General Guidelines for NEW players to a modded RimWorld (+Promotion)

Started by Trunken, April 19, 2019, 05:54:47 PM

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Trunken



This is a Guide for NEW players who want to hop into a different (modded) RimWorld



Mods are widely spreaded and diving into it, opens up a gigantic and often confusing new experience for people, who attempt to find their way through all the given choices.

It might be overwhelming and will throw up endless new questions laying on your mind. The following will try to help you and i wish someone was telling me the same words, before my long journey of attempts and failures began.

So what are the basics? What makes your next RimWorld a better (or maybe even tougher) place to live? How can we guarantee compatibility on our addon selection? What should we foucs on and how do we make all this work?

Basics:

Mods can be either directly downloaded and manually installed or integrated through SteamWorkshop.

Directory:
...\RimWorldXXXYYYZZ\Mods\Modname (DRM-Free)
X:\Steam\steamapps\common\RimWorld\Mods\Modname (steam)
SteamWorkshop:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/294100/workshop/

All mods are made by normal people like you and me. Some are XML gods, someothers masterminds in C# or just great graphic artists. Mods are often made by more than one single mans influence. People cooperate with each other, to bring their stuff to the next level.

This means also that some arent as perfect or are still work in progress. Modders offer us the chance to participate on their concepts and designs. They do this for free and hope people love it as much as they do, after finishing the long work to a shareable version.



There are hundreds of mods out there and they often do similiar things like adding items or buildings to the game. So how do we guarantee stability as a user?

Tips:

       
  • 1. Lets start small: Read the mods description to the end.
  • 2. Search for compatibility or mentioned problems with already downloaded mods, especially when they do similiar things with the game.
For a random example: Rah's Bionics and Surgery Expansion is based on Expanded Prosthetics and Organ Engineering, so both mods would definately disturb each other. But its written in the description, so luckily we can find out, when we have concerns.

       
  • 3. Categorize your type of mods to avoid problems and fix errors.
  • 4. Add mods only one by one or in small groups.
Enable Developer Mode at the option, so the log window open on warnings/error not only on critical ones. Activate mod's at small batches of 5-10 mods at once. Watch the log window after it if an error (red text) show up, identify the mod (deactivate mod's until the error don't show up). If you installed that mod manualy, check if you got the right/latest version and if you installed it right. Any error you got at Rimworld startup, will increase the chance that you can have a critical error later that prevent you from playing or loading.**Added by: Canute
  • 5. Add a Mod Manager when you loose the overview.
You have five mods for different vegetation? Cool! But maybe two of them change the same definition ingame or try to apply a new texture on the exact same thing. Organizing will encircle the problem for you, until you can isolate the mod which causes errors, especially if your not familiar with debugging.

XML Error: What the hell is that red text?!


       
  • 6. Try to load mods with heavy changes first. Then add smaller content and patches.
  • 7. Reduce multiple type of mods for one and the same thing. This will often alone ensure a clean and stable game for you.
  • 8. Report if you have a problem with a mod and you should'nt. This way you help to improve it. Make sure the problem lays not on your end in all conscience though.
  • 9. Remember: Filesize can indicate how big the changes are made by your chosen mod. This might not be entirely correct though! Because even a small mod can package a bunch of screenshots and preview pictures in addition, which adds up fast, but has no effect on your running game.
You should think about your load order. What each mod does specificly. So you can rearrange it correctly.

Core > Libraries > Framework >  Heavy Overhaul > Settings & Changes > Buildings & Items > Patches (Light)

Don't forget some mods want to overwrite features. Patching is a way to do that.

Tools:

RWMS RimWorld Mod Sorter (Autosorting, growing Database) [Requires Python]
Better Loading Mod (Overview over Loading Times, can be detailed on logging)

Trunken



For people who still want a machete for this jungle, i added a list for basic mods, which are working smooth and and are really nice to have. Since everyone has their own personality and taste not all of this offered choices apply to everyone.

ModName | (Quick Explanation)

Essentials  Load this mods first
Core :-)
HugsLib
JecsTools
Mod Manager (Love you Fluffy)

Other Mods often rely on these libraries. They are basic. Humanoid Alien Races 2.0, the Alien Framework is just another example for mods like this, which create incredible functionality and depth for other modders to play with.

If you have overdone it and you wait 10minutes before the game even starts...

Startup Impact (Lets you see, which mod eats your loading time)
RIMMSLoadUp (Way too epic. Community Solutions to speed up your loading times on many mods)
RunTimeGC (Clears unnecessary data like relations of dead people from your 100h+ savefiles)
FrameRateControl (Can help users who are like me, desktop much and switch priority)

Start up
EdB Prepare Carefully (Can't play a game without this)
Faction Control (Adjust your enemies and friends)
Map Reroll (Must have mod)

Events
More Faction Interaction (Living world)

Races
Forsakens (The Abandoned Ones) [Needs Humanoid Alien Races 2.0]

Graphics & Environment
Fertile Planet (Increases wild growth and vegetation)
Soil Contrast + Green World (Eyecandy)
[TWC] Cupro's Stones (Beautiful mountains)
Metals+ (Different Veins)
Dubs Paint Shop (For artists, color your base and cloth)
Dubs Mint Menus (If you see things from this author, grab them)
RPG Style Inventory (Must have mod)

Extensions
Camera+ (Zoom)
Dual Wield (Must have mod)
Follow Me (Lets your camera follow the selected pawn)
Colonist Bar KF (Replaces it entirely. Mods which rely on this Bar are incompatible)
Better Workbench Management (Lets you link workbenches and more)
Recipe Icons (Must have mod)
RimHUD (Incredible handy replacement!)
Room Sense (Shows room beauty and more)
Heat Map (Shows room temperatures and more, no view on multiple colony instances atm)

Enhancements
OgreStack or Stack XXL (Define your Storage)
Haul to Stack (Check for existing stack)
Path Avoid (Clean Hospitals etc.)
While you're up (...to, bring something along!)

I didn't test Pickup and Haul yet, but it seems great too for an -easy mode- on carrying.

Management & Overview
Work Tab (Fluffy) and/or Numbers (They're both compatible with slight drawbacks)
Colony Manager (Fluffy)
Medical Tab (Fluffy)
Research Tree (Fluffy)
Animal Tab (Fluffy)
Area Unlocker (Fluffy)
RimWorld Search Agency

Advanced
Psychology (Give your pawn a Soul)
MendAndRecycle (Repair your stuff. I cannot play a game without this) and/or Reclaim Fabric
RIMMSqol (Quality of Life. Customize your pawns after landing. Extends the Trait System)
Hospitality (Welcome travelers and guests to your home. Adds a totally new mechanic)
Mad Skills + Crafting Quality Rebalanced or Static Quality Plus (Adjust your Skill System)
Quality Builder (Lets you declare the quality the bulding should be made of)

Suggestions
Caravan Options (Faster Traveling)
Trading Spot (No more Traders in the kitchen)
Better Traders (More Gold)
Change Map Edge Limit
Terraform RimWorld (Made by a kind genius)

Wild Life
Animals Logic (Full configurable animals)
Birds and Bees (Neuter, if you're animal stock gets out of hand)

Atmosphere
Infused (Should be vanilla. Adds various stats to your items on crafting)
Jewelry (Even more Gold. Author is a true talent)
Craftsmanship (Makes talking useful)

Medical Configurations
Core + Animal Cybernetics
Expanded Prosthetics and Organ Engineering + Bionic icons + Animal Cybernetics
A Dog said + Expanded Prosthetics and Organ Engineering + Bionic icons + Animal Cybernetics
[FSF] Vanilla Bionics Expansion + [SYR] Prosthetic Table/Icons + Animal Cybernetics
[FSF] Vanilla Bionics Expansion + Archotech Expanded + [SYR] Prosthetic Table/Icons + AnyC
[FSF] Vanilla Bionics Expansion + Archotech Exp./Prosthetic + [SYR] Prosthetic Table/Icons + AnyC
Add [LBE] A Dog Said Easy Patcher for more modded critters, if you have A Dog Said installed
Medical Training (Lets you train your medic skills and removes corpses)

They add very much to the game and are not easy to explain. Check out their descriptions.

Food
VGP Vegetable Garden (This author invested so much time and work in his stuff. Absolutely worth)
VGP More Veggies
VGP Xtra Trees and Flowers
RimFridge (Easy Cooling)
Harvest Sync (Not 100% perfect yet)
Room Food and/or Table Dinner (Helps on eat without a table)

Water
Thanks For All The Fish
Impassable Chest-deep Water (Build your castle)

More Random Stuff
Stuffed Floors + X (Not all Floor Mods are 'compatible', they could be tho. Some names swap to english)
Doors Expanded + Clutter Doors (3x1 Doors and Optics)
Larger Solar Panel (5x7 Solar Panels)
Advanced Powergeneration (For the energy hungry)
Mechanoid Power Source (Beneficial shipwrecks)
ED-Laser Drill (Geysir creation/removal)
Omni-Core Drill (Metal farming)
Electric Stonecutting
Wall Light
Door Mats (Anti Dirt)

More Buldings, Items
Additional Joy Objects (Easy relaxations)
GloomyFurniture (You should check this out)
More Furniture (Finally there is a lamp on bedside tables) or Vanilla Furniture Expanded (Sweet GFX)
More Sculpture (You should check this out)

Weapons
Damage Indicators
WeaponStats (Overview)
Weapon Tech
Dead Goat's Weapon Pack

An endless List.

Turrets
Turret Extensions (XeoNovaDan's mods are all just awesome and safe picks)
Expanded Artillery
Pulsefire Turret
Advanced Mini-Turret
More Mini Turrets

Another endless List.

Defense
Better Spike Traps
ED-Embrasures
Advanced Shield Belts
Vanya Shield

Apparel
Apparello
Advanced Parka
Spartan Foundry (Endgame content)

Another infinite endless List.

Hair & Body
[CP] Detailed Body Texture
Gradient Hair + Hair Dye
[KV] Show Hair with Hats
Nackblad Inc Rimhair

The variety of items given by the community is endlessly infinite endless. Pick your bits.

Honorable Mentions
Mood Bar (Colored mood) (Note: This is not compatible with Colonist Bar KF)
Custom Mote Maker (Pops a status smiley on pawn click)
Brr and Phew! (Adjust temperature rating and reaction)
Realistic Rooms (Minimalistic. Lower quality requirements)
Smaller Rooms (Minimalistic. Lower size requirements)
Memorable Auroras (XND)
Never Retreat (No runners)
Dire Raids (More action)
Prisoner Ransom (If this just had a simple Cancel/Back-Button in addition, it would be excellent)
Raids For Me / Hunt For Me / Kill For Me / Down For Me (Unbelievable)
ZiTools (Object Seeker)
Vanilla Furniture Expanded - Medical Module (Compatibility not always given)
Sparkling Worlds (Lemme test this gem)
Real Ruins (Excellent idea. Player based ruins. Does not work with everything yet)
Multiplayer (We want this so badly. Does not work with everything yet)



When you think your mod deserves a spot here, let me know and i add it, maybe i did overlook it somehow. If i forgot to mention something, you want to add lines or change the loading order, please feel free to adjust.

There are dozens of huge mods out there i didn't test yet, but i will try to improve and extend this list for you guys. For now i hope that should be enough :-)


Owlchemist

I feel it's worth noting the annoyance of overwhelming load time. What I have come to learn is that mods which add new functionality to the game aren't much of a culprit for adding load time, but mods that add new definitions to the game could be (new items/buildings, new recipes, hediffs, etc). There's some sort of compounding effect the more you add since everything is trying to validate their cross references between one another.

For example, say you added a mod which only added 10 seconds load time to starting up the game. Later on you add a whole mess of other mods to your game. If you remove that first mod again, you might expect to regain 10 seconds of load time if it were a linear effect, but you'd probably find it to be much more than that, even upwards to 10x the difference. Personally, for me, I got one such example of a mod that adds 4 seconds with a vanilla loadout. But if I remove it with all my other mods installed, it shaved 35 seconds off load time.

Trunken


Canute

Trunken,
good start you made with it ! :-)
Some comments from my side.
Beside a few mods that change/add some GUI elements are the most mods basicly cheat's for the vanilla gameplay (vanilla = unmodded)
From weapon they are far stronger then vanila weapons, shield belt that allow you to shoot, appareal with new effects.
Over new abilities for you like to use the inventory for hauling or magic for all.
New races or faction with different abilities like vampire or androids.
But ofcouse some stronger enemies and event's that can cause your crazy.
So be warned ! :-)

QuoteDirectory:
X:\Steam\steamapps\common\RimWorld\Mods\Modname
We are on the forum, so you should change it to match for the DRM-free version.
...\RimWorldXXXYYYZZ\Mods\

QuoteTips:

    1. Lets start small: Read the mods description to the end.
3. Let's activate small too:
Since all mod's are fan made, there is no quality control. Sure the mod author doing their best but noone is perfect.
Enable Developer Moder at the option, so the log window open on warnings/error not only on critical ones.
Activate mod's at small batches of 5-10 mods at once.
Watch the log window after it if an error (red text) show up, identify the mod (deactivate mod's until the error don't show up).
If you installed that mod manualy, check if you got the right/latest version and if you installed it right.
Report the error to the mod author at the mod topic/discussion.
Any error you got at Rimworld startup, will increase the chance that you can have an critical error later that prevent you from playing or loading.
Because of this error chance of a modded gameplay, a permadeath safegame isn't recommend ! :-)

You can use external Mod sorting tools like
automatic Rimworld mod sorter
or
RWMS - RimWorld Mod Sorter

About Loading times:

Some modder discover some techniques that increase the modloading.
RIMMSLoadUp
is one of these.
Better Loading Mod
give you a better overview about the loading, but don't speed it up.


A musthave mod, special when you add mod's with new items/researches/recipes are
Help Tab
with that mod you got an ingame search tool to know about nessesary researches,workbenches for items.
There is no update for 1.0, but the B19 version work's beside a few warnings (yellow text).




Trunken

Hey Canute,
thanks for welcoming me and your suggestions :-) you seem to be an old wolf here.

I finally had time to test the RMWS Autosorting Tool now. No noticeable performance changes, but its a good one to keep, especially if you start from scratch again. Author seems doing a great job on updating the database too. Better Loading Times gets also a *thumbsup*

I added your advice to the help section plus RWMS and BLT under Tools to download.

Albion

Nice comprehensive overview.
However I'm missing event mods in your suggestions, specifically More faction interaction and Sparkling Worlds.

shakeyourbunny

Hello, the author of RWMS here.

Big thanks that you are linking to my little script, but the link itself is not working, use: https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=48594.0 :-)

RimWorld does not really have dependencies by itself, but there are some mod (families) which depend on each other and when these are not loaded in the suggested order provided by the mod authors themselves. You see, the rough order is loading basic libraries (like HugsLib) first after Core, then mod frameworks (like Alien Races), then the big content addons / conversions, then the other stuff to conclude with patches and add the user interface mods. There are some mods which have to be loaded last, but this will usually be stated on the mod page (Ludeon / Steam / Github etc).

I read through your General Guideline, it is neat to introduce RimWorld Vanilla Players to a modded experience and point out the most important caveats.

It is funny that yesterday I tried to put a Steam Workshop list for vanilla players, but gave up because there are really so many good mods out there and if you are not looking, you are sitting on top of 100 mods :) The problem is where you want to go with your mods, binge-modding is very easy with RimWorld.

Keep up with the good work!


Nieve

This guide need someone to keep it continue.

Played this game for years but still struggling with mods and the other essential for them to run properly :'(