RimWorld Wiki Guide — How to Play, Survive Your First Colony, and Master the Basics

RimWorld is a colony sim / story generator by Ludeon Studios, designed by Tynan Sylvester (it left Early Access on Steam October 17, 2018 and still sits at roughly 98% positive from about 240,000 reviews). You manage a handful of shipwreck survivors — the game calls them pawns — and build a colony from nothing on a hostile alien world. Raids, disease, mental breaks and relationship drama all happen, and the game engine weaves those events into stories. This guide is the full onboarding: what the game actually is, how to lay out your first colony, what to do each step of the first 30 days, how the wealth mechanic punishes hoarders, how to survive your first raid, and the mistake list every veteran eventually learns.

---

Official resources: Steam store page · IGN game page · RimWorld Wiki (official wiki) · Ludeon website · Wikipedia

What RimWorld Actually Is: A Story Generator, Not a Game You "Win"

Let's clear up the biggest misconception first: RimWorld has no required win condition. There's no "beat the game" button. Instead you get an AI storyteller that keeps generating events, and the core loop is "colonists get into trouble → you handle the trouble → the trouble leaves marks → the marks become a story." Crashes, plagues, raids, mental breaks, colonists falling in love or betraying each other — all of it is story material.

The design philosophy, which Tynan has repeated for years, is "losing is fun." The drawn-out, messy collapse of a colony is usually more memorable than a smooth run. The most famous RimWorld stories in the community are almost always "everyone died horribly" stories.

So the first mindset shift for a new player: treat "stay alive and leave a good story" as the goal — not speedrunning toward some victory screen.

Picking Your Start: Scenario, Planet, Storyteller and Colonists

The character-creation screen throws several choices at you at once. Here's what each one actually means and what a beginner should pick.

Scenario

Stick with the default Crashlanded (three survivors whose ship crashed). Its resources and pacing are the most balanced, and about 90% of community guides assume it. Don't start with Naked Brutality (one naked pawn, nothing else) or Rich Explorer — those are challenge modes for experienced players, and they'll just teach you how to die slowly.

Planet and tile

When generating your world, pick a temperate forest tile: mild climate, long growing season, balanced resources. Avoid ice sheets, deserts and extreme jungles on your first run. Your first colony exists to teach you the systems, not to test your tolerance for suffering. Also worth doing: generate the world with a little higher "coverage" slider so you have good tile options, and try to land near an ally faction if you can.

Storyteller

The storyteller is the AI that decides what events happen and when. The game asks you to pick one on the new-game screen:

• Cassandra Classic — events ramp up steadily and predictably. This is the beginner pick.
• Phoebe Chillax — long peaceful stretches, but the raids that finally come hit noticeably harder. Fine for a relaxed start, just don't be surprised later.
• Randy Random — pure chaos, no logic whatsoever. The community's favorite for long-term runs, but a terrible first experience.

Here's the thing people miss: you can change the storyteller and difficulty in the options menu at any time, mid-save. Nothing is locked in. Pick Cassandra, and if you want things calmer or spicier later, just swap.

Starting colonists

The short version: no serious health problems, and no Pyromaniac trait. A pyromaniac pawn who mental-breaks will set your base on fire, and a beginner cannot deal with that yet. Look at Cooking, Construction and Growing skills first — not combat. You can fight with anything; you can't eat with a gun.

Also check each pawn's passions (the flames next to a skill) — passionate pawns level up faster, so you want your three starter jobs covered by passionate pawns. Age matters too: younger pawns have more years of learning left, older ones start with better baseline skills. And if a pawn has a burning passion in a skill you don't need, that's still fine — passions matter more than exact numbers in the first colony.

Days 1–3: The Build Order That Keeps You Alive

Hit spacebar to pause the moment you load in, then do these in order (this is the consensus order from the classic Reddit starter threads and the Ludeon forums' beginner guides):

1. Build shelter — a small enclosed room (4x4 or a bit bigger) with walls and a door. Protects pawns from wildlife and the elements.
2. Place a stockpile zone — put it inside the shelter and set its priority to Important so pawns haul all the starting supplies inside.
3. Plant rice — rice is the fastest-growing crop in the game; get it in the ground immediately. A patch of 40-60 tiles feeds three pawns comfortably.
4. Build beds — one wooden bed per colonist. Sleeping on the ground hits mood hard.
5. Research Smithing — the gateway to weapons and armor.

That's day one. The order matters: shelter first (exposure and wildlife kill), then food production (hunger is the silent killer), then morale (beds), then the tech tree.

The First 30 Days: A Week-by-Week Roadmap

• Days 1-3: Finish the build order above and stabilize food — rice in the ground plus hunting. Hunt what you can kill easily (deer, rabbits, not that megasloth).
• Days 4-7: Once Smithing finishes, craft at least one gun. Build a cooler (set it below 0°C / 32°F) so your food doesn't rot into a pile of "unforbidden delicious" trash. Lay sandbags on the side you expect raids from.
• Days 8-15: Your first raid usually arrives in this window. Get everyone armed and the sandbags in place before it does. If you're behind, pause and re-prioritize — nobody will wait for you.
• Days 16-30: Slow the expansion down. Build a proper kitchen (a separate room stops "food poisoning from dirty cooking area"), individual bedrooms (shared sleeping spots and sleeping-on-the-floor are mood penalties), and recreation (horseshoe pin is the cheapest, chess table is better). Then fix your work priorities — the section below is where most new colonies actually die.

By the end of day 30 you should have: stable food income, at least one freezer, everyone armed, a defensive line, and a work schedule that doesn't rely on everyone doing everything.

Work Priorities: Why "Nobody's Cooking" Kills More Colonies Than Raids

Every pawn has work types (Cooking, Growing, Construction, Research, Mining, Hauling, and more). By default everyone is set to "do a bit of everything," and this is the #1 new-player death cause — not combat. What actually happens: everyone is busy doing their own thing, nobody cooks, and the whole colony starves into a cascade of mental breaks.

On day one, open the Work tab and assign:

• One pawn at Cooking priority 1 (this is the most important job in the colony — do not argue)
• One pawn at Growing / Construction priority 1
• One pawn at Research / Crafting priority 1

Everyone else hauls and cleans. Yes, it's that rigid. RimWorld's default work priorities are a trap for people who've played other colony games — this one expects specialization from day one.

The Three New-Player Killers: Hunger, Mental Breaks and Raids

1. Hunger (the silent #1 killer)

• Plant rice first, always.
• Cook food into simple meals before eating — raw food carries a mood penalty.
• Keep a freezer (cooler at below freezing) so food doesn't rot.
• If food runs low, hunt — but do not eat raw meat unless you enjoy the mood debuff and food poisoning roulette.

2. Mental breaks

Every pawn tracks needs: food, sleep, recreation, mood. When mood collapses, they hit a mental break — smashing things, wandering, catatonia, and for pyromaniacs, arson. The prevention kit is cheap: cooked food (mood bonus), a decent bedroom (at least 3x3, one bed each, a light), and recreation (horseshoe pin is the budget option). The critical one beginners miss: pawn's mood nukes when they see corpses — haul and bury (or butcher) dead bodies promptly. A pile of rotting raiders in the middle of your base is a constant mood drain you can't afford.

3. Raids

The first raid lands in the day 8-15 window most runs. Mechanically: raid size scales with colony wealth (the "wealth trap" below). You handle it with weapons, sandbag cover, and focused fire via Draft. More on that in the raid section.

The Wealth Trap: Why Hoarding Gets You Killed

This is the single most important mechanic to understand in the mid-game, and it's completely invisible to new players. Raid strength (raid points) scales with colony wealth — the total value of every building, item, colonist and animal you own. The official wiki's Wealth management page states the wealth counted toward raids caps at 1,000,000, and raid points cap at 10,000.

Official source: RimWorld Wiki — Wealth management — raid strength scales with colony wealth, capped at 1,000,000; raid points cap at 10,000.

The classic new-player loop: hoard everything — piles of steel, stacks of loot, rooms you're not using. Wealth spikes, raids get meaner every cycle, and the colony dies from being "too rich." It feels backwards, but RimWorld literally punishes accumulation.

How to Survive Your First Raid (Step by Step)

1. Draft: select your colonists, click Draft, and move them behind the sandbag line.
2. Focus fire: select everyone, right-click one enemy at a time, and kill them one by one. Do not let each pawn pick their own target — split fire is how you lose.
3. Use cover: sandbags and rock chunks give hit chance penalties to enemies and protection to you. Standing in the open is suicide.
4. Aftermath: bandage wounds, haul or bury bodies, patch buildings — then strip the raiders' weapons. Early on, their guns are better than yours.

Common Mistakes Checklist (lessons from thousands of hours)

• Expanding too fast at the start: bigger base = more materials = more wealth = harder raids. Start small, grow deliberately.
• Nobody dedicated to cooking: covered above — the #1 new-player killer.
• Eating raw food: mood penalty and food poisoning, both of which chain into worse things.
• Ignoring mood: walls don't hold a colony together, mood does. If pawns are unhappy, nothing else matters.
• Blood and corpses everywhere: huge mood drains. Haul and clean constantly.
• Random research order: Smithing first, then practical stuff — Electricity (for refrigeration) → medicine → defense.
• Panicking when a colonist gets hurt: set medical priority (Patient / Bed rest) to 1 in the Work tab and wounded pawns will put themselves to bed automatically.
• Refusing to pause: playing at 3x speed in real time is a self-inflicted difficulty spike. Pause is free.

Where to Go Next

Once you're past the first 30 days, the natural next knowledge nodes, in order: advanced colony management (wealth and defense science) → the terms dictionary (so guides stop confusing you) → the DLC breakdown (what's worth buying) → Steam Workshop mods (where half of RimWorld's life lives). All of them have guides:

• RimWorld colony management guide: wealth, defense and base design
• RimWorld terms guide: Scaria, Quadrum, Glitterworld and all the slang
• RimWorld DLC guide: Odyssey and all 5 expansions ranked
• RimWorld Workshop and mods guide
• RimWorld platform guide (including the Console Edition truth)

Frequently Asked Questions

What kind of game is RimWorld?

A colony sim and story generator: survivors crash → you build a colony → an AI storyteller generates raids, diseases and relationship events → the events form a story. There's no forced win condition; the goal is "stay alive and leave a good story."

How should a beginner start in RimWorld?

Crashlanded scenario + temperate forest tile + Cassandra storyteller + no pyromaniacs. Day one order: shelter → stockpile → rice → beds → research Smithing.

What should I do in the first 30 days of RimWorld?

Days 1-3 stabilize survival (shelter, food, beds); days 4-7 make weapons, a freezer and sandbags; days 8-15 survive your first raid; days 16-30 add a kitchen, bedrooms and recreation, and fix work priorities.

How do I survive my first raid in RimWorld?

Arm early, lay sandbags, then Draft and focus-fire enemies one at a time from behind cover. Loot the bodies afterward — their weapons beat yours. If outmatched, retreat and save your people over your stuff.

Is RimWorld hard?

The difficulty is mechanical density, not reflexes — there are a lot of systems, but they all have logic. Follow the first-30-days list in this guide and you'll avoid most classic deaths. That's what the community means by "losing is fun."

Does RimWorld have an ending?

There are optional ending lines (ship launch, the Royal Ascent, Archonexus and more), but all are optional — the game never forces you to finish. See the RimWorld endings guide for details.

---

Related Guides

• RimWorld Terms Guide — Scaria, Quadrum, Glitterworld and all the slang
• RimWorld DLC Guide — Odyssey expansion and all 5 DLCs ranked
• RimWorld Workshop Mods Guide — essential mods and install rules
• RimWorld Platform Guide — PC, Console Edition and Steam Deck
• RimWorld Endings Guide — Ship Launch and Royal Ascent

Last updated: August 12, 2026.