Hey, ATS, Let's Play -- Rimworld

Uff ... as I suspected, things just wound into a death spiral. It was rather entertaining how it ended out.

I will write it up tomorrow afternoon when I get some time. Things have been a bit hectic here with virtual school having started up the past couple of days.

I played a bit Monday, and got in the last bits today, but I'll put up the final, tortured moments of our lost tribe tomorrow because I'll have the chance.

It was not one of my finer hours with this game ... but it was funny.

a reply to: ketsuko

What mods do you use/recommend?

a reply to: OccamsRazor04

It sounds like you have the royalty expansion? I don't have it quite yet. I was waiting until first of April for various pay day type events to happen before I jumped on it myself.

HugsLib, Harmony are ones that will enable a lot of other mods to simply work with the Core, so if you're doing mods, they're a given.

GiddyUp is nice. There is a core and then several expansions that flavor it. It expands what you can do with mounts from combat mounts to types of mounts to even armor for mounts.

I also like minor QoL ones. I have one that allows me to stack more in a stack in my stockpiles, so I can pack more stuff into less space. I have one that directs colonists to stack something onto an existing stack if possible, so I don't have three or four stacks of rice unless they're all maxed out.

I have one that lets me reclaim fabrics/leathers at the tailor bench, so when I get dead bodies, I can strip them and reclaim what they were wearing so it doesn't have death taint if I want to -- early game, it's useful especially.

I have one that lets my colonists stabilize their fellows out on the ground instead of having to carry them back to a medical bed to do it. In a real crisis, that can be a lifesaver (Stabilize Here).

I have one that expands the types of turrets and gun complexes I can build. They've saved my bacon more than once; I just never got to where I could build them this game. I was too tech primitive.

RimCuisine (I think) gives you the ability to dry meat, pickle vegetables, and dry fruit and make cheese. You can also mill grains into flour and sugar cane and sugar beets into sugar. It also adds extra plants you can grow in your fields ... a more complex brewing system, and alcohol is a nice trade good. But the first three are very useful before you get good freezers because they'll extend the life of your gathered food for up to 30 days before it spoils in unrefrigerated conditions (pickles might go even longer). Then making that into pemmican extends it for years.

I mix RimCuisine with the VGP Vegetable Gardening set of mods for truly extensive agriculture. Both let you grow all kinds of stuff and cook all kinds of stuff, and they also let you research and learn to can which lets your food move out of the freezer and onto a shelf ... for good. Canned goods are also nice trade items.

A fishing mod is also nice. If you have a stream, river, lake or coast, you can generate a relatively steady stream of protein with your hunters at low risk. Some types of fish you can catch will even generate hide too. Fishing is also considered a bit of a recreational activity for some so they can improve their rec need just standing and fishing.

If you really want your colonists to show personality, install Psychology. That's more of a flavor mod, but it really reworks the underlying systems that govern their personalities. You get some interesting stories out of it, but it will make them more willful too, less inclined to necessarily do what you want them to all the time.

I really enjoyed using Hospitality. It lets you create a travelers' stop out of your base. Groups of travelers from nearby friendly to neutral factions will stop in to stay with you for a day or three. You don't have any control over them. They do pretty much feed themselves without you having to feed them, but basically it's your job to provide bed and entertainment space. Your colonists play host, and you can build relationships with them up to the point where you can even recruit them if you want. You can gift them and raise relations with their faction (recruiting tends to damage your rating so make sure you really want them). It also lets you designate areas in your base where they can buy items from you. The last game I played, I specifically build a room, put shelves in it, stocked them with minor clothing items, nonperishable food items like chips and soda, books, drugs, etc., and designated it buy/sell (I made a 7/11). I made money out of that hand over fist (enough I was building minor silver furniture). You can also charge for the bed if you want. Keep them happy, and they tend to leave gifts for you when they leave and send more travelers your way. Think of Hospitality as a means of reverse caravaning.

I forget what it's called, but I have a mod that lets all kinds of plants grow wild, not just berries. It's more just a flavor thing, but it's nice to think of your colonists gleaning everything out of the wild, not just berries.

A Dog Said and the Easy Patcher for it will let you put simple prosthetics on your animals. Animals are hugely important to the game one way or another. They are either an important cornerstone of you colony's economy (meat, wool, milk, eggs) or they're indispensable battle mounts and beasts or burden ... or both. And they tend to get beat up. A Dog Said lets you keep them functioning as long as possible by giving your best German shepherd a peg leg or prosthetic tail when the time comes.

Those are just some that I can think of that I always tend to have running.

a reply to: ketsuko

Oh, there's also one called Mod Manager (I think) that reworks the interface that the game shows you with mod lists. It also adds tools that will let you see which mods are enabled for a game and which ones are outdated for the game version you're playing. You also have tools that will let you create and save lists of mods for each game you play so you can easily remove/install the right mods depending on what game you want to play.

If you play more than one game or even just one and a new version gets uploaded meaning mods get outdated and need reworking, this one is very helpful.

All right, as promised the final chapter of Clan Brontosaurus -

Elephants Never Forget

Clan Brontosaurus was down to three survivors. Beaten and still suffering the horrid effects of lockjaw venom, they struggled on, trying to pick up the pieces and create some kind of life for themselves. But Black Dog was suffering over the death of his brother, and Red was trying hard to overcome the trauma of having lost a leg. Bluto was working overtime to put on a good face about it all, but putting the whole group's worries on his shoulders just took a toll.

Food was the big problem.

Meg had been the cook. Bluto tried hard to do her job, but mistakes were made. Somehow, bad meat got into the meals, and Red wound up with food poisoning ... on top the lockjaw venom ... on top of the amputation. In the midst of the drama of Red puking all over there was another raider. Black Dog handled it without too much trouble, but the raider dropped some featherdust, and Bluto couldn't resist.

The resulting binge sent him into a drug induced stupor.

Now no one was cooking. Even worse, the crops had finally matured.



So many meals sitting in the ground, and no one was harvesting! Bluto was high, Red was too sick, and Black Dog was sitting on the pier ... fishing and catching nothing. Even worse, no one was cooking either. Hunger was common in the face of an embarrassment of riches.

It looked like they were going to just let it all end right there, but the gods hadn't quite finished with them yet. There was a series of bangs and a small explosion in a nearby field. It snapped Bluto and Black Dog back to themselves and they went to investigate.



An embarrassment of riches had fallen from the heavens, if you can call beats riches, but to the starving, any ready food is wealth. Bluto got to work cooking the first solid meals in a few days, and Black Dog fed Red. It got everyone back on their feet again. Black Dog even got into the fields. Soon Bluto had rice, blue corn, beans and squash to work with too.

Maybe ... just maybe things would be all right. But Black Dog's lucidity was too short-lived.

All too soon, he broke down again, and went hunting ... for elephants ... by himself ... with just a bow and arrows.



The herd was large, and soon they were enraged. You see, you mess with one, and you mess with them all! And they don't forget. In no time at all, they had trampled Black Dog into the ground, ripping him limb from limb and following his trail back to where he had come from.



Bluto tried to effect a rescue, but the elephants were too canny and trampled him as well.



They ravaged the camp site, crushing the fields, and getting between Red and any safety he might have gained inside the tribes base.



For animals that quickly tossed and trambled the best hunter of the tribe, one lone teen on a peg leg presented no challenge at all. They quickly caught Red and tore off his right arm at the shoulder. The last thing Red saw was his arm festooning the top of a pineapple plant. Mercifully there was too much shock for him to feel the pain as he lost consciousness from the blood loss.

And then there was silence in the jungle.

Months later, a group of travelers happened upon a decaying camp. Mold and rot covered a few rude pallets and a crude loom. And scavengers had cleaned out all but the high, arching rib bones of a lone brontosaurus.

So basically, I thought I was maybe going to pull them out of it once the crops came in, but Black Dog had to harvest the plants, and that put him into a mental break.

The mental break sent him into a fit where he went hunting, and he went hunting a herd of elephants with just a bow and arrow by himself. The elephants kicked over into revenge, and there were a LOT of them, more than five easy. The whole herd takes revenge, so they all went into attack mode. The three never had a chance. The game did send in a mysterious man in black, but the elephants took care of him too.

a reply to: ketsuko

I did think of another one that is useful.

EDBPrepare Carefully.

This one lets you tailor everything about your starting colonists from how they look, to their name, to their starting skills and stats and traits. You can also save favorites and load them in over and over.

There is another mod that will let you edit colonists in-game and appears as a tab in your HUD. I often use it to change the names of colonists I end up accepting into my group later on if what they have is outlandish. I might also tweak their setup if it ends up being silly. I forget what it's called though.

Both of them work together, so you can have both running.

a reply to: ketsuko

"Shouldna donthat"

I sure didnt expect that to be the end. Im glad we went through it all, else their stories would have been lost in the bowels of the universe!

Yeah, Im weird about stories. Sometimes I like to think all stories are some wibbly-wobbly manifestation of something that actually happened, somewhere.

Thank you for this Kets. T, too, for communicating stuff through the thread!

Will.. There be another?

a reply to: Serdgiam

I started another one this afternoon and I'm working through the beginning stuff. Instead of using Randy Random and the tribal start, I used jungle, lost caravan, and Cassandra. Imagine my surprise when instead of the jungle of death, I actually got a good mix of game with a minority of predators to start, and we're being given breathing space to start out. I also got a better map for a fortified building position.

I did change my starting crew a bit.

I am using Bluto again, but he's being joined by Wanda, a guy named Jupiter, a simple gal called Ma'am, and a dude named Dave. The caravan start affords them three high powered rifles, flak armor, and three muffalo which give milk and wool.

So far I've built a basic shelter with stockpile, sleeping spots, an add-on chamber with butcher table, oven, food prep bench (need to turn the milk into cheese before it spoils), a table and stools (no more ate without table crankies). I've tamed three guinea pigs (1m/2f). I plan to raise them and eat their offspring and use the skins (cuy anyone?).So I've dubbed them the Fuzz Farmers.

The bad luck is that they are living right next to a mysterious ancient evil. So all our defense prep has been to build a death trap to train any bad monsters down. I'm hoping with our high powered rifles and a gun complex, some spike traps and a deep mud moat, we can kill the scary monsters, loot the spoils of their chamber, and then use it for ourselves without having to mine out the hillside.

originally posted by: OccamsRazor04
a reply to: ketsuko

What mods do you use/recommend?

Here are a few that could be usefull.

Rimfridge , gives acces to refrigerators , instead of having to build huge coolers with the stock items.

Embrasures , gives acces to walls with peep holes where you can shoot through , perfect for defence i build these in a Huge U shape to create a killzone.

Misc. robots , gives acces to hauling and cleaning robots , need a lot of power and are quite expensive but defenatly worth it , i run around 60 robots in current playthrough.

They will haul stuff during the night , and place build materials on objects that are pending to be build.

This will allow you to remove your colonists from hauling or cleaning , leave them inside your compound though.
They cant take that much damage , and you don't wanna lose any.

Very power costly good to pair up with the Miniature Nuclear Generator mod.

Defensive positions : with this you can bind your colonists to a location from where they will defend in a drafted position right away , works well with the embrasures mod.

Allows you to send all your colonists to their specific defensive spot with the click of a button , saves you from doing a lot of micro managment during the start of a encounter.

Quarry : A Quarry , wich can be placed almost everywhere , they do fade out over time but they give you extra resources when you mined all the materials in the map, they give any minable item , From Gold , Uranium to the Chunks.

More trade ships : increases the amount of trade ships that you can trade with from that orbital beacon , defenatly usefull when you reach a point where you have a huge stockpile of items to trade off.

Simple sidearms : Allows you to equip your colonists with up to 2 sidearms , wich means guns , melee weapons and grenades , depending how much your colonists can carry.

Very usefull because if enemies rush you , the colonist can switch to his melee weapon and deal with the threat more effective.

These are just a few i use , but probably the most usefull ones.

Figured i should pass these on from one Fan to another.

a reply to: TheGreazel

Ah, yeah, quarry I forgot. It has been updated. I don't think embrasures necessarily has for 1.1, or I've missed it.

Quarry is good if you don't have lots of stone to begin and sometimes even then because of the random stuff it can throw up.

a reply to: ketsuko

Thanks! I am running some of FLuffy's mods. I wanted colony manager, but it requires a new save.

I have a robust colony of about 12 people now. Almost lost it all because I took a quest that lowered all female mood by 22. One of them went berserk and was slaughtering my animals and I was worried about my thrumbo. I saw I could imprison them not knowing that doing so made them a prisoner I needed to recruit again, I thought it just put them in timeout until their tantrum ended. Then another went berserk and wanted to punish my animals. After knocking out an alpaca an elephant she attacked knocked her out. So now I had no cook. My main constructor got gut worms along with 3 others, the other 3 were out for a few hours. This guy who is one of my most important people has been out for about 8 days now. 8 freaking days. Then I got non stop raider attacks, with almost my entire population either going berserk or starving. If not for Thrumbo power I was doomed for sure.

I outlasted the 9.4 days of -22 mood for females, got my cook back, and most of my people are healed. Got 3 new recruits from the raiders. My construction expert is still down and I cant figure out why. It was looking pretty bad for a while but I think I will pull through.

ETA: I did a quest to another colony where I was supposed to get some power generator but for the life of me can't figure out where it is. I never got any pods that I could see and I don't see it anywhere.

a reply to: OccamsRazor04

Yeah, it's rough when everything happens at once and things spiral on you. It's deadly when it happens early on.

Enter the Fuzz Farmers -- Battle for the Fridge

Meet the Fuzz Farmers:



Bluto, Wanda, Ma'am, and Dave ...



... and Jupiter.

Theirs is a sad story. Once upon a time, they were members of a successful colony. Actually, it was a colony that had some satellite colonies, and they were tasked with running lots of trading missions to local tribes and villages, gathering items for a large project. No one told them what the project was. It was top secret!

They were very excited to participate. They were assured that no other group was as accomplished at getting things as they were. Over and over they hit the roads and trails with their faithful muffalo Roma, Action, and Violet. It was a good time to be alive!

But Jupiter and Bluto began to suspect that things were not as they should be on those last few trips. The main colony began to be distant and no one would talk to them. The last time they went out, they didn't even have a list of things to bring back. By then, Dave was starting to think they were being sent away on purpose too. Ma'am was kind of slow, so she never noticed anything, and Wanda was always just happy to be alive.

As they left out over the plain that last day, there was a huge booming roar and they turned to see a large, bulky pod lifting off over the horizon. An old radio link on Jupiter's belt crackled to life one last time and they heard a scratchy voice say, "Sorry!" before it all cut out.

They had been abandoned to their fate.

Jupiter, Bluto, and Dave got right to work deciding what to do. Sweet natured Wanda calmly gathered plants and herbs with Ma'am while they waited on the men to come up with a plan. In the end, it was decided they would cut toward the coast and away from the satellite colonies. After days of hacking through some heavy growths of fungus jungle and even more rainforest, they hit the sea.

Wanda and Ma'am quickly found good places to set up vegetable, grain, a herb gardens in the shelter of a large outcrop of stone. Ma'am also thought they could grow cotton too. For a simple gal, there wasn't much about plants she didn't know, and when she swung a sword, you sure did get out of her way! Wanda was interested in what herbs she could glean. She was an intuitive healer, and her skills opened all kinds of doors for the group when they went trading.

Meanwhile, Jupiter the engineer of the bunch directed the others in setting up the first shelter. It was rough with log walls, but it kept out the rain. It wasn't long before they had a place to sleep and a place to store their goods. The next project was another room for cooking and eating.

Somewhere in all that was when they heard the strange noises ... odd clicks and whirs, scratching sounds. They seemed to be coming from the wall. And they didn't sound good. Jupiter and Bluto examined the wall closely and discovered that it was actually ancient brick work. Something was on the other side, and they knew they'd have to deal with it sooner rather than later.

So a plan was hatched. I between all the other activities needed to survive, Jupiter carefully surveyed the extent of the ancient ruins in the mountainside. They were extensive, and it was decided that they would break into the chamber on the far side of the ridge. Jupiter, Bluto and Ma'am spent time discussing how best to set up a kill zone leading out of the side of the old wall.

So for days, they worked on building chutes and walls, and a gun complex ... mud moats and spike traps and barricades.

Finally, they decided they were ready, and with everyone who could fight gathered in defensive positions, Bluto breached the wall ...



It opened into a chamber of horrors. Ancient cryo capsules defended by a mechanoid warrior drone. The drone attacked immediately, and the group fought hard. Over the years as traders, they'd managed to lay in a good arsenal of weapons and armor, and it was put to the test now! But in the end, they won out. They thought it was over, but there was a failsafe built in. Now it activated. The cryo capsules shut down and the occupants lept out brandishing weapons, and another fight ensued. This one was even harder.

They weren't sure they'd make it, and the group's bull muffalo was killed. Bluto was seriously wounded fighting a breaching action into the chamber itself to dig some hunkered down strangers. Things looked grim for a time, but Wanda was an angel of mercy. She stabilized the wounded, saving Bluto's life. And everyone except poor Roma survived.

And in the days to follow, love bloomed amid the chaos.



Bluto fell hard for his nurse.

With strangers dispatched and everyone healing nicely, plans went forward to convert their chamber into a freezer for the group's food stores.



Jupiter and Bluto quickly pulled up flooring and began adding a second layer of steel wall inside the stone brick work. It would help insulate the room against the sometimes brutal jungle heat. The old quartz pillars could not be moved and neither could the cryo capsules, so they had to be scrapped and broken down. At least they yielded useful metals and minerals that could be useful later on.

Meanwhile the group's animals "got busy". Dave was an excellent at husbandry, and it didn't take long for Sowbell and Poppy to start preparing for litters of guineapups. And even though it looked like they might be just looking at poor Action and Violet being two lonely cows ... it turns out that Roma did his duty before he died. Both cows turned up pregnant and if even one of the calves was a bull, the group could continue the herd assuming they could trade for a new cow elsewhere in the future.

As the time went on, the work picked up in pace, and soon, it came together -- the glorious freezer! The group was proud of it. They'd fought for it, sacrificed, shed blood over it, but now ... they had a means of keeping all their hard-won sustenance safe in cold storage.

originally posted by: ketsuko
a reply to: TheGreazel

Ah, yeah, quarry I forgot. It has been updated. I don't think embrasures necessarily has for 1.1, or I've missed it.

Quarry is good if you don't have lots of stone to begin and sometimes even then because of the random stuff it can throw up.

Search for ED-Embrasures , i am running the latest version of Rimworld the mod should be version 2.0.0.0

a reply to: TheGreazel

I'll go look. I must have had a different one installed. Sometimes different folks have the same idea and put out different versions of the same basic idea.

Enter the Fuzz Farmers -- How to Eat Fried Worm's Poop

With the freezer in, solid electricity, and regular crops of rice, things are looking up. So Jupiter decides it's time to figure out the next major project.



Everyone was getting a bit tired of sharing space with Wanda and Bluto at night. They tried hard to be discreet, but well ... you just can't hide certain things from everyone else, not even in the dark, and with the two of them engaged now, everyone knew it wasn't going to end anytime soon.

Therefore, Jupiter decided it was time to build a proper living space.

He laid out plans for four decent sized bedrooms, a library and research space, and an extra space that could be used for ... something they'd figure out eventually. There was a problem though. Jungles are marshy, and marsh isn't good ground to build heavy structure on. Jupiter was fine with that though. He enjoyed good engineering challenges! It took some time, but he finally decided that a raised wooden walkway would do the trick and support wooden wall sections that could be integrated into the surrounding stone structure. Most of the bedrooms would be build back into the hillsides.

It would take some time. They'd have to mine it all out and chisel a good deal of stone block, but in the end, they'd have a pretty nice place to lay their heads in private spaces to call their own, better than the bare bamboo flooring at any rate.

Meanwhile, life continued on.



The guinea pigs had their first litters. Dave decided they would keep one of Sowbell's babies, a brown and white female he named Midge. Since it seemed that guinea pigs only had two pups in a litter, three females would provide more meat for the group than two, and they would be more insurance. Dave also kept his eye out for a likely looking little male to back up Chonk ... because the jungle is vicious.



It sometimes comes right into your home to attack as Bluto found out when he accidentally provoked a cassowary. (At least everyone found out that cassowary is pretty tasty.)

And little guinea pigs are about as vulnerable as they get.

The group had a nice diversion when some feral cats decided they'd join.



Dave was a bit wary. As much as he loved cats, animals of all kinds really, he was worried they were just buttering the group up for the guinea pigs. Cats and rats and all that you know ...

But Wanda and Ma'am thought they were the sweetest things, and the whole group got up to the most meme-worthy antics. So the colony made an effort to keep them as pets, but cats are cats, and they will go where they will.



And one by one ...



The jungle took its toll until there were none. Now they're eating what's left of them. Cat, the other white meat.

The real news though was the slurrypede. Dave was out tracking what he thought might be some wandering thrumbos when he happened upon the slow-moving and completely inoffensive creature. Slurrypedes are a techno-organic nightmare creation of outer rim science. It's rare to find one out on its own, but this one appeared to unattached to any group.

Dave knew what he had to do ...

Just the other night the group had been debating whether or not to knock out an entire corner of their freezer to install a nutrient paste dispenser. No one was terribly enthusiastic about it because nutrient paste, while nutritionally complete, tastes somewhere between cold, congealed oatmeal and the paste you used in kindergarten, not terribly appetizing. However, on the plus side, it would free up Wanda from having to cook all the time so she could do other things to help out.

The slurrypede was a giant, living nutrient paste dispenser, and even better, it simply ate anything organic it ran across and pooped out nutrient paste. In fact, there were entire galactic debate societies dedicated to which came first - the nutrient paste dispenser or the slurrypede.

On the down side with a slurrypede, you were eating worm poop ... but it was nutritionally complete.

So Dave left off his visions of thrumbos and got to work.



Slurrypedes aren't smart critters, so the hardest thing about taming one is just all the repetition involved. It didn't take Dave much trouble, just lots of patience, to add Mando to the colony, so now they didn't need to worry about the nutrient paste dispenser so long as Mando was on the job, eating and pooping, and in a jungle, there was plenty to eat!

Dave's next task would be to simply teach Mando to stay out of the fields ...

a reply to: ketsuko

I thought the slurrypede was maybe a mod creature, kind of hilarious it's standard.

Eta: My cat I started with attacked a chinchilla and died.

a reply to: OccamsRazor04

I've kept them alive with varying degrees of success. The ones I had the best luck with were Maine coones. Of course, once I'd taugh them how to go hunting for me, they regularly got the crap kicked out of them and ate up a lot of medical resources, but usually, they managed to bring down whatever it was they were hunting in the process.

The problems started once I'd hunted out all the small game. Then they'd do crazy stuff like start hunting horses and ibex and other larger game that no cat in its right mind ever tackles and lives to tell about.

But I usually don't play in highly dangerous biotopes. This is my first jungle, and I've having to keep all my animals behind walls except for the muffalo. They're brawny enough to survive following their master out into the wild. It took quite a bit of resources, but I built a large open walled area that serves as a pasture for my critters. I know have guinea pigs, muffalo, and my favorites -- alpacas.

a reply to: ketsuko

I got guinea pigs to become pets for people. I had 4 alpacas to start with I am up to 29 now. I added some mods for animals, elder things, dinosaurs, and a gene editing mod to create hybrid animals which I am researching now.