I’m pleased to announce that RimWorld is finally coming to GoG.com! It’ll be available March 3, along with the Royalty expansion.

Here’s the page where you can wishlist it now.

Two big pieces of news today!

Free update to version 1.1

RimWorld’s free 1.1 update is now live for all players! This update has been on the unstable branch for a week to smooth the transition for mods, and now it’s the standard branch for everyone.

To see the full change log for this update, look at the original 1.1 announcement here.

RimWorld – Royalty released

RimWorld’s new expansion RimWorld – Royalty is available!

See the full description and buy it at:

• Our DRM-free website
• RimWorld – Royalty Steam page

The expansion includes a new system for nobles and titles, psychic powers, mechanoid combat structures, quests and rituals, luxurious palaces, Imperial technology, and new music from Alistair Lindsay.

Through all of RimWorld development from 2013 to its release in 2018, our team size hovered between two and three developers. Since the game’s release, we’ve been scaling up. Now we’re at seven developers, which has allowed us to work on multiple projects in parallel. This is how we’ve been able to commit resources both to improving RimWorld’s core and adding new free content, as well as developing a rich expansion that opens up new kinds of gameplay.

Technical details

If you’re playing without mods: You’ll be able to update and continue playing on the new version without interruption.

If you’re using mods that haven’t added support for 1.1: You can continue playing version 1.0 as long as you like by using the version-1.0 beta branch. To access it, right-click RimWorld in your Steam library list, click Properties, then select the ‘betas’ tab. Select ‘version-1.0’ from the drop-down list. You’ll want to change this back to ‘default’ eventually.

For modders: We did a lot of work before 1.0 and in this version to make updating as painless as possible. There’s a guide to updating mods to 1.1 included in the game files, called ModUpdating.txt. The excellent modder Brrainz has also written a separate online guide here – thanks to him! You can also get live help with modding on the RimWorld Discord server.

The game now includes a system for handling multi-version mods, so there is no need to make multiple Workshop items or break old mod uploads by updating them in-place.

We will be carefully watching for critical bugs and fixing them! If you find anything, please post about it on the Ludeon bugs forum.

Thanks

Big thanks to the developers who worked on 1.1 and this expansion: Piotr Walczak, Kenneth Ellersdorfer, Igor Lebedev, and Matt Ritchie. Thanks to Oskar Potocki both for his new art made just for us, and for providing his animal art. And I have to thank the volunteer modders, testers, and translators who helped out: Haplo, Brrainz, Pheanox, Dubski, Jaxxa, alphaBeta, Diana Winters, XeoNovaDan, someonesneaky, Mehni, RawCode, and many others. Thank you.

RimWorld versions 1.1, a major update from version 1.0, is now available for public testing and modding on Steam’s unstable beta branch. That’s right everyone – RimWorld is done, but that doesn’t mean we’re done with it!

You can find a full change log for this update at the bottom of this post. This update will be released to the default branch soon. We’ve placed it on the unstable branch now to get in some final testing, and to smooth out the transition for mods.

If you want to help test, right-click RimWorld in your Steam library list, click Properties, then select the ‘betas’ tab. Select ‘unstable’ from the drop-down list. Note that this version is unstable and might break.

We will be carefully watching for critical bugs and fixing them! If you find anything, please post about it on the Bugs forum.

About compatibility:

• If you’re playing without mods: You’ll be able to update and continue playing on the new version without interruption.
• If you’re playing with mods: Simple data-only mods, like new hairstyles, will probably work on the new version without changes. Complex mods will break. If you’re using complex mods, I recommend that you set your Steam branch to version-1.0. Then, set it back to default after your mods have been updated in a few weeks. Anyone can keep playing on version 1.0 as long as they wish, using the version-1.0 branch.

For modders: We did a lot of work before 1.0 and in this version to make updating as painless as possible. There’s a guide to updating mods to 1.1 included in the game files, called ModUpdating.txt. Modder Brrainz has also written a separate online guide here – thanks to him! You can also get live help with modding on the RimWorld Discord server.

The game now includes a system for handling multi-version mods, so there is no need to make multiple Workshop items or break old mod uploads by updating them in-place. (Mods which gain support for 1.1 will create an error on the log in version 1.0, but this error is harmless. It’s just because there is some new XML data in the About.xml file which 1.0 can’t interpret.)

Big thanks to Oskar Potocki for donating his Vanilla Animals mod to become part of the core game.

Discuss this on the Ludeon forums.

Change summary

New features

• UI now looks sharp at UI scales over 1.0. Great for 4K monitors.
• New Quests tab provides information about available, active, and historical quests.
• Added a new data-driven quests generation and management system. This should make it straightforward for modders and us to add or change quests without programming.
• UI now uses colored text to highlight important words like character names, places, and rewards.
• Improved the mod management interface and code.
• Mods now have a global package ID which lets them refer to each other.
• Mods can now define other mods they must be loaded after or before. Added a tool to automatically sort the mod list.
• Mods can now define other mods that they depend on. Shortcuts allow the player to easily download required mods.
• Mods can now define other mods that they are incompatible with. The interface will warn players about incompatibilities.
• Added loading screen tips. These are short bits of text helping the player understand an obscure aspect of the game. They’re displayed during loading.
• Loading screen now displays present and active expansions and mods.
• Added room stats gizmo, which displays the stats of the room containing a selected building, at a glance.
• Added recon armor, a lighter variant of marine armor.
• Added EMP launcher weapon. It fires EMP grenades a long distance.
• Added smoke launcher weapon. It fires smoke grenades a long distance.
• Added smoke grenadier enemy.
• Added a planet population slider to the planet generation parameters.
• Added animals: Bison, donkey, duck, goat, goose, guinea pig, horse, sheep, yak.
• Added ‘tortured artist’ trait. The character has a permanent mood debuff, but gets art inspirations from low mood.
• Added a bunch of new backstories across multiple categories.
• Added heatstroke alert for colonists and tame animals.
• Added taming inspiration, which makes the next tame attempt very likely to succeed.
• Added fertility overlay, which shows terrain fertility in an easy-to-see way.
• Added terrain affordance overlay, which shows where you can build what in an easy-to-see way.
• Added barricades, which are like sandbags, but can be constructed of metal, wood, or stone. Changed sandbags to be constructed of textile stuff instead of steel.
• Added an option to choose which kinds of letters pause the game.
• Added recipes to burn entire stacks of drugs at once.
• Added wooden hand and wooden foot.
• Added a variety of new tribal backstories.
• Added a letter to the player when a colonist is kidnapped, noting that there will be chances to get them back.
• Added asexual trait.
• Bisexual trait is no longer hidden.
• Context menu now shows icons next to each option depending on what’s being chosen. E.g. When choosing a building material, see icons for the material. When choosing a drug to administer, see icons for the drugs. And so on.
• Info cards can now include hyperlinks to other info cards. This is used in various places. For example, the info card for animals (and people) links to the type of meat and leather you can get from them. Info card for plants links to what you harvest from them. Info card for surgeries links to each ingredient. Info card for buildings links to the building materials. And so on.
• Info card now visually displays the object being inspected.
• Added weapon biocoding, which makes a weapon only usable by one individual.
• For modders, added ModUpdating.txt, a file included with each version from now on with notes on what they might need to update to keep their mod working.
• Added Greek language localzation created by some wonderful volunteers.

Adjustments

• The game now uses an incremental garbage collector, which should remove the periodic frame hitches that would appear when a lot of memory was allocated and released. However, note that there is still a cost to memory allocations, so modders should still try to reduce allocation wherever possible.
• Optimizations to many systems. Performance should be significantly better, especially in complex game situations with many pawns.
• Faction icons are now differentiated by shape as well as color, to help out colorblind players.
• Redesigned how the underground mineral scanner works. Instead of showing all minerals on the map instantly, it can be worked at by a pawn, who will periodically find new mineral patches. This can go on forever, so minerals are never exhausted.
• Split tribe into two factions, the gentle tribe (naturally neutral) and fierce tribe (naturally hostile).
• Redesigned the system for generating ruined buildings on map start to make much more varied and interesting ruins.
• Prisoner tab now shows slave price, recruitment chance, potential faction relation gain upon release, and information about the last recruiter and their impacting.
• Added new body impact visual effects for when a creature gets hit by a projectile.
• Added ‘pawn lost’ thought that happens when a pawn is kidnapped or abandoned by their caravan.
• Downed pawns can now be loaded into transport pods like prisoners.
• Added confirmation dialog before attacking friendly factions.
• Added ‘allow refueling’ toggle to torch, campfire and passive cooler.
• Pawns now really like the pawn who rescued them.
• Added toggle refuel allow command to pod launcher, wood generator, chemfuel generator, fueled smithy and fueled stove.
• Added an explanatory letter telling players how to get advanced components for the fabrication bench.
• Added skill descriptions to combat log text.
• Added an arrow that points at the UI during the tutorial.
• Added scar pain feedback and reworked how scar pain works. Scars are now assigned an easy-to-understand pain category instead of an obscure number.
• Added ‘freed from slavery’ mood-boosting thought for pawns bought from a trader.
• Trade interface now shows the next restock time for settlements.
• Added mood boost when prisoner released.
• Open caskets now look different from closed ones.
• Brawler trait disallows shooting passion.
• Colonists attending a party gain recreation value.
• Player can now inspect the contents of cryptosleep caskets on a new tab.
• Stomach is no longer a vital organ.
• Changed animal rescue radius from 30 to 75.
• Info card for surgeries now shows the chance of death upon failure.
• Info card shows max hit points factor for materials.
• Interface now reports the chance of a successful arrest before you try to make it.
• Insect hives slowly heal over the course of days.
• Reworked how traits and work disables are laid out in the Bio tab for greater space efficiency.
• Changed caravan reform to be allowed with sleeping hostiles on site.
• Changed sites to stop and reset forced exit timer when enemies start a battle (for awakening mechanoids and hidden ambushes).
• Reworked the world site system to allow easier combination of different site parts, and to feed things back to the player more flexibly.
• Added the ability for world sites to have unknown parts.
• Rebalanced sleeping sickness.
• Rebalanced mechanoid bodypart coverages
• Changed rare thrumbo incident to send from 2 to 6 thrumbos.
• Adjusted a lot of text to use a colon instead of brackets, and to consistent use a capital after colon.
• Ashes from burned plants and buildings now survive rain and disappear after 10-15 days. They’re also visually larger.
• Trade price improvement from negotiator is now reported on the trade screen.
• Tattered apparel and unhappy nudity alerts now shows how many are affected.
• Changed and fixed some hotkeys.
• Smelting, burning and destruction review. Plate armor is now smeltable, except for wooden plate armor which is burnable. Wooden club also is burnable now and the metallic variants are smeltable. Apparels from hyperweave or devilstrand can no longer be burnt, can destroy apparels now same as with weapons. Neolithic ranged weapons can now be burnt.
• Placing turrets now shows min and max range, not just max range.
• IEDs now explode when bullets hit them.
• Pawns no longer engage in recreational acitivites when injured, unless the activity can be done in bed.
• Bridges now only support light buildings.
• The terrain requirements for building walls now depends on what they’re built from. This means stone walls can’t be built on bridges any more.
• Pawns now sometimes take the family name of their partner upon marriage.
• Dementia now causes slow skill losses.
• Rework stock generation for all trader and settlement types.
• Factions tab display changed for clarity; enemy relations are shown with icons.
• Bio tab now displays faction icons.
• History messages tab layout reworked – tooltip replaced with a pane on the right side that displays the letter.
• Credits now list the memory of colonists who died.
• Anasthetic now wears off slowly instead of all at once. The person will be drowsy for some time.
• Nimble pawns are now better at avoiding traps.
• Increased the selection limit up to 200.
• Combined the stats ArtSpeed, TailoringSpeed and SmeltingSpeed into UnskilledLaborSpeed and renamed UnskilledLaborSpeed to GeneralLaborSpeed.
• Renamed sculptor’s table to art bench since it’s not just for sculptures any more.
• Localization data is now packed into a single file per language, which massively reduces the number of files in an install of the game and speeds up various file operations.
• Many other balance changes, code improvements, optimizations, and adjustments.

Fixes

• Fix: Explosions from missed projectiles landing in wall cells could hit things on the other side of the wall.
• Fix: Enemy settlements could generate with floors on water.
• Fix: Nutrition eaten per day readout when forming a caravan would be affected by the current hunger level.
• Fix: Manhunting animals could attack doors without seeing anyone going through them.
• Fix: Corpses wouldn’t create corpse bile.
• Fix: Colonists could play horseshoes from a different room.
• Fix: Prisoner’s food restrictions were ignored when the food came from the warden’s inventory.
• Fix: Duplicate context menu options on campfire when producing psychite tea.
• Fix: Can’t give a rescued addict their drug without angering their faction.
• Fix: Goodwill change during siege does not end attack.
• Fix: Blind guy won’t use recreation.
• Fix: Jawless animals can still haul.
• Fix: Prisoner gets mood debuff when colonist euthanized.
• Fix: Wind turbines register no wind during windy storm.
• Fix: Shelves have no path cost and description doesn’t state they hide beauty of things inside of them.
• Fix: No mood penalty for giving bonded animal as a gift if sent by transport pod.
• Fix: Pawns with one-arm and alcohol withdrawal are unable to manipulate anything at all.
• Fix: Pawn with alcohol-induced brain damage are doomed to die.
• Fix: Uninstalling a trap does not properly roll the chance to trigger the trap.
• Fix: Wild animals spawn in sealed underground spaces.
• Fix: Pregnant animal is also viewed as sick one (since pregnancy affects its capacities), so it sells for less than one with no health conditions.
• Fix: No forced departure countdown for caravan if there are sleeping mechanoids.
• Fix: Luciferium wont remove Frail. Now, lucifierum can remove all chronic health conditions.
• Fix: Even if campfire runs out of fuel during cooking, cooking continues.
• Fix: Raiders keep attacking walls forever after their group flees.
• Fix: Crashed ship parts that land on bridges are instantly destroyed.
• Fix: Duplicate context menu options when opening cryptosleep casket.
• Fix: Butchering rotted animal yields fresh meat even if it rots during the job.
• Fix: Lag spikes on animal birth in endgame.
• Fix: Storyteller choice resets when you reopen the storyteller config page.
• Fix: When placing a cooler, the system ignores blueprints and building frames.
• Fix: The ‘restore default settings’ tool exits game without saving.
• Fix: If your only colony is on an island, the endgame quest to journey to the ship never occurs.
• Fix: Rain and Snow weather overlay textures replaced with blank rectangles in old colonies due to loss of floating-point precision.
• Fix: Age displayed differently in trade screen and on colonist.
• Fix: Animals that are wandering won’t follow area restrictions.
• Fix: Hopper and vitals monitor rotate in the opposite direction from other buildings.
• Fix: Can’t restrict ambrosia in food restrictions.
• Fix: Administered beer does not provide nutrition.
• Fix: Steadfast and iron-willed traits effects’ are clamped to a small effect.
• Fix: When a colonist dies while being rescued, others get no negative thoughts.
• Fix: For the ‘drag a character from left behind to selected’ tutorial instruction, it allows you to drag a character anywhere at all, even just within ‘left behind’. It should only accept dragging from left behind to selected.
• Fix: It’s possible to land in any biome in the tutorial by selecting a landing site, going to the character creation screen, then going back to select a different landing site.
• Fix: Insects can be tamed and hunted after their hives are destroyed.
• Fix: Preferred character list not working correctly.
• Fix: Power conduit graphic does not display properly on top of grave.
• Fix: Change colonist schedule to ‘sleep’ instantly ends the food binge mental state.
• Fix: Selecting several beds causes a major performance drop.
• Fix: Manhunter pack incident not working on high wealth or difficulty.
• Fix: Can see things in undiscovered cells if they peek around the edge of the fog.
• Fix: Arrested wild man don’t use nutrient despenser and can’t receive food.
• Fix: Military commissar backstory missing Social bonus.
• Fix: Allies can sometimes push player pawns out of cover during combat.
• Fix: ‘Run in background’ being disabled can make the game stop loading when in the background.
• Fix: Player can start with pets his pawns can’t keep tame.
• Fix: Escape ship letter mentions raiders even in peaceful difficulty, where they are not present.
• Many other fixes.

Discuss this on the Ludeon forums.

I’ve just pushed an update to build 1.0.2282.

Changes:

• Game loading has been optimized, especially with mods. You should see significantly faster loading.
• Player-created content updated.
• Localizations updated.

This update should be compatible with existing savegames and mods.

The RimWorld soundtrack is up for sale on Steam! 31 tracks of space western tunes from Alistair Lindsay (Twitter).

Here’s the Steam page.

If you like Al’s music you can get more from him at his Bandcamp page.

I’ve just released a technical update to version 1.0 of RimWorld. It should be 100% compatible with all existing savegames and mods. The new version is 1.0.2150.

Steam will auto-update. If you’re playing the DRM-free version of the game you can go download it now from your permanent personal download link which was emailed to you.

Aside from updating translations and player content, and fixing a handful critical bugs, the new version’s main purpose is to add support for multi-version mods. Previously one entry in Steam workshop could only work with one version of RimWorld. This causes problems when we release a new version: Players can’t continue on the old version since some mods are updated, but can’t continue on the new version since not all mods are updated.

Now, mods will be able to support multiple versions simply by putting version-specific files in directories named for the target game version. Other files from the mod’s base directory are used in all versions, as before.

For modders, here is how to set your mod up for multi-version support:

In the mod’s About.xml file, don’t use <targetVersion> any more. Instead, write a list of supported versions like this:

<supportedVersions>

        <li>1.0</li>

        <li>1.1</li>

</supportedVersions>

When you upload to the Steam Workshop, your mod will be properly tagged with all supported versions.

Version-specific content should go in a folder named after the version being targeted. For example, if you make a folder called “1.0/Defs”, version 1.0 of the game will load Defs only from that folder, while other versions of the game will load from “/Defs”. (Note that if you add a version-specific folder like “1.0/Defs”, the default “/Defs” folder will be ignored when playing on 1.0.)

You can do this with the “Defs”, “Assemblies”, and “Patches” folders. Other data types, like textures, are always shared between versions (for now).

If you do not need the multi-version content loading, you place the  “Defs”, “Assemblies” and “Patches” folders in the mod’s root folder, just like before.

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