RimWorld’s birthday and community event!

Posted October 8th, 2024 by Tia Young

Celebrate RimWorld’s birthday with us and participate in our community event

RimWorld turns 11 years old on November 4th! To celebrate, we’re holding a birthday community event to showcase all things RimWorld. 🎂

Everyone that participates (and follows the rules below) will be entered in a random giveaway for one of three sets of YouTooz’s War Queen figure and RimWorld pin sets!

We’ve also got a small update for RimWorld in version 1.5.4241, and the changelog is below.

Thank you so much for continuing to support and show your love for our game over the last decade.

Happy birthday RimWorld! 🎉 – Ludeon Studios

RimWorld Birthday Community Event 🎂

By participating in our birthday event, you’ll be entered in a random giveaway to get one of three sets of YouTooz’s War Queen figure and RimWorld enamel pins!

Please read all of the event rules and giveaway details before participating.

Event rules

  • 1 entry per person.
  • To participate, share your RimWorld creations with us! It can be RimWorld fanart, in-game screenshots or gameplay videos (vanilla/non-modded content only), writing, and other creative media. Share it with us by replying to the X @LudeonStudios birthday post or share a link on the official RimWorld birthday Reddit thread. All submissions must be human-made works, no AI-generated content permitted.
  • Participation closes on Oct 25, 11:59PM Pacific. Giveaway recipients will be announced on Oct 28 on Twitter/Reddit by TiaPixel.
  • Those selected for the giveaway will be contacted on Twitter/Reddit by TiaPixel (and no one else, be careful if someone other than TiaPixel reaches out).
  • You must respond before Oct 31 or someone else will receive the giveaway.

Here are some ideas/inspiration if you’d like to participate, but don’t know what to do. (Of course, you’re not limited to these!)

  • Birthday themes: Birthday cakes, party decorations, presents, and joyful celebrations!
  • Screenshots: Colonies/bases, individual rooms (throne rooms, ritual chambers, war-torn battlegrounds), and interesting events (weddings, rituals, intense battles, hilarious moments).
  • Artwork: Illustrations of your colonists, pets, mechanoids, xenotypes, ideoligions, etc. Comics depicting funny in-game moments or stories of your colonists. Speedpaintings of your artwork.

Giveaway details

  • 1 set of the YouTooz War Queen figure and YouTooz RimWorld enamel pins will be randomly given to 3 different participants.
  • Note: YouTooz is unable to ship their merchandise to certain countries, please check yours before participating: https://youtooz.com/pages/shipping-policy

RimWorld Sales

RimWorld and the expansions BiotechIdeology, and Royalty are all on sale until October 18!

Changelog

  • Improve performance of “need warm clothes” alert with large numbers of clothes in stockpile.
  • Moved “CausedBy” translation key to core.
  • Insect jelly will now be deprioritized when selecting caravan food.
  • Disable room space need thoughts when asleep.
  • Smoke launchers, incinerators, and gunlinks no longer have qualities.
  • Re-flavor royal titles.
  • Allow timbershrooms to grow on polluted ground.
  • Allow prisoners to be downed for prisoner sacrifice and execution rituals.
  • Updated creative rewards content.
  • Updated translations.

Fixes

  • Fix: Dev palette cached incidents being skipped if target is the wrong type.
  • Fix: Hard-coded formatting on injury label in brackets for body part sources.
  • Fix: Copying colonist ScenParts with configurable lists edits in-place instead of copying data over.
  • Fix: Wall torch has inconsistent max fuel compared to other similar buildings.
  • Fix: Brain isn’t properly destroyed by execution cutting on deathless pawns.
  • Fix: Electroharvester has flipped graphics.
  • Fix: Pawns without reading policies producing error when prisoners have joy need via mods.
  • Fix: Randomly scattered things don’t retain quality from scenario config.
  • Fix: Shamblers not able to walk through open doors in some circumstances.
  • Fix: Coagulate can be used on pawn with no tendable hediffs.
  • Fix: Hunting work site generation can cause errors with modded games if leatherDef is null.
  • Fix: Global learning speed factors do not appear on skill tooltip.
  • Fix: Missing eyepatch drawn over blindfolds.
  • Fix: Some anomaly debug actions visible without anomaly active.
  • Fix: Breastfeeding moms dropping babies if no bed.
  • Fix: Healer Mech Serum prioritizes sterilized over mental ailments.
  • Fix: Having bloodfeeding and cannibalism memes sometimes generates an ideoligion with no positive cannibalism precept.
  • Fix: Misconfigured distRange on SubcoreEncoder_Working sound.
  • Fix: Exception ticking mothballed world pawn.
  • Fix: Room size space calculations can add cells from outdoor locations.
  • Fix: Error if simulate killing unspawned pawn with a shield.
  • Fix: Deconstructing firefoam popper with auto rebuild on places a blueprint on deconstruct.
  • Fix: Ascetic pawns judge others for their appearance, contrary to trait description.
  • Fix: Deadlife shamblers appearing on schedule.
  • Fix: Ideology buildings not respecting interaction spot overlap.
  • Fix: Anima Tree artificial structure radius inconsistencies.
  • Fix: Incorrect wealth calculation on buildings with def-defined base market value
  • Fix: Sanguaphage meeting quest not completing if join offer is postponed.
  • Fix: Error in inspect string when saving game directly after a pawn has used a verb.

Bow down to the War Queen! (Plus RimWorld enamel pins)

Posted October 4th, 2024 by Tia Young

Majestic War Queen figure and RimWorld 5-pack enamel pins now available

Hey there, we’re excited to share that our majestic vinyl War Queen figurine and RimWorld enamel pin set are now available on YouTooz for the next 4 weeks!

War Queen vinyl figure: We sent out a signal pulse… and a War Queen responded! She’ll make a great addition to your colony at home.

RimWorld enamel pin set:  Features 5 RimWorld-themed designs including:
– RimWorld logo
– “Ate without table -3” thought
– Crashlanded colonist
– Scyther
– Thrumbo

We’re also running a birthday month sale for RimWorld and its expansions until Oct 18. 🎉

Long live the War Queen!

– Ludeon Studios

Bow down to the War Queen!

Posted September 28th, 2024 by Tia Young

👑 She arrives with a new pin set on Oct 4th in the RimWorld x YouTooz collection, available for 4 weeks only!

20% off from Sept 13 – Sept 26

Hi everyone! Our new Steam bundle lets you experience the best of city-building and colony-building with Foundation x RimWorld!

Relax in Foundation as you create sprawling medieval cities with free-form tools and watch as your villages live organically in their world. Dig into RimWorld for an immersive story experience as you grow your colony and survive!

Get 20% off with the bundle! And if you already own one of the games, get 20% off the other!

Foundation: Foundation is a grid-less, laidback medieval city-building game with a focus on organic development, monument construction and resource management.

RimWorld: A sci-fi colony sim driven by an intelligent AI storyteller. Generates stories by simulating psychology, ecology, gunplay, melee combat, climate, biomes, diplomacy, interpersonal relationships, art, medicine, trade, and more.

Necesse & RimWorld bundle now available!

Posted July 30th, 2024 by Tia Young

20% off from July 30 – August 9

Hello! We’re launching a bundle that combines two classic colony-building simulators: RimWorld x Necesse!

Develop your settlements and explore procedurally generated worlds. Go from fighting raiders and sentient robotic beasts to conquering magical dungeons for treasure with your friends.

Get 20% off with the bundle! And if you already own one of the games, get 20% off the other!

About RimWorld: A sci-fi colony sim driven by an intelligent AI storyteller. Generates stories by simulating psychology, ecology, gunplay, melee combat, climate, biomes, diplomacy, interpersonal relationships, art, medicine, trade, and more.

About Necesse: Build, quest, and conquer across an infinite procedurally generated world. Play alone or with friends as you establish a settlement and explore deep dungeons, fight monsters and bosses, mine rare ores, craft magical equipment, recruit specialists for your colony, and more!

– Ludeon Studios

The boomrat plush just might explode… with love!

Posted June 27th, 2024 by Tia Young

Boomy plushie that glows in the dark available now!

Hi everyone! Our new plushie boomrat just launched on Makeship!

Handle this little guy carefully, he just might explode… with love! His boomy pustules also glow in the dark with special fabric.

The boomrat plush is only available for a limited time, so get yours now on Makeship: https://www.makeship.com/products/boomrat-gitd-plush

RimWorld & Dwarf Fortress bundle now available!

Posted June 17th, 2024 by Tia Young

If you own one of the games, get 10% off on the other!

Hello! We’re launching a very special colony simulator bundletoday: RimFort x DwarfWorld!

If you own one of the games, get 10% off on the other! The bundle runs until June 26, 2024, and it’s one of the best ways to spend 1000 hours in game.

Explore massive, generated worlds with your colonists and your dwarves. Go from fighting raiders and sentient robotic beasts across the planet to vampiric infestations and necromancers deep in your mines!

About Dwarf Fortress: The deepest, most intricate simulation of a world that’s ever been created. Build a fortress and try to help your dwarves survive against a deeply generated world. Adventure Mode now available in open beta.

About RimWorld: A sci-fi colony sim driven by an intelligent AI storyteller. Generates stories by simulating psychology, ecology, gunplay, melee combat, climate, biomes, diplomacy, interpersonal relationships, art, medicine, trade, and more.

– Ludeon Studios

Update 1.5.4104 released

Posted May 24th, 2024 by Tia Young

Hey everyone! We’re back with a small update containing some changes, improvements and fixes for RimWorld and its expansions. This update should be compatible with all savegames and mods.

We do these updates with the help of players from the RimWorld community! If you’re interested in helping us test, or you have a bug to report, please join us on the official RimWorld development Discord.

Bye for now!
– Tia

Changelog

  • Adjusted render node worker to support multiple graphics per node without dirtying/reaching the render tree.
  • Thoughts for each genetic chemical dependency are tracked independently instead of lumped together into a single confusing thought.
  • Remove deathless regeneration coma on resurrection.
  • Tweak some Anomaly incident occurrence rates so that they’re less prevalent in ambient mode.
  • Clarify the label for “anomaly disabled” mode.
  • Added labelNoParenthesis rule symbol to pawns and things.
  • Updated Spanish LanguageWorker.
  • Ghouls can now be ordered to rest in medical beds.
  • Pawns will now satisfy genetic chemical dependencies when in caravans if their drug policy allows it.
  • Harbinger trees now consume corpses part by part even if they have no nutrition.
  • Adjusted distance ranges on some sounds.
  • Replaced gender-specific words with symbols in schematic texts.
  • Don’t store virtual relationship records which can never imply another relationship.
  • Changed fade shadows to not multiply together.
  • Remove healer mech serums from animal operation options.

Fixes

  • Fix: Minor grammar irregularity with addiction counsel.
  • Fix: MechbandDish description typo.
  • Fix: StaggerDurationFactor stat does not work without Biotech.
  • Fix: Arresting beggars auto-fails.
  • Fix: Genetic chemical dependency thought not properly nullified by mind numb serum.
  • Fix: Remote repairer hediff can be duplicated.
  • Fix: Autobongs making non-organic entities high.
  • Fix: Creepjoiners have entity faction when enslaved
  • Fix: Increased carried thing layer to resolve some apparel issues.
  • Fix: Beam verbs and incinerator hitting cells without line of sight.
  • Fix: Headgear not always rendering correctly when crawling.
  • Fix: Preferred xenotypes not working correctly between prisoners and slaves.
  • Fix: Incorrect label argument used in activity suppression tooltip.
  • Fix: Various specific save/load errors with awoken corpses and hypnotized pawns.
  • Fix: No “missing bed” feedback for “take to bed” warden order.
  • Fix: Mech booster is rotatable.
  • Fix: Apparel without CompColorable causes errors in styling station.
  • Fix: High Mechtech can be selected in research without building a multi-analyzer.
  • Fix: Message spam when capturing an enemy during a psychic ritual siege.
  • Fix: Left behind pawns dying counts towards “colonists killed” stat if they die.
  • Fix: Becoming a shambler incorrectly taints utility items.
  • Fix: Feedback for sky-lantern participants who can’t reach any wood, added better ritual feedback functions.
  • Fix: Unnecessary loading warning appearing for transport pods without colonists.
  • Fix: Creepjoiner letters not using gendered kind labels.
  • Fix: Suspending lovin’ causing errors.
  • Fix: Ritual dialog tooltip slightly cutoff.
  • Fix: Refugees can send leaving messages multiple times.
  • Fix: Misleading extra warnings if complexes were previously activated before entering
  • Fix: Some circumstances where temp factions wouldn’t be properly hostile to anomaly entities or insects.
  • Fix: Unable to place non downed pawns in a cryptosleep pod.
  • Fix: Error when entity dies during bioferrite extraction.
  • Fix: Error on inspect pane for ghouls without hunger needs.
  • Fix: Herd animals trained to attack won’t target shamblers.
  • Fix: Psychic ritual failing when invoker gets psychic shock.
  • Fix: Farskip not working on colony ghouls.
  • Fix: Several scenarios where collapsed roofs can destroy pit gates.
  • Fix: Hediff and mutant abilities not saving cooldown.
  • Fix: Fleshmass stomach not preventing gut worms letter.
  • Fix: Colony mechs and ghouls can’t be selected in split caravan dialog.
  • Fix: Modded violent work types disabling ghoul melee skill.
  • Fix: HediffDef aptitudes displaying as active without Anomaly installed.
  • Fix: Recluse thoughts not nullified properly by mind numb serum.
  • Fix: Inhumanized not nullifying childbirth related memories.
  • Fix: Biofuel refinery accepts dye as organic matter, but it doesn’t have any nutritional value.
  • Fix: Sunlamp light radius inaccurate.
  • Fix: Error using “Damage until down” method on pawn with shield belt.
  • Fix: More consistent handling of ActivitySuppressionToggleTooltipDesc and ActivitySuppressionTooltipDisabled translation keys.
  • Fix: High activity alerts display HP percent.
  • Fix: Activation inspect pane string has hardcoded “s”.
  • Fix: Inconsistent text ‘Start’ vs ‘Begin’ bestowing ceremony.
  • Fix: Newborn babies can generate with parents’ PawnKindDefs startingHediffs.
  • Fixed some scenarios where skyfallers would drop through mountain roofs.
  • Fixed some situational issues with creepjoiners leaving after being ghoulified.
  • Fix: Genes and traits that increase skills on growth moment stack.
  • Fix: Schematic generation error if only remaining projects are excluded.
  • Fix: Activity suppression and studying not respecting allowed areas when selecting an interaction cell.
  • Fix: Some undesired behavior with creepjoiner letters.
  • Fix: Include common book symbols in book doer rule pack grammar requests.
  • Fix: Relaxing socially not respecting standard seat reservations.
  • Fix: Lay down driver sometimes causing errors on load.
  • Fix: Having “give psylink” debug action on debug palette without royalty active causes errors.
  • Fix: Deadlife shamblers opening doors.
  • Fix: Unable to place non downed pawns in a cryptosleep pod.
  • Fix: Error when entity dies during bioferrite extraction.
  • Fix: Errors for ghouls without hunger needs.
  • Fix: Sun/Edge shadows not always drawing if off-screen to the right.
  • Fix: Tending pawns get medicine after using initial stack even if they have more.
  • Fix: Security doors count as 2 doors for prisoners, reducing their prison break mtb by 50%. Added informative text explaining that having only security doors in a prison multiplies escape mtb by 110%.
  • Fix: Error when turning pawn with ideoligion role into a ghoul.
  • Fix: Harbinger tree provocation not working on ambient horror mode.
  • Fix: Pawns leaving allowed area to rope animals.
  • Fix: Luciferium addiction doesn’t cause a medical emergency alert when a pawn is deathless.
  • Fix: “BlockedByRoof” translation key in Royalty instead of Core.
  • Fix: Scaria isn’t removed on shambler resurrection.
  • Fix: Colony mutants in buildings don’t show on the colonist bar.
  • Fix: Auto activate monolith scenario part doesn’t have edit interface.
  • Fix: Some music sequences ending harshly instead of fading out.
  • Fix: Luciferium addiction remains on turned mutants.
  • Fix: Turret packs can replace other turrets when throw misses.

New “ambient horror” mode threads all Anomaly threats directly into the game

Hi everyone!

We’re here today with a new feature update to Anomaly. Today’s update adds a new way to play with all Anomaly content threaded into the entire game, instead of being linked strictly to the monolith quest. This resembles more how other expansions all interact together continuously over the course of a long game. No need for Anomaly to take over an entire playthrough!

We’ve also added some new economic pathways to make it more feasible to progress through Anomaly content as a low-tech tribal colony.

Take a look:

Ambient horror mode

Now, when you start the game, you can select from three ways to integrate Anomaly into your game:

  • Standard with monolith: The original Anomaly experience. Anomaly threats are linked directly to the monolith.
  • Ambient horror: In this new mode, the monolith does not appear. Instead, Anomaly threats are threaded into the rest of the game. All Anomaly threats can occur, even the most dangerous ones. Anomaly threats are relatively uncommon compared to normal raids by default, but this can be adjusted before and during the game. This is a good mode if you want to enrich your story without Anomaly becoming the focus. (Note that since there is no monolith in this mode, the monolith endgame won’t occur.)
  • Disabled: Anomaly threats do not occur, and there’s no monolith. Anomaly tools like security doors, incinerators, hellcat rifles, turret packs, and serums are still in the game.

Study efficiency setting: We added a “study efficiency” slider to the difficulty settings. Higher settings give more research points each time you study an entity. By default, study efficiency is better at lower difficulties, so even when there are fewer entities to capture, you can still make steady progress. As always, you can customize study efficiency how you like, including changing it during a run.

Better support for tribal playthroughs

In previous versions, it was hard to progress through Anomaly content as a tribal. We’ve added new economic pathways to use for players who want to stay low-tech:

  • Bioferrite extraction research project. We’ve added a new research project that allows doctors to extract bioferrite directly from captured entities without a ‘bioferrite harvester’. This is less efficient, but doesn’t require electricity.
  • Bioferrite can be obtained from harbinger trees. Chopping down harbinger trees will give twisted flesh and bioferrite, adding a new way to obtain bioferrite without capturing entities.
  • Updated research tree to not require electricity. We’ve rearranged parts of the Anomaly research tree to allow researching more projects without electricity.
  • Some Anomaly items can be made at crafting spots. The following items can now be made at a crafting spot, as well as the bioferrite shaper: Ceremonial hood, nerve spiker, ritual mask, ghoul plating, ghoul barbs.

Note: For existing saves, you will need to unlock bioferrite extraction, even if you’ve previously researched bioferrite harvesting.

Thanks to all

Big thanks to everyone who has given feedback! We’re always crawling the subreddit and Discords, so whatever you said, there’s a decent chance one of us was lurking and taking notes.

There’s always fun discussion going on on the RimWorld subreddit. And if you’d like to help us test new builds and give feedback, join us on the Official RimWorld Development Discord.

And as always, if you like, please review Anomaly on Steam! (Expansions don’t get many reviews since there’s no button prompt in the Steam library.)

– Ty

Changelog

  • Added new Anomaly settings dialog to the storyteller selection page.
  • Added a new “Ambient horror” Anomaly playstyle mode.
  • Added a new “Disabled” Anomaly playstyle mode.
  • Added a tribal method for bioferrite extraction.
  • Harbinger trees now give bioferrite instead of wood when harvested.
  • Draw “Ineffective” label over psychically deaf targets when targeting with disruptor flares.
  • Blood rage at 100% now forces animals to be awake.
  • Removed entity conditions for horror tension music.
  • Added field in race props to generate unnatural corpse defs.
  • Pit gates, pit burrows, and fleshmass hearts will now destroy and refund adjacent buildings on emergence.
  • Reduced the max targetable body size for devourer’s leap to prevent them from eating things like centipedes.
  • Clarify text in regards to the revenant.
  • Revenant balancing: slightly reduce health, and increase min population requirement, as well as min refire days.
  • Skipping revenant target away will now interrupt the hypnosis.
  • Show the game conditions for death pall, gray pall, and blood rain.
  • Allow death pall and gray pall to overlap with blood rain.
  • Ancient beds are no longer colored to suit their role.
  • Pyromaniacs now consider hellcats to be incendiary.

Fixes

  • Fix: Some names were missing.
  • Fix: Babies spawning with ghoul haircuts.
  • Fix: Incorrect dates on ideoligion rituals.
  • Fix: Ghoul hediffs being removed on resurrection in some cases.
  • Fix: Grouped behavior of atmospheric heater gizmo not working correctly.
  • Fix: Mutant status not being cleared when rising shambler killed.
  • Fix: Gorehulk and devourer lack manipulation-affecting limbs, making them weaker than intended in melee.
  • Fix: Nociosphere not returning to sent from location.
  • Fix: Ritual spectate side not respected.
  • Fix: MessageRevenantHeard translation key is forced lowercase.
  • Fix: Sanguophage reimplant reward not working in some circumstances.
  • Fix: Cultist abduction ritual continues despite missing caster in some circumstances.
  • Fix: Ghoul in caravan causes errors on the assign drug policy UI.
  • Fix: Psychic bond between two pawns who have psychic bonding gene don’t create bond on romance success.
  • Fix: Ghouls getting drug dependency hediffs from implanted xenogerms.
  • Fix: Labyrinth exit not always accessible.
  • Fix: Corpses being debug spawnable.
  • Fix: Revenant hypnosis copying to duplicates.
  • Fix: Pawns try to exit pocket maps via the sides.
  • Fix: Clarify language around “Entity will escape soon” warning.
  • Fix: Nociosphere doesn’t adapt to EMP stuns.
  • Fix: Creepjoiner babies are set to the wrong PawnKindDef.
  • Fix: Downed mechs were not carried out of pit gates when using exit dialog.
  • Fix: Metalhorror defenders spawning on unwalkable cells.
  • Fix: Chaos skip able to send pawns into fogged areas.
  • Fix: Inaccurate goodwill costs on comms console dialog.
  • Fix: Mechlink is kept on corpse raised.
  • Fix: Several mech implants are duplicatable.
  • Fix: Combat music playing when no colonists are present in the undercave.
  • Fix: Dryads getting blood rage from blood rain.
  • Fix: Fleshsacks act like embrasures.
  • Fix: Ghouls count toward ideoligion diversity thoughts.
  • Fix: Unintended prearrival infection pathways.
  • Fix: Monoliths spawned via dev tools not linking to quest.
  • Fix: Raid source sites getting removed upon leaving map without clearing enemies.
  • Fix: Draw fleshbeasts not working in caves.
  • Fix: Ghouls getting heart attacks.
  • Fix: Metalhorror inspection returning an empty letter if already discovered.
  • Fix: Harbinger trees not correctly consuming corpses with no nutrition left.
  • Fix: Harbinger trees able to consume things on shelves.
  • Fix: Turret packs could be thrown onto trees.
  • Fix: Pawns tending others not being interrupted if the target leaves.
  • Fix: Performance issue when selecting lots of animal beds.
  • Fix: Meditation offset lines are drawn between the building and itself when being reinstalled.
  • Fix: Starvation alert not updating for pawns in caravans.
  • Fix: Manhunter_Bloodrain message repeating too frequently and unable to be translated correctly.
  • Fix: Void structures spawning in front of monolith.
  • Fix: Ghouls aren’t tendable.
  • Fix: Mutant skill disabling causing issues with various mods.
  • Fix: If no colonists are spawned on the map, venerated message shows when designating animals to hunt.
  • Fix: Revenant trance wasn’t cleared if revenant was killed after attacking while stunned.
  • Fix: Error when hypnotized pawn is despawned.
  • Fix: Typo in ritual thought.
  • Fix: Sculpture graphic index not maintained if style was manually set in bill.
  • Fix: Error on growth moment dialog.
  • Fix: Backstory has incorrect work disables.
  • Fix: World pawns with duplicate sickness not dying.
  • Fix: Revenant progressedLetters fail to mention firefoam.
  • Fix: Right side of dev bar blocking colonist bar clicks.
  • Fix: Struck ore message look target lost after save load.
  • Fix: Mote attempted to spawn on null map with psychic ritual.
  • Fix: Attack jobs getting cancelled against faction animals.
  • Fix: Psychic ritual invokers being killed not canceling cultist psychic rituals.
  • Fix: “Form Caravan” gizmo missing on certain maps after being settled.
  • Fix: Constructed TargetInfo with null map.
  • Fix: Pack animal graphics not always being invalidated.
  • Fix: Typo in golden cube description.
  • Fix: Pawns popping out of beds if force tended.
  • Fix: Duplicator obelisk activation giving hostiles duplication sickness.
  • Fix: Needs not being updated after resurrection.
  • Fix: Situational music not always respecting volume settings.
  • Fix: Some creepjoiner downsides occurring when enslaved.
  • Fix: Farm animals attacking pawns without lords.
  • Fix: Berserk pulse working on mech bosses.
  • Fix: Lifters not able to empty bioferrite harvesters.

Integrating Anomaly more with the rest of the game

Posted April 18th, 2024 by Tia Young

Now you can mix in some horror without saturating the whole experience

Hi everyone – Ty here.

We’re loving your Anomaly stories! Please keep it up with the duplicated babies, shambler babies, and gray labyrinth baby drama. This expansion explores new ground creatively for RimWorld and it’s been incredibly gratifying to see people having new kinds of stories in the game.

Releases like this bring massive amounts of feedback, which is always incredibly valuable for us to understand how the game is playing and what people want. This time around, many players have said they’d like to be able to mix Anomaly content more into the rest of the game so it feels like less of a self-contained experience, and more like something that integrates into a normal playthrough.

Originally, we had Anomaly throw a ton of content at you guys because we wanted to be sure people would experience all the new stuff and see how much was really there. We may have pushed a bit too far there – Anomaly has tons of content and exposing it all too fast was saturating the experience. This is great for a certain type of intense, focused playthrough, but the game should also support other playstyles.

Today’s update addresses that with some key changes and new features:

  • Anomaly content is less dominant by default while the monolith is active. You’ll see more incidents from the base game and other expansions now.
  • You can customize how Anomaly-focused you want your playthrough to be. We added sliders to the game settings that let you choose how much you want Anomaly horror events to dominate the game. If you want it to be pure horror when the monolith is active, you can. If you want the horror to be a light sprinkle on top of the rest of your RimWorld, you can do that. You can alter these settings any time in the options menu by opening the storyteller settings (and this is possible on games started in previous versions).
  • You don’t need to see every entity on every playthrough. We reduced the number of entities you must interact with before advancing the monolith. You still can wait to see every entity, but it’s your choice now. This spreads the experience further over more playthroughs, if you choose.
  • We’ve updated the Anomaly scenario to start with three researchers and a ghoul (up from two). This gets you into the meat of the game quicker when using this scenario.

We’re making other ongoing minor changes as well – see the full changelog below for details.

We’re still watching and considering other changes, so please keep telling your stories! And thanks for your effort in writing useful and rich feedback.

If you’d like to help test or report bugs, please join the official RimWorld Development Discord. Join us on Reddit to discuss the update here.

Also, please don’t hesitate to review Anomaly on Steam! (Expansions don’t get many reviews since there’s no button prompt in the Steam library.)

Thanks all,
Ty

Changelog

– Added storyteller options to increase or reduce inactive and active presence of Anomaly events.
– Reduced entity codex entry count required for monolith level 3 from 17 -> 12.
– Drastically reduce the chance of getting a faction leader from skip abduction.
– Reduced metal horror infection chance when an infected doctor performs surgery.
– Skulls can now be consumed by harbinger trees.
– Minor optimizations for food searching.
– Added safety checks to RoofCollapserImmediate to prevent out of bounds.
– Reduce revenant flammability to prevent it being trivialized by fire.
– Increase the upper end of blood rain duration for both the incident and psychic ritual.
– Added missing default constructor to PawnRenderNode_Apparel.
– Added some null checks to getting invisible versions of materials.
– Prevent strange signal quest from firing if the monolith has been disrupted.
– Removed awoken corpses from scenario editor.
– Clarify that ghouls created by the ghoul infusion operation aren’t hostile.
– Added custom descriptions to the diagnosed (hidden) versions of organ decay and crumbling mind to make them less confusing.
– Remove min threat points for obelisk incidents to allow discovering more incidents with low colony points. Increase the earliest day that they’ll occur to compensate.
– Update The Anomaly scenario to start with three (up from two) researchers and a ghoul.
– Clarify Anomaly threat settings tooltip.
– Adjusted active monolith threat frequency calculations to allow for 100% anomaly incidents in all active levels if desired.
– Added a dev tool to force end revenant hypnosis.
– Removed “Simulate not owning X” options to prevent mods from disabling expansions in users’ games.
– Reduced entity count required to advance to waking monolith level from 8 to 7 to avoid softlocking in ice sheet biomes.
– Pocket maps count towards the wealth of their parent map.
– Corpses now have a 6 hour window before they’ll resurrect in a death pall.
– Improved target highlighting for incinerator and beam verbs.
– Updated player creative rewards content.

Fixes

– Fix: Cultist faction not generating with their preset ideoligion on older saves.
– Fix: Drafted tend only tends one injury.
– Fix: Pawns can teleport into very dangerous labyrinth rooms.
– Fix: Error when trying to debug spawn an unnatural corpse.
– Fix: Corpse unburied mood not being applied if in stockpile.
– Fix: Sightstealers won’t attack colony mechs.
– Fix: Shamblers sometimes get stuck in rising state.
– Fix: Strange signal quest not ending if the map is removed.
– Fix: Revenants can be infinitely studied by killing them then taking their spine to a holding platform.
– Fix: Kidnappers won’t try to dig their way out if they get stuck.
– Fix: Ideology members count does not increase on prison release until save/reload.
– Fix: Crash trying to use psychic slaughter on escaping entity in niche circumstances.
– Fix: Resurrection serum fails to draw mote after pawn is devoured.
– Fix: Typo “burner charges” -> “burner charge”.
– Fix: Twisted meat is allowed in hoppers by default.
– Fix: Pawn growth points and vatGrowTicks aren’t copied when a child is duplicated.
– Fix: Abductor obelisk duplicating pawns.
– Fix: ShipJob error with null ship.
– Fix: Removing an ideology role via meme does not recalculate disabled work types.
– Fix: Recipes not setting random styles correctly.
– Fix: HediffComp.NotifyPawnKilled passing in instigator rather than target.
– Fix: Error trying to duplicate pawn in some circumstances.
– Fix: Duplicates have royalty title of original.
– Fix: Typo in dreadmeld discovery message.
– Fix: Head apparel is using the body mesh set instead of the head mesh set.
– Fix: Icons in FloatMenuOption do not scale with text size.
– Fix: Duplicate translation entries for crawling inspect strings.
– Fix: Duplicated pawns will be the mother of the child if the original was the mother.
– Fix: Messages about cube withdrawal for gone temp pawns.
– Fix: Errors while mouse cursor holds a jumppack jump order while pawn is flying.
– Fix: Rare edge case where a worshipful village spawns without a terminal due to lack of room size.
– Fix: Inconsistencies with shambler tending rules.
– Fix: Raised shamblers getting bestowing ceremony quests.
– Fix: Revenant hypnosis not wearing off in specific circumstances.
– Fix: Typo in hate chant letter.
– Fix: Peeking with an incinerator could sometimes set the shooter on fire.
– Fix: Babies could have void curiosity.
– Fix: Containment tooltip flickering when changing.
– Fix: Situational pathfinding error when studying.
– Fix: Temp quest pawn corpses counting as colonist corpses after save/load
– Fix: Error on taking ghoul on caravan regarding drug policy.
– Fix: Ghoul tried to be a part of a marriage ceremony.
– Fix: Harbinger stump descriptions mention wood.
– Fix: Error with psychic harmonizer.
– Fix: Analysis projects would throw an error if attempted after finishing event.
– Fix: Conversion warning from prisoner guest tab.
– Fix: Refueling campfire canceling dance party.
– Fix: Nociospheres sending unstable letters after already departing.
– Fix: Books in scenario parts not being initialized.
– Fix: Colonists unable to take items in containers into portals.
– Fix: Bioferrite not showing up in ingredients list for ceremonial hood.
– Fix: Typos in backstory.
– Fix: Carry to biosculptor pod job fails on colonist prisoners.
– Fix: Starting animal edit interface not displaying correctly on large UI scales.
– Fix: Performance drop calculating containment strength for outdoor holding spot/platform.
– Fix: Analyzable gizmo disabled if no research bench available.
– Fix: Void provocation unable to fire harbinger tree sprout incident.
– Fix: Error when rendering belt node with null wornGraphicData.
– Fix: Duplicates’ unborn babies not inheriting source unborn baby’s xenogenes.
– Fix: Caravan ambushes ending despite colonists having death refusal.
– Fix: Prisoners getting both “monster by bed” and “imprisoned with entity” mood debuffs.
– Fix: Creepjoiners can be enslaved without responding.
– Fix: Returning from labyrinth not using the correct map when selecting the return cell.
– Fix: Revenant causing permanent stun.
– Fix: Shard inhibitors can be rotated.
– Fix: Desiccated deer artwork had incorrect scaling for North/South directions.
– Fix: Colored text broken in mod config for some translations.
– Fix: Error when targeting empty colonist bar entry.
– Fix: Monolith spawning too close to geysers in rare circumstances.
– Fix: Player shamblers show up in the schedule tab.
– Fix: Able to order monolith activation when there is no path.
– Fix: Cubes enthralling pawns on different maps/caravans.
– Fix: Nociosphere not returning to its original location on activity activation.
– Fix: Metalhorrors not emerging once enough of your colonists are infected.
– Fix: Deathless pawns dying without correct injuries from failed surgery.
– Fix: Child shamblers can arrive with children disabled in storyteller settings.
– Fix: Child ghouls causing errors on attempting to get body graphic.
– Fix: Chaos skipping into a fogged area doesn’t clear fog.
– Fix: Incinerators with shield belts cause “shield user has ranged weapon” alert.
– Fix: Error when wastepack infestation occurs near map edge, attempting to spawn outside of map.
– Fix: Custom xenotypes lose their custom icon when duplicated with obelisk.
– Fix: Gender typo in creepjoiner letter.
– Fix: Text formatting for nociosphere gizmo inconsistent.