seemed to work last I played. That said, I haven't read of anyone documenting the feature, and the wiki is barebones as usual (likely on account of no-one having documented the relevant testing yet). I also play "lightly" modded, so take my experience with a grain of salt.
In any case, 1 pawn caravans get incredibly easy ambushes, especially if said pawn has a gun, jump pack, armor, and consumables such as go juice or lances for emergencies. If sending more than 5 pack animals, it might be a good idea to send multiple pawns or have a combat team ready to be launched via drop pod or far skip. Far skip on a caravan pawn is an obvious get-out-of-ambush-free card.
Very enjoyable race through early Rimworld. As a beginner this video might have overwhelmed me, but a few hundred hours in, I’m able to focus on a few handy mechanics i haven’t experimented with yet. I’ll definitely be giving them a try next time through. Thank you!
"Analysis Paralysis" is 100% my biggest weakness, and I never had words for it until now.
Looking forward to my next start of dwarf fortress with this newfound knowledge.
I to suffer from "Analysis Paralysis" trying to make everything perfect means you never get anything done.
My coping mechanise is to give myself artificial restrictions like the 18x17 boxes and fit the best bedrooms you possibly can in there with mid game material.
Before I did that I was looking at jade and weird shaped rooms, totally wasted hours of my time for no benefit.
Hope you figure out how to mange it better, it never really goes away.
@@FrancisJohnYT You've hit the nail on the head. The biggest problem is the constant, "is this right?" When doing a layout, and, looking back, just deciding "this is my design, that's what I'm using" is the strategy I've gone with.
Of course, with games like rimworld and dwarf fortress the possibilities just go on and on, so simply deciding to go with this arbitrary layout I think is the only option, lol.
How did you create the grid on the ground?
This is a great refresher vid for someone returning to the game after a couple of years! Thanks so much.
Over a 1000+ hours of rimworld, and Francis can still teach me some of the basics of the game I was totally unaware of. Excellent video! Now I really need to catch up on the biotech series. I'm lagging behind by almost 10episodes now. XD
God, I complained on one of your other Rimworld videos that I needed to find a noob guide because I just couldn't keep up with the craziness of the DLCs.... and a month or two later.... Francis provides! So excited for these!
26:08 A little hint for new players: If you're planning on running on Simple meals for a while and don't have access to coolers, it can be useful to make 2 bills. First one on the list should only use meat, 2nd one can include vegies. That way, your Muppets will make sure to use the meat which goes bad faster, but will fall back to using vegies if no meat is available.
I'm a big fan of tribal runs and can go years without a fridge. Keeping the number of prepped meals reasonably low, and cooking the meat first, make it quite easy. My current tribal nomad run was about seven years in before we researched electricity and built a fridge.
I would also add that you should set bills to make 6x the number of colonists. This gives 3 days of food and simple meals deteriorate in 2.5 days. It does mean you will have food to feed prisoners, or if someone goes on a food binge. At worst you will lose a few meals to rot, but still not have a mass of food.
Rice, potatoes and corn last an absolute age. You can have decent stocks of these and never need a freezer.
@@kerrymoore1961 tribal runs change the strategy a bit. You want pemmican made first, then make simple meals of the meat only. While pemmican does rot, it takes very long to, making it good food for caravans
@@FerrybigGaming I do the limited number of simple meals, first meat, then veg. I make pemmican with all excess meat, to avoid waste.
if you are an acual noob, and just watched this. just defend yourself with some spike traps. and start in the mountains. this was more of a pro guide
Agreed, I always start with a few traps, no matter the difficulty.
I just started my journey a couple nights ago. Thank you for the effort you put into this. I've watched a bunch of guides that were really good but this was great.
Something I'd add, even in early game, make bedrolls for your caravan people. They're amazingly good at keeping their mood up by avoiding that 'slept on the ground' negative mood buff.
After watching 3 times over, I’m still learning things from your videos. Thank you so much!❤
I've only been playing a few weeks, and have learned so much from this video. Thanks so much - I've saved it to my Rimworld Essentials playlist.
3:14 Marble's good for statues, but limestone's a better building material than marble. It's nearly as tough as granite or slate (one of those; forget which one) when making walls.
12:57 The expanding home zone is for firefighting so your buildings don't burn down at the start. :) it gives your pawns (and you) a wake up call if a wildfire is coming close to your base. For this reason, I like putting firefighting on a "1" priority in work settings.
22:55 Just hope there's no horse lovers viewing your video
(~) 31:24 (also 49:10) You can also craft blunt weapons (clubs) out of stone to reduce the chances of death when attacking the enemy. (Since this is vanilla/no dlc, you don't have to worry about "Strong melee damage" gene.)
Marble walls are the only wall that is pretty
Someone made a video about a year ago testing the down chance of every weapon, they are all basically the same.
@@rustyspork767 If you can get lots of good statues, wall beauty doesn't really matter IME.
1 is a noob trap. They automatically already start firefighting when everyone is at 2, but you can’t override it if firefighting is already at 1.
@@luzhang2982 With breacher and sapper raids now, I pretty much only want sandstone on a tile, anything else is a benefit, but the ability to rebuild walls fast is majorly important.
Awesome tutorial, I played a lot during the alpha and beta days and hopped in again yesterday and apparently forgot everything, twas such a sad short colony. Really made my day to see a part 2 video in the queue
Literally just got Rimworld in the Steam sale. Nice timing!
I like how FJ does a compare/contrast of potatoes vs rice like that's the reason it's always his main food supply. Also, crazy. I've played this game for hundreds of hours and still learn new things from FJ. Truly a master of the human leather crafts
More of a pro guide than beginner, no mention of traps or keeping wealth low until you're prepared to handle the extra threat that excessive wealth can create. On the whole though, not bad. :)
One of the benefits of nutrient paste that you didn't mention is that it is the highest ratio of nutrition input to output of any meal in the game; If you focus on other things, like making each colonist their own little room instead of the statue'd barracks route, then you can offset the penalty to a degree. Separating out the butchery from the rec room would also give a mood buff on that front.
Base game yes. For biotech dlc, babyfood is higher. Still no food poisoning or work has its advantages
@@luzhang2982 Only for babies, young children that don't have an adult's nutrition capacity (and even then they suffer a -5 moodlet, so it's -1 mood worse, and it gets even worse for baby food if you have ideoreligion precepts that ignore nutrient paste quality, or ascetics), and small animals that find 0.9 nutrition to be too much for a single meal and thus waste a lot of volume (eg. chickens). At a 5:10 ratio it's consuming .25 nutrition to produce 0.5 nutrition in 0.05 doses (200% efficiency), while nutrient paste consumes 0.3 nutrition to produce 0.9 nutrition, or a 300% efficiency, and also doesn't need a cook to procure (such meals can also be mass-produced and stored in a freezer using the zoning/draft trick, too).
I should have mentioned that, it's just I suppose I never found nutrition hard to come by on a temperate forest tile. That nutrition saving could be useful during a toxic fallout.
I much prefer having everyone on +5 mood meals all the time and I find it much easier to keep everyone stable.
i have 1000 hourz in thiz game. But here i watch it anyway to hear ztuff that i already know. i love u francis :3
coming back to rimworld after a while, this video is perfect for someone like me who has ADHD lol. i always appreciate when someone moves this fast while explaining.
I understand that feeling, I find myself watching most videos on x2 speed as they feel way to slow to watch. It's the reason I try and cram so much into tutorials as I don't want to waste peoples time.
I've about 150hrs in the game and I've learned about 14 things in the first 8 minutes of this video.
1:01:49 I believe there's a new Patron on the list who sums up all of our feelings concisely: Mydayisruinedifnofrancisvideo. I'm right there with you.
So in response to "Does anyone actually read the names" (a patron on the list): Yes?
@@bobsprock I've always skimmed them at least... there have been some funny ones over the years.
I love how this Nugget series starts posting a handful of days before I finally crack this puppy open!
"They'll plant animals slower." I did not realize this is how animals worked. I lived my entire life up to this point believing that animals were born. I WAS LIED TO!
There's a great documentary about it called "Pet Sematary".
Apols for the necro but one politely suggests that as Scandinavia has pidgeon fields there is nothing that we can take as writ from those lunatic scienceish folk.
This was awesome. I have 5086 hours into the game and learned a bunch of things.
Because of the roofing thing, I prefer my rooms to be 13x13. That way, no pillars or other support structures are needed. 🙂
Also, 13x13 with walls (meaning 11x11 room space) it subdivides nicely into useful sizes (3x3, 5x5, 3x7, 7x7, 3x11, 11x23, etc.) that connect with 3-wide hallways (creating good choke points that let 3 melee pawns hit a single enemy) and fit most buildings (except for a couple that are 4 or 6 tiles wide). No pillars needed, easy to organise, and easy to defend against infestations, etc..
I like 11x11 spaces (13x13 walls), but objectively speaking it's not very space efficient - at least not with central doors on all four sides. I'm currently experimenting with 11xN rooms, where N varies by room type, and 11x11 rooms with only a single entrance. I still haven't found a solution I'm happy with, but have learned to be fond of 3 wide main corridors.
@@r3dp9 - 11x11 is just the main "room grid". You can obviously knock down the walls between two rooms and make it 11x23 (as mentioned above), or any other size that still fits. And you don't need a corridor around _every_ room (nor does every room need to be 11 tiles wide in either direction; even 3x3 works fine for some rooms). The 11 is just the limit to avoid pillars (i.e., never more than 11 [13 counting walls] in both directions at the same time).
3-wide corridors (with choke points) are ideal because they let 3 melee paws hit 1 enemy stuck in the door (or provide cover for 2 ranged pawns, if the enemy stays at a distance).
There would be a more interesting layout with hexagons but it would require ceilings to hold up 2 tiles further from walls than they currently do. With the current ceiling distance limit, hexagons won't work well with beacons or sun lamps.
@@r3dp9 Shockingly enough, I do not always place the doors in the middle at each side 🙃 E.g. my workshop has worbench - door - workbench - door - workbench on one side 🙂
@@redunicorngaming - Yep, 3 from the corner is actually more common, if the wall is 11 wide. Better use of space.
make it a morning task to right click the allow button and hit allow all this will unset all the animals that had been killed by other animals if you do this every morning you almost never need to hunt
There are other buildings besides butcher tables with cleanliness debuffs: starting with machining tables with -2, smithies and hydroponic basins with -3, art benches and stonecutter's tables with -5, ending with crematoriums with whooping -20
TMIL
I feel like this is a mechanic of the game that got forgotten about. Like the developers were going to have the clean stat affect more things but forgot about it after a while, like the plan changed.
@@FrancisJohnYT - So... like every other mechanic in the game? ;-)
Just got the game for X mas since I watched you Nomad series at work 😄 It is helpful after 40 hours :)) keep it up 😄
Your tip about hunting the entire map is genius
Thank you so much for this guide! I just started playing Rimworld, and this is such a lifesaver. Please keep this starter guide going. ❤😊
I've played this game on and off since before the full release, but have always been trash. There's a lot I'm learning here, best practices I failed at. I'll be going through your content attentively, you're impressively concise and informative. Good stuff.
The core thing I have learned is, send a bloody trade caravan. I do not do that, I am as social ingame as I am in real life. I also don't mass hunt to get money. But in hindsight, of course that's the right strategy. Kill things, get loot, make money, make friends.
Using dogs as meatshields does throw me off but it makes me want to give them cybernetics. I just adore the idea of a raider bursting into my home and seeing a beautiful chrome cyberdog, steel fangs driven with pneumatic strength.
Learning to Trade in the early game means you don't have to wait several years to research the tech necessary to make guns or get flak vests.
A few decent guns and some armour in the early game make a huge difference.
This is the best starter guide I've seen so far. Thanks x
24:28
Rimworld: Capybara
FJ: Chupacabra
I bet they eat "neutronamine" and suffer from "paralytic abrasia". ;-)
Great stuff FJ. A couple of additional tips I like to use that I'll throw in here.
1. You can plant daylilies indoors to increase the beauty with just a torch or lamp. I usually do a 3x3 plot and it helps a good bit. You could do roses, but they live less time so are more time consuming to maintain.
2. For the kitchen, if you have a spot of rough hewn stone on the ground (I forget the actual name, but the slate ground spots on your map are them) you can build your kitchen there instead of on dirt and it will be naturally clean (0.0 cleanliness) to help with food poison chance.
2. point was true in the past - natural stone flours were always clean, but it was changed in 1.3 update and all natural floors get dirty outside the dirt itself
@@Jfk2Mr right. Sorry. Dirt can still be tracked in and they need to be cleaned but they’re a base 0 cleanliness when cleaned instead of the negative that dirt is
@@illegalotter Well, said -1 cleanliness is not an issue - dirt does not track on itself (thus it stays at -1), so to get food poisoning due to dirt (cleanliness
For anyone new to RimWorld, please keep in mind that this is only one way to ease into the game, it's certainly not the only way. There are many valid ways to start to learn the game. If you're interested in creating different kinds of stories, leaning into odd character traits and different biomes will yield very different results. However, if your primary interest is to dominate the environment and only see positive outcomes to actions (which is willfully missing out on large parts of the experience imo) then by all means, Francis offers largely solid advice. What makes RimWorld special is how many different things and ways you can find to enjoy the game, there's no right or wrong outcome, just outcomes. "Failures" are often far more memorable than successes.
Man you speak fast but clear also very informative and entertaining video you’re helping me a lot hopefully you can continue to make content on rimworld!
Here I am 1400+ hours on the Rim and I'm completely excited the FJ has a new noob guide.
A part of me wants to get into Rimworld because the "story generation" aspect of it means it will give experiences and stories that other games just can't really do. However, I keep putting it off because I feel like there's so many things you need to be aware or mindful of at all times, especially before you've established things at the beginning that I fear that I'll forget or overlook a thing or two that'll cause problems and then I'll miss something while putting out that fire that'll start another fire and then end up in a death spiral and loose the colony before it feels like I've really even gotten started. Maybe watching this tutorial series will help clear some things up and demystify the game a bit more for me.
But even those failed colonies can end up with fun stories, that's half the fun.
When I first started, I had similar concerns. However, Rimworld gives you plenty of ways to experiment. One option is to play your first colony at a really low threat level. Peaceful will throw almost no enemies at you, so you can play around with a ton of the game mechanics without as much pressure. Sure, you won't end up using the combat/defense mechanics, but you also don't have to worry about your first base dying while you're just trying to find your way through the basics.
Or you can play all your colonies like that, focusing on base building and not fighting.
Also, you can change the threat level at any time. If you start getting bored or just get to a place where you're interested in experimenting with combat, you can go into settings and raise the threat level whenever you want.
Finally, if you play in reload anytime mode, when something goes wrong you can go back and replay the scenario differently, which can be especially fun and useful when learning combat. Play with positioning your pawns differently and using different weapons.
Rimworld is complicated, and a lot of videos showcase people playing at high levels of skill and difficulty. If that isn't your comfort zone, don't feel pressured to leap in an play like that. Some people are fine with playing for days, having their colony implode, laughing about it, and starting over. Others won't enjoy that.
For me, the beginning of the game isn't as interesting as the mid-game, so if I'm really enjoying a colony but it falls to ruin, I sometimes reload a save from days or weeks before (real time), one where the colony had gotten past early development, and then I restart its story and go from there. Other times I start from scratch.
Everyone has different ways to enjoy Rimworld, and while FJ is showing some great, optimal ways to set things up, forgetting to do them won't doom you. Most people who play Rimworld don't set their game up nearly as well as this but still play well and have a blast.
If you remember just one rule, "dont amass a ton of useless wealth" then rimworld is quite forgiving on lower difficulty, and you can just rise it once you learn and start to feel that game is to easy.
Just go for it. Start on just the base game, even if you have the dlcs. Even a failed colony is fun, and starting new colonies is one of the best parts of the game.
It does not take long to learn the basics, and you will just carry on learning as you play. I am many thousands of hours in and I still learn things.
It is a game that is very, very worth the money and worth taking a chance on playing.
Play on Peaceful. The game is plenty eventful/pleasent/atmospheric/fun even on the "boring" difficulties.
Very nice. Helpful and mod free it seems.. I'll be watching more.
gratz on 100k subs mate, deserved!
took only a few vids to make this a fave sub. nice work. I'm very glad I watched the part about the kitchen floor...omg was I mismanaging that.
Some preferences for me:
a) manage walkways and keep pawns and their dirt out of the kitchen. keep the butchery off the main path while still adjacent to the kitchen? bonus
b) do not place tables/etc. where pawns could be under roofed locations dependent on a single wall segment. Try to avoid fully depending on single walls for large sections of roof if possible
c) wake-up-grab-meal-eat-go is a key behavior that I want to minimize the walk time on if i can.
d) i always place my horseshoe pit outside, and some distance away from early buildings, since IIRC it cannot be relocated and early buildings are subject to redesign/etc. However I now see the advantage of having it much closer and inside.
The reason it adds homezones around your walls/structures so far out is so your pawns will help fight fires before they reach your structures.
Adding a roof zone 3 tiles out from your walls acts as a firebreak that blocks plant growth, negating the need to fight fires outside even wooden walls.
@@r3dp9 This is very good info for a new player like myself to know. Thank you!
@@r3dp9 That is such a good idea!
Kitchen and food Tip:
- a pawn needs 2 meals a day. Rice can last 40 days, Meals only last 4 days. Do not make too many meals. you want a 3-4 day buffer. more in lategame.
- make sure to not make your fields too huge. you have a limited amount of time in a day, and rice is labour intensive per unit food.
- in the Bill Details: Check "pause when Satisfied" and set it to 3-6 meals remaining: this prevents the cook sprinting for the kitchen every day because you have 19/21 meals. it basically forces the cook to be more efficient by making the bill cook in larger batches, being only active when you Start to run out.
- the 4x Meals are also only more efficient when it comes to hauling: the cook will pick up only what he needs for a single item by default. Time/raw food is identical with four single meal orders.
- you can make Kitchen efficient with 2 shelves at either side of the kitchen with raw ingredients, ordering the cook to "drop on floor", and most importantly! placing a low priority single square stockpile where he sits/stands. (so that the meal drops and is properly counted. Without it the bill is endless until haulers pick them up from between his feet.)
i haven't watched a single SECOND of this video yet, its 9 am, im fucking loaded, and this video is goated. GG.
At an hour long, this is more of an 8-piece bucket than a nugget, but i'm not complaining
thing to note about the homezone. Is that your survivors will only put out fires if it reaches inside your homezone. If you're building stuff out of wood or building large farms its good to have the homezone go beyond the boundary of these a little bit so that your people will do some proactive fire safety.
I may be way late to the party and by no means an expert in the game, but when you shrink that home zone and there is a fire, they will not go put anything out outside your home zone. I actually expand my home zone to get a good jump on fires when they start close to my base to get my pawns putting out the fire before it gets out of control. As I said, I do not have alot of time in the game, but that is my understanding of it.
5:10 On addictions: Most addictions are absolutely horrific to deal for a starting colonist at best incapacitating them for the duration of the withdrawal and at worst driving their mood down so low that they try to kill another colonist, themselves, or your stuff. However, Ambrosia addictions are probably the one acceptation to that, as the withdrawal period is rather short and the negatives quite minor (a minus 10 mood and I think some other negatives), so that addiction is usually not a deal breaker you really want that pawn for some reason or another.
29:00 On downing and killing enemies: Rimworld has a built in system so that a non player controlled pawn will have a percentage chance on dying upon incapacitation via certain damage types like frostbite, burns, melee, and ranged attacks (but doesn't seem to apply for things like heatstroke, blood loss, malnutrition, psychic shock, etc) no matter how severe the injury was or how badly injured the pawn was. You will find enemy pawns with the wimp trait that die to a couple punches, and notice how you almost never actually destroy something vital that would cause a thrumbo or megasloth to just drop dead. This setting can be changed under the custom settings on the line "Enemy death on downed", but the thing to know is that it's pretty much a roll of the dice if you are going to kill or down the enemy weighted so that when you have fewer pawns you tend to down more enemy pawns compared to when you have more pawns.
38:12 The directions you send a caravan in relation to your tile do not correspond to where the caravan will leave the map, but telling a pawn to go to a specific tile will always have them choosing the same part of the map to go to in order to leave.
> but doesn't seem to apply for things like heatstroke, blood loss, malnutrition, psychic shock, etc
I think that's related to the mechanism. The "death chance on downed" seems to apply to _injury_. Those cause pawns to go down through pain, which is also why go juice is "a hell of a drug" as our gracious host would say.
However, heatstroke, blood loss, and the like are _effects_ that directly reduce consciousness. That doesn't seem to cause a "downed" state in exactly the same manner, and that's why the colonist heat acquisition tunnel is viable.
Annnnnnd we're back!
With some more Rimworld!
Spectacular tutorial. Thank You :)
12:58 it adds the area around the walls to the home zone, so that fires that reach the home get put out on time
this helps with stuff i forget to do, and the butcher bill set up is a good tip
Actually there is still a mechanic in Rimworld where if you have one meal with food poisoning, when added to a stack a debuff is applied to that stack. There is then a chance of food poisoning from any meal in that stack; there is a mod that addresses this annoying 'feature'.
I am surprised that machine pistol does not make a difference on downing colonists due to fire-rate, spread and damage, causing high pain over multiple body-locations. I have never done the numbers, but on my Ice sheet challenge it 'appeared' machine pistol was significantly superior on downing pawns over the likes of assault rifles and h/smgs.
It should be more effective at downing pawns (vs. killing them) simply due to the fact that it does less damage per hit (so it's less likely to get 1-shot kills).
Francis often draws conclusions from relatively small samples taken in artificial conditions and with no variance / variability data, and Rimworld has a _lot_ of RNG. Simply repeating the same test (even if the test consists of killing 250 enemies) can show variations of + or - 20%.
instead of flooring or statues in the barracks. you can set a growzone inside of it growing Daylilies. They grow in lamp or torchlight and make it beautiful.
For automised tree choping I just lay down a grow zone and forbid it from planting, anything that grows to "100%" will be harvested by your planters without needing micromanagement.
It works for ambrosia and everything else that grows
I got a note on that and have been using it since, works great for tree harvesting.
24:30, idly listening in the background...
"...foxes, boomrats, chupacabras..."
*
Oh they put vampire dogs in the game now! Neat!
Wait...
I was using a cyborg vampire equipped with a super sword sharpened with mechanites to chop enemies to bits, a vampire dog does not sound to far off.
Regarding butchering small creatures first: See the "allow large corpses" thing? Just disable it, and that's it. No need to sort creatures individually
I would also add that in a barracks, if it is on soil, grow enough daylillies to make the barracks impressive(they only need 30% light and add zero wealth). You can make statues, but I do that later on, rather than at the start, plus it helps train plants skill, for those not so good. I would honestly add the 'complex jobs' mod, so you can turn off harvesting to those you are training up. I train up people for plants even if they have no passion, so I have a level of redundancy in my colony; similar with medical, where I get pawns with poor medical skills to install and uninstall legs on prisoners until they get to a point they can tend colonists if my medic goes down.
There are many, many things that can be added as only so much can be said in an hour video for a game this complex.
Oh and get your poor shooting pawns to always hunt as a primary task, I don't care if the meat rots, just that my colonists can hit a barn door if a raid arrives. Don't level that skill over 10 on a pawn with no passion in shooting though, as degradation of skills, gives a diminishing return on further training.
I have about 80 hours in this game. Which for me is high and I though I had a decent grasp on the basics...
LLOOLL NO I DONT.
This video is a gold mine.
Francis! Francis! Francis! Francis John! Woohoo!
Got over 3k hours in RW ... still watched every second lol
Cooking
Another reason to do by one instead of 4, is it takes roughly the same time if close the supply is close. But if you call a dupe due to raid well the cook by 1 is maybe done with 3, while the cook by four is not done. This can and will happen.
Could also setup two meal preps, one with meat only and then one with everything. This allow us to not build a fridge, due to vegs last about 13 days and meat is about 3 days if indoors. Just means hunt when you need to and only make the meals you need to or about 2 to 4 pawn count.
PS: I not use fine meals, unless I 100% need a buff to mood and 90% of the time you do not need it. FJ does not need it in this video.
Thanks for the tutorial 🔝👍
Cassandra kills you on purpose.
Randy kills you by accident.
Phoebe kills you when you least expect it.
I am nowhere near a veteran, I stopped playing near the 1.0 version and restarted recently.
Personally, I think the tribal start isn't that difficult. Having 5 paws makes the job distribution easier, the early access to pemmican sidestep the lack of fridges and you get mostly self-sufficient foraging.
If you have a good crafter, recurve bows are a surprisingly solid option. They only take wood to craft and you can easily craft them to a higher quality than guns. High-quality bows are competitive with mediocre guns.
Always try to buy components. When your tech improves, you may need a lot of components quickly.
Generally, the temperate/ boreal edge is rather mild.
At low-tech, wood is vital for cooking, heating and crafting.
Happy prisoners are easier to recruit and keep pacified.
I like to draft a group to get rid of predators. Even bears and wargs can fall quickly to five shooters. And, if I simply manage to make them unconscious. I try to heal them. If they bond, I gain a pet warg, if I fail, I just finish it off.
Corpse fridges are great at feeding guard wargs.
Handy . I was supposed to be doing a tutorial vid for my wife this week, who just started Rimworld and Star Dew Valley. I may still have to do it, with additional chapters for royalty, ideology and biotech, but I may be able to avoid that now...
She doesn't appreciate me being there at the time since I am a massive backseat gamer.
I may still have to do one, as our starts differ significantly, and my priorities are not quite the same. Still forwarded it to her to go watch, thanks :)
Btw, it sounds like I disagree a bit. There are lots of ways to play Rimworld. This video is still awesome !
rimworld is a masterpiece in both ways
It's not very often I can sit down and watch a tutorial for an hour and not click off.
I really suck at this game so this is helpful thank you
I thought i was on the equator, but I guess not because we had a long winter. Animals were dying of starvation and the pawns were down to 1 meal. I had no idea why they weren't making food out of the animals. Finally figured out you have to give the slaughter table bills.
Really nice guide! Thanks a lot
Not sure if somebody mentioned this in the comments, but by default the game, probably expands your home zone area, in case of a fire. I believe pawns will only automatically extinguish fires, within the home zone. This gives it some time to keep from spreading, to your base.
I swear that I heard you say to hunt Chupacabras and had to replay it multiple times, made me laugh 😂 (Min24:25)
You said you dont know why the home zone is expanded beyond the walls. I'm pretty sure it's for firefighting, so they can address a fire before it gets to the walls.
"If you play well, you can still end up dying" sometimes playing well is the REASON you end up dying, wealth is a biotch
The thing about Randy is yes he can throw a bunch of bad shit at you at once, but unlike Cass or Phobe he doesn't really care how well you are doing and is just as likely to throw a bunch of good things at you at once. He is both the hardest and the easiest.
side note, whenever u copy craft say a a/c unit make sure u set temp on new united made........... i made 4 in a row kept wondering why room wasnt cooling, finally realized the new ones temps were not copied over lol. i was used to stranded alien dawn, copy a item it copied settings too.........
Home zone expands around the outside of walls because (I imagine) it’s so your pawns respond to fires before your structure is on fire.
13:00 First time iv herd you say that lol. The expanded home zone is for fires to protect the home zone. If you have someone set to firefight and put a home zone over it they will run there and put it out
Thumbs up! Good tutorial with not using any mods. Too many hosts keep using mods. This games just needs more legitimate content that isn't using any mods and playing on default map size. Therefore, applies to everybody and less confusing. Would like to see more information for mechanics of each expansion.
I would just not put the kitchen there. Bad enough if kitchen cooking in a main room. But putting it in a pathway? It's even worse. Put the kitchen just to the right attached to the refrigerator. So there is only one single way into the kitchen plus even closer to the stockpile. Only the cook will go in. Adding floor to kitchen is actually good for this as sims will not be walking through.
Also this tutorial doesn't really explain how electricity works. This was a difficulty for me when first learning. Maybe the next part will go more into that.
During combat sims are lined up. As far as I understand it, this game has a percent chance of friendly fire. It's not mentioned here what is going on with that. Would be good to know how that works as I never line my sims up like that.
The only thing I would disagree with here is the beginning saying half research of tribe is terrible. Absolutely it is not terrible just because you don't get some research boost. In fact, I consider a basic custom scenario of a few naked tribe with nothing a good way to start the game for anybody. Start with a small group, naked with nothing, as tribe, and actually try to survive and build up from complete scratch. Research rate of Tribe makes the game less overpowered. I would never want the research boost of New Arrivals.
My go-to scenario for over a year now is Tribal Naked Brutality. It's tough but still fun.
The kitchen makes more sense when it gets a bit later and you move the butcher table indoors. At that point you disable the external kitchen door and it becomes a dead end. I should have covered that. Early on dragging dirt in is less of an issue.
Electricity shows up in the next episode, really should have covered it in this one.
For friendly fire is 3x5 deep is perfect, but you can squeeze in 6 more around the edges.
ua-cam.com/video/_yBBO3r55G0/v-deo.html
Tribal start is one of my favourites but a toxic fallout means you pretty much have to leave the tile as without a fridge or solar you better have a big pile of pemmican around. For that reason I would recommend a crash landed scenario as tech gives your a better chance of surviving all the possible events that Rimworld can throw at you.
@@FrancisJohnYT Unlike soil, the stone ground next to the kitchen can be cleaned. I'd recommend building your kitchen over that instead, if possible.
I also like to leave dirt floors in the beginning of my tribal run for bedrooms, with a torch inside. That way, I can sow flowers to boost the room's beauty.
I love your tutorials! Thanks, FJ! Could you do one on how to deal with mech cluster missions that spawn a cluster with toxicity or mood debuff and you have to caravan out to deal with them? I almost always die to those or lose 90% of my pawns.
Long story short, send one pawn and carry grenades in the caravan/transport pods if you want to be really safe.
The cluster never seems to cover the problem causer so you just sneak in the back/unprotected area and destroy the problem causer. Then they leave the map via walking to the edge. Grenades can be used to destroy it quicker or to keep you out of range of any proximity sensors. You don't need to fight the mechs, let them sleep.
Note : the grenades are not your primary weapon, you need a gun/melee weapon in case of ambush going to/from the site.
@@FrancisJohnYT oh wow, thank you! I didn’t know you could walk off the map. Always tried to kill everything so I could form the caravan back!
I've got to drop a like and comment even though I play this game a lot
When the storyteller decides you will have eternal winter with 3 years of coldsnaps between winters
And then a volcanic winter. And then two toxic fallouts. And then, after you fill your base with heaters and hydroponics, some pirates set up a climate adjuster next to you raising the temperature by 10 celsius and you never lose a single crop to cold again.
It's also great how cold temperatures make living plants evaporate but, if you cut the plant and leave it _on the exact same spot,_ it instead keeps the plant fresh forever.
@@RFC-3514 it was my first game, and my guys starved to death before i understood how carvans worked
Omg this is a life saver haha I'm new and struggling!!
I’m really bad at this game but I love it. It’s very stressful for me though. All of the mental breaks get overwhelming.
Regarding building size, I've seen 13x13, specifically to cater to the load bearing distance of the walls. Why do you find 18x17 is the ticket?
how good is marble during raids? iirc, they break too easily when used as material for a killbox. so i often go with marble + granite maps. marble for living space. granite for killbox.
Marble is ok, but later on you upgrade the killbox mouth to plasteel even if you do have granite. For that reason I would say marble is necessary and granite would be nice.
You don't really care about the strength of your walls outside of the kill box exit. Would be nice if your walls could take an extra hit from Thumpers or grenades but it's not nearly as valuable as being able to make lots of nice statues.
Expand home zone is to larger to trigger firefighting once fire comes near enough. I leave it because I’m lazy.
It expands it and its helpful because if your home zone is only in the house they wont fight a fire that is coming near you until it reaches the zones
Realistically, if you play perfectly you can't really lose @ Rimworld.
RNG can be a sod. Multiple high number raids, plague and high psychic drone can pretty much kill any colony, but that is mostly correct. I have played a naked brutality run where I got plague on day one and could not tend well enough with herbal meds...
Get hit by mechanites, then plague, then drone followed by breacher mech raid. If you are playing vanilla I'm not sure you can survive that.
Everyone will be on the verge of mental breaks, no low shields they are Royalty. Unless you have lots of insanity lances to stop the centipedes you are in trouble and they will not stop until your entire colony is broken.
@@FrancisJohnYT I mean, you've played on 500% difficulty with some serious nonsense (getting two end game missions done at the same time) and were never close to really losing. I'm just saying, being able to pause and think means vanilla (i.e. no content mods) RimWorld is hard to truly lose at if you are anywhere close to a perfect player :)
@@FrancisJohnYT - Or just get hit by disease early on when playing in a tropical biome (no wild healroot).
The game does get ridiculously easy once you have high-level psycasts, though. I routinely break 200-enemy raids using two pawns.
That whole "worship trees and cast spells" expansion seems to have been designed during a very drunk night. It has nothing to do with the game's overall sci-fi style, and it makes no sense that the enemies can't use those same powers against you (especially if all it takes is worshipping a tree, and all tribals have the natural meditation type).
Great content, as usual. :)