Ever hear a PC gamer argue with a console gamer about why computer gaming is superior? Very often, the argument can be summed up with one word: “mods.”
- Where To Get Rimworld Mods
- Rimworld Total Conversion Mods 2019
- Rimworld Total Conversion Mods
- RimWorld Mods ⋆ RimWorld Base
A mod could be a pack of new weapons, a new animal, or a total conversion of the game. A mod will usually contain several Defs of various types, as well as content like images and sounds. The base game is defined in a single mod called Core. Players can choose which mods to activate. Most players often have several mods active at once. Nov 23, 2018 MarsX is the only actual total conversion I've found. All the others just add new stuff and/or tweak existing stuff. MarsX changes everything. Can't wait till it gets updated to 1.0. Currently only available for A16 and I keep an install of A16 only for the MarsX mod.
With computer gaming, you can take a great game like Rimworld and make it even better by downloading some killer mods. However, there are so many mods out there that it can be difficult to separate the trash from the treasure.
That’s why we’ve assembled our list of the best Rimworld mods that you can play right now. With these mods, you can create the feeling of a brand new game with every download!
Prepare Carefully
For some players, the random and chaotic elements of Rimworld are part of the charm. For others, though, the unrelenting chaos may drive you to pull out your hair in frustration.
If you’re in the “frustrated” camp, you should check out the Prepare Carefully mod. It lets you customize your colonists (names, traits, equipment, etc.) and starting resources. By stripping out the game’s original points limit, this mod allows you to do some crazy things almost right away.
This is one of the best mods for Rimworld when it comes to empowering the player.
Blueprints
Maybe you started Rimworld with ambitious plans to build countless buildings. However, nothing kills that ambition quicker than the need to start the obnoxious building process each time.
With Fluffy’s Blueprints mod, you can create a blueprint of one of your existing buildings. From there, you can create a new copy of that building, right down to the interior furniture.
You can use this mod simply to save time or realize your vision of creating a suburban neighborhood on a distant alien world. Either way, this mod makes Rimworld a lot more fun!
World Edit
Let’s face it: if you’re playing a game like Rimworld, you probably enjoy micromanaging a small army of virtual colonists. Why not take that micromanagement to the next level with the World Edit mod by FunkyShit?
As the name implies, this mod allows you to make small changes to certain areas or major changes to the entire world. If you want, this can lead to some fun “playing God” scenarios where you come up with crazier and crazier scenarios for your colonists to face.
What if you feel like you’ve mastered Rimworld, though? In that case, you can use this mod to create the most difficult possible environments for you and your colonists. All of a sudden, you have the customizable “hard mode” you never knew you needed!
Colony Manager
While micromanaging colonists can be fun, every player reaches a point where it gets pretty tedious. Eventually, you want to grab your monitor and tell your colonists to show a little initiative.
With the Colony Manager mod, you no longer have to manually select colonists to go forage for food and wood. Instead, you select how much you need of each resource and your colonists will do their best to meet your quotas.
This is one of our picks for best Rimworld mods because it puts these tedious activities in the background. That lets you concentrate on your next bizarre alien adventure instead of gathering food one click at a time.
Relations Tab
Longtime Rimworld players know that one of the best things about the game is also one of the worst things. What are we talking about? Managing relationships, of course!
Nurturing relations between different colonies and factions can be one of the most rewarding parts of the game. However, Rimworld doesn’t make it easy to keep track of these relationships, turning this rewarding element into an annoying chore.
With Fluffy’s Relations Tab mod, you get an easy and intuitive way to monitor colony relationships at a glance. It’s pretty simple as mods go, but this will definitely change how you play the game for the better.
Realistic Rooms
We usually don’t get too caught up in the argument that video games aren’t very realistic. Every now and then, though, some aspect of game design is so unrealistic that it really affects our enjoyment.
In Rimworld, that unrealistic aspect is room complexity. The game has strict rules in place for creating a brand new room. As everyone finds out when they get their first apartment, you don’t need much more than a mattress and a pillow!
That’s where Crisniper’s Realistic Rooms mod comes up. This mod simply lowers the room requirements so that you can create rooms more quickly using fewer resources. Use this to save plenty of time or, at the very least, to recreate your sad college apartment days!
Tech Advancing
Where To Get Rimworld Mods
What does Rimworld have in common with a game like Street Fighter? Eventually, players realize they don’t know what’s going on and just start hitting buttons to make stuff happen.
Tech advancement in Rimworld feels like that because many players don’t know how to advance their tech level. You can either stay confused and low-tech or snag GHXX’s Tech Advancing mod.
This straightforward mod simply advances your tech level based on what you have chosen to research. Trust us: this mod is so intuitive that you’ll start wondering why the game didn’t ship with this feature!
Zombie Apocalypse
When you get down to it, there are basically two categories of mods. There are those intended to enhance existing gameplay and those meant to transform the game entirely.
The Zombie Apocalypse mod transforms Rimworld into a sci-fi zombie dystopia. Beneath this simple premise, though, is gameplay that real zombie fans can sink their teeth into.
Because infected colonists can spread their zombie disease, you need to either remove limbs to stave off the infection or permanently dispose of the colonists. Ultimately, this is a fun way to add apocalyptic moral choices to your game.
Rimworld Total Conversion Mods 2019
Allow Tool
Allow Tool, a mod by UnlimitedHugs, is another mod that makes base gameplay 100% better. In fact, it’s the kind of mod you won’t ever want to turn off once you get used to it.
This mod provides a selection tool that allows you to select almost any element in the game. After that, you can draw out a square and basically select all of that kind of item within the square.
Using this to find where ore is or rearm all your mortars at once is a great way to save time and keep your colony safe. With a little creativity, you can constantly find new uses for the Allow Tool.
Dubs Bad Hygiene
Our final selection for best Rimworld mods falls somewhere between “super realistic” and “super silly.” With the Dubs Bad Hygiene mod, you can turn colony hygiene into one more thing you need to manage.
What does that mean? In addition to survival concerns, your colonists will need to stay clean and use the bathroom. You’ll quickly find that, as in real life, nothing makes people happier than a major bathroom renovation!
Best Rimworld Mods: Time To Play
Now you know what the best Rimworld mods are but do you know where you can learn even more about your favorite games?
Here at SideGamer, of course. Be sure to come back every week for more gaming tips and reviews.
Rimworld is a sci-fi colony simulator that has an immense following and player base. Rimworld also has an extremely active modding community with some players using hundreds of mods in their playthroughs. The Steam workshop is where you can find 99% of these mods and to look through all ~7,000 could be extremely tedious. Some of these mods aren’t even up to date anymore! We’ve compiled a list of some of the best Rimworld mods.
This is not an exhaustive list leave a comment below after you’ve read through and let us know what great mod we’ve accidentally left out.
If you’re interested in more Rimworld content, check out our other posts here!
Guards For Me
A relatively new mod, Guards For Me lets you designate colonists to be patrol guards, bodyguards, and standing guards.
Patrol guards will follow set waypoints and attack any threats they see. You can make patrol guards walk the outside of your base to keep an eye out for any mad animals or incoming raiders.
Bodyguards will follow a colonist you designate and protect them from any enemies.
Standing guards will stay in one spot and attack any hostiles that come their way.
Guards For Me is a great way to defend your colony at all times. Sure, a kill box and some turrets should get the job done, but sometimes you need a human to make some rounds or follow your level 20 crafter around and make sure their arm doesn’t get ripped off by a mad bear.
This is also a great way to roleplay! Maybe your new colony has a drug operation and you want someone to guard the stockpile 24/7. Or maybe your new colony is an organ far… I mean prison and you need guards to walk the halls and beat would-be escapees with uranium maces (why haven’t you removed their legs yet?). The possibilities are endless!
Vanilla… Expanded
Vanilla… Expanded is a huge repository of mods by Oskar Potocki that add a variety of things to the game. From new armor, new factions, new animals, new furniture etc. these mods have it all! There are 15 (!) total mods in this collection to subscribe on the Steam Workshop and we highly recommend subscribing to all 15.
Here is a list of all 15 with links to their pages on the Steam Workshop.
EdB Prepare Carefully
EdB’s Prepare Carefully mod is a must-have for anyone playing Rimworld that wants to customize their colonists. Typically, you just have to keep rerolling colonists till you get one you like, but with Prepare Carefully you can choose what traits your colonists have, their skills, even their appearance.
Prepare Carefully also has the option of using a point system so that you don’t start with overpowered pawns or items. If you want a balanced playthrough but also want to customize your pawns then this feature was made for you. That’s right, you can customize your starting items or animals too with this mod!
Prepare Carefully also has the option of saving your setup so that you can use it again for your next colony if you find yourself wanting to use the same pawns or traits over and over again.
This is one of the most popular mods on the Steam Workshop and should be one of the first mods you mess around with after a quick vanilla playthrough. Prepare Carefully is without a doubt one of the best Rimworld mods.
Expanded Prosthetics and Organ Engineering
This is an automatic install for me whenever I am reinstalling mods. If you like bionics, prosthetics, and organ harvesting then this is the mod for you. Expanded Prosthetics adds 4 new workbenches that let you craft simple prosthetics like peg legs all the way to advanced ones like bionic arms. One workbench even lets you craft your own organs! Synthetic kidneys and livers created right in your very own organ lab.
This mod is huge. While it does have a lot of late-game research and crafting, the basic prosthetics table does offer you some flexibility letting you tap into this mod early on. Pawn lose a leg? Craft them a peg leg at the basic prosthetics table!
I find myself constantly harvesting organs from prisoners to sell to caravans and trade ships. Expanded Prosthetics also adds two new traders – the textile and prostheses trader. Of course, this pairs well with another mod called Prisoner Harvesting. Prisoner Harvesting gets rid of the annoying debuff your colonists get from harvesting organs from prisoners.
Tilled Soil
While this mod technically hasn’t been updated since release it is still one of the most subscribed mods on the Steam Workshop. It is really simple and only does two things. Tilled Soil adds… well, tilled soil.
In the flooring menu, you will find “tilled soil” which is a buildable version of fertile soil. Tilled soil gives plants grown on it the same bonuses as fertile soil. Your crops will now grow with 200% fertility allowing you to focus more on base building and less on massive farms. Some consider the 200% overpowered, so it depends on your playstyle. Some players like to stick to the more “realistic” 100%.
You will also find that you now have the ability to rehabilitate stone floors into dirt so that you can make underground greenhouses.
Color Coded Mood Bar
This is a simple quality of life fix that lets you check your pawns mood very quickly. Color Coded Mood Bar adds at the top of the screen, you will see a colored bar behind each colonist’s figure. It should look something like the above image. The higher the bar, the happier the colonist. The lower the bar, the closer they are to having a mental break.
The colors are as follows:
It’s a simple mod that really helps you keep track of who is happy and who is about to have a tantrum and smash their room.
Wall Light
Rimworld Total Conversion Mods
Another simple mod, Wall Light adds a new light that can be constructed on walls. They can be rotated so that they face any direction and are perfect for placing above workbenches or next to beds. I find that they look neater than your standard floor lamps.
Wall lights follow the same research requirements of the regular standing lamp. There are also colored wall lights so you can still make that disco room your colonists are dying to have.
This mod is also extremely compatible with old saves. Simply install it and load up your old save and you will see the option to build them in the furniture menu. If you ever want to uninstall this mod you can either remove the wall lights in your save before uninstalling or simply just uninstall it. You’ll get a few errors on the first load in and your colony will be dark unless you remembered to build standing lamps before but otherwise, you’ll be fine.
This version does not include a wall sun lamp. If you want to get that as well, head on over to this link and install it. It essentially works the same as the above.
RPG Style Inventory
RPG Style Inventory is a great mod that replaces the original gear tab with an RPGesque inventory screen. It makes checking your colonist’s loadout a breeze. The color denotes the quality of the item and there is also a small icon in each square that tells you if the colonist is being forced to wear that item or if it was worn by a corpse.
Be aware that it may not be compatible with mods that add other slots on pawns. Check the mod page for more information on which mods it has been made compatible with.
While You’re Up
How many times have you seen a pawn walk by something that could be hauled to the destination they are going to? Not anymore! While You’re Up helps keep your colony running efficiently. Colonists will scan the surrounding area before starting a new task for anything that needs to be hauled to the area that their task is in.
So say your colonist is at point A and there is a stack of meals that need to get hauled to point B. Well, it just so happens that your colonist is the cook and point B is the freezer/cook area. Your colonist will grab that stack of food on their way to point B and drop it off before starting their job.
Its a really simple mod that helps out immensely and should be an auto-install for everyone.
RimWorld Mods ⋆ RimWorld Base
And that wraps up what we believe are some of the best mods in Rimworld! We couldn’t list all of our favorites here, but these mods are a great place to start.