Cursed: A full story of a colony with plenty of pictures

[MiniKeeper]

Rimworld Adventure 4: Cursed
Custom scenario: The Rich Explorer
Difficulty: Cassandra Extreme
Landing point: Mountainous forest with year-round growing

My starting colonist, picked for his good stats and traits. He lacks some skills, but is overall pretty decent.


Notable skills: 8 shooting, 8 melee, 8 crafting.

Day 2:
After constructing a small shack and planting a small amount of rice, we get our first visitors. One of them is a trader. There are no panthers nearby, but there are an awful lot of timber wolves and cougars, heh heh heh...



I didn't get the trader, but I did kill the other visitor. Hurtle got chewed up a bit in the process. Hopefully he doesn't get an infection...

Day 3:
Hurtle recovered from his injuries without an infection. I got lucky this time.

Day 4:
I knew Cassandra would make me pay for getting lucky.
I got my first wanderer. Pyrrha. The same colonist who doomed my last colony (read Rimworld Adventure 3, "HumbleTown with friends"). She's come back to haunt me and doom my colony again. This is some illuminati level stuff here.


On the bright side, she has great social and research. And despite being 51, she has no bad health conditions.

Right after she joins, I get the popup to name my colony. I name it Cursed after this event.

Day: 5
I get a call from a 40 year old male nurse who is on the run from raiders. I think I'm going to accept, I have a good amount of food and need more manpower. I know my first raid is due soon, but I think I can handle it.


Rats. I didn't realize the nurse career disabled violence. Well, my first pacifist colonist. He has Too Smart, so he has a lot of potential. He also has 12 medicine, so I'm foreseeing him being a rescuer/distraction for enemies during combat. Otherwise his stats are meh.

Our first raider quickly follows him. Erisen comes wielding a shiv. Fun fact, she is the leader of the faction of pirates.


And our actual first raider appears from the opposite side of the map. This should be easy.


Hurtle incapacitated Erisen with a few shots from his charge rifle. Her stats are okay, but she can't haul and we already have a good researcher and crafter. Afterwards, Hurtle easily disposed of the other raider.

Day 6:
The colony so far.


The next steps are to make a kitchen and hospital.


Day 9:
We just got a heat wave alert. Heat waves are never good.

Day 10:
We got an escape pod containing a Too Smart surgeon in his 30's. The heat wave hasn't had much effect, since Pyrrha and Love both have ridiculously high heat tolerance (both over 45 degrees Celsius). Passive coolers are being researched to make sure Hurtle doesn't die of heatstroke.

But then, we get attacked by 3 raiders. They have decent weaponry, this might be a close fight.


In the end, we incapacitated two of the attackers. I'm only capturing one since the second raider is has pretty bad stats.


Sadly though, Will has a 96% recruitment difficulty. He's definitely getting released. No prisoners for me.

Day 11:
Thanks to our great warden, we got a new colonist (this was the guy from the escape pod) . Welcome to the colony Valery.


Day 13:
We have our first melee only-raid. This is only two guys, but they could cause a lot of damage.



Luckily, the good old aggro-a-predator strategy is pretty effective against melee raiders. I had a cougar take down one of the attackers and the other one fled. We shot the cougar afterwards.

Sadly, the raider has a 99% recruitment difficulty. He won't be getting recruited anytime soon.

Day 20:
After 7 whole days of peace, a raid finally arrived. Luckily though, we just built two turrets and some basic defenses.


Luckily though, we easily repulsed one raid, without only casualty being a turret.


Day 21:
Things are going very well. The colonists are throwing a party right as a bulk goods trader is approaching. We are slowly building more defenses as well.


Day 23:
Right as the trader caravan left, a trio of three manhunting elephants arrived. Hopefully we will have enough firepower to take them out.


Fortunately, our turrets in combination with our guns killed the elephants without any major injuries.

Day 27:
After several more days of peace while we construct our hospital and continue to grow food, a wanderer joins.
She's actually decent. Welcome to the colony Harper.


Notable skills: 8 melee, 9 growing.
The only bad part is she dislikes men, 3 of my 4 other colonists.

Day 28:
A big raid has arrived. 9 people in total, 3 of them have sniper rifles. This will be a bloody fight.


But. Somehow. Magically. We walk away from the fight with only a couple bruises. Turrets are the MVP of the colony. We manage to claim 2 sniper rifles, an incendiary launcher and a single prisoner.


Our prisoner, Macey, has a 71% recruitment difficulty, we should be able to recruit her with our 16 social warden.

Day 29:
As I predicted, Macey was recruited with a 9.2% chance. Welcome to the colony Macey.


Notable skills: 10 shooting, 11 cooking, 10 crafting.
Also is Too Smart, along with being a masochist and prosthophile.

Day 30:
Right as my colonists started harvesting a bountiful crop harvest, a blight comes. Pretty salt inducing, but Cassadra has been quite merciful so far.


Still, so many potatoes and cloth units lost...

At least to easy my pain a pirate merchant showed up. Maybe I can buy something neat.


They didn't have anything worth buying. However, I did sell some of my useless clothing.

But, in classic Cassandra fashion, right as they leave, a sapper raid arrives. Including a raider with a very impressive 19 melee.


But luckily, a local tribe sent armed friendlies to help me take out these sappers. Two warriors with great bows come to join the melee as the sappers begin tunneling into my hospital.


A local squirrel goes mad as the raiders decide to burn the hospital to ash while they are attempting to tunnel through it.


Macey is dazed and wandering as this all happens.

The battle is quick and deadly.
The hospital burns to the ground, but the fire is mostly contained. We repel the raiders, but Valery has his left hand blown off by a shotgun.


We capture 2 prisoners. One of them was released for having a 99% recruitment chance, and the other, Lynx, is the raider with 19 melee. She is 63 years old, but has no bad health conditions and decent stats.

Day 37:
After many more days of peace, Lynx finally joins us. We need to start mining plasteel to build the multi analyzer, and eventually the ship.


Lynx is pretty good.
Notable skills: 18 melee, 8 shooting (sadly she's a brawler), 7 growing.
She is also a hard worker and fast walker. She'll make a good hauler/general laborer.

Day 38:
We begin a mining campaign to find plasteel inside a local mountain. Instead we stumble upon an ancient tomb. However, I don't think the risk of having to fight mechs inside the tomb is worth the rewards.


Day 39:
But, as the mining expedition continues, my worse fear came true.
An infestation occurred as my colonists were mining.


Luckily, everyone was able to escape. Love got bitten pretty badly, but was okay in the end.
After everyone escaped I sent in Valery, Macey and Hurtle and they mowed down the insects one by one with their automatic weaponry (and some help from the turrets too).


Day 40:
We've found plenty of steel inside the mountain so far, but no plasteel. Hopefully we have hit a vein soon...

Day 41:
Here comes a raid with more sappers. They have decent equipment. This could end badly.


The sappers positioned themselves in a weird spot. I sent out Hurtle with a sniper rifle, but they had 2 sniper rifle wielders of their own. Hurtle got his arm shot off before he retreated.


I moved some of the turrets to a better spot to attack the raiders, but 2 of my colonists (Macey and Valery) have mental breakdowns. I don't think I can win a fight against these sappers.


The sappers come through the tunnel, and a skirmish occurs. Our Labrador retriever is shot to death, but the turrets are helping a lot. Until, literally 10 seconds after the gunfight starts, a solar flame occurs, and the turrets power down.
Cassandra stacked the deck against me.


We survived though.
Pyrrha is dead, and everyone else is pretty shot up, but we are alive.


On the bright side, we captured a prisoner. He's a sheriff, so he's useless. Cassandra has finally unleashed her wrath after being merciful for so long.
With Pyrrha dead and everyone else demoralized I don't think the colonist will last much longer.

Day 43:
With all the damage caused by the sapper raid, I don't think building the ship and launching it is a viable goal. So instead, my plan is to raid the cryptosleep tomb and put all my colonists in pods. I really can't see the colony lasting long enough to build the ship with our main researcher dead and the lack of plasteel.

Later that day we open up the tomb. It only has two pods. We'll find another way to put my colonists into cryptosleep.


I checked around the map but to no avail. This is the only tomb around. We will have to research cryptosleep caskets.
I have Love ingest some of the mechanite pills found within the tomb. He then captures and extracts a bionic arm from one of the former sleepers.

Day 44:
I then called over a trade caravan from a local outlander town. Hopefully they can provide us with the plasteel necessary to build the multi-analyzer.

But later that day, as two colonists have simultaneous berserk breakdowns, my battery shed lights ablaze due to the "zzzt" event.


I'm starting to wonder if we can event survive long enough to make cryptosleep caskets.

Day 46:
Finally! The bulk goods trader has arrived! Hopefully we can get the measly 50 plasteel we need...


But as Love heads to the caravan, Valery, who is berserk, walks into the room with out prisoner from the cryptosleep tomb, who ironically named Valerie.
This leads the the Valerie vs Valery fistfight.


Spoiler alert: Valery wins.

But luckily, Love purchases and picks up the plasteel. We can research the pods now!

Unfortunately, all these berserk rampages caused a lot of wounds, which turned into infections. And, sadly, during an operation to amputated Harper's leg, which had become badly infected, she died of infection.

Day 47:
More sappers. This time Love's brother is with the raiding party. Luckily, the caravan is still around. Hopefully they can repel the raiders for us.


Shoot! The sappers came in the tunnel the last sappers came through. I guess I should have seen that coming though.


The gunfight was short. Valery was killed by a knife and sword wielding raider duo. The raiders kidnapped Lynx, but Macey and Love fled to the cryptosleep tomb. I have Macey ingest some of the miraculous mechanite pills, then have Love build walls to encase the two of them in the cave.


Inside the cave are two psychic animal pulsers. One use artifacts that drive ALL animals on the map into manhunting rage.

If I'm going to die those freaking sappers are coming with me.
Relations with Mercy's Plain, the outlander town, broke down after I used the psychic device, but it doesn't matter.


The outlanders are quickly overcome and perish. The sappers try to escape through the very same tunnel they came from. There is no escape from the wrath of the artifact.


I feel no pity for this. Stupid sappers.


I have Love and Macey enter the caskets. The other two colonists will bleed out soon after.
Valerie (the prisoner) burns to death in a fire caused by a poorly thrown Molotov by the sappers. And as I predicted Hurtle bleeds out, followed by Lynx.

I can only watch as my colony burns to ash. Every story seems to end with fire consuming everything.


And finally, the ruins of my colony.


Endgame statistics:
Colonists killed: 5
Major threats: 10
Enemy raids: 9
Time played: About 7h and 30 minutes.

I named by colony Cursed thinking I would die early. I actually had one of the most peaceful (not really very productive though) midgames of all my stories so far. Sadly, I died to the huge ramp up in raider difficulty during the later part of the midgame. I hate sappers more every story.
This story took up 45 pages on Microsoft word (mostly because of pictures) and has about 2100 words.
Thanks for reading.

[ryann1908]

Man, i love yours stories, i can't wait to see more! And i'm kinda doing something similar to this too, plus alpha 16 is very near! Can't  wait. Keep the good work!