Here are some beginner and advanced Rimworld hints, tips and tricks. (Updated 1/1/21)

• Planning - Don't forget to pause, and plan things out. There is a "planning tool" in the architect menu that allows you to plan building outlines.
• Using Less Resources - When building your main base, try to keep it as one building with many rooms instead of mulitple buildings. This allows you to use less coolers and heaters, by using vents between rooms.
• Initial Skills - When picking your starting colonists, a few skills are essential if you want to survive.

  A Shooting skill of 6 or higher will insure if you get raided that your colonists can defend themselves.

  Having a good cook with a skill of 5 or above will decrease the chance of food poisoning when cooking.

  Make sure your constructor has at least 4 skill so they can build generators. Higher skill also means the construction gets done faster.

  Every colony needs one good doctor with at least a skill of 6.

  You will also want to have a good grower and miner. Both should have at least a skill of 4. If your growing skill is low, you may fail to harvest and get less food.

  Also a good cutter will be able to cut down trees faster for building things out of wood.

  While the social skill is less important early on, having one colonist capable of recruiting prisoners to join you may be very useful if you want more ways to grow your colony.

• Order Queue - You can give multiple orders to colonists by holding shift.
• Progress Bars - If you want a more in-depth view of what your colonists are doing, zooming in all the way with the scroll wheel will allow you to see progress bars.
• Area Debuffs - When choosing a starting area, watch for debuffs like permanent summer.



• Clean Rooms Are Important - Keeping rooms clean be tedius, but it's a good idea to have at least one person clean every once in a while.

  This is especially important in your kitchen or food preparation area. There is a high chance of food poisoning when preparing meals in a dirty room. Keep your cooking area separate from your butchering area.

• Animals Eating All Your Food - If an unwanted animal self tames, it will wander around your base and eat all your food!

  The best way to prevent this is to create a new zone anywhere away from where you store your food and asign the animal to that zone.

  Note that large pets like elephants and thrumbos consume a lot of food, so make sure you have a large stock of food before taming them.

• Changing Bases -If you are about to be overrun, you can create a caravan with your remaining survivors and try moving to a different zone.

  This will mean grabbing whatever you can and then building a whole new base in a new area.

• Rotating Objects - You can use Q and E to rotate objects.
• Faster moving colonists - With normal doors, colonists have to stop and open each door they encounter, making them take longer to perform each action. Because of this, try researching auto-doors as soon as possible.
• Stockpile Zones - It is ideal to have two different stockpile zones.

  One zone can store all your food, and perishable items (this zone should also eventually become your freezer).

  The second zone can store your non perishables like rocks and crafting materials.



• Wind Turbines can stop working if trees or other plants grow around them. One good way of preventing this is to place some solar panels around your turbines. Solar panels don't block wind turbines.

  You can also set growing zones around your wind turbines to prevent plants and trees from blocking them.

• Walking space - When building, always try to keep at least 3 tile spaces for people to walk around. This way when they pass each other they won't slow down.
• Dangerous animals - Watch out for boomrats, wolves, bears, boars, and other dangerous animals around your base. They may not attack you right away, but if one of them goes mad they may go after the nearest colonist without warning.
• Big Rooms over Small - When starting to build your base, try not to make colonist rooms too small. 7x7 tiles should be the minimum size for rooms if you want the spacious interior mood boost.
• Prioritize building - Early on if you simply build everything you want without planning ahead, your colonists might build less important things first.

  The way to get around this is to use the planning tool instead and only tell colonists to build what you want them to focus on at the current time.

• Ambushing - Instead of fighting your enemies out in the open, try to hide behind a wall or a building and then ambush them from multiple sides as they arrive at your base.
• Colonists not following orders? - If you want your colonist to do something specific, select them and then hit R twice. This will reset their current action, and they will proceed to do whatever action you ask of them.
• Leveling up your medical skill - If you have a lot of medicine, you should capture enemies even if you don't want to recruit them so you can raise your doctors medical skill by taking care of them.
• Leveling up your shooting skill - Hunting is a good way to level up your shooters skill so they can be ready if a raid happens.



• Saving your best meals - When you can finally cook fine or lavish meals, make sure to click each meal and unallow it.

  This way your colonists won't eat all your best meals until you actually need the mood boost.

  You can also assign what kind of food each colonist can eat in the Asign menu under food restrictions.

• Strong Base Defense - Early on, barricades are the best line of defense. They can provide cover from enemy gunfire while allowing your colonists to shoot.

  Try to have barricades at the entrance of your base, and protect the sides with either natural or wooden walls to funnel enemies to your base entrance.

  When you have enough resources, build a perimeter wall around the outside of your base with one entrance. This way raiders will have to use this specific entrance to get to your base.

  If you want to go for the strongest base defense, try researching electricity and then go for Gun Turrets.

• Getting more components - You can get more components by mining compacted machinery on the sides of hills and mountains, deconstructing old ships/buildings, and dissembling mechanoids.

  You can also use a component assembly bench to create them, or purchase them from the Orbital Bulk Goods Trader.

• Mood Buffs - If you want to make your colonists feel better, give them fancy/lavish meals, better/larger environments, and a bit more recreation hours.

  Relationships also increase mood, with marriage being a huge mood buff which lasts for weeks and affects every colonist who attends the wedding.

  Other small things can cause mood debuffs, for example you should place a few torches outside of your buildings, since colonists don't like being in the dark when walking or working in those areas.

• Mental Breaks are not always bad! Although they may do damage by eating your best food or attacking colonists, sometimes its best to let them have the break. After the mental break is over, the colonist will gain a huge 40 mood boost.

  However there are times where you cannot afford to allow a colonist to have a mental break, like if they are eating all your lavish and fine meals.

  In this case you can stop a mental break in two ways. One is to select another colonist and hitting R to recruit them, then right click the person having the mental break and "melee attack" them.

  This will knock out but will not kill the colonist, stopping their rage. Only downside is they will take some time to heal their wounds.

  The second way to stop a mental break is to arrest the colonist. Note that this will remove them from your colony until you can recruit them again!

• How to deal with heat waves - Heat waves can be really bad if you are not prepared. All your food can quickly spoil and your colonists can also get a mood debuff for being too hot.

  A good way to prepare for heat waves is to have coolers in all buildings. You don't have to have a cooler for every room, instead use a vent to keep the temperture of multiple rooms the same.

  Having more than one or two coolers in your refrigerator is also important. While one cooler can keep food frozen during normal temperatures, it does not have enough power to keep things cool during a heat wave.

  Also consider sending colonists to do work inside (like cleaning, cooking, etc.) to cool off during heat waves. Otherwise they may get heat stroke from being outside too long.

• Growing indoors - In order to produce food during winter on some maps, you might have to grow your crops inside. In order to do this, you need to research Hydroponics.
• Protecting Animals - Keeping animals inside a safe area inside a building will protect them from being hunted by other animals on the map.
• Preventing Fire Spread - To prevent fires from spreading and reaching your base, expand your Home zone area out further than the default.

  This way if fires start nearby, your colonists will have time to put them out before they get close to your buildings.

• Low on medicine? - Make sure you research Medicine Production as soon as possible. Later on you will run out of medicine quickly when raiders arrive more often.
• Keeping your fridge cool - If you want to make sure your refrigerator stays cold during summer and heat waves, build a double wall around it instead of just a single wall.