[A16] Poll: What difficulty do you play on?

[Shurp]

I've thought about going with the random colonist start, but it seems to me like the odds of getting screwed are too high.  What happens if nobody can cook?  If you don't get a doctor?  If all three have miserable construction skill?

I suppose you can do without a starting smith or researcher and hope to get one later on.  But some skills you need from day one, no?  (Of course, if you enjoy losing then that's not a problem.  But then you can also intentionally pick crappy colonists too

[XeoNovaDan]

What happens if nobody can cook?  If you don't get a doctor?  If all three have miserable construction skill?

It'll be less productive to gameplay, but working around that issue is part of the fun really. My vanilla+ tribe has a completely random location and completely random tribesmen but they turned out to be a decent bunch. One of them was an alcoholic and they're experiencing withdrawal symptoms at this point, but it's still fun dealing with it. She typically teeters on the minor/major break threshold (extreme difficulty for mood debuff), but she's holding it together because of a party that she attended... and the fact everything's in one room so she's getting a net mood gain of +8 from very impressive barrack, dining room, and rec room.

Edit: All was going well... until she started a wake-up binge due to said withdrawal, so we tried to arrest her but she refused... and got beaten to death by bare hands.

[Shurp]

Try wooden logs next time.  In my experience the log beatdown always produces incapacitation before death.  Also don't forget you can wall up your drugs in a closet.

And that is an advantage of the tribal start.  With 5 colonists you're more likely to have someone who can perform vital tasks.

[grrizo]

Some Randy Challenge

[b4d]

Custom story teller with extreme difficulty

lots of events and very frequent raids, cause being beaten to a pulp is fun

[PetWolverine]

I've been playing on Cassandra Rough until recently, but I've been adding mods that seem to keep making the game easier (albeit more interesting), so I bumped it up to Intense on tundra with permanent toxic fallout. It's about the right difficulty for me for now.

I haven't tried Randy, but I like the idea of a storyteller who's trying to... tell a story... rather than throwing random events at me. I played Phoebe when I was still getting the basics down.

[Greep]

I've played cass and randy a lot, and I find randy makes better "stories" that come from the randomness.  Beavers every season is pretty annoying, though.

[Wraithling]

Custom story teller with extreme difficulty

lots of events and very frequent raids, cause being beaten to a pulp is fun

Hey, that sounds fun    Which custom storyteller are you using? I've been playing Rimworld for 3 months and Cassy extreme no longer challenges me as she used to.

[b4d]

Hey, that sounds fun    Which custom storyteller are you using? I've been playing Rimworld for 3 months and Cassy extreme no longer challenges me as she used to.

I combined two storyteller into one and adjusted the numbers a bit

Iron Dan as base
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=731434226

and take part of Hildegarde raid settings from Rimsenal - Storyteller's for the raids
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=725952322

[Wraithling]

Many thanks b4d, will check Iron Dan out; I already have Hildegarde and occasionally switch to her.

Slightly more on-topic - I hope vanilla introduces another difficulty beyond extreme. I want more disasters happening to my base, more raids coming, and not just the occasional auto-door breaking down. I believe most 1-month-old players can easily handle extreme, even if they eventually settle for lesser difficulty for reasons of their own.

[Granitecosmos]

Randy Random Rough is what I prefer. Classic Randy douchebaggery without bullcrap lategame raids.

However.

• I don't use killboxes.
• I don't build mountain bases.
• I actually prefer flatlands instead of hills/mountains.
• I've built my most recent turret, like, I don't know, half a year ago? I don't even bother with Turret Research anymore.
• I play as tribe at least 90% of the time.
• I actually made a custom scenario for myself that I've been using for months now. It starts me off with just one guy, tribal colony, with just a Tribalwear and one Steel Spear. No additional items. No additional resources or food. Git gud or git ded.
• I prefer Boreal Forests with -25°C or less average winter temperature. I start in Fall and can't grow crops until the next summer.
• Savescumming is for the weak. In my colonies, glory and death walk hand in hand.
• No humanoid butchering unless starvation hits. Human leather is too profitable. I'll be drowning in silver anyway but I prefer harder methods.
• No organ harvesting for profit, for the same reason mentioned one line above.
• No reroll on colonists. Even if it's a one-man start with a pacifist demented sheriff. Surviving with a guy like that is what makes one a better player.

The only reason I don't play on higher difficulties anymore is because raid scaling gets ridiculously out of hand lategame. I prefer events that actually can be solved over a stat check of "Have you built a killbox/are you using an exploit? If not, you're dead." because I fail to see the fun in the latter.

[AngleWyrm]

Had a couple insect infestations during fall of the first season, with six colonists. In the first one there were two hives, and in the second one there were three hives. Both scenarios were unplayable to me, as it would send valuable colonists to the hospital for an extended recuperation period, slowing down the game. So they became potential futures that I chose not to walk through Save/Restore.

That was Iron Dan storyteller on Rough, and so to eliminate long load times from my life I turned the difficulty setting to Peaceful. Probably going to bump it up later.

[Rah]

@Granitecosmos, interesting preferences. I play Randy and Cassandra on Extreme without any big killboxes or exploits, although I do have a perimeter wall and several small openings where I allow them in. If you look at the attachment picture you can see how I usually defend my base.

In this particular case it's Randy Extreme 190 days in. Usually I will build a bunker style setup with steel traps, sandbags and a few turrets to slow the attackers down while my colonists fire from their roofed bunkers. The attackers often use the sandbags as cover and then firefights ensue. Any animals and brawlers will be on standby in the back if things get out of hand. I have 5 of these openings and "bunkers" around the wall. In the image all my colonists have gut worms and I'm dealing with a toxic fallout and volcanic winter, and they also just had a huge tribe attack, but they're still holding out relatively well.

[attachment deleted by admin due to age]

[Fellbourne]

I chose Cassy Extreme altho thats not entirely accurate due to the fact I now much more often play with modded story tellers (pandora dark, hardcore storytellers, Rimsenal) bc Vanilla Rimworld has become quite farmable for me now. Initially it wasn't, but I have played the crap out of this game 1600+ hours. I most often play unmodded or lightly modded with mostly QoL type mods or mods that increase difficulty (story tellers, realistic darkness, manhunters) I happen to be playing a lightly modded cassy exteme  desert flat terrain atm. Mods in use this game Number 22 w/rice, World PawnGC, Animal Tab, Allow Tool, Wildlife Tab, Allow fresh, Allow Deadmans Apparel, Refugee Stats, Numbers, RBSE.





In this game I have 27 thrumbo fur armchairs, 3 flatscreens in the hospital, 1 mega screen, 2 silver billiards tables, 4 silver grand statues, 12 full sets of devilstrand gear, 13 sets of power armor, 21 royal beds to sell, 10 royal beds for my colonists, 42 chess tables to sell, 12 sets of alpaca wool parkas and caps, 3 muffalos, 7 alpacas, 17 huskies, 22 husky puppies. I

I call traders on cooldown from the time I get micro electronics researched, I buy all artifacts, steel, plasteel, gold, uranium and glitterworld meds. I know I don't need that much uranium, i'm just buying as a silver sink and to make a grand uranium statue for laughs,  traders often dont have enough silver for everything I want to sell, not that i need it bc my stockpiles are always overflowing with silver anyway, that's why I make silver grand statues and crap and waste thrumbo fur on chairs. I never use turrets except for modded storytellers. I very much like mountain bases and I do often turtle up heavily walled and trapped like shown, but not always. I'm starting to do walless and trapless plays. and am going to try sometime in the near future a pausless run.

Any biome with any amount of soil is extremely farm-able. Harder difficulties offset themselves imo BECAUSE of the increased raid / manhunter pack sizes. its just throwing food and weapons and resources at you. This map has almost no animals naturally ever, yet we eat lavish meals and I have bills set to make pemican and kibble forever because 50 rhinos is a ton of meat. The last mech raid was 22 centipedes and 9 sythers, that's a heck of a lot free plasteel. Personal shields are overpowered, artifacts are overpowered, selling furniture is crazy lucrative.

Additional note on the mods in use , most don't impact the gameplay that much with the exception of RBSE witch i was testing out for the 1st time in this playthrough. (also in part why i decided to post seeing as Rah is the creator) While RBSE is definitely more balanced and less cluttered than EPOE it is as i feared still too easy to obtain and too strong

[Sola]

Cassandra extreme only.  Once you've learned all the mechanics, the game itself is too easy to play on other difficulties.

RNGeezus and I have never been great friends, so I'm not much a fan of Randy Random.