EDIT: These fixes have been moved to the main branch.

There have been some rare technical issues with 1.0 – specifically with resolution changes on the Mac version. Piotr Walczak has been working on fixing them. We’re pretty sure they’re fixed, so I’ve just uploaded a fixed version of 1.0 on Steam’s unstable beta branch.

The changes are very limited with the intention of having this update be compatible with all mods and savegames.

I encourage anyone who is willing to give the unstable branch a try with any combination of mods. If you’re willing to take the time, please report compatibility problems in the forum thread below. Thanks very much.

Link to forum thread on this.

It’s finally here! I just hit the button to release RimWorld 1.0. Thank you to everyone! I have many people to be grateful to (many of whom I mentioned in the last update).

There’s a juicy new trailer you can watch here:

Some logistical details (I also mentioned last time):

If you’re playing an unmodded game, just keep playing. Version 1.0 will be compatible with un-modded savegames from Beta 19 and Beta 18.

If you’re playing a modded game, you should follow these two steps now:

1. In Steam Library, right-click on RimWorld, select Properties, go to the Betas tab and select the “beta19” beta.
2. Back up your mod files.
   1. Copy all the files in C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\workshop\content\294100
   2. Paste them all in C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\RimWorld\Mods

I’m recommending modders don’t update in-place to prevent the above problem, but can’t guarantee everyone will get the message.

1.0 is mostly the same as Beta 19, with a lot of bugfixes. The only significant new feature is a new food restriction system that allows you to determine what your colonists and prisoners are allowed to eat.

Time to celebrate over here! Thanks again everyone.

RimWorld 1.0 will be released on Wednesday, October 17!

After five and a half years of development we’re coming to the close of this chapter of RimWorld. Thanks to everyone who got involved on the forums, posting bugs, chatted on Reddit, offered mods on Workshop and the forums, to those who are doing translations, to everyone who contributed to the RimWorld Wiki, and to Piotr Walczak, Ben Rog-Wilhelm, Alistair Lindsay, Rhopunzel, and others who collaborated with me on making the game. Thank you everyone.

If you’re playing an unmodded game, just keep playing. Version 1.0 will be compatible with un-modded savegames from Beta 19 and Beta 18.

If you’re playing a modded game, you should follow these two steps now:

1. In Steam Library, right-click on RimWorld, select Properties, go to the Betas tab and select the “beta19” beta.
2. Back up your mod files.
   1. Copy all the files in C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\workshop\content\294100
   2. Paste them all in C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\RimWorld\Mods

I’m recommending modders don’t update in-place to prevent the above problem, but can’t guarantee everyone will get the message.

1.0 is mostly the same as Beta 19, with a lot of bugfixes. The only significant new feature is a new food restriction system that allows you to determine what your colonists and prisoners are allowed to eat.

There will be a shiny new trailer on release day.

As for the future, I plan to continue updating the fan-made translations and creative content. There will also likely be a bug-fixing patch. Beyond that, though I won’t promise anything and nothing’s decided, I can think of a variety of interesting directions to go with the game. For today, though, I’m just celebrating.

Thanks again everyone.

Discussion on the forums.

A new build is up on the unstable branch.

If you are playing with mods but were on the unstable branch from an earlier testing phase, change back to default branch now. The code for this update should be 99% mod-compatible, but the mods won’t work until they’re recompiled because the binary API for the translation system changed.

The game content is exactly the same as Beta 19. There are some bugfixes, but the most important thing is the new localization system. It’ll help translators more accurately translate the game into non-English languages, with issues like grammatical gender (e.g. le/la in French) respected and better automatic handling of grammar for a variety of languages.

Below is a forum post from Piotr Walczak, who implemented the latest improvements, explaining what translators can do to take advantage of the new functionality.

Forum post: New keyed translations format

For anyone interested in helping translate, now would be a great time! The game content is stable, the grammar code is in, and we’re on the final push to get things set for the 1.0 release. Potential translators should please take a look the forum post below to learn how to contribute. Thanks in advance.

Forum post: How to contribute to translations

Forum post: Help check the language workers

So, RimWorld’s early access price has been $30 USD since we first started selling the game in 2013.

Buying an early access game is risky compared to buying a finished game. Also, RimWorld’s value in content (and the time players tend to play it) have gone up a lot since those early days. There’s also the matter of simple financial inflation. Because of these factors, the final price will be higher than the early access price.

The early access price will remain the same for the rest of the early access period – this change will only occur when 1.0 is released. And of course, anyone who bought during Early Access will get the final version for no additional cost.

I wanted to let everyone know about this ahead of time so people have time to make an informed purchasing decision without surprises.

As of now there’s no announced release date for 1.0 yet – still working on filling in all those final details!

Discussion on the forums.

RimWorld Beta 19 – Polish the Cannons is released!

To get the update: If you’re on Steam, the game will update automatically. If you’re DRM-free, you can re-download from the same link you got the game from originally. It always has the latest version.

If you want to keep playing Beta 18 on Steam: Right click RimWorld in the Library list -> Properties -> Betas -> Choose beta18 from the drop-down menu.

You can play savegames from Beta 18 (and probably before), though some details will change upon loading.

I did want this build to be 1.0 for a while, but it became apparent the game would benefit from one more refinement round, so we’re doing Beta 19 first. I very much want the 1.0 version to be worthy of its version number, which means not rushing it.

Please discuss this post in this forum thread.

EDIT: This build did include 64-bit support. It works fine in the DRM-free build, but caused old builds to become unplayable when added to Steam, because of complications in Steam’s system for deciding which version to serve to which player. It seems Steam doesn’t easily support an old beta branch being 32-bit only with a new one being 32/64 – in this case it starts serving 64-bit content into the old branch, making it unusable since the files are mixed between versions. Since the 32-bit version works fine for almost every use case (aside from very rare and extreme massively-modded situations), I’m removing 64-bit until I can get in touch with Valve and figure out how to get it working smoothly.

Below is a list of notable changes. If anything below seems to change game balance, you can bet that related variables were adjusted to maintain roughly the same challenge as before – I just don’t write down every single change because otherwise this list would be way too long. This list also does not including a ton of more behind-the-scenes optimization, refactoring, fixing, and adjustments we did.

• Added bridges. You can build bridges over rivers and non-deep lake/ocean water. Bridges support all but the heaviest structures, can burn, and collapse under damage.
• Added new “Messages” section of the History tab. This section shows the last 200 messages and letters you’ve received.
• Added low-tech plate armor.
• New scenario: Naked Brutality – Start naked with no items.
• New main tab: Wildlife. Allows easy counting, finding, and designating of wild animals.
• Ship end sequence: Starting up the ship reactor now takes 15 days, during which you will be attacked constantly by desperadoes and mechanoids.
• New raid arrival mode: Multiple groups.
• New raid arrival mode: Enemy pods scattered all over the map.
• Split mechanoid scyther into scyther (close combat specialist) and lancer (fast sniper)
• Split tribal warrior into warrior (mid-range melee) and penitent (poverty melee, similar to drifter)
• Faction relations are now categorized as hostile/neutral/ally instead of just hostile/neutral. Allies will randomly send military aid and will respond to certain special requests.
• You can now offer gifts to improve faction relations by using transport pods, sending caravans, or giving gifts to their traders. Gifts can be silver, items, or slaves. No more magical teleporting silver gifts.
• Visitors of allied factions will now occasionally leave gifts before leaving.
• New buildings:
  • Watermill generator: Generate power from moving water.
  • Autocannon turret: Heavy medium-range turret.
  • Uranium slug turret: Armor-penetrating long-range turret.
  • Fabrication bench: Craft advanced components and some advanced tech items.
  • Waterproof conduit: Transmit power under water for bases on both sides of a river.
  • Butcher spot: Butcher without building a bench, at an efficiency penalty.
  • Double sleeping spot: Sleep with your partner, even in crushing poverty.
• New traits:
  • Undergrounder: Don’t mind never seeing the sky, don’t mind being in darkness.
  • Great memory: Slower skill decay.
  • Tough: Take less damage.
  • Gourmand: Eat a lot, random eating binges, cooking skill bonus.
  • Sickly: Get sick often.
  • Quick sleeper: Take less time to sleep.
• New items:
  • Flak pants
  • Prosthetic heart
  • Bionic spine/heart/stomach
  • Archotech eye/arm/leg
  • Tornado generator
  • Patchleather: Poor-quality leather made from any combination of other leather
• New incident: “Wild man wanders in”.
• New terrain: Soft sand – doesn’t allow building medium or heavy structures.
• New designators: Mass-forbid and unforbid.
• Infestations now begin with the insects tunneling towards the colony, which gives the player time to respond.
• You can now write job titles for your colonists.
• New type of attack: Kick sand/water in eyes.
• Condensed leathers together into fewer types. Instead of a separate type for each animal, there are categories.
• You can now smooth natural rough rock walls into high-quality walls.
• Trained animal skills and tameness now decay over time. Animals can revert to the wild, depending on their natural wildness.
• Deep drill use will now sometimes cause insect attacks (by tunneling through the ground near the drill, with a warning).
• New edge shader for blueprints looks much nicer and more visible than before.
• Workbench bills can now be assigned to specific colonists.
• Added “Show what will buy” window which shows all items a trader will buy.
• Trees’ color now depends on the current season.
• Added tainted-apparel thing filter.
• Increased prisoner recruitment chance and added a resistance which must be reduced to zero before recruitment can begin.
• Animals can now be renamed.
• Animals can now get diseases.
• Added an automatic destroyed building replacement toggle. When active, a destroyed building will leave behind a blueprint and be automatically rebuilt.
• Added translation report tool: Generates a report about the currently-loaded language data stating which translations are missing, which are unnecessary, and lots of other useful information.
• Added translation cleaner tool: Corrects many common problems in translation files and adds/updates English language reference for every string in the game.
• You can mass-toggle various checkboxes and drop-down selections by clicking and dragging the mouse over them.
• Workbench bills can now be copied and pasted.
• Colonists now opportunistically haul items while working if their current target is roughly in the same direction.
• The player can now request AI-core quests from allies.
• It’s now possible to craft prosthetic and bionic body parts, grenades, and molotovs.
• It’s now possible to mass-cancel all designations with a designator’s right-click menu.
• It’s now possible to forbid/unforbid all items and rearm all traps with a designator’s right-click menu.
• You can now drag and reorder colonists in the colonist bar.
• Social interaction log now has flavorful randomized text instead of the same repeated interaction text every time.
• Mods page now has a search bar so you can easily find one mod in your list of hundreds.
• In some very bad situations, a mysterious Man in Black may arrive. Can he set things right in these parts?
• Armor system reworked into a 3-outcome system with armor penetration. The armor penetration of the weapon is subtracted from the armor value of the armor. This gives an effective armor rating, measured as a percent. We roll a RNG out of 100%. If the result is under half the effective AR, the hit is totally deflected. If the result is over half the effective AR, but under the effective AR, the hit is mitigated – damage is reduced by half and sharp hits are converted to bruise. If the result is over the effective AR, the hit passes the armor and applies normally. As before, armor is applied in sequence from the outside in. AR maxes out at 200%. Default armor penetration is 1.5% per point of damage, but some weapons vary from this.
• Totally reworked how plants grow; they now grow everywhere at once instead of reproducing plant-by-plant. Wild plants after several in-game years should now look more or less as good as at the beginning.
• Long-range mineral scanner can now be tuned to seek specific minerals, and must be worked by a researcher.
• Battles in the Combat tab are now named.
• Items of the same type in the Items tab are now grouped together.
• Items in the Items tab can now be sorted by mass, market value, etc.
• Instead of shooting them, hunters now execute downed creatures with a neck cut (except explosive creatures).
• When placing or selecting work stations where pawns can sit while working, the spot where the pawn goes is indicated by a chair outline so the player realizes that a chair can be built there.
• Removed tornado incident.
• Improved caravaning:
  • Redesigned how world movement speed is fed back per-world tile.
  • Pack animals now follow colonists to speed up the packing process.
  • Added Caravan tab with caravan loading progress.
  • Redesigned “Form caravan” window: stats like carried mass, caravan speed, days worth of food, and visibility are now explained better.
  • Caravans now automatically forage for food while traveling.
  • Added “Remove from caravan” command: remove people or animals from the caravan even if it hasn’t left the map yet.
  • Added “Load into caravan” right-click option: designate extra items to be picked up by the caravan before leaving.
  • Caravan speed now depends on the carried weight.
  • Caravan members now slowly gain social recreation when the caravan is not moving.
  • Caravan visibility is now explicitly expressed and better explained than the old caravan stealth. This makes small caravans more relevant.
  • Quest prompts now give much more information about what kinds of challenges to expect.
  • When reforming a caravan, we now list colonists’ inventory separately so the player can choose what to take and what to leave.
  • Caravans who are not moving now have a lower chance of being attacked.
• Transport pods now have a contents list which allows removing things from the pod.
• Blunt weapons now have a chance to stun the target.
• Joy is renamed to ‘recreation’.
• Using deep drills can cause insect attacks.
• Changed deep moving water to chest-deep moving water: walkable but slower than shallow water.
• Turrets are cheaper and more powerful, but now consume steel/uranium for maintenance after firing a lot.
• Character log now integrates log messages from combat and social interactions.
• Deadfall trap redesigned to Spike trap: Much more powerful with a 100% chance to spring on targets, and has armor penetration (depending on what it’s made of) but requires resources to replace.
• Insects will now go into an insect-specific “hypothermic slowdown” instead of getting hypothermia and dying on the first winter.
• Alphabeavers incident now only occurs in biomes with sparse plants so they’re not meaningless.
• The refugee from the “downed refugee” world quest can be instantly recruited by offering help.
• Removed scyther blade.
• Mechanoids now always die on downed.
• Doing passionate work now affects mood instead of recreation.
• Deep drills now yield stone chunks if no resource is below.
• Firefoam poppers will now pop whenever there’s a fire in a 3-cell radius, instead of only when the fire touches them.
• Food poisoning now has three stages it moves through over the course of a day.
• Pawns hit by ranged attacks now stagger the same way as pawns hit by melee attacks. This effect only happens if the weapon’s stopping power stat is equal or greater than the target’s body size.
• Most crafting benches are now uninstallable and reinstallable.
• Removed shiv since it’s basically a low-quality knife.
• It’s now possible to craft knives at crafting spots.
• “autostart.rws” is now automatically loaded on start in dev mode, for faster testing.
• Techprof subpersona core now completes current research instead of random research.
• Combined rib body parts into rib cage.
• Reworked the “advanced map options” dialog layout, extreme game-breaking map sizes are now disabled by default and must be enabled in the options.
• Tribal factions can now do sapper raids.
• Added medical care column to the Assign tab.
• Removed shoddy and superior item qualities.
• Rebalanced and refactored quality generation. Masterwork/legendary level items never generate on enemies, traders, bases. Masterwork items are extra hard to craft, and legendary requires an inspiration.
• Removed the distinction between allowed areas and animal areas.
• Wearing new apparel now takes time. Colonists now take off the colliding apparel first (which takes time) before wearing the new one.
• Added minimum crafting skill to various weapon and apparel crafting recipes.
• Removed the requirement to pay fee to initiate the item stash quest.
• Various floors now require research.
• Settling very near another faction base will now cause faction relations loss every quadrum because of anger due to territorial encroachment.
• Fulfilling trade requests now gives goodwill.
• Destroying a faction base of a mutual enemy now gives goodwill.
• All traders are now unwilling to buy tainted apparel and short-life meals.
• Improved animal fleeing behavior
• No human enemies spawn with weapons above industrial tech.
• Charge lance is now craftable and usable by humans.
• Explosive weapons now explode when set on fire.
• Wood-powered fires and coolers no longer vanish when fuel is exhausted; they wait to be refueled.
• Tons of art has been redone and adjusted.
• Many, many other bugfixes, interface and balance adjustments

RimWorld has now sold over a million copies. Platinum status!

This is a remarkably unexpected moment for me. The original Kickstarter only sought 1,000 sales, and that seemed like a lot. This is… crazy.

Many thanks to all the players for buying the game, to Piotr Walczak, Ben Rog-Wilhelm and all others who worked on it, to modders for making a huge variety of mods that are intricate, scary, useful, and amusing. Also to everyone who ever made a video about RimWorld, or streamed it, or just told a friend about it. And to those making comics and art interpretations, to those moderating forums and chat channels, and everyone else bringing life into the community. I can’t thank you enough.

Here’s hoping RimWorld and its community keep going strong for a long time to come.

RimWorld Beta 18 – A World of Story is released! Here’s the video (where I accidentally call it Alpha 18 – old habits die hard).

To get the update: If you’re on Steam, the game will update automatically. If you’re DRM-free, you can re-download from the same link you got the game from originally. It always has the latest version.

If you want to keep playing Alpha 17 on Steam: Right click RimWorld in the Library list -> Properties -> Betas -> Choose alpha17b from the drop-down menu.

It’s finally in Beta! This is build 0.18.1722 of RimWorld. That last number is the number of days since I first started working on RimWorld in February 2012. 1722 days – almost five years. It’s come a very long way since the first public look in September 2013. It’s time to start bringing it to a close, which is why version 0.18 is Beta 18 instead of Alpha 18.

The “Beta” designation means that we’re on the final stretch before the 1.0 release, and that there won’t be major content additions like whole new game systems. Of course we will almost certainly add more content, before the 1.0 release or after. We will also continue seeking feedback so we can fix those little bugs and design problems that only become apparent after tens or hundreds of hours of play. RimWorld has become an exceptionally complex game, and it takes a long time and a huge amount of play to understand how to improve it. So it’ll keep evolving for a while.

In any case, enjoy Beta 18. There is a lot of new stuff. See the features list below for details, and watch the video.

Compatibility: Saved games from non-modded Alpha 17 should still be loadable, though some things may change upon loading (e.g. characters may forget what they are doing; buildings may insta-deconstruct if they changed size and no longer fit, etc). Complex mods made for A17 won’t be usable and will need to be updated. Very simple mods may still load.

Rough features list:

• New swamp biomes: Swamp biomes are hard to move through due to choking vegetation, and hard to build in due to swampy terrain. Many new plants were added to fill out these and other biomes.
  • Tropical swamp
  • Temperate swamp
  • Cold bog
• New incidents:
  • Meteorite impact. A meteorite impacts, leaving a lump of mineable ore.
  • Aurora. A beautiful aurora lights up the night sky, improving mood.
  • Tornado
  • Peace talks quest
  • World refugee quest
  • Prisoner rescue quest
• Storyful combat: A major rework of melee combat, and a new way to report all combat interactions. Storyful combat generates a combat log that reports each blow, miss, swipe, block and fall in the combat. During or after a fight, you can review the combat log to see what happened, to generate a richer story.
• Various research has been split up
  • Gun research is now broken into several stages, so making advanced guns like assault rifles takes more research than making simple revolvers
  • Melee weapon research is now broken into several stages
• New furniture
  • Bedroll: Portable bed
  • Dresser: Passively improves room
  • Endtable: Passive improves room
  • Various new table sizes
• New quest reward special items:
  • Psychic emanator
  • Vanometric power cell
  • Infinite chemreactor
  • Techprof subpersona core
  • Healer mechanite superdose
  • Resurrector mechanite superdose
  • Orbital bombardment targeter
  • Orbital power beam targeter
• Tribal content upgrade:
  • Ikwa melee weapon
  • War mask
  • Tribal headdress
  • Recurve bow
  • Tribal hunter
  • Tribal heavy archer
  • Tribal berserker
• New world site components (used in various situations):
  • Sleeping mechanoids
  • Animal ambush
  • Enemy ambush
• New mental breaks:
  • Insulting spree. Randomly go around and insult people.
  • Targeted insulting spree. Follow around a specific other colonist, insulting them repeatedly.
  • Tantrum. Go around randomly smashing furniture, buildings, and damageable items.
  • Bedroom tantrum. Go to your own room and randomly smash furniture, buildings, and damageable items.
  • Targeted tantrum. Go to destroy a single, specific, randomly-chosen, valuable item or building.
  • Sadistic rage. Melee attack prisoners for a while. Fists only. Only occurs when there are prisoners to attack. Does not attack downed prisoners.
  • Corpse obsession. Dig up a corpse and drop it on a meeting spot table or in a random high-traffic area. The mental break then ends.
  • Catatonic. Collapse on the spot into a downed state with a psychological breakdown. Recover some days later. This can be implemented by a “catatonic breakdown” hediff.
  • Jailbreaker. Colonist goes to a random prisoner (who is capable of prison breaking), and upon doing a special “spark jailbreak” action with them, induces an immediate prison break in that prisoner.
  • Slaughterer. Slaughter random colony animal(s) periodically.
  • Murderous rage. Hunt down a specific colonist or prisoner (randomly chosen) and attempt to kill them by melee attack. Uses melee weapon or fists, as equipped. Keep attacking until the target is dead.
  • Run wild. The pawn basically starts acting like an animal. You can tame him to try to get him to rejoin.
• New mental inspirations. Basically reverse mental breaks – these give temporary bonuses to colonists in high moods.
  • Work frenzy (1 day): Global work speed 2.5x
  • Go frenzy (1 day): Walk speed 1.5x
  • Shoot frenzy (3 days): Shooting hit chance improved as though the pawn is 10 skill levels higher.
  • Inspired trade
  • Inspired recruitment
  • Inspired surgery
  • Inspired art
• World features like lakes, mountain ranges, and bays are now detected and named. Names are displayed in the world view.
• Caves now form sometimes in mountainous maps. Inside there are special cave plants. There can also be dormant insect hives.
• Many new tale types were added. So, the game will record many new types of events, and colonists can make art about them. Art descriptions should be much more diverse.
• Crop blights now appear and spread over time instead of instantly destroying crops
• Spaceship is now bigger and has one more component, the sensor cluster
• Spaceship quest ending phase: When going to the hidden space ship to finish the game, the game does not end instantly on arrival. The map generates with the ship intact. To take off, first you must power up the ship, which takes some days, during which you must survive raids.
• Space ship construction now requires advanced components, which have their own tech tree and production method
• Split pistol into revolver and autopistol
• Boomalopes can be milked for chemfuel
• Added chemfuel generator, which generates electricity from chemfuel
• Artillery works differently now. There is one type of mortar, which can fire any type of shell, with each shell creating a different effect. The shells are explosive, incendiary, firefoam, and antigrain (a special high-tech warhead).
• Seasonal latitudes: Seasons now more reasonably adjust depending on latitude. Instead of flipping at the equator, there is a seasonless crossover zone.
• Redesigned alert letter types and sounds to be more specific.
• Pawns can now be banished. This is analogous to abandoning pawns in caravans.
• Technical: The save file now contains the actual contents of the planet map, instead of just the seed to generate it. This speed up loading, makes forward compatibility possible, and makes it technically possible to modify the world map during play.
• Many many tunings, bugfixes, and redesigns.

EDIT (Nov 20): I forgot to mention another feature we added, which is queuing orders. You can now queue multiple orders for colonists. This was a ton of work to do because it forced us to separate the code that validates jobs from the code that initiates jobs, but should make many things much more convenient for players.

We’ll be closing sales for to the Backstory-in-Game package and Pirate King packages on November 7, 2017. The Name-in-game package will remain on sale. Anyone who already purchased any of these packages won’t be affected, only new sales will be closed.

I’m closing these sales because the game is maturing and it’s coming to the right time to make the content final. In addition, closing these will free up more time for us to work on the game itself.

Thanks everyone for all the great content submitted over the last few years! As any player can tell you, it’s really enriched the game.

I’ve just released Alpha17b, a performance hotfix for Alpha17. Steam users will get it automatically, while non-Steam users can download from their existing permanent download link (there won’t be an update email sent out). This is build 0.17.1557.

When we made the targeting AI smarter in Alpha 17, we also made it harder on the CPU. Players in late game were seeing drastically reduced performance. Alpha17b optimizes this and several other things. There are no changes to gameplay – just optimization of what’s there already.

This update will work with your existing saved games, XML-only mods and (hopefully) most or all code mods.

If for any reason you want to continue on the older version, you can set your Steam beta branch to ‘alpha17a’.

Sorry for any disruption! We’re also hard at work on Alpha 18.