One of the nice things about Rimworld is how moddable the game is. There are hundreds of different mods available through the Steam workshop. These range from cosmetic changes through to ones that add new items and events up to those that change the gameplay significantly. Experimenting with different mods gives the game lots of replayability, but where do you start? What are the absolutely essential, must have mods for Rimworld? In this post I’ll list my choices. I’ve restricted these to mods that enhance the base game rather than change it significantly.
I’ve given links to the steampowered web pages for these mods, you could also search for them within the Steam workshop. (Note: since I wrote this post, Romworld 1.3 has been released. At the moment most of the mods here are NOT compatible with 1.3, hopefully the authors will update them soon.)
Essential Mods
Here’s the list of the top ten mods I always use when playing Rimworld:
• Harmony and HugsLib
These two mods don’t do anything on their own, but they’re needed for some of the other mods so load them first.
Harmony
HugsLib
• Mod Manager
If you’re going to be playing with mods, this gives a much easier way of managing them.
Mod Manager
• RimHUD
Replaces the basic colonist information panel with a new one containing a lot more essential information.
RimHUD
• Common Sense
Improves the colonist AI so that your pawns are less likely to be annoyingly stupid and hence require less micromanaging.
Common Sense
• Incident Person Stat
We’ve all been there: you offer sanctuary to a refugee, only to find that they’re a pyromaniac drug addict who refuses to do any work. Some people consider that part of the story, personally I find it annoying. This mod lets you see a potential new colonist’s details before making a decision on what to do.
Incident Person Stat
• Avoid Friendly Fire
Tells your colonists not to shoot at an enemy if there’s a friendly pawn in the way.
Avoid Friendly Fire
• Realistic Rooms
In the core game, the room sizes required to make your pawns happy are huge. This mod simply reduces those sizes to more realistic numbers, making it easier to keep your colonists satisfied and to build more compact bases.
Realistic Rooms
• No Random Relations
You travel hundreds of light years across the galaxy to start a new colony and what happens? Your long lost sister turns up in a raiding party! Again, some people might like this turn of events but I find it annoying. This mod stops the game generating random relationships during the game.
No Random Relations
• Double Population
This one really is a metter of taste. I like (trying) to build big colonies with lots of pawns. This mod provides new versions of the storytellers with their population preferences doubled.
Double Population
So there you are, my personal top ten list of must have Rimworld mods. As I said at the start, not all of these have been upgraded yet to version 1.3, so keep your eyes on them in the Steam workshop.