Noob Advice

[Snowcaller]

Most people on this forum are fairly veteran at Rimworld. What advice would you offer to someone who just bought it.
Not your game winning strats but stuff to help a noobie survive.

Mine would be Grind that crafting.
Keep Your kitchen clean.
Remember to micro your melee pawns.

[AileTheAlien]

You don't need a clean kitchen if you eat nutrient paste, since it will never give food poisoning. (That building / item should actually explicitly state that, IMO...)

Cannibals / psychopaths are easy-mode for not needing to worry about food, and/or harvesting organs to sell.

[Grimelord82]

1) Roughly double the listed grow time of any plant, to figure out when you'll actually have it. Day/night cycle is a thing.
2) Pawns eat twice a day, using 1.4 to 1.8 nutrition depending on what you cook. 2 meals * #pawns. Or 20 vegetables/meat * number of pawns (if you have a cook). Or 32 vegetables/meat/pemmican * #pawns for raw

[Eterm]

My advice for new players is:

1. Don't go into the game thinking, "I've played these kinds of games before, I'm happy playing on rough". Play on 'base builder' as recommended. You'll still likely get wiped out through no fault of your own but you'll have more fun than facing challenges you can't get through unscathed.

2. Related to this, don't try to play to "win". I won't post spoilers but if your goal is beating the game you may be underwhelmed since really this game is all about the journey to get you there.

3. Renewable energy is far less maintenance than wood fired generators because it's actually a pain to cut down trees all the time.

4. Don't over-generate though, the cost of breakdowns will deplete your components store. A solar plus 2 wind plus 2-3 batteries can get you well into the mid-game.

5. Save power by not lighting bedrooms, pawns are happy to sleep in the dark.

5a. If you're in a temperate climate, save lots of power not heating or cooling rooms except for hospital.

6. There's a "set manual priorities" tickbox on the work tab, it's really important so you can set some people to haul before doing other jobs. The default priorities are worth understanding the way they are however. For example someone with high haul priority will cut one plant then haul it back to base then go back to cut one more plant, for example.

7. Many 'basic' crafting jobs don't increase your crafting skill but do take longer if your skill is low, so make sure there's a "skilling" job somewhere they can do.

[Jibbles]

1. Avoid engaging your pawns in battles near edges of map.  Raiders will steal them in a heartbeat if they're down. There's little to no time to save them.
2. Place several small 1x2 rooms with open door in various locations away from base.  Pawns can run here if base is too far when scythers/raiders enter the map.
3. Zones/areas/bills. Look up tips if you need to. But go ahead and learn all about them to save frustration.
4. It's okay to let raiders steal/destroy your property (every now and then) rather than risk your pawns if you know there's a good chance you'll get defeated.  Just focus on beefing up security after the fact.

[5thHorseman]

Don't play Ironman I mean Permadeath I mean Commitment mode. Save often, reload often. That way you're not afraid to test things when you're not sure.

But don't save and reload every single mistake or loss, because the game punishes too many successes in a row.

[Jibbles]

because the game punishes too many successes in a row.

How?

[5thHorseman]

There's a "how easy/hard should I be on you?" graph that you can see in development mode, history button, graphs button. It's the green line. If that gets too high the storyteller sends bigger stuff. If you reload every time you take a hit, that line keeps going up.

I reload when really bad stuff happens - especially if I was testing some mechanic to see if really bad stuff would happen - but you can't just reload every single failure.

[Klomster]

Get a good doctor, don't get that doctor into battle, unless you literally have no option.

Your pawn cannot do that dangerous thing alone, send someone to help.

Grow healroot.

Strive for fine meals.

Pause, think, unpause, pause, think In combat.