Pioneer's Guide

Welcome, Overseer

Register with New colony on the title screen, or try one of the demo colonies first. When you found a colony you pick three things:

Scenario

Landing site

Click the world map to choose where you land. The card beside it shows the biome, hilliness, local stone types, how much of the year is warm enough to grow crops, and the average temperature. A temperate site with a long growing season is the gentlest first colony. Deserts, tundra and mountains are real challenges.

• Hills and mountains give you lots of rock to mine for stone and alloy, but less farmland.
• Rivers and lakes have fertile banks. Deep water can't be crossed, but shallow fords and shores can.
• The area around your landing spot is always dry and open, and every map edge can be reached from it.

Reading the screen

• Top bar: your colony name, the day, time, season and temperature, and your power balance. Next to them are the window buttons: Work, Schedule, Production, Research, Events, World, Market, Wonders, Bounties and Alliance.
• Stockpiles panel (left): everything your colony owns, totalled across all stockpiles.
• Research tracker: the current research project and its progress.
• Architect dock (bottom): the build and zone tools, grouped into tabs.
• Inspector (right, I to toggle): details for the selected colonist (needs, mood, thoughts, health, gear) and for the clicked tile (terrain, room rating, temperature). Below it is the Colony Log. Switch it between Important and All.
• Radio: planet-wide chat plus announcements about trades, wonders and bounties.

Your first days

Your colonists land with a few supplies and nothing else. Here's a solid opening that works in most biomes. Colonists can work out what to do on their own, but they'll only build, farm and store what you designate.

1. Make a stockpile Open the Zones tab and drag out a Stockpile Zone near the landing site. Your colonists haul loose supplies into it. Things lying outside a stockpile are harder to find and easy to lose. Later you can roof it with walls to make a storeroom. Drag over or next to an existing zone of the same kind (or the same crop) to grow it; the two merge into one. Delete Zone [0] erases zone tiles you drag over.
2. Plant food right away Drag a Rice Field on good soil (meadow grass or fertile loam; the tile inspector shows fertility). Rice is the fastest crop; add potatoes for poor soil and corn for a big, long-keeping harvest. As in RimWorld, each colonist needs roughly 15–20 tiles of cooked rice (twice that if they eat it raw), so make it bigger than you think you need, and plant on day one.
3. Build a campfire Production → Campfire Hearth (4 timber). It's your kitchen, tailor and heater rolled into one. Colonists cook raw food into meals here, sew clothes, and warm up beside it. A meal turns 10 raw vegetables or meat into almost a full stomach: cooking nearly doubles your food, and colonists hate eating raw.
4. Build a shelter Lay Timber Walls in a small rectangle and leave a gap for a Timber Door. Any area fully sealed by walls, doors or rock counts as a room. Rooms stay warmer in cold weather and cooler in hot weather, and they keep prisoners from escaping later on.
5. Give everyone a bed Put a Canvas Sleeping Cot (5 timber) inside the shelter for each colonist. Sleeping on the ground or in the cold leaves a bad memory for days. Once you've researched Basic Furniture, swap the cots for Wooden Beds, which give even better rest.
6. Start research Build a Research Bench (8 timber), open Research T and pick a project. Basic Furniture (beds, tables, game table) or Stonecutting (slate walls, masonry) are good first picks. Even without a bench, colonists can do slow "field research".
7. Mine for stone and alloy Use Orders → Mine Rock and drag over rock. Mining gives stone blocks, and sometimes salvage alloy and components, which are rare and valuable. Glittering alloy veins deep in the mountains are the best source.
8. Check work priorities Open Work F1. Make sure your best grower has Grow at 1, your best builder has Build at 1, and someone has Doctor, Craft and Haul switched on.

Surviving the first year

1. Stock up before winter Crops stop growing in the cold, and a hard frost kills young outdoor crops. Watch the season in the top bar. By autumn you want a big food store: rice, potatoes and corn keep for weeks, plus preserved ration packs (which never spoil). The log warns you when food drops below a few days' worth.
2. Dress for the weather Before the cold comes, make sure there's cloth for Insulated Parkas. Colonists sew and put them on automatically once winter makes a parka the better choice. Grow cotton (after Hydroponics research) or hunt for hides to make Hide Coats.
3. Prepare for raids Hold on to the best weapons you find. Colonists automatically pick up the best one in stock. Research Defensive Structures for sandbags, barricades and spike traps. Build them where raiders will have to walk past.
4. Keep spirits up Tables, cooked meals, good beds, a game table and a few flower planters keep mood high. Happy colonists work faster, and wanderers are more willing to join a happy, well-fed colony.
5. Plan for power Research Smithing → Machining → Electricity Basics to get solar panels, batteries, heaters and coolers. A cooler in the wall of a small room makes a freezer where food never spoils.

Needs

Every colonist has needs that drain over time. The inspector shows them as bars.

Mood & thoughts

Mood works as in RimWorld. It starts from a base of 32%, plus an expectations bonus that shrinks as your colony gets richer. Every active thought pushes it up or down, and mood drifts toward that target: up to 12 points an hour rising, 8 an hour falling, and not at all while asleep. Select a colonist to see their thoughts.

A new colony also gets Initial Optimism (+10%) for its first 8 days. As the colony gets richer, colonists expect more, so good rooms, fine meals and recreation matter more over time.

Situational thoughts

These last as long as the situation does: hungry (-6) or ravenous (-12), drowsy (-6), tired (-12), exhausted (-18), recreation from fully satisfied (+10) to starved (-20), chilly or sweltering, in pain, sick, food poisoning, beautiful or ugly surroundings, animal companions, and natural-mood traits.

Memories

Inspirations

Above 50% mood, colonists are occasionally inspired. It's rare at 50% and about once every 10 days at 100%. An inspiration lasts up to 8 days: Work Frenzy (x1.8 work speed), Go Frenzy (+40% speed), Shoot Frenzy (far better aim), Inspired Taming (next taming succeeds), Inspired Recruitment (next recruitment succeeds), Inspired Creativity (next craft two quality levels better), Inspired Surgery (next operation twice as likely to succeed) or Inspired Trade (18% better prices on the next trade deal).

Mental breaks

Breaks follow RimWorld's tiers. Below 35% mood a colonist risks a minor break (about every 4 days on average). Below 20% it's a major break (about every 0.8 days), and below 5% an extreme one (about every half day). Nerve traits move these thresholds. After a break, a colonist gets Catharsis (+40% for 3 days).

• Minor: Food Binge (eats from your stores), Sad Wandering (wanders off for most of a day), Insulting Spree, or Hide in Room (shuts themselves in their bedroom for 6–12 hours).
• Major: Tantrum (smashes nearby structures for a few hours), Daze (wanders off for over a day), or, if there's beer or joints in stock, a Drug Binge (12–24 hours of drinking and smoking everything they can find).
• Extreme: Berserk (attacks the nearest colonist, prisoner or pet), Fire-Starting Spree (sets fires for a few hours), Catatonic Breakdown (lies helpless for two to five days), Murderous Rage (hunts down the colonist they like least until that person is downed), or Give Up and Leave (walks off the map and is gone for good). Breaks never start while your colony is offline-protected, and a colonist giving up stays if the colony goes offline.

Skills & traits

Colonists have RimWorld's twelve skills, from 0 to 20: Shooting, Melee, Construction, Mining, Cooking, Plants, Animals, Crafting, Artistic, Medical, Social and Intellectual. Doing a job earns XP in its skill. Level 1 takes 1,000 XP, and mastering a skill (level 20) takes 265,000.

• Passions (🔥 interested, 🔥🔥 burning) set how fast a colonist learns a skill: 35% with no passion, 100% interested, 150% burning. Give colonists work they're passionate about.
• Learning slows to a fifth after 4,000 XP in one skill in a day, so skills grow over weeks, not hours.
• Skills at level 10 and above slowly decay without practice, faster the higher they are.
• Each skill level adds about +6% work speed for that kind of job. Harvest and mining yields go up about +2.5% per level.
• Construction can fail, as in RimWorld: a builder at level 0 succeeds 75% of the time, rising to certain success at level 8. A botched job loses half its delivered materials and starts over.
• Shooting and Melee set hit chance with guns and with blades or fists. Cooking unlocks fine (6) and lavish (8) meals and cuts food poisoning. Medical improves tend quality. Social makes wardens wear prisoners down faster and recruit more often. Animals raises taming chance. Intellectual speeds research.
• Work speed also goes up and down with pain, exposure, malnutrition, illness, traits, inspirations and bionics. It never drops below 25%.

Traits

Colonists have one to three RimWorld traits. Traits on the same spectrum never stack, e.g. Industrious, Hard Worker, Lazy and Slothful, or Sanguine through Depressive.

Friends & rivals

Colonists who spend time together chat (+10 opinion), have deep talks (+15) and, if they're Kind, offer kind words. Some slight (−5) or insult (−15) each other, and Abrasive colonists do it 2.3 times as often. At +20 they're friends; at −20, rivals. An insult can turn into a fistfight that bruises both and leaves strong feelings either way. See each colonist's Relations in the Bio tab.

Romance & family

As in RimWorld, single colonists who like each other (opinion +15 or more) sometimes try their luck. Success depends mostly on how much the other colonist likes them. A rebuffed suitor feels it (−5 mood for 3 days, −10 opinion).

• Lovers (+35 opinion) who've been together 10 days and are fond of each other may propose. A yes makes them fiancés (+30), and they marry about two days later. Newlyweds get Got Married (+40 mood for 30 days), a honeymoon opinion boost, and become spouses (+30). A turned-down proposal stings (−18 mood).
• Partners pick beds near each other, and sleeping side by side gives Got Some Lovin' (+8 mood).
• Couples who've soured on each other may break up (or divorce). The one who's dumped takes −15 mood and −50 opinion of their ex.
• Family: a wanderer or refugee is sometimes a colonist's sibling (+20 opinion), parent or child (+30).
• Grief: losing a spouse or child costs −20 mood, a lover −16, a sibling −14 and a parent −8, each for 30 days, on top of the usual A Colonist Died.

Backstories

Every colonist has a childhood and an adulthood (see the Bio tab). Backstories add skill levels and can make a colonist incapable of some work. A pacifist preacher won't hunt or fight, a clerk won't mine or build, and a sheltered ward won't haul. Incapable work shows as ✕ in the work grid, and wanderers list it before you accept them.

Work priorities F1

The Work window is a grid of colonists and work types. Click a cell to cycle 1 → 2 → 3 → 4 → Off. A colonist always does their lowest-numbered available work first. Each cell shows the colonist's skill level for that work type, so you can see who's best at it.

Emergencies come before all of this. Colonists eat and sleep when they need to, rescue and treat bleeding or downed colonists, flee or fight raiders, and get warm when they're freezing.

Schedules F2

Each colonist's day is split into hours. Pick a brush and click or drag across hours to set them to:

• Anything: the colonist decides.
• Work: only jobs (plus urgent needs).
• Joy: recreation time.
• Sleep: bedtime.

Presets (Day shift, Night owl, Relaxed) fill in a whole row at once. Night owls are handy for keeping watch and keeping research going around the clock.

Architect toolbar

Choose a tab in the bottom dock, then a tool (or press 1–9), and click or drag on the map. Blueprints show up as ghosts. Builders deliver the materials and then construct them. Orders → Cancel Blueprint removes a blueprint and refunds anything already delivered. Locked tools show the research they need.

Production bills P

As in RimWorld, every bench has its own bill stack. Click a bench and press 📋 Bills, or open Production P and pick a bench on the left. A colonist goes to the nearest bench that has work and takes the first bill there that can run. For each bill you can:

• choose how it repeats: Do X times, Do until you have X (counts stockpiled goods, not what's worn), Do forever, or, for garments, Do when needed (sewn only while a colonist wants one for the weather),
• suspend it, or delete it,
• let only colonists with a minimum skill work it, so your best cook makes the lavish meals,
• move it up or down.

Use + Add bill to add any recipe that bench makes (up to 15 bills). A new bill starts as "Do 1 time". Benches you haven't set up yet run a sensible default stack: every recipe they know, kept in stock (garments when needed). A bill gets skipped while it's done, suspended, locked by research or missing ingredients.

Research T

Open Research, choose a project, and colonists with Research work turned on will study it at a Research Bench. If you have no bench, they'll do field research in the open instead. Finished techs unlock buildings and recipes. Some techs need earlier ones first.

Costs (in brackets) are RimWorld's research points. A Neural Supercharger bionic boosts a colonist's research speed.

Power

Electrical buildings that touch each other, directly or through power conduits, form a grid. Each grid balances on its own:

• Generators: a wood generator gives a steady 1000 W while it burns 22 wood a day (holds 75), and a chemfuel generator 1000 W on 4.5 chemfuel a day (holds 30). Haulers refuel them once they drop below 30%, and new ones are built empty. A biofuel refinery turns 70 wood (or 70 raw vegetables) into 35 chemfuel. A solar panel gives up to 1700 W at full daylight and nothing at night. A wind turbine gives up to 3450 W as the wind allows, and a watermill a steady 1100 W beside water. A geothermal generator built over a steam geyser gives a steady 3600 W. Batteries smooth out the gaps.
• Batteries store surplus and cover shortfalls, such as solar at night.
• If a grid can't meet demand even with its batteries, everything on that grid shuts off.

The top bar shows your total generation and demand. Heaters, coolers and lamps only work while powered.

Weather & the outdoors

Weather follows RimWorld and varies by biome: clear spells, fog, rain, foggy rain, thunderstorms, dry thunderstorms, and snow when it's freezing. The current weather shows in the top bar.

• Aim: outdoors, rain and snow cut accuracy to 80%, fog to 50%. Storms and heavy snow also slow walking.
• Fire: rain and snow put out fires in the open. Dry thunderstorms throw lightning that starts them. Anyone standing in flames can catch fire. They panic and run about for a few seconds, taking 2 burn damage a second and maybe lighting the ground, until they beat it out. Water or rain puts them out at once. A firefoam popper (research Firefoam, 7 alloy) goes off when fire comes within 3 tiles. After 2.5 s it bursts, smothering every fire and burning person within 10 tiles, and is used up.
• Getting wet: colonists outside in rain or snow feel Soaking Wet (−3%).
• Storage: things left outdoors slowly fall apart. Cloth, hides and medicine go fastest, wood and components slower, and stone, metal and silver not at all. Rain makes it five times as fast, and goods dumped in water or marsh rot three times as fast. Wall in your stockpiles.
• Outdoors need: colonists stuck under a roof for days get Cabin Fever (−3%), then feel Trapped (−8%). A bit of outdoor work or a walk refills it quickly.

Rooms & beauty

Any area fully enclosed by walls, doors or natural rock (up to 300 tiles) is a room. Rooms are insulated from outdoor temperature, and each one gets an impressiveness rating that shows in the tile inspector.

• Beauty comes from buildings: flower planters +6; wooden beds, dining and game tables and lamps +2; slate walls +1. Industrial gear is ugly: generators −4, sandbags, batteries and coolers −2.
• Clutter hurts: each loose item stack is −2, rot −6, a corpse −15. Keep your stockpiles out of the bedrooms.
• Wealth (what's built and stored inside), space (bulky furniture takes some) and cleanliness count too.
• Filth: colonists track dirt in from outside, the wounded drip blood, and food poisoning means vomit. Colonists on the Clean work type scrub it up. Dirty rooms also raise the risk of infection when wounds are tended there.

Impressiveness uses RimWorld's formula, which combines wealth, beauty, space and cleanliness, with the weakest of them holding the room back. Ratings go Awful (under 20), Dull, Mediocre (30), Decent (40), Slightly (50), Somewhat (65), Very (85), Extremely (120), Unbelievably (170) and Wondrously Impressive (240). Sleeping or eating in a room gives a thought from +1% (mediocre) to +8% (wondrous). An awful bedroom costs 2%. A room with more than one bed is barracks. Sharing costs mood (−7% awful down to −1% somewhat impressive) until the barracks is very impressive (+1% … +4%). A couple with two beds in their own room still counts as a bedroom. Beauty is a need of its own (RimWorld). It follows how beautiful a colonist's surroundings are (the room's beauty per tile, or about 8 tiles around outdoors), rising quickly and falling slowly. Moods run from Hideous (−15) through Unsightly (−5) to Pretty (+5), Very Pretty (+10) and Beautiful (+15). Sculptures, planters and good furniture help. Clutter, rot and corpses hurt.

Recreation & comfort

Recreation is a need of its own. It drains about 2.5% an hour while colonists are awake, more slowly once it's low. They relax during Joy schedule hours, when they're unhappy, or when the bar runs low.

• Variety matters (RimWorld tolerance). Each kind builds tolerance as it's enjoyed, by two thirds of the recreation gained. Tolerance shrinks what that kind gives, so the same game every night pays less and less. Above 50% a colonist is bored of that kind and picks something else until it falls below 30%. Tolerance fades 18% a day for a young colony, and more slowly (down to 7%) as wealth raises expectations. Give them more than one way to unwind.
• Mood: +10 at 85%+, +5 at 70%+, −5 below 30%, −10 below 15%, −20 when empty.

Beer

Research Brewing, then grow hops (8 per plant). At a Brewery, cooks make 1 wort from every 5 hops and fill a Fermenting Barrel (25 wort). It turns to beer in 6 days between 7 and 32 °C, pauses from −1 to 7 °C, and spoils if it gets hotter or colder than that. Keep barrels indoors.

• Colonists have a beer for recreation at most once a day: +17% chemical recreation (its own tolerance) and a little food.
• Alcohol high: Warm +10, Tipsy +14, Drunk +20, Hammered +26. One beer adds 15% (less as alcohol tolerance builds, 1.6% per beer) and it falls 75% a day.
• Hangovers: anyone who got Drunk wakes up hungover once they sober up. It starts as a pounding hangover (−12, work −18%), eases to serious (−6, −8%) and mild (−3, −3%), and is gone within a day.
• Addiction: once alcohol tolerance reaches 25%, each beer can hook a colonist (3% at 25% tolerance, 5% at 50%, 15% at 80%). An addict's need for alcohol falls 50% a day, and they'll drink whenever it runs low. Without beer they suffer Alcohol Withdrawal (−20 mood, slower work) until they kick it, about 15 days without drinking.

Psychite tea

• Research Psychoid Brewing (500), grow a Psychoid Field, and brew tea at the campfire (4 leaves each).
• A cup is +40% chemical recreation and +10% rest. High on Psychite gives +12 mood for about 6 hours.
• Tolerance builds 3% a cup (−1.5% a day). From 10% tolerance each cup can cause addiction (3.6%, up to 30% at 80%). The need falls 50% a day, and Psychite Withdrawal is brutal: −35 mood, slower work and 20% slower walking.

Smokeleaf

• Grow a Smokeleaf Field (8 days, 9 leaves a plant) and roll joints at the machining table, 4 leaves each.
• A joint is +80% chemical recreation, so colonists may pick one over a beer. High on Smokeleaf gives +13 mood but means 30% slower work, 10% slower walking and 30% more hunger. The high lasts about 12 hours at first, and less as tolerance builds (+3% a joint, −1.5% a day).
• Addiction is possible from 15% tolerance (4.4% a joint, rising to 30% at 80% tolerance). Each joint satisfies 90% of the need, which falls 50% a day. Smokeleaf Withdrawal brings −20 mood, slower work and 15% slower walking.

Comfort

Comfort rises (60% an hour) while sitting or lying on something comfortable, up to that furniture's comfort, and falls 4% an hour otherwise. A bed gives 75% and a cot 68%. At the dining table, or while playing at the game table, the best seat beside a colonist counts: stool 50%, dining chair 70%, armchair 80% (10 cloth). Below 10%: Uncomfortable (−3). At 60/70/80/90%: +4 / +6 / +8 / +10.

Farming

Drag a growing zone and growers will sow, tend and harvest it. Crops follow RimWorld: the listed grow days count only growing time, and plants rest at night (about 19:00 to 06:00), so a crop takes roughly 1.8 times its grow days. Growth also depends on soil fertility (fertile loam is best, then meadow and marsh, then poor ochre dust; potatoes barely care) and on temperature (full speed from 6 to 42°C, none below 0°C).

• Crops can't be planted on gravel, bare stone, water or snow.
• A killing frost (−10°C or colder) withers immature outdoor crops. Extreme heat stops growth too.
• A field inside a heated room works as a greenhouse all year round.
• Blight can wipe out much of your most-planted crop, so it's worth spreading your bets.

Food, cooking & spoilage

Colonists eat about twice a day and always reach for the best food nearby: lavish, then fine, then simple meals, and raw food last. Food poisoning ruins a colonist's day (pain, slow work): meals from an unskilled cook carry up to a 5% risk (down to 0.1% at cooking skill 9+), and raw food about 2%. Two things decide the risk, as in RimWorld: the cook's skill (5% at level 0, falling to 0.1% from level 9) and the kitchen. A clean kitchen adds nothing, a dirty one adds up to 5%, and cooking at an outdoor fire adds 2%. Nutrient paste never poisons.

Keeping food fresh

• Above 10°C, perishable food spoils at full speed and eventually turns into rot, which is ugly and useless.
• At 10°C or below it spoils about three times slower.
• At 0°C or below it's frozen and doesn't spoil at all. A powered cooler set into the wall of a small storeroom makes a freezer.

Seasons & temperature

The year has four seasons: Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter. Colonies land in mid-spring. Outdoor temperature comes from your biome's baseline, plus a seasonal swing (warmest mid-summer, coldest mid-winter), plus a day/night swing, plus weather: cold snaps outside summer and heat waves in summer.

Staying warm (or cool)

• Rooms are insulated, so they stay closer to mild than the outdoors.
• A campfire inside a room heats it, and a second fire helps more. An outdoor campfire warms the tiles near it.
• A powered heater warms its room to a comfortable level. A cooler chills the room next to it.

Comfort and exposure

• Between about 10°C and 30°C (in the basic suit), colonists are comfortable. Outside that range they get Chilly or Sweltering mood penalties.
• Further out (below about −2°C or above 36°C) they build up hypothermia or heatstroke. At 30% they work slower, at 90% they collapse, and at 100% they die. Exposed colonists seek warmth or shade on their own, and downed ones are carried to the warmest bed.

Apparel & armor

As in RimWorld, clothes come in layers. Over their charter thermal suit a colonist can wear an outer garment (parka, duster or coat), a vest underneath it, and headgear. Insulation from every layer adds up. Colonists choose and change clothes on their own, picking whatever in stock makes the best whole outfit for the season, plus a bonus for armor. A tuque under a parka handles deep winter, and a cowboy hat with a duster handles the desert.

Armor works as in RimWorld. A weapon's armor penetration is subtracted from the armor rating (a rifle pierces 27%, a pistol 14%). Each hit then rolls: under half the remaining armor it's deflected, under the full amount it does half damage, otherwise full. Bullets and blades are sharp, fists and brawls are blunt. Coats protect the torso and limbs, the plate vest only the torso, and helmets the head. Each layer covering the spot that's hit rolls in turn, outermost first, so a duster over a plate vest gives the torso two chances to stop a bullet. Cloth comes from cotton fields and cargo pods, and hides come from hunting.

Quality

Weapons, apparel and furniture come in RimWorld's seven qualities, from Awful to Legendary. Quality depends on the maker's skill (Crafting for gear, Construction for furniture). A novice makes mostly awful or poor work, and a master makes good to masterwork. Better quality means more accurate and harder-hitting weapons, stronger armor and warmer clothes, more restful beds, more fun game tables, more beautiful rooms and more valuable goods. Only an Inspired Creativity can produce a Legendary item. Colonists swap to better-made gear on their own.

Shooting & cover

As in RimWorld, each tile of distance compounds a shooter's accuracy: 89% per tile at Shooting 0, up to 99% at 20. So skill matters most at long range. Each gun also has accuracy by range: pistols are best up close, rifles at medium and long range. Cover next to the target on the shooter's side blocks shots: walls 75%, sandbags and barricades 55%, grown trees 25%. Melee hits depend on Melee skill.

Health & doctors

Damage lands on body parts (head, torso, arms, legs) as wounds that hurt and can bleed. Pain slows work. Bleeding or downed colonists are an emergency: others rescue them, carry them to a bed and call a doctor.

• Tending works as in RimWorld. Tend quality is the doctor's skill (20% + 10% per Medicine level) × the medicine's potency, ±10% luck, +10% if the patient is in bed. Each medicine also caps it:

  Medicine	Potency	Best tend	Where from
  None	30%	70%	—
  Herbal medicine (healroot)	60%	70%	Healroot fields, traders, cargo
  Industrial medicine	100%	100%	Drug Lab (3 fabric + 1 herbal + 1 neutroamine), traders
  Glitterworld medicine	160%	130%	Rare cargo pods

  Doctors use the best medicine in stock. Neutroamine is bought from traders.
• Better tends heal faster. Resting in a bed speeds healing a lot.
• Surgery (RimWorld): installing a bionic is an operation. Choose it in a colonist's Gear tab and a doctor operates when free. Success is the surgeon's chance (10% at Medicine 0, 50% at 4, 90% at 10, 110% at 20) × medicine potency (none 30%, herbal 60%, industrial 100%, glitterworld 160%) × room (clean 100%, dirty down to 60%, outdoors about 51%) × bed (90% if not lying in one), capped at 98%. Inspired Surgery doubles it. A failure wounds the patient; one in five failures also ruins the part.
• Untended wounds slowly clot and heal, but poorly. A tended wound can become infected, as in RimWorld: 15% for cuts and gunshots (30% for burns, never bruises) × (85% − 80% × tend quality) × the room (50% in a clean room, more in a dirty one, 100% outdoors). Tend in a clean infirmary.
• Colonists with Bed Rest work enabled stay in bed while they recover.

Bionics

Bionic parts from the machining table (or traders) are installed from the colonist inspector. Each one also gives an "Augmented Body" mood boost.

• Bionic Eye: sight and accuracy.
• Bionic Arm: manipulation and work speed.
• Bionic Leg: movement speed.
• Neural Supercharger: research speed.

Diseases

An illness is a race between severity and immunity. If immunity reaches 100% first, the colonist is cured. If severity reaches 100% first, they die.

• Treatment: these are RimWorld's rates. A tend lasts about a day and takes its quality × the "perfect tend" figure off each day's severity gain. Sick colonists need tending every day, and better doctors and medicine make all the difference.
• Immunity builds faster while resting in bed and much slower while malnourished.
• Past a certain severity a sick colonist goes to bed rest on their own. A grave illness can down them.
• Being sick costs mood ("Sick", then "Gravely Ill") and slows work.
• Parasites never get worse and never go away on their own. Gut worms double hunger and cause pain and vomiting. Muscle parasites slow movement and work by 30%, double tiredness and hurt. A doctor cures them with tends adding up to 300% quality, one tend every two days (three perfect tends, or five at 60%).
• While your colony is offline-protected, illness can't take anyone past 79% severity, so nobody collapses or dies of it while you're away.

Wildlife & hunting

Each biome has its own wildlife. Herds start away from your landing site and more migrate in over time.

How to hunt

1. Select a colonist, right-click an animal and choose 🎯 Hunt.
2. Armed colonists with Hunt work enabled will track it down and finish it off if it's downed.
3. A kill leaves a corpse. Haulers bring it in and cooks butcher it for raw meat and hides. A Butcher Table (8 timber) gives the full yield. The campfire also works as a RimWorld "butcher spot" at 70%. Yield also scales with the butcher's Cooking skill: 75% at level 0, 100% at 10 and 125% at 20. Corpses rot about as fast as raw meat.

Predators & manhunters

• Ash wolves hunt the local deer and hares every few days and leave carcasses behind. Their kills are free corpses to butcher if you get to them before they rot.
• A manhunter pack is a group of enraged local boars or wolves that arrives from the map edge and charges your colonists. It's larger for richer colonies. Armed colonists fight back and unarmed ones flee. Manhunters never attack downed colonists. After a couple of days the rage wears off and they turn back into ordinary wildlife.
• Manhunters can't be tamed while enraged.

Ranching & pens

Livestock works as in RimWorld. Muffalo can be tamed in cold biomes. Cows, chickens and muffalo also turn up through the Farm animals wander in event, which adds a few tame animals to your colony.

• Milk and eggs are animal products. Cooks use them in place of meat, and an egg is as filling as five pieces of meat, so a fine meal needs just one egg. Eaten raw, they give the raw-food mood penalty. Milk keeps about 14 days and eggs about 15.
• Wool is a fabric. Every tailoring recipe takes any fabric, so wool and cloth work the same.
• Pens: cows and muffalo are roamers. Paint an Animal Pen zone (Zones tab) and handlers rope livestock into it, where it grazes and stays put. (RimWorld uses fences and a pen marker. Here the zone is the pen.)
• Roamers outside a pen sometimes start roaming: they drift to the map edge and leave for good unless a handler ropes them first. Roaming is paused while your colony is offline-protected.
• Sexes & breeding (RimWorld): animals are ♀ or ♂ (shown on their label). Only adult females give milk or lay eggs, and wool comes from both. A cow or muffalo near an adult male of her kind may get pregnant (🤰) and gives birth after 6.7 days. Young animals grow up in 20 days (chickens 12) and produce nothing until then. With a rooster about, hens lay fertilized eggs that hatch into chicks after 3.5 days unless the cooks get to them first. Breeding stops at 24 colony animals.

Animal taming

Select a colonist, right-click a wild animal and choose 🤝 Tame. Colonists with the Handle work type walk up with a treat from the stockpile and try to win it over. A marked animal holds still for its handler instead of running off. Each animal can only be tried every so often.

• As in RimWorld, each attempt succeeds with chance (4% + 3% per Animals level) × (1 − wildness). A skilled handler matters: at Animals 10 that's about 8.5% per try for a deer, and 17% for a boar.
• Every attempt needs a treat (any food from the stockpile). With no food, there's no attempt.
• A failed attempt on a boar or wolf can enrage it at its handler (30%).
• Tamed animals must be trained by handlers before they work, using RimWorld's steps. Fighters learn Guard (3 steps: defends within 12 tiles) and then Attack (5 steps: chases enemies up to 30 tiles away). Pack animals learn Haul (7 steps). Pen livestock (cows, muffalo) can't be trained. Each session succeeds with chance (10% + 5% per Animals level) × (1 − wildness), and an animal can have one every 6 hours.
• Training slips without practice: every 12 days (tame animals) down to every 6 days (the wildest), an animal forgets a step, Attack and Haul before Guard. Handlers keep retraining it. An animal over 10% wildness with no training left can go feral. Decay pauses while your colony is offline-protected.
• Bonds: an animal can bond with the colonist who tames it (1%) or trains it (0.7% per step learned). That colonist gets Bonded Animal (+5 mood) and trains it 5× as easily. If the animal dies, they grieve: My Bonded Animal Died (−8 for 20 days).
• Tamed wolves are carnivores: they eat from your food stores, or hunt wildlife if there's nothing.
• Tamed animals get a name (like 🐾 Biscuit) and give colonists an Animal Companions mood bonus. Losing one hurts mood.

Raids

Threats follow RimWorld's Cassandra storyteller: a lone mad animal early on, a small raid around day 5, then waves of one or two threats every week and a half or so. A scout warning names the edge they're coming from shortly before they arrive (except drop pods). Only one raid happens at a time.

• Raid size follows RimWorld's raid points: colony wealth, colonists, colony age, and an adaptation factor that eases off after you lose colonists. Gear improves as raids grow: shivs and fists, then pistols, then rifles.
• Assault: they walk in and fight. If you've walled yourself in, they breach walls and doors to get at you.
• Tribal war parties (about 1 raid in 3): more warriors than a pirate raid of the same size, armed with clubs and short bows. They always attack head-on. Their bows can be looted, or made at the machining table (10 timber).
• Sappers tunnel straight through your walls, ignoring killboxes and doorways.
• Drop pods land raiders right inside the colony, with no warning.
• Sieges: raiders dig in about 25 tiles out and lob mortar shells every couple of hours. Shells damage buildings and people and can start fires. They storm in after a day and a half, or the moment you attack their camp.
• Mechanoids (from day 30, about 1 major threat in 5 once raids are big enough): Scythers (fast, power blades), Lancers (charge lances that pierce armor) and Centipedes (very tough, 72% sharp armor, six-shot heavy charge blasters). Mechs never flee or surrender, can't be taken prisoner, and are destroyed rather than downed, leaving alloy and components behind. Bring armor-piercing rifles and fight from cover.
• Raiders don't attack downed colonists. If nobody's left standing, they grab your most valuable stack and run.
• They break and flee once they've lost about half their number, and they give up after a few days.
• Dead raiders drop their weapons and some silver. If they rob you, colonists take a mood hit.
• A wounded raider left behind can be taken prisoner. See Prisoners.

Combat & drafting

Colonists defend themselves without orders. Armed colonists engage hostiles that get close, and unarmed or badly hurt ones flee. Gunners stop to shoot once they have range and line of sight. Everyone equips the best weapon in stock: assault rifle > bolt rifle > pistol > shiv > fists.

Firing

• As in RimWorld, gunners aim before each shot or burst, and moving spoils the aim. Trigger-happy colonists aim and recover faster, and careful shooters slower.
• Friendly fire: a missed shot can hit someone standing right next to the target, friend or foe. Pawns within 4 tiles of the shooter are safe. Don't brawl in front of your own gunners.
• Dodging: in melee, a defender dodges up to 25% of blows (1.25% per Melee level).

Drafting

• Select a colonist and press R (or right-click → ⚔️ Draft) to take direct control.
• Right-click a tile and choose 🚶 Go here to move them, or right-click an enemy and choose ⚔️ Draft & Attack.
• Press R again to undraft and they'll go back to their usual routine.

Defenses

• Sandbags and barricades give cover. Put your shooters behind them.
• Spike traps hurt the raiders who walk into them and wear out with use. Place them in chokepoints.
• Mini-turrets (Gun Turrets research, 7 alloy) fire two-shot bursts at any raider, mechanoid, insect or manhunter within 14 tiles. Raider gunners shoot back, and a destroyed turret explodes, so keep colonists out of the blast.
• Tamed wolves make good guard dogs.

Prisoners

After a repelled raid, if a wounded raider is left behind you'll get an event asking whether to take them prisoner or release them.

• Prisoners get tended by doctors and carried to a free bed, which becomes their prison bed. They show an orange tint and a [P] tag.
• Each prisoner has a resistance rating (higher for good fighters). The inspector shows it.
• Wardens visit each prisoner about once a day (or sooner if they're hungry), bring a meal and wear resistance down. A good Social skill helps, and so does the prisoner's mood (RimWorld: ×0.2 when miserable up to ×1.5 when happy), so a comfortable cell pays off. What the prisoner thinks of the warden counts too: ×0.5 for one they hate, up to ×1.5 for one they like. Once resistance hits zero, each visit has a chance to recruit the prisoner, which also depends on Social and mood.
• Prisoners try to escape now and then. A prisoner in a walled cell tries about once every 45 days; one whose bed is outdoors tries far more often. Cellmates always join a prison break, and prisoners in other cells within 20 tiles join half the time.
• Right-click a prisoner to release them at any time.

Events & decisions E

Every few days the storyteller sends an incident. Some just happen. Others are decisions that wait in the Events window (the badge shows how many are pending). If you don't answer before one expires, the safe default is chosen for you.

Wanderers and refugees only turn up when the colony is reasonably happy, has a few days of food, and has fewer than 10 colonists.

Traders

A passing trade caravan arrives as a decision. It offers a few goods for silver at a markup, and buys your most plentiful goods at below their value. Take as many deals as you can afford, then click Done trading. Silver comes from raider loot, trades with players, bounties and the market.

World map & caravans M

• The World window shows the shared planet: every player colony, biome and point of interest.
• Player trades: offer some of your goods in exchange for someone else's. The goods you offer are held in escrow straight away, so trades can't be duplicated. They're delivered when the other player accepts, even if you're offline.
• Caravans: click a tile and choose Send caravan to send colonists and goods across the map. On the way they may find derelict cargo or meet nomads. Recall them or disband them when they get home.
• Ancient sites: explore them for rare relics like archotech cores and power cells. Each site can only be cleared once, by the first colony to get there.

Market, wonders, bounties & alliances

• Market K: post your goods for silver, or buy other colonies' listings.
• Wonders J: planet-wide megaprojects that every colony contributes materials to. Finished wonders are announced with a planet-wide bonus.
• Bounties B: contracts on dangerous targets, paid in silver. Each one can only be claimed once. The Factions tab shows your standing with the planet's factions.
• Alliances L: found one or join one. Allies share a defense pact.
• Radio: planet-wide chat and announcements.

Offline protection

You can't watch your colony around the clock, so a Protected Offline Shield covers you while you're away:

• About a minute after your last session disconnects, the colony goes into protected hibernation.
• While it's protected, no raids or threats arrive, food and rest can't drop to fatal levels, mental breaks are suspended, and recreation stays at a safe minimum.
• Other players can still accept your open world-trade offers. Goods are delivered while you're away.

Controls & shortcuts

WASD / right-drag

Pan the camera

Mouse wheel

Zoom

Left-click

Select a colonist or tile, or use the current tool

Right-click

Order menu for the selected colonist: prioritize, hunt, tame, release, tend, move

1 – 9

Pick a tool in the current architect tab

R

Draft or undraft the selected colonist

E

Events awaiting your decision

F1

Work priorities

F2

Schedule

P

Production bills

T

Research

M

World map and caravans

K

Market

J

Wonders

B

Bounties

L

Alliances

I

Show or hide the inspector panel

?

Controls overlay

Esc

Close the open menu or window

Quick tips

• Plant more food than you think you need. Winter is long, and blight happens.
• Keep a stack of ration packs as a reserve that never spoils.
• Build a dining room with a table and a bedroom with real beds early. They're cheap and the mood payoff is big.
• Keep stockpiles out of bedrooms and dining rooms. Clutter makes rooms ugly.
• Make sure at least two colonists have Doctor on, and keep healroot in stock.
• Wealth attracts bigger raids. Build defenses as your stockpile grows.
• Check the Events badge. Unanswered decisions fall back to the cautious option.
• The Colony Log (Important filter) tells you what needs attention.