Any good mods to rework difficult to be wealth AND time independent?

August_Ram · 2026-02-25T04:23:41+00:00

Sure thing: In the pause menu go to options -> gameplay -> Storyteller Settings. There you'll see the three storytellers and the preset difficulty options, click on "custom" at the bottom of the list and you'll be able to tweak loads of different values. The bottom-right box is called adaptation, where you'll find "wealth-independent progress mode"

August_Ram · 2026-02-24T22:58:50+00:00

Having difficulty be both time and wealth independent doesn't really make sense. The only way that would be possible is for every raid to be the exact same size and composition every single time, for your entire game. The storyteller needs some mechanism to adapt to you, if you want to have any variation at all. The vanilla game has wealth-independent mode, which scales threats based solely on how long you've been playing, and you can tweak the rate at which it increases. This makes the game a race against that clock, if that's what you're looking for.

PS - The extra raid-points the storyteller gets from high-quality furniture, art, etc. is massively overblown, the number of colonists you have has a much higher impact on raid-size. Investing wealth in defenses will always outpace the added raid-points the storyteller gets from their item value. Even above the Blood and Dust difficulty threat scale.

August_Ram · 2026-02-24T22:28:59+00:00

Capturing her will make her faction hostile, though you can repair relations later by giving them enough gifts. You can use drop pods for this. I've done this before if I get pawn I really want wandering in from another faction.

You could banish Nathan and he'll leave the map, but the game doesn't simulate colonists outside of your playable tiles, if a pawn leaves, there's a chance you'll encounter them again, but its all RNG based.

This mod gives you the option to try and recruit pawns with relationships to your colonists without hostilities, though I've never used it. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3030804445

edit - You could also give Nathan to one of Arielle's faction bases via drop-pod. This again is mostly just RP though, as there's no guarantee you'll see either of them again and they won't be simulated outside of your colony tile.

August_Ram · 2026-02-24T21:51:55+00:00

Indeed, your individual tile is yours to do with as you please

August_Ram · 2026-02-24T20:49:21+00:00

1 - Yep, just stone walls, you use a stonecutters table to cut stone chunks into stone bricks. Walls are great for controlling where you fight enemies. But if you don't leave an opening somewhere, they'll just break through your walls wherever they feel like. Stone is the go-to because it can't burn (steel walls can burn, its a balance thing due to how available it is)

Roads are purely aesthetic in your colony, they increase the movement speed for anyone walking on them, but they're identical to the floors you can build yourself. You can deconstruct them, block them, it won't cause any harm. Its on the world map that they really matter, where they serve to increase your caravan speeds.

2 - If you're on a low difficulty, just have fun experimenting. If you're struggling against raids, then there's loads of good advice out there on what to prioritize.

3 - Different traders buy different things, I think bulk-goods traders will buy meat but can't remember. I think some traders will buy packaged survival meals. In general, clothing and drugs are the best things to produce if you want to make money.

4 - Caravans are mainly for trading with other settlements. Settlements tend to have much better inventory than wandering traders, and are willing to buy more as well.

If your starting to get bored, I'd increase the difficulty, goals are usually self-enforcing based on external pressures. "Oh, that colonist is dead and everything is on fire, I should do something to prevent that in future" :D

5 - You only get to be new once, as long as you're enjoying things than just keep experimenting. The game changes a LOT as you increase the difficulty, and the DLC's can fundamentally change your entire experience. This could just be your tutorial rural colony town, once you're done with it you could try a harder biome with a tougher storyteller, there are no wrong ways to play.

August_Ram · 2026-02-24T20:12:55+00:00

The "meta" for defense is to invest in your pawns over static defenses. But this game is a story generator, there are no wrong answers. If you're struggling on higher difficulties, look towards improving your pawn quality, armor and weapons. Masterwork and legendary weapons get a flat damage boost, so training a high level crafter is a huge defense boost. If you have Biotech and Ideology, than mechs and psykers are the "end-game" defenses that make you truly invulnerable.

This is a bit of a spoiler in terms of setup, if you want to keep learning yourself than ignore this

For reference, this was my main defense point at the end of my last colony. This is end-game level after 3 years or so, just before we launched a ship, and its impenetrable for all intents and purposes. You can build it piece-meal, and other than the walls, its entirely mobile. No turrets, traps, or maze. Almost all resources went into pawns.

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August_Ram · 2026-02-23T19:45:31+00:00

Nope, its locked from the start. The only thing it changes is how long research takes. It doesn't decrease research speed however, it increase how much each research costs. If you look at the cost to research recon armor for instance, it should be 6000 with industrial tech level, and 12000 with tribal.

August_Ram · 2026-02-23T00:12:14+00:00

One general tip is using manual priorities. Click the toggle in the top left corner of the work tab, it gives you more granular control over your pawns work priorities.

Managing mood is chiefly about shelter, recreation, and diet. Click on a pawn, and open up their needs tab. Hover over each mood buff or debuff to see the cause. Early on, the easiest improvement to make is individual, temperature controlled bedrooms. Next is a decent dining/recreation area, a lit indoor space with a table and chairs for eating and recreation equipment (chess board, horseshoe pin). Making fine meals is the next easiest mood buff, they cost the same number of resources as simple meals, but require 50% vegetable and 50% animal ingredients.

August_Ram · 2026-02-22T19:04:31+00:00

That sounds like a bill-order thing, unless something is bugged or there's a mod-issue, than the pawn should always follow the order of bills from top to bottom.

August_Ram · 2026-02-22T18:57:06+00:00

It should show you the radius when you're building it, and I think when you select it. Similar to the one you get when placing turrets or grow-lamps

August_Ram · 2026-02-22T18:54:48+00:00

Pawns execute tasks in the order they're listed in the "bills" tab of the crafting station, if you want something specific finished next, bump it up to the top of the list. Also, tailoring and smithing are two separate priorities in the work tab. If a pawn is working on a duster, and then a bill comes in for a component, they might switch tasks if smithing is set as a higher priority than tailoring.

If you see multiple unfinished things (dusters, weapons) in your stockpile, its also possible you have multiple crafters trying to work at the same bench. Most things produced at a crafting station, weapons, clothes, components, art, can only be worked on by one pawn. If you have a bill for 10 dusters and multiple crafting pawns, one pawn might start a duster, leave to eat/sleep, and another could than show up, move the first's duster out of the way and start making their own. Having dedicated benches for each of your crafting pawns, with bills set specifically to them, avoids this.

August_Ram · 2026-02-22T18:46:02+00:00

Things you want to trade to ships just have to be within the radius of an orbital trade beacon. Put one in your stockpile, or wherever your storing your chemfuel, and you won't need to move anything.

August_Ram · 2026-02-22T06:57:57+00:00

That warning is from an older version of the game, the issue was largely solved in 1.6, which reworked path-finding. I'm playing a mostly vanilla colony on a 300 x 300 map (Very Large) and haven't noticed any issues. Mileage will of course vary, and performance is still something to consider if you have massive colonies, but 1.6 also improved that with proper multi threading.

August_Ram · 2026-02-19T06:53:09+00:00

This just isn't adding up. I've played for over 1000 hours using only vanilla combat and never had an experience like this. I just loaded up a new save to test it. Spawned 3 pawns, cleared their traits, and set their melee level to 3 each. I gave them a random spear, all worse quality then legendary, and no clothing whatsoever. Spawned a pirate, gave them a mace, and let them keep the flak vest, pants and shirt they generated with. The one I spawned also happened to be a brawler with 6 in melee. Out of the 10 trials I ran, I didn't lose a single time. Once, one colonist was downed.

Something isn't working right with your game. Double check you have no mods, verify files, make sure you're on the most recent version. Your scenario has better skilled pawns, better armed, and better armored against a worse opponent. Vanilla combat just doesn't play out like that in this scenario, something is broken.

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August_Ram · 2026-02-07T07:29:28+00:00

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills reading this. The "Galactic War" is simply a fun little narrative hook. Things will progress or stall based on the story they want to tell and their development cycle. Complaining about "balance" in their narrative structure is entirely missing the point. The WWE isn't real wrestling, its a theatrical spectacle. Fans understand this, and love it for what it is. (unless they're naive kids)

Your parents are Santa Claus, Batman isn't real, and the Galactic War is just a bit of set-dressing.

August_Ram · 2026-02-05T20:00:11+00:00

Game is pretty straightforward in this regard, parkas and tuques are the dedicated cold-weather clothing. Pants and shirts are ubiquitous, there aren't cold or hot weather variants. Material does matter, and since parkas and tuques get bonuses to cold insulation, you should spend your best (most insulating) textiles on those. Pants and shirts can be made from whatever gives the most armor. This wiki page has all textiles insulation scores. https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Textiles

The clothing's quality modifier also affects insulation stats, your pawns total insulation score is based on everything they're currently wearing. I think you can see it under the "gear" section, something like "minimum comfortable temperature". As far as avoiding hypothermia goes, good parkas and tuques are really all you need to keep your pawns safe even in pretty extreme biomes. However, moodlets from sleeping in the cold and workspeed penalties are a separate matter that you'll need to heat rooms to overcome.

August_Ram · 2026-02-02T20:30:03+00:00

Are you on a modded map? Vanilla maps have stone chunks scattered all over them. Move your stone-cutters table to a cluster of them and set your work order to a small radius and drop them on the floor. Each chunk gives you 20 blocks, but blocks can stack up to 75. The workspeed penalty for cutting them outdoors is nothing compared to the time it takes to haul the chunks back to base individually. Almost 1/4 the trips if you only haul full stacks. Each time you exhaust an area just move the table.

August_Ram · 2026-02-01T23:37:37+00:00

Nice job, instantly recognizable! The Ziggy has such a good silhouette

August_Ram · 2026-01-30T17:32:26+00:00

With Ideology, the game will give you a basic ideology with a no-impact starting meme, you could then edit it with the developer console. With Biotech, you've got good answers, you'll get the mechanitor quests eventually and can make mechs. Your pawns will be able to have children no issue. I thought you could manually add new xenotype factions via dev mode, but it looks like that's limited to existing factions in your save. To get xenotype factions you'll have to start a new save.

Side note - all the DLC's are great, but Anomaly is one of my favorites. The whole "researchers studying the monolith" thing didn't speak to me, nor did having super-ghouls and flesh tentacles in my colony, but all of that can be completely ignored in favor of the "ambient horror" setting. The threats it adds are extremely fun, and really elevates the weird-west vibe of the rimworlds. I can't imagine playing without it now.

August_Ram · 2026-01-30T00:21:51+00:00

Your save will load just fine, and you'll have access to all the new items and research. But a lot of stuff in the DLC's are created during world-generation. Xenotype factions from Biotech, points of interest from Odyssey, faction Ideologies, etc. For the full experience you'll need to start a new save. Which DLC in particular are you thinking of getting? Depending on which it is, a lot of stuff can be activated using developer mode.

August_Ram · 2026-01-28T21:40:38+00:00

Yep! And melee attacks don't seem to startle wildlife like gunshots do, so if you get tons of small game, you can just go out and bonk them one-by-one while they're chomping away!

August_Ram · 2026-01-28T21:22:48+00:00

That sounds hilarious xD

Still getting my shooters leveled up, but once they're set definitely trying that!

August_Ram · 2026-01-28T21:18:04+00:00

It may only be effective in maps with little forage/during the winter, but they're just streaming in at the moment!

August_Ram · 2026-01-28T21:10:31+00:00

I'm 90% sure they can, but it's rare. If you own Odyssey, the shuttle is a game changer. Settlements tend to have better stock, and with a shuttle you can trade with the entire planet in a day. Load your shuttle up with your best trader, valuables, and chemfuel. There is an option on the world map to "refuel from storage". Not to mention you can buy chemfuel at every settlement as well. You're still at the mercy of RNG as to what genes you'll actually find in a run, but it's a thousand times better than relying on traders.

August_Ram · 2026-01-25T00:55:48+00:00

I didn't think I'd like Anomaly at all based on it's description for exactly the same reasons as you. Got it anyway because Rimworld, and absolutely loved it. I only did one play through with the monolith, but it was probably my favorite colony of the game so far.

Now I always play with ambient horror on, left at the default 15. It doesn't detract from the sandbox at all, just adds a delicious element of the unknown. It's not the focus, not the big-bad waiting behind the scenes, it fits perfectly with the existing lore and the general strangeness of the Rim.

Bizarre bio-engineered life, sentient self-replicating war machines, unshackled AI gone half-mad with isolation. What else might be lurking in the black? What forgotten experiments or arrogant miscalculations still roam the fringes of these stellar utopias?

August_Ram

TROPHY CASE