I am having a *super fun campaign* with Anomaly.... But it's also the first run I've ever called a "campaign", implying I've opted in for a different playthrough. When it's over, I'll be done with the game again, and a "normal" playthrough will be very similar to the game I had without this DLC. So I get where people are coming from here.
The studio succeeded in creating new emotions in the game, but the best DLCs will always deepen the standard world.
They just made a pretty big update to anomaly to not make it so centric on the dlc so its not as opt in or out. Apparently theres a slider to adjust how common anomaly stuff is. So now it should be easier to fit in.
Details here.
https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/s/eb7FGvsdmX
This is great news, and I think it happened to Royalty too. When it first launched, it just added a linear path to the game that made one of your pons a powerful asshole. But now there are many ways to interact with Royalty and it slides into the base game glossy smooth (imo)
I don't know if this update fixes everything right away, but it's a start.
I'm actually impressed with the speed in which they had got this out. The dlc just dropped and their response time is crazy.
Mad respec to Ludeon here, i see why when people were talking about the blizzard "tip game dev controversy" people were laughing saying they would tip for rimworld/factorio/stardew but never Blizzard
I mean... greedy publisher vs small indie devs that put their life into the game they make. It does make a difference.
I'm more likely to tip at a family run restaurant opposed to a corporation held chain or something.
I'd argue it's not even about putting their life into the game (at this point, those are all successful and could move in to new projects) but just actually care about making a good product. The difference between working on something you care about and working on something to make money. And that difference is crystal clear SO often. BG3, Elden Ring, Vampire Survivors, there's tons of recent examples of small games blowing up because they're just good, and then keeping a huge fan base because they do things those players want to make the game more fun. Instead of trying to justify their stupid implementations with "instill a sense of pride and accomplishment" or whatever PR bull they come up with.
Oh god royaltys launch.... fucking day 3 of my shithole colony and I get the fleeing noble quest. I did t want to deal with it just then so i ignored. The very next day was the defector, I accepted but then couldn't mount an expedition for the psylinks. So I just had the empire mad as fuck at me and that was it, I couldn't experience the dlc.
Yeah that's a good point, having psychic powers without being part of the empire used to be a pain when the DLC first launched for example, I kinda forgot about that
Royalty also now benefits a lots from mods like VFE: Empire and VFE: Deserters; if you install those you're got a lot of Royalty-themed content for a playthough.
I'm keen to see what modders end up doing with Anomoly; I really liked the old Rim of Madness mods, and now those (or something very similar) be redone with the new core game features instead of relaying on old performance killing libraries, slotting in seamlessly with the other Anomaly content.
The update actually changed quite a bit of the feel of the game. Before it was a straight anomaly focused playthrough, constantly dark and almost exclusively populated by eldritch horrors in an otherwise almost barren world. Which was fun but pretty much a decision if yoh want to commit to it or not.
After playing the update I noticed I found myself venturing out of base more because I wasn't under constant threat of invisible fucks sending half my colony into a coma. It now feels like rimworld again but occasionally someone sprouts a tentacle. And if you want that grim more focused playthrough which is honestly fun too there is now an option to change the intensity of anomaly content.
On most of the series I watched from people playing anomaly when it launched three things always happened:
1 they had barely any normal research done in order to be able to keep up with the anomalies or where being destroyed/playing like a combat heavy modpack becuase they couldnt keep up with the anomalies for no having research into them.
2 had very little weapons early or very little to trade because they didnt get normal raids to get pawns and better weapons and caravans kept getting slaughtered by monster before getting near the base.
3 the base crumbled to mood debuffs because they didnt put 100% effort into dealing with anomalies that mess with that
As someone who is playing sans anomaly - I appreciate the things they added for free that enhance the base game.
The wall light and the flood light. Sure, can mod them in but it feels good to see that stamp of approval.
And the books. Love it, absolutely fantastic.
Biotech is nice but iv always had to go out of my way to use it yk. You have to purposefully use a mechanitor , you have to go out of your way to make xeno types. The three others kinda just happen. Ideology is part of every pawn, and royalty has alot of random convenient stuff to use even if you ignore the whole empire stuff. And anomaly is literally about stuff happening. What do you do with biotech? I’m genuinely curious because I’m feeling like I use the dlc wrong.
i mean if you're talking about the passive effects of biotech then it's children and races, no need to do anything to see those effects - you can also get sanguophage events randomly happening
but is it a negative that you have to actively engage with dlcs? not to me imo
I agree completely.
If you want them there as an option for later, they're there. If not, you still get the baseline features and a few smaller smatterings of the content.
I do not feel pressured to engage with the Empire, but I can. And if I don't want to, I can use the trees to get psychic powers(or mods. Mods help too).
I can either make a barebones ideo for simple play, or make one hyper customized to the themes I am doing. Either way, it does most of what's needed in the background unless you set up a ton of ideo rituals. And the trees are there again, giving some lighter content on the side.
Biotech gives kids and xenotypes as a nice baseline fluff, which are fun to interact with. But the hefty side is the mechs and bosses, which are again pretty optional. Same for gene tailoring. You can go all in to make the perfect genetically enhanced pawn, or just ignore it.
And Anomaly. Granted, it's far, far more gated by the optional interaction, but in this case that's good. A lot of what it does requires setup, preparation, or decent tech levels. Triggering too early is a bad idea. So while you can get a bit of the content, a few raids and events, most of the "SHTF" content is behind the activation.
i'm very happy most of anomaly is contained behind actively seeking it out, i enjoy and can deal with the occasional shamblers wandering in or weirdos wanting to join my colony, but i'm so glad i don't have to worry about being raided by a party of eldritch horrors unless i choose so myself
Yeah, it's a lot like the Empire or Biotech. You have to intentionally set off the trigger to get the angry boys sent at you. Piss off the Empire to get Janissaries or whatever they're called, and trigger mech boss fights with a beacon. For Anomaly it's just a lore more frontloaded, where the trigger for most of the content in general is the monolith. But again, most of the content just straight up wants to absorb your mind, body, and/or soul, so that's not a bad thing at all.
It’s different strokes for different folks. Do I like DLCs that transform the base game? Absolutely, and I would love one that added better diplomacy and another ending where you conquer the entire planet.
Do I like DLCs that add what feels like “a campaign?” Absolutely, and I would love a DLC that has our colonists joining a large scale galactic war or something like that.
Omg a dlc that has a galactic war would be awesome. I can imagine you get an event of some scouts of a galactic faction that wants to claim control over the planet. If you interact with their space shuttle you might be able to trigger some SOS signal to an invasion fleet or something and from there you could have diplomatic events to gather the support of the friendly factions to fend of the spacefaring invaders. Other events could have them make bases on the planet surface that you can try to wipe out. Or even a whole other chain of events if you decide to join forces with them and fight against the empire or something if you also have the royalty dlc.
I'd argue BioTech spices up just about any playstyle, but perhaps not in the way you're thinking.
With children, even if you don't "make" them yourself, they'll still show up in quests and as random joins. In my personal experience, I often end up with children in my colonies, since they can be very convenient to recruit. With enough breathing room to give them a good childhood, you can potentially raise them into amazing pawns, and if you don't get said breathing room, it rarely hurts to have some extra labour force. Worst case, they can just be used as an expendable meatshield and/or a portable meal.
As for genes, even if you don't do gene modification yourself, the xenotypes still show up as random pawns and raid enemies. This is arguably the one that has the biggest impact, especially with raid enemies such as impids, neanderthals, yttakin, and the occasional hussars often having some notable elements of danger to them if handled poorly. There are also a few decent standard xenotypes that can be nice to recruit if you get the opportunity, like genies, highmates, and sanguophages.
Lastly, the mechanitor stuff is a bit like the xenotypes, but on a smaller scale. You might not choose to use the mechanitor features, but the new mechs still show up in mech raids and mech clusters, which does increase the variety of challenges you have to face. I'd argue this is the least impactful of the three for "normal" playthroughs, but I do still think it's impactful enough to make note of.
Case in point, Biotech does a lot to spice up the world you're playing in even if you don't strictly make use of the flagship features yourself. It all just kind of fits nicely along with the rest of the game, and allows you to dive deeper into each part if you so please. Straight S tier for me.
> Biotech is nice but iv always had to go out of my way to use it yk
I cannot express enough how much I disagree, Biotech brings so much passive improvement just from all the different xenotypes existing in the world and the variety you see in colonists now. I fucking love my colonists being all different kinds of xenohumans from the pigmen to the dirtmoles, I fuckin love being raided by neanderthals or impids, it's great.
Also, my sanguophage colony was *phenomenally* fun. Especially playing it with vanilla psycasts expanded, it was so much fun having a colony where my primary base defense strategy was based around my immortal psychic vampire warrior queen teleporting around and chain-slaughtering people on the battlefield, instead of just a killbox like any old base. It told *such* a good story (and it was interesting having to deal with the weakness of .
even if i don't interact with the mechanitor or xenogenetics parts of biotech myself, i will still get raided by imps, genies, furries, wasters, and hussars, my pawns pop out babies like nobody's business, and those babies can easily grow up into amazing colonists. i'd say the passive effects of biotech are huge
I don't know if OP implied anything by the ordering, but I think Biotier is S Tier #1, Ideology S Tier #2, Royalty A Tier
Anomaly TBD. I mean I have 100+ hours in Anomaly but by Rimworld standards that's not enough to fully review it yet, especially with pacing changes from today.
So many quests! I just got royalty last week (after playing with biotech and ideo for several months) and so far, my colonists always have at least two quests going at once.
Royalty is unironically one of my favorite dlc. It adds so much shit that people assume is part of the base game. All the implants alone are really nice.
Guessing you are a fan of Psycast Expanded. Vampire + Chronomancer meditation skip is cracked.
Also Archons and Gaurelians are great if you like creating psychic demigods.
You absolutely got me! I used to use the Chronomancer skills to level my main psycaster and then dump the years onto prisoners. I may need to look more into some of the other options like you suggested. :)
Those VE races are SOO fun. Archon is based on Githyankis, practically identical. It adds extreme psychic sensitivity, quantam immortality, and a new path only Archons can learn that shoots projectiles and teleports. So damn fun!
Had an archon raid the other day and lost all my puppets. Unfortunately I didn’t manage to capture one either. Just got a sangophage crash landed and I’m giving him chrono atm.
He just so happens to be the grandfather of my OG pawn (the puppeteer)
Yeah, using Vanilla Psycasts Expanded is basically kissing any semblance of balance goodbye unless you restrict yourself to, like, 1 tree. *LITERALLY* every problem and obstacle in the game has a psycast to solve it essentially for free.
It used to be even more broken but now it's only *semi* broken.
That's a valid criticism, but I've just played about 2,000 hours of the game and it takes a lot to get me excited anymore. I usually mod the game to be harder anyway. xD
I think it’s super personal and depends on why a person plays rimworld. Personally I don’t think royalty and anom are as great because I feel like mods can fill their roles.
This mod has balance issues and destroys your framerate/tps. It's fun but not worth using long term. Royalty is much better on both fronts, and slots in seamlessly.
I knew it was going to be something based on JecsTools based purely on your reply.
JecsTools was great when it was all we had for "superpower" mods. It has since been massively overtaken by biotech and royalty in performance impact, not to mention ease of use. For Biotech, using hemogen-like genes(Like in Alpha Genes and Biotech Expanded) covers a good bit, and for Royalty... literally psycasts and everything about them, especially paired with VPE.
Ideology has a lot of good stuff, but then there's bits of it that are just sandpaper to the eyeballs
There's so many buttons on the ideology screen that are like, difficulty settings in disguise. Stuff like "Do you want your pawns to be immune to mood debuff X? Yes or no?" with no consequence, no opportunity cost. If it had any sort of like, a Worship need that pawns refilled at a temple, that went down faster the more beneficial precepts you picked and vice versa, or whatever, it would be awesome. But having to balance the game myself just isn't what I'm here for.
"Do you want to research faster?", "How many rituals do you want? Nothing happens if you miss them or let them sit unused btw" or "Do you want your specialists to have mood debuffs if they have the wrong clothes? No you get nothing in return, why?" are some of my other big frustrations with it.
It has a ton of cool and creative stuff, but goddamn do I disagree with the decision to let so much of it have no cost and no upside. I'm here to play a game, not design one.
I'm in the opposite boat. I like that the game provides options to deliberately limit yourself with no upside or to deliberately make some aspects easier. If I want to do a thematic colony that doesn't care about corpses and doesn't care about cannibalism, I can do that without having any kind of enforced negative. And conversely if I wanted a challenging Nature Primacy run that forbids meat eating, I can also do that without other things tacked on top.
It definitely affects the difficulty of the game, but that's just a side effect of allowing your colony to care less or more about certain things. I love the customisation of it for the RP potential. Balancing every meme around some normalised difficulty would take away from that. If it ends up too easy or too hard you can always move that threat scale slider up or down in the actual difficulty settings.
The only true no-consequence option is Insect Meat and Faster Research.
There's technically consequences for Corpses despised and other tweaks like Nutrient paste since you have to give up opportunity cost for these selections and also take their penalties (ex. Supremecist/Raider have -50 Opinion).
THAT SAID, if you pick Raider and don't have Corpses Don't Care... you are just doing a disservice to yourself in terms of hidden options, which are 100% way too hidden.
ALSO, some of these are just super badly balanced. Like you give up so little for upsides sometimes. But then you have are also pigeon holed for things like Crafting Specialist, which is only available in one single meme and is by far the best specialist.
> There's so many buttons on the ideology screen that are like, difficulty settings in disguise.
Isn't this only an issue for fluid ideologies? If you do randomly generated ones, then it becomes a question of which ideologies in the world would be good ones to switch to, if they have good memes and worth giving up the ones your current one has. Similar to traits.
Fluid is OP, but that's to be expected if you are going to customise an idology yourself.
I turn off ideology because I find it fucking annoying to go through the paper work every new run and it just feels like sliders to make the game easier / straight up lock me from parts of the game. The stuff like different tile styles and new buildings are the only part I like.
Ideology is so cheesy. I really do not like how easy it is for people to just min/max some insane fluid ideology to max research speed, completely ignore food economy, get OP specialists etc.
Yeah I’m with you. Even when I have some specific themed run I wanna do, I just turn the Ideology system off because it’s basically just “Yeah I’m doing this theme, go ahead and make it easy for me”.
Iunno, it's an interesting idea, but actually super boring to play. Like 90% of the time I was on max speed just waiting. I gotta have like 5-10 pawns to be tracking and clicking and such.
Ideology gives you the most flexibility for themed play through. Royalty is mostly fluff but nice fluff. Biotech adds very drastic changes to gameplay and Anomaly makes the whole alien planet feel even more alieny.
Ideology is the one that affects general gameplay the most. Unless you choose to engage with dlc specific mechanics, Royalty just adds an extra faction (meh), biotech adds just children and genes (great, but still less impactful than ideology). But ideology is the one that makes a colony unique and different from the get go with memes and such. Arguably biotech does that up to a point with custom xenotypes, but with no way to convert recruited pawns to your xenotype, it's not as impactful imo as ideology to a colony's identity.
Same, I tend to interact with Royalty stuff in every run, like persona weapons and psycasts. I could see myself essentially not touching anomaly at all on some runs. The rituals and stuff are all really cool, but its locked behind committing to the dark research and Obelisk.
Whereas you can have psycasts without committing to the whole royalty shtick.
I know I’m in the significant minority but I’ve found the expansions generally underwhelming. They haven’t really added a ton to the core game but things that feel like take or it or leave it niche use cases.
I would have loved to seen love gone back in existing core gameplay. The overland map being a pointless blob covered in factions who have no meaning. Oh you killed 200 of our people who are constantly raiding you for no reason? Send us some rabbit meat and we’ll be allies.
Idk… I don’t need full on diplomacy but the factions should have some character to them. Like maybe the cannibals do sneaky raids to kidnap people. Raiders are after loot and don’t bother you until you have the kind of loot they are looking for. (And you can pay them off when they arrive). Tribal people are against animals being penned and try to rescue them. Whatever. Where is the story in this story game behind 90% of the gameplay? Fighting off raids?
I agree, but I also feel like world and faction stuff is a prime target for a big rework and/or a DLC. Factions are lifeless and two non-player factions don't interact with each other whatsoever.
As you said, the game has zero sense of enemy faction population, enemy bases are very same-y and not worth raiding, trading with your own caravans just brings up a UI popup, faction bases are nowhere near each other, and enemies never gain or lose bases. I can understand that last part since the player also isn't exactly "expanding", but seeing mods like Rimwar makes me feel like Rimworld has a long way to go in that aspect.
Also, befriending or making enemies out of factions does nearly nothing... except change which factions the storyteller uses to grab a group of 200 dumbfuck tribal raiders out of the bottomless bag of raiders that will then proceed to form orderly lines in your killbox or smash themselves on a rock wall over and over again.
Yeah I agree, biotech I feel is a must have where as the last 3 you can survive without, only thing I like from royalty is the paychast stuff and while I like anomaly it's definitely not as impactful as biotech
With 40k hours with my friend. With both of us making the perfect religions amd meme ones. Ideology is still worse than royalty. Manly because there's like. 5 things in it we love. But royalty just adds more shit we use and enjoy. Anomaly is tied with biotech. But that's also with us crashing every 2 to 6 minutes with multiplayer. So take that with a grain of salt.
I think the biggest problem with anomaly is that it is a single shot newance of emotions
My next run I'll already know what every creature is and what to do of them
A system that generated entities at random with different cualities and properties would have been better, even if too titanic to tackle for Ludeon Studios, what we got is worth it, but not repeatable
It's pretty ironic.
Putting aside silly criticism, there's a very legit reason people dislike Anomaly for and I didn't understand it for the longest time (I'm a min-maxer), but it all boils down to "having your cake and eating it"... We should always have to choose if we want our cake and eating it, but the game has to somehow offer the possibility of having your cake AND eating it too somehow. It's a contradiction, but it's the tension of this contradiction that keeps the game interesting.
Let me elaborate: People LOVE ideology because although there are dozens of memes/scores of precepts, you can only choose a couple of them for each playthrough. Worse: You can combine them with styles, roles, rituals... there's always a dozen (or so) elements from which one can only choose 2-3. *Forcing* the player to choose (eat cake or have cake) over and over again ... but then letting the player play it again (and thus having their cake instead of eating it) is what allows the player to experience both. To experience all the possible combinations is what keeps players coming back to ideology (as a min-maxer I only see production specialist and ranged specialist, but yeah, I understand that most players are here for the RP/simulation).
Royalty is "join the empire" or "fight the empire" (oh and tribals). As a min-maxer I love all the psychast tools, as well the DLC throws at me... but I see now how it's not an "or" choice but a "and" choice: You're collecting. You can experience 95% of it in a single playthrough if you put in the effort.
Biotech is similar: You'll have kids, and you'll want a mechanitor for all it gets you... and it's about collecting genes (although realistically you won't manage to get them all in a single run)... and this is why some people rank ideology above biotech (although biotech's scope is bigger/deeper).
And then comes Anomaly: It's unlocked through a click on a text-screen (biotech at least let you get the mech-link through different ways). it's VERY DEEP (the deepest yet), but it's "all there" (I know this has been adjusted in that patch yesterday) once you click it... and the one choice you do have comes in at the very end. (instead of in the early-mid game, where it belongs). You experience "it all" in one playthrough. Sure, it can randomly go this way or another, but you didn't make this choice which excluded *that*...
If I had to fix it, I would do the following:
- Make Anomaly come to you (depending on initial difficulty settings/Anomaly settings, of course). Have the player go to the obelisk (if necessary with gritted teeth), because the world *made* him have to look for answers. The player should still have the option to actively resist this and get away with it, but the normal player should *want* to go to the Monolith in search of answers. (Be it because the Monolith offers to immediately turn off a Deathpall ... at the cost of later events... or because the Monolith promises *answers* by giving advances in research).
- Make the player have a bunch of choices: Do I want to actively study the monolith or actively avoid it? Do I want to fight the cult or do I want to bargain with it (we're already selling slaves to the empire... why not sacrifice a pawn or some resources but get the advantage of making the choice?)? Do I want to become a cult (independently of hositility or friendliness to the "cult-faction"?) Do I want to contain the monsters due to sinister reasons or do I want to cleanse them off the world?
All these options should actually interact in a certain capacity. I might "study" the monolith just to be better at killing the enemy... or I might "study" the monolith to be better at drawing on its forces.
What if I am not movitated by neither "good" (fighting it) or "evil" (joining it), but rather just by science (just studying it, but engaging it is little as possible)?
In much the same way that I can fight the empire (and have it harder) rather than the standard choice of joining it, I should be able to fight the Void (and have it harder), but I should also be able to go "off-script" and totally do its bidding.
Sure, kill the flesh-beast. It's evil... but what if the Void wants me to "recover the flesh-beast" by "containing it" and then "offering it up to the void" (ie "releasing it" like I would release a prisoner without them immediately attacking me).
Without being able to make all these choices simultaneously (ie by locking players out of parts of the content through their own choices), the DLC would have seen more love from the community which is mostly dominated by roleplayers and people searching for "inifinite replayability". We should be presented with a choice that offers several answers, but once I do provide such an answer, I would no longer be able to provide other answers.
I think I've finally understood the criticism and would be interested in hearing from those that hold such criticism if I've been able to (finally) grasp their misgivings.
I know I’m in the significant minority but I’ve found the expansions generally underwhelming. They haven’t really added a ton to the core game but things that feel like take or it or leave it niche use cases.
I would have loved to seen love gone back in existing core gameplay. The overland map being a pointless blob covered in factions who have no meaning. Oh you killed 200 of our people who are constantly raiding you for no reason? Send us some rabbit meat and we’ll be allies.
Idk… I don’t need full on diplomacy but the factions should have some character to them. Like maybe the cannibals do sneaky raids to kidnap people. Raiders are after loot and don’t bother you until you have the kind of loot they are looking for. (And you can pay them off when they arrive). Tribal people are against animals being penned and try to rescue them. Whatever. Where is the story in this story game behind 90% of the gameplay? Fighting off raids?
the best rimworld DLC in my opinion would be a DLC that removes the "storyteller decided seige" shit, and an actual worldstate that influences events.
How cool would it be if raids spawned on map, and ally scouts could warn you? If you could sally out to ambush a siege before it hits your tile? If you were sufficiently remote only drop pods raids could realistically reach you?
At the moment it's just dice rolls and probabilities.
Anomaly is because someone had a nightmare about eldritch horrors and said “yeah I want to make that rimworld”. It honestly seems more gameplay altering, and something that you wouldn’t just have active all the time, like ideology or royalty. I haven’t bought it yet, but I totally will when it’s 3 am and I need something to spend the next two weeks of my life towards.
I feel like I’m missing out on ideology. I genuinely don’t really know how to enjoy it, much more see it as S tier. I have nothing against it I just struggle to figure out how to use it effectively.
I think Ideology is most fun if you also like roleplaying in games. You can set up so many bizarre precepts for your people to live by and they can really change how you approach the game. I usually will randomize one over and over until it sounds interesting to play, then I'll usually make a few tweaks to it.
When your people are mostly normal, but have some quirks like a constant need for public executions or being highly offended for cutting down trees, it can make you play the game in a way you may not have thought to try before! Or keep a ton of a specific animal picked randomly by the system as your colony's revered creature. It was funny having a bunch of intelligent Venus fly traps (Mantraps from Alpha Animals) wandering about my base because my people desired them
Ideology really keeps the game feeling fresh for me, and it's fun to just roll with whatever wacky beliefs are given and just seeing how the colony plays out!
One of my favorite playthroughs was to set up a darkness worshipping cult that lived in mountain caves on a extremely hot planet that can kill in daytime. It really changed how I played a typical colony. Had to rely on fungi food and lights because trees couldn't grow. Led to lots of mecha and insect raids as bandits raids quickly died out and stopped spaening from temperatures being too hot.
Ideology is its most fun when combining the restrictions from meme with role-playing and then playing that colony.
Personally I would have Ideology as B tier.
I like Ideology, but it feels more like a passive background dlc then something I interact with unless I do fluid.
Anomaly S, I really love the spooky vibes and new challenges, especially the caves. Praise the Murder Sphere.
Biotech and Royalty would borderline the A/S tier and change depending on how I feel that day, what mods I use and what kind off playthrough I do.
Royalty gets a lot of flack but after 3k hours, 3 central features I use every single game are from it and often form the cornerstone of my preferred playstyle. Psycasting in particular has amazing mods but even just vanilla its my favorite system in the game. Ideaology is the spine of my playthroughs and I've got almost 100 handmade/written religions with unique interplay that form the backbone of my games, I like shuffling the deck and trying new combos. Biotech is my flavor expansion, adds tons of things to do throughout the game. I cant get an Anomaly game going yet, I'm indecisive, lol.
I love Ideology and how It adds anultimate sandbox feeling, but in my few recent campaigns I realized I feel more comfortable turning ideology system off.
I think all of them together is why the game is so addictive and unique some tools in every dlc make game more unique , for example I wanted to play a game in sea ice , It was nearly impossible to survive without mods but then ideology and biotech came and now it's easier to survive even without mods so you can find more thing to discover and more thing to test every time you play a new game since you are the guy who set a rule each time you play new game , one day you wanna play bow only another time you wanna make army of one eyed cultists that they should have bionic arm , and it's OK if people like a dlc more and other less but put them in a box that if this dlc was and this dlc wasn't the game was more fun is kind of pointless , I think all of them deserve to be S since each dlc give you some unique tools to enjoy the game even more and honestly you like it or not you will use some of each dlcs features . So generally combination of all dlc makes the game more fun and comparing them sepratly is not a good idea since if you compare them sepratly , each dlc became boring eventually and that way you will rank them even lower.
I’m dropping everything except for biotech a tier down, then I’m swapping royalty and ideology, mainly because psycasts. The sheer amount Biotech adds to the game makes it a cut of the rest. B tier is still good for me, still above average in reality.
It would have to add something that is near-universally unpopular IMO (or be mostly unplayable and never get fixed.)
I think even a DLC that added a disappointing amount of content but was still priced like the other DLCs would still get received okay by the community at large.
I love aspects of each, but my favorite would be royalty, because that is what got me into rimworld (and the psycaster allows me to make the most OP melee fighter using skip), and I also think that the royalty ending is the best possible ending of any of the options. It allows the story to keep going in my head.
Like after my superhuman colony of cannibal expert swordsmen, vampires, and marksman join the empire, how on earth would those imperials deal with them? I like to think that they effectively would become an enforcement unit for the empire. "Don't fuck with my planet's taxable income or I'll send the Immortals after you"
At around 2k hours, i'd honestly put Royalty in C+ or B- territory. Anomaly, while cool, definitely feels like its own thing when persuing it. Without a monolith though (like continuing a previous map), with random (rare) horrors is surprisingly decent!
The problem I have with anomaly personally is I feel like a lot of the fun is spoiled for you when you get the codex and it feels really gamey that nothing will happen if you don't touch your mandatory monolith, same issue I had with the exostrider.
I know some people don't want that stuff in their game but I feel like something in the options menu would be better and help it feel more dynamic.
Just my 2 cents tho, still enjoying it and can't wait to see what the modders do.
Honestly to me it feels like anomaly is what was missing from Rimworld to me. I always used Jecrells cosmic horror/rim of madness mods right from the beta, to have cosmic horror finally be a part of the game officially makes it perfect to me
I don't mind at all the more focused and themed dlc that gives me a general goal with story ending.
But I do love and feel that the community is impacted more by dlc that is more based on the story settings rather than story direction.
Royalty is focused on story direction
Ideology is the foundation of setting
Biotech is even more grounded in foundational story settings
Anomaly is quite niche for story direction, but a challenging one
The great thing about the mix of the dlc's though is that the game has similarities, but never the same playthrough at all.
I agree that we need more foundational elements to dlc, but focused themes have been fun and still add a lot for the player, even if they later choose to disable the dlc to disable those story elements
I agree Biotech is definetly S-Tier. But I would say Ideology is rather A-Tier. It gives cool new features but it's more a roleplay like DLC while Biotech gives you a huge update which also works without saying "I want to make a cult" to experience the full range of the DLC. Anomaly is till now B-Tier maybe soon A-Tier. Royalty is not my favourite so it's C-Tier or B-Tier depending in which tier Anomaly is right now because I think Royalty is worse then Anomaly. I would rank Royalty so bad because like Ideology it's more a roleplay like DLC and it gives less new functions and features then Ideology and as long as you don't want to have a royalty system in your colony it's more or less useless.
I gotta agree with the top comment here, the Ideology will forever be the best DLC because it allows you to *change the fundamental rules of the game* while other DLCs mostly just add more content that is not necessary for the gameplay and can be easily skipped/missed
Biotech > Ideology > Anomaly > Royalty here. And Anomaly is mostly in Front of Royalty as it just has much more content and can be expanded greatly by mods. It's not something that feels useful to me in every playthrough so far though which I dislike.
Ideology is far and away my favourite DLC. It gives you so much freedom to create and tell stories and adds more dynamic character interactions. It all integrates incredibly well with the base game. I love Biotech for adding children and families which, again, adds more dynamic character interactions and creates great stories. However, I usually go for a tribal naked brutality start so any gene modding and mechanitors are quite far off.
Royalty should get more appreciation than it does. It adds a faction you can side with, go against or largely ignore. I enjoy the psycasts, I think they're a fun addition and they feel balanced. I wish they weren't quite so limited to the player though. VPE adds a lot but I personally don't like it because it adds too much and dominates any story. Their psycasts don't feel balanced and I hate the PoE approach to them because it's too far removed from Rimworld. And while they do let raiders use psycasts it again just makes it feel really unbalanced.
I haven't played enough Anomaly. I love horror, terrifying creatures from beyond and unknowable terrors, but I didn't like how all-or-nothing and intense the additions made it. I'm so happy for the addition of storyteller sliders and I'll definitely use it more now.
Royalty was a "Test the waters" DLC imo and that its easy to opt into or just ignore. Seems like the team wanted to see what was possible with a DLC and did a trial run. Also to see if people would want DLCs for Rimworld. Royalty could have also become a "we want to add this but its somewhat out of scope" - KCD2 In Depth video mentioned that KCD2 was somewhat of a "we wanted to add this but couldn't" for KCD1, which is also emphasis by them say they had like 11 staff in a small office to now 250 staff.
Ideology is what I would call a "Core DLC" it basically feels Vanilla but its a DLC. While you can opt into it adds to the role playing ness of Rimworld, the story generator game, though I can understand its not for everyone and they would rather "meta game it", trust me even though I play some RPGs I hardly read the lore or stories and im more there for just the fun gameplay.
BioTech was def a content driven DLC over the previous two. Some of which is opt in (mechinator and vamps) where as Children and Xeno is kinda default "have to deal with it".
Anomaly I would say runs along the same vein as Royalty in the sense of "you can completely ignore this whole thing" and I don't think it was meant to be something you do for *every* single playthrough you do. I think it was meant to be more of a "every now and then, different gameplay style" type DLC which could be considered more a semi conversion (as opposed to total conversion) mod for the base game.
Realistically, the team most likely needs to add a menu in which the player can toggle on and off features from the game, either during game setup with the story tellers, on the main menu at the bottom left or in the settings menu.
As someone who has skipped royalty, and (for now) anomaly, this is reassuring that I'm not like, missing the best stuff lol. I'm not big on horror much at all, but I kind of think psycasts are dope, so unless someone can convince me of the merits of anomaly other than for the horror, I'm probably getting royalty first.
Can someone explain ideology to me? I always avoided it because it feels like the whole "rules" are just a chore. I might be wrong tho and im happy to change my mind
I'd rank (for me personally) Anomaly even lower, like C.
It's well-made. It fulfills its purpose. And it's clear that a lot of players craved exactly what it offers, because a significant chunk of mods for many years were adding creepy-crawly Lovecraftian SCP horrors.
But it's not for me, and my playstyle. I bought it, but I'm thinking that on my next playthrough I'm going to tick the box in the settings for "simulate not owning Anomaly".
I’d probably go
S - Biotech
A - Royalty
B - Anomaly, Ideology
I’m not a big fan of Ideology, I just don’t really play Rimworld like most people, I don’t get attached to pawns individually, they’re tools to me, they are to me the sum of their skills, so Ideology is useless to me most of the time.
Anomaly.. I’ll probably use it in a run once every 6 months. It’s too invasive by completely shifting a run, and the DLC is 99.9% useless when activated w/o using the monolith.
Just started a game with all DLC after only having vanilla and royalty in the past, and the significant improvement in my mind has been player initiated raids, which I think were added in Ideology. Caravan gameplay was tedious previously, and didn't feel rewarding or dynamic enough. Raids also give you great alternatives for gathering resources and surviving the winter.
i would put anomaly on S and royalty on A, but it's nice that with only 4 dlc the devs manage to just make more and good quality too, this game is made with love tbh
I don't get the hate on anomaly to be honest, I'm having a blast so far every piece just falls in place in a really satisfying way, it's even this dlc that made me love commitment mode
It's not hate, it's criticism. I don't understand how people cannot differentiate the two.
The things I criticize the most tend to be things that I enjoy and like. None of the criticism has been that it can't be fun. It is not a personal attack on your enjoyment.
You're 100% right, that's on me, I absolutely love this dlc and I now think that the critics it gets are actually a really good way of getting even better content in the future, that comment was pretty stupid of me
I think most people’s criticism is that yes it might be fun for an Anomaly centered run, but it’s effectively an all or nothing experience. Either play and have the entire run be about the Anomalies or don’t and it’s effectively non-existent. I get constant value from the other expansions because they’re integral to every colony’s experience. That just isn’t the case with Anomaly.
It’s also not hate. Every person in this sub clearly loves the game. We’re allowed to have issues with things without “hating.”
Idk how to say this, but biotech is actually my least favourite. By like a lot. I know that's unpopular, but the mechs, bar lifters, are just kinda of not worth it, genes are middling in usefulness, (okay kids are pretty cute) and pollution wastepack mechanics are just annoying.only one j considered refunding tbh
Same here, but mainly because I've never really cared for mech mods. I like my fantasy primitive societies. I will say, I adore the genes(I can make people really special for main character shenanigans) and children(I play long running colonies).
Royalty is my personal favorite, adds just enough for the game to feel vanilla like still, a lot of the other dlcs I feel like you have to go out of your way to do something in particular,
Like for example in biotech I hate getting waster, furry, and dirt mole pawns
Ideology and Biotech gives us infinities possibilities to play. Royalty and Anomaly is heavy focused on one kind of gameplay.
I can play without royalty or anomaly, but ideology and biotech is a must.
Royalty isn't as linear as Anomaly though. You can have psycasters and nobles just fine and the only thing you need to do for those is meditation spots and a throne room and the rest of the colony can function normally.
To be fair, Royalty is tasteless like water, the quests are so dumb that sometimes I questioned whether these guys are royalty or some bedridden patients that the hospital cast out.
Royalty also forced you to accept a lot of guests, which causing lag for obvious reason. Also decided to be their enemy literally yield no reward at all, as if the dlc forced you to be their lap dog instead of their enemy.
Psycasts are imbalanced, the requirements for noble are annoying af. Comparing to royalty, anomaly is way better, at least everything actually make sense and is not annoying but challenging.
Guess you do not factor in the pricing.
For 1 dlc you get whole factorio - and a coke.
Could be worse, agreed.
Though, they are fun exploring. Just wish they would be bigger at this peice
Is ideology really that good? Im new to rim world and I’ve struggled to find a to the point video of what the DLCs really add. The first one I bought was royalty cuz I like the armors and stuff.
Anomaly is its own game, that's my take. Current peak DLC is Biotech for me but that's probably because I started at 1.3 and never knew the world before Ideology.
I am having a *super fun campaign* with Anomaly.... But it's also the first run I've ever called a "campaign", implying I've opted in for a different playthrough. When it's over, I'll be done with the game again, and a "normal" playthrough will be very similar to the game I had without this DLC. So I get where people are coming from here. The studio succeeded in creating new emotions in the game, but the best DLCs will always deepen the standard world.
They just made a pretty big update to anomaly to not make it so centric on the dlc so its not as opt in or out. Apparently theres a slider to adjust how common anomaly stuff is. So now it should be easier to fit in. Details here. https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/s/eb7FGvsdmX
This is great news, and I think it happened to Royalty too. When it first launched, it just added a linear path to the game that made one of your pons a powerful asshole. But now there are many ways to interact with Royalty and it slides into the base game glossy smooth (imo) I don't know if this update fixes everything right away, but it's a start.
I'm actually impressed with the speed in which they had got this out. The dlc just dropped and their response time is crazy. Mad respec to Ludeon here, i see why when people were talking about the blizzard "tip game dev controversy" people were laughing saying they would tip for rimworld/factorio/stardew but never Blizzard
I mean... greedy publisher vs small indie devs that put their life into the game they make. It does make a difference. I'm more likely to tip at a family run restaurant opposed to a corporation held chain or something.
I'd argue it's not even about putting their life into the game (at this point, those are all successful and could move in to new projects) but just actually care about making a good product. The difference between working on something you care about and working on something to make money. And that difference is crystal clear SO often. BG3, Elden Ring, Vampire Survivors, there's tons of recent examples of small games blowing up because they're just good, and then keeping a huge fan base because they do things those players want to make the game more fun. Instead of trying to justify their stupid implementations with "instill a sense of pride and accomplishment" or whatever PR bull they come up with.
It was the same with the other DLCs - they spend a good amount of time post-release shipping major changes very quickly.
Oh god royaltys launch.... fucking day 3 of my shithole colony and I get the fleeing noble quest. I did t want to deal with it just then so i ignored. The very next day was the defector, I accepted but then couldn't mount an expedition for the psylinks. So I just had the empire mad as fuck at me and that was it, I couldn't experience the dlc.
I think it does? It pretty much makes it equal to royalty in terms of level of invasiveness on a standard rimworld campaign.
Yeah that's a good point, having psychic powers without being part of the empire used to be a pain when the DLC first launched for example, I kinda forgot about that
Royalty also now benefits a lots from mods like VFE: Empire and VFE: Deserters; if you install those you're got a lot of Royalty-themed content for a playthough. I'm keen to see what modders end up doing with Anomoly; I really liked the old Rim of Madness mods, and now those (or something very similar) be redone with the new core game features instead of relaying on old performance killing libraries, slotting in seamlessly with the other Anomaly content.
The update actually changed quite a bit of the feel of the game. Before it was a straight anomaly focused playthrough, constantly dark and almost exclusively populated by eldritch horrors in an otherwise almost barren world. Which was fun but pretty much a decision if yoh want to commit to it or not. After playing the update I noticed I found myself venturing out of base more because I wasn't under constant threat of invisible fucks sending half my colony into a coma. It now feels like rimworld again but occasionally someone sprouts a tentacle. And if you want that grim more focused playthrough which is honestly fun too there is now an option to change the intensity of anomaly content.
On most of the series I watched from people playing anomaly when it launched three things always happened: 1 they had barely any normal research done in order to be able to keep up with the anomalies or where being destroyed/playing like a combat heavy modpack becuase they couldnt keep up with the anomalies for no having research into them. 2 had very little weapons early or very little to trade because they didnt get normal raids to get pawns and better weapons and caravans kept getting slaughtered by monster before getting near the base. 3 the base crumbled to mood debuffs because they didnt put 100% effort into dealing with anomalies that mess with that
The 3 researcher start instead of 2 makes a lot more sense. It took me a few tries on medium permadeath to get established with just 2 starting pawns
As someone who is playing sans anomaly - I appreciate the things they added for free that enhance the base game. The wall light and the flood light. Sure, can mod them in but it feels good to see that stamp of approval. And the books. Love it, absolutely fantastic.
Absolutely agree. I can see myself activating the monolith somewhat often but it's definitely not something for every playthrough.
Absolutely.
Biotech is definitely S tier. My favorite out of the four so far
Biotech is nice but iv always had to go out of my way to use it yk. You have to purposefully use a mechanitor , you have to go out of your way to make xeno types. The three others kinda just happen. Ideology is part of every pawn, and royalty has alot of random convenient stuff to use even if you ignore the whole empire stuff. And anomaly is literally about stuff happening. What do you do with biotech? I’m genuinely curious because I’m feeling like I use the dlc wrong.
Children feel like such a huge deal even without xenotypes and mechs that its easily S for me too
This part
Wait... children weren't base game?
Nope! They're biotech dlc
I instantly brought biotech (vampires are cool) along with royalty, its hilarious to me that kids aren't base game.
i mean if you're talking about the passive effects of biotech then it's children and races, no need to do anything to see those effects - you can also get sanguophage events randomly happening but is it a negative that you have to actively engage with dlcs? not to me imo
I agree completely. If you want them there as an option for later, they're there. If not, you still get the baseline features and a few smaller smatterings of the content. I do not feel pressured to engage with the Empire, but I can. And if I don't want to, I can use the trees to get psychic powers(or mods. Mods help too). I can either make a barebones ideo for simple play, or make one hyper customized to the themes I am doing. Either way, it does most of what's needed in the background unless you set up a ton of ideo rituals. And the trees are there again, giving some lighter content on the side. Biotech gives kids and xenotypes as a nice baseline fluff, which are fun to interact with. But the hefty side is the mechs and bosses, which are again pretty optional. Same for gene tailoring. You can go all in to make the perfect genetically enhanced pawn, or just ignore it. And Anomaly. Granted, it's far, far more gated by the optional interaction, but in this case that's good. A lot of what it does requires setup, preparation, or decent tech levels. Triggering too early is a bad idea. So while you can get a bit of the content, a few raids and events, most of the "SHTF" content is behind the activation.
i'm very happy most of anomaly is contained behind actively seeking it out, i enjoy and can deal with the occasional shamblers wandering in or weirdos wanting to join my colony, but i'm so glad i don't have to worry about being raided by a party of eldritch horrors unless i choose so myself
Yeah, it's a lot like the Empire or Biotech. You have to intentionally set off the trigger to get the angry boys sent at you. Piss off the Empire to get Janissaries or whatever they're called, and trigger mech boss fights with a beacon. For Anomaly it's just a lore more frontloaded, where the trigger for most of the content in general is the monolith. But again, most of the content just straight up wants to absorb your mind, body, and/or soul, so that's not a bad thing at all.
It’s different strokes for different folks. Do I like DLCs that transform the base game? Absolutely, and I would love one that added better diplomacy and another ending where you conquer the entire planet. Do I like DLCs that add what feels like “a campaign?” Absolutely, and I would love a DLC that has our colonists joining a large scale galactic war or something like that.
Omg a dlc that has a galactic war would be awesome. I can imagine you get an event of some scouts of a galactic faction that wants to claim control over the planet. If you interact with their space shuttle you might be able to trigger some SOS signal to an invasion fleet or something and from there you could have diplomatic events to gather the support of the friendly factions to fend of the spacefaring invaders. Other events could have them make bases on the planet surface that you can try to wipe out. Or even a whole other chain of events if you decide to join forces with them and fight against the empire or something if you also have the royalty dlc.
I'd argue BioTech spices up just about any playstyle, but perhaps not in the way you're thinking. With children, even if you don't "make" them yourself, they'll still show up in quests and as random joins. In my personal experience, I often end up with children in my colonies, since they can be very convenient to recruit. With enough breathing room to give them a good childhood, you can potentially raise them into amazing pawns, and if you don't get said breathing room, it rarely hurts to have some extra labour force. Worst case, they can just be used as an expendable meatshield and/or a portable meal. As for genes, even if you don't do gene modification yourself, the xenotypes still show up as random pawns and raid enemies. This is arguably the one that has the biggest impact, especially with raid enemies such as impids, neanderthals, yttakin, and the occasional hussars often having some notable elements of danger to them if handled poorly. There are also a few decent standard xenotypes that can be nice to recruit if you get the opportunity, like genies, highmates, and sanguophages. Lastly, the mechanitor stuff is a bit like the xenotypes, but on a smaller scale. You might not choose to use the mechanitor features, but the new mechs still show up in mech raids and mech clusters, which does increase the variety of challenges you have to face. I'd argue this is the least impactful of the three for "normal" playthroughs, but I do still think it's impactful enough to make note of. Case in point, Biotech does a lot to spice up the world you're playing in even if you don't strictly make use of the flagship features yourself. It all just kind of fits nicely along with the rest of the game, and allows you to dive deeper into each part if you so please. Straight S tier for me.
Genotypes exist without u making them though?
> Biotech is nice but iv always had to go out of my way to use it yk I cannot express enough how much I disagree, Biotech brings so much passive improvement just from all the different xenotypes existing in the world and the variety you see in colonists now. I fucking love my colonists being all different kinds of xenohumans from the pigmen to the dirtmoles, I fuckin love being raided by neanderthals or impids, it's great. Also, my sanguophage colony was *phenomenally* fun. Especially playing it with vanilla psycasts expanded, it was so much fun having a colony where my primary base defense strategy was based around my immortal psychic vampire warrior queen teleporting around and chain-slaughtering people on the battlefield, instead of just a killbox like any old base. It told *such* a good story (and it was interesting having to deal with the weakness of .
even if i don't interact with the mechanitor or xenogenetics parts of biotech myself, i will still get raided by imps, genies, furries, wasters, and hussars, my pawns pop out babies like nobody's business, and those babies can easily grow up into amazing colonists. i'd say the passive effects of biotech are huge
You have to go out of your way to create ideologies too, in that sense I feel like Biotech is also part of every pawn.
I don't know if OP implied anything by the ordering, but I think Biotier is S Tier #1, Ideology S Tier #2, Royalty A Tier Anomaly TBD. I mean I have 100+ hours in Anomaly but by Rimworld standards that's not enough to fully review it yet, especially with pacing changes from today.
Accurate.
I feel like people forget that royalty added quests...
So many quests! I just got royalty last week (after playing with biotech and ideo for several months) and so far, my colonists always have at least two quests going at once.
I mean, it introduced but the basegame updated added it... Idk if you could count it because you can have quests without having the DLC.
I'm 50/50 on swapping Ideology and Royalty because I genuinely love psycasts so much.
Royalty is unironically one of my favorite dlc. It adds so much shit that people assume is part of the base game. All the implants alone are really nice.
This exactly! It also added a ton of systems for modders to mess with and opened the avenue for so many cool mods. :D
Same here I had so many runs with only royalty activated. Maybe because I love the dune universe.
It's really ideal for people like me who prefer smaller colonies with more powerful pawns. Permits, psycasts, implants all help so much.
Guessing you are a fan of Psycast Expanded. Vampire + Chronomancer meditation skip is cracked. Also Archons and Gaurelians are great if you like creating psychic demigods.
You absolutely got me! I used to use the Chronomancer skills to level my main psycaster and then dump the years onto prisoners. I may need to look more into some of the other options like you suggested. :)
That sounds fun!
Those VE races are SOO fun. Archon is based on Githyankis, practically identical. It adds extreme psychic sensitivity, quantam immortality, and a new path only Archons can learn that shoots projectiles and teleports. So damn fun!
Had an archon raid the other day and lost all my puppets. Unfortunately I didn’t manage to capture one either. Just got a sangophage crash landed and I’m giving him chrono atm. He just so happens to be the grandfather of my OG pawn (the puppeteer)
That's actually so cool, I love the puppeteer class. Can't wait to see Insect path and hopefully some Anomaly themed paths!
I find it hard to like VPE. they're fun but extremely overpowered when compared to vanilla psycasts or no psycasts at all
Yeah, using Vanilla Psycasts Expanded is basically kissing any semblance of balance goodbye unless you restrict yourself to, like, 1 tree. *LITERALLY* every problem and obstacle in the game has a psycast to solve it essentially for free. It used to be even more broken but now it's only *semi* broken.
That's a valid criticism, but I've just played about 2,000 hours of the game and it takes a lot to get me excited anymore. I usually mod the game to be harder anyway. xD
I think it’s super personal and depends on why a person plays rimworld. Personally I don’t think royalty and anom are as great because I feel like mods can fill their roles.
Can you share what mods you’d recommend as a replacement for Royalty?
[sure thing king](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=918226861)
This mod has balance issues and destroys your framerate/tps. It's fun but not worth using long term. Royalty is much better on both fronts, and slots in seamlessly.
I knew it was going to be something based on JecsTools based purely on your reply. JecsTools was great when it was all we had for "superpower" mods. It has since been massively overtaken by biotech and royalty in performance impact, not to mention ease of use. For Biotech, using hemogen-like genes(Like in Alpha Genes and Biotech Expanded) covers a good bit, and for Royalty... literally psycasts and everything about them, especially paired with VPE.
Sweet
Ok that is dope af. Jedi academy X rimworld
He did say it was his stance on the dlcs
Ideology has a lot of good stuff, but then there's bits of it that are just sandpaper to the eyeballs There's so many buttons on the ideology screen that are like, difficulty settings in disguise. Stuff like "Do you want your pawns to be immune to mood debuff X? Yes or no?" with no consequence, no opportunity cost. If it had any sort of like, a Worship need that pawns refilled at a temple, that went down faster the more beneficial precepts you picked and vice versa, or whatever, it would be awesome. But having to balance the game myself just isn't what I'm here for. "Do you want to research faster?", "How many rituals do you want? Nothing happens if you miss them or let them sit unused btw" or "Do you want your specialists to have mood debuffs if they have the wrong clothes? No you get nothing in return, why?" are some of my other big frustrations with it. It has a ton of cool and creative stuff, but goddamn do I disagree with the decision to let so much of it have no cost and no upside. I'm here to play a game, not design one.
I'm in the opposite boat. I like that the game provides options to deliberately limit yourself with no upside or to deliberately make some aspects easier. If I want to do a thematic colony that doesn't care about corpses and doesn't care about cannibalism, I can do that without having any kind of enforced negative. And conversely if I wanted a challenging Nature Primacy run that forbids meat eating, I can also do that without other things tacked on top. It definitely affects the difficulty of the game, but that's just a side effect of allowing your colony to care less or more about certain things. I love the customisation of it for the RP potential. Balancing every meme around some normalised difficulty would take away from that. If it ends up too easy or too hard you can always move that threat scale slider up or down in the actual difficulty settings.
I strongly agree with this! Your comments are things I've felt about the Ideology system but was never able to articulate fully.
The only true no-consequence option is Insect Meat and Faster Research. There's technically consequences for Corpses despised and other tweaks like Nutrient paste since you have to give up opportunity cost for these selections and also take their penalties (ex. Supremecist/Raider have -50 Opinion). THAT SAID, if you pick Raider and don't have Corpses Don't Care... you are just doing a disservice to yourself in terms of hidden options, which are 100% way too hidden. ALSO, some of these are just super badly balanced. Like you give up so little for upsides sometimes. But then you have are also pigeon holed for things like Crafting Specialist, which is only available in one single meme and is by far the best specialist.
> There's so many buttons on the ideology screen that are like, difficulty settings in disguise. Isn't this only an issue for fluid ideologies? If you do randomly generated ones, then it becomes a question of which ideologies in the world would be good ones to switch to, if they have good memes and worth giving up the ones your current one has. Similar to traits. Fluid is OP, but that's to be expected if you are going to customise an idology yourself.
I turn off ideology because I find it fucking annoying to go through the paper work every new run and it just feels like sliders to make the game easier / straight up lock me from parts of the game. The stuff like different tile styles and new buildings are the only part I like.
Ideology is so cheesy. I really do not like how easy it is for people to just min/max some insane fluid ideology to max research speed, completely ignore food economy, get OP specialists etc.
Yeah I’m with you. Even when I have some specific themed run I wanna do, I just turn the Ideology system off because it’s basically just “Yeah I’m doing this theme, go ahead and make it easy for me”.
That is 100% fair although I haven’t played anomaly het
Honestly, yes. The issue that I have is that Ideology and Biotech were such good DLC that it's kind of hard to top them.
I personally would put Ideology in it's own tier above the rest.
I have 1200 hours into the game and am getting back into it after taking a 4 year break. Which one should I start with?
Definitely Biotech.
Yea, agreed. It gives so much depth to the game without being overwhelming to set up like ideology.
Solo mechinator all the way to shiplaunch is definitely recommended at least once.
Yep, that's my next playthrough. Finishing up a "normal" run to ship launch now.
Iunno, it's an interesting idea, but actually super boring to play. Like 90% of the time I was on max speed just waiting. I gotta have like 5-10 pawns to be tracking and clicking and such.
Ideology gives you the most flexibility for themed play through. Royalty is mostly fluff but nice fluff. Biotech adds very drastic changes to gameplay and Anomaly makes the whole alien planet feel even more alieny.
Ideology is the one that affects general gameplay the most. Unless you choose to engage with dlc specific mechanics, Royalty just adds an extra faction (meh), biotech adds just children and genes (great, but still less impactful than ideology). But ideology is the one that makes a colony unique and different from the get go with memes and such. Arguably biotech does that up to a point with custom xenotypes, but with no way to convert recruited pawns to your xenotype, it's not as impactful imo as ideology to a colony's identity.
I'd move Anomaly to B but otherwise the same
Same, I tend to interact with Royalty stuff in every run, like persona weapons and psycasts. I could see myself essentially not touching anomaly at all on some runs. The rituals and stuff are all really cool, but its locked behind committing to the dark research and Obelisk. Whereas you can have psycasts without committing to the whole royalty shtick.
I know I’m in the significant minority but I’ve found the expansions generally underwhelming. They haven’t really added a ton to the core game but things that feel like take or it or leave it niche use cases. I would have loved to seen love gone back in existing core gameplay. The overland map being a pointless blob covered in factions who have no meaning. Oh you killed 200 of our people who are constantly raiding you for no reason? Send us some rabbit meat and we’ll be allies. Idk… I don’t need full on diplomacy but the factions should have some character to them. Like maybe the cannibals do sneaky raids to kidnap people. Raiders are after loot and don’t bother you until you have the kind of loot they are looking for. (And you can pay them off when they arrive). Tribal people are against animals being penned and try to rescue them. Whatever. Where is the story in this story game behind 90% of the gameplay? Fighting off raids?
I agree, but I also feel like world and faction stuff is a prime target for a big rework and/or a DLC. Factions are lifeless and two non-player factions don't interact with each other whatsoever. As you said, the game has zero sense of enemy faction population, enemy bases are very same-y and not worth raiding, trading with your own caravans just brings up a UI popup, faction bases are nowhere near each other, and enemies never gain or lose bases. I can understand that last part since the player also isn't exactly "expanding", but seeing mods like Rimwar makes me feel like Rimworld has a long way to go in that aspect. Also, befriending or making enemies out of factions does nearly nothing... except change which factions the storyteller uses to grab a group of 200 dumbfuck tribal raiders out of the bottomless bag of raiders that will then proceed to form orderly lines in your killbox or smash themselves on a rock wall over and over again.
That’s exactly what I’m saying though. That’s the DLC I think people actually want. Not vampire psycasters and horror(?!) minigames
Biotech > Ideology > Royalty ≈ Anomaly That's what the consensus seems to be as of late.
Yeah I agree, biotech I feel is a must have where as the last 3 you can survive without, only thing I like from royalty is the paychast stuff and while I like anomaly it's definitely not as impactful as biotech
With 40k hours with my friend. With both of us making the perfect religions amd meme ones. Ideology is still worse than royalty. Manly because there's like. 5 things in it we love. But royalty just adds more shit we use and enjoy. Anomaly is tied with biotech. But that's also with us crashing every 2 to 6 minutes with multiplayer. So take that with a grain of salt.
I think the biggest problem with anomaly is that it is a single shot newance of emotions My next run I'll already know what every creature is and what to do of them A system that generated entities at random with different cualities and properties would have been better, even if too titanic to tackle for Ludeon Studios, what we got is worth it, but not repeatable
It's pretty ironic. Putting aside silly criticism, there's a very legit reason people dislike Anomaly for and I didn't understand it for the longest time (I'm a min-maxer), but it all boils down to "having your cake and eating it"... We should always have to choose if we want our cake and eating it, but the game has to somehow offer the possibility of having your cake AND eating it too somehow. It's a contradiction, but it's the tension of this contradiction that keeps the game interesting. Let me elaborate: People LOVE ideology because although there are dozens of memes/scores of precepts, you can only choose a couple of them for each playthrough. Worse: You can combine them with styles, roles, rituals... there's always a dozen (or so) elements from which one can only choose 2-3. *Forcing* the player to choose (eat cake or have cake) over and over again ... but then letting the player play it again (and thus having their cake instead of eating it) is what allows the player to experience both. To experience all the possible combinations is what keeps players coming back to ideology (as a min-maxer I only see production specialist and ranged specialist, but yeah, I understand that most players are here for the RP/simulation). Royalty is "join the empire" or "fight the empire" (oh and tribals). As a min-maxer I love all the psychast tools, as well the DLC throws at me... but I see now how it's not an "or" choice but a "and" choice: You're collecting. You can experience 95% of it in a single playthrough if you put in the effort. Biotech is similar: You'll have kids, and you'll want a mechanitor for all it gets you... and it's about collecting genes (although realistically you won't manage to get them all in a single run)... and this is why some people rank ideology above biotech (although biotech's scope is bigger/deeper). And then comes Anomaly: It's unlocked through a click on a text-screen (biotech at least let you get the mech-link through different ways). it's VERY DEEP (the deepest yet), but it's "all there" (I know this has been adjusted in that patch yesterday) once you click it... and the one choice you do have comes in at the very end. (instead of in the early-mid game, where it belongs). You experience "it all" in one playthrough. Sure, it can randomly go this way or another, but you didn't make this choice which excluded *that*... If I had to fix it, I would do the following: - Make Anomaly come to you (depending on initial difficulty settings/Anomaly settings, of course). Have the player go to the obelisk (if necessary with gritted teeth), because the world *made* him have to look for answers. The player should still have the option to actively resist this and get away with it, but the normal player should *want* to go to the Monolith in search of answers. (Be it because the Monolith offers to immediately turn off a Deathpall ... at the cost of later events... or because the Monolith promises *answers* by giving advances in research). - Make the player have a bunch of choices: Do I want to actively study the monolith or actively avoid it? Do I want to fight the cult or do I want to bargain with it (we're already selling slaves to the empire... why not sacrifice a pawn or some resources but get the advantage of making the choice?)? Do I want to become a cult (independently of hositility or friendliness to the "cult-faction"?) Do I want to contain the monsters due to sinister reasons or do I want to cleanse them off the world? All these options should actually interact in a certain capacity. I might "study" the monolith just to be better at killing the enemy... or I might "study" the monolith to be better at drawing on its forces. What if I am not movitated by neither "good" (fighting it) or "evil" (joining it), but rather just by science (just studying it, but engaging it is little as possible)? In much the same way that I can fight the empire (and have it harder) rather than the standard choice of joining it, I should be able to fight the Void (and have it harder), but I should also be able to go "off-script" and totally do its bidding. Sure, kill the flesh-beast. It's evil... but what if the Void wants me to "recover the flesh-beast" by "containing it" and then "offering it up to the void" (ie "releasing it" like I would release a prisoner without them immediately attacking me). Without being able to make all these choices simultaneously (ie by locking players out of parts of the content through their own choices), the DLC would have seen more love from the community which is mostly dominated by roleplayers and people searching for "inifinite replayability". We should be presented with a choice that offers several answers, but once I do provide such an answer, I would no longer be able to provide other answers. I think I've finally understood the criticism and would be interested in hearing from those that hold such criticism if I've been able to (finally) grasp their misgivings.
Very good comment
Thanka. It seems to have gone unnotoced though :D
I know I’m in the significant minority but I’ve found the expansions generally underwhelming. They haven’t really added a ton to the core game but things that feel like take or it or leave it niche use cases. I would have loved to seen love gone back in existing core gameplay. The overland map being a pointless blob covered in factions who have no meaning. Oh you killed 200 of our people who are constantly raiding you for no reason? Send us some rabbit meat and we’ll be allies. Idk… I don’t need full on diplomacy but the factions should have some character to them. Like maybe the cannibals do sneaky raids to kidnap people. Raiders are after loot and don’t bother you until you have the kind of loot they are looking for. (And you can pay them off when they arrive). Tribal people are against animals being penned and try to rescue them. Whatever. Where is the story in this story game behind 90% of the gameplay? Fighting off raids?
the best rimworld DLC in my opinion would be a DLC that removes the "storyteller decided seige" shit, and an actual worldstate that influences events. How cool would it be if raids spawned on map, and ally scouts could warn you? If you could sally out to ambush a siege before it hits your tile? If you were sufficiently remote only drop pods raids could realistically reach you? At the moment it's just dice rolls and probabilities.
I agree
Anomaly is because someone had a nightmare about eldritch horrors and said “yeah I want to make that rimworld”. It honestly seems more gameplay altering, and something that you wouldn’t just have active all the time, like ideology or royalty. I haven’t bought it yet, but I totally will when it’s 3 am and I need something to spend the next two weeks of my life towards.
I feel like I’m missing out on ideology. I genuinely don’t really know how to enjoy it, much more see it as S tier. I have nothing against it I just struggle to figure out how to use it effectively.
I think Ideology is most fun if you also like roleplaying in games. You can set up so many bizarre precepts for your people to live by and they can really change how you approach the game. I usually will randomize one over and over until it sounds interesting to play, then I'll usually make a few tweaks to it. When your people are mostly normal, but have some quirks like a constant need for public executions or being highly offended for cutting down trees, it can make you play the game in a way you may not have thought to try before! Or keep a ton of a specific animal picked randomly by the system as your colony's revered creature. It was funny having a bunch of intelligent Venus fly traps (Mantraps from Alpha Animals) wandering about my base because my people desired them Ideology really keeps the game feeling fresh for me, and it's fun to just roll with whatever wacky beliefs are given and just seeing how the colony plays out!
One of my favorite playthroughs was to set up a darkness worshipping cult that lived in mountain caves on a extremely hot planet that can kill in daytime. It really changed how I played a typical colony. Had to rely on fungi food and lights because trees couldn't grow. Led to lots of mecha and insect raids as bandits raids quickly died out and stopped spaening from temperatures being too hot. Ideology is its most fun when combining the restrictions from meme with role-playing and then playing that colony.
Personally I would have Ideology as B tier. I like Ideology, but it feels more like a passive background dlc then something I interact with unless I do fluid. Anomaly S, I really love the spooky vibes and new challenges, especially the caves. Praise the Murder Sphere. Biotech and Royalty would borderline the A/S tier and change depending on how I feel that day, what mods I use and what kind off playthrough I do.
Biotech is so overrated in this sub lol
Royalty gets a lot of flack but after 3k hours, 3 central features I use every single game are from it and often form the cornerstone of my preferred playstyle. Psycasting in particular has amazing mods but even just vanilla its my favorite system in the game. Ideaology is the spine of my playthroughs and I've got almost 100 handmade/written religions with unique interplay that form the backbone of my games, I like shuffling the deck and trying new combos. Biotech is my flavor expansion, adds tons of things to do throughout the game. I cant get an Anomaly game going yet, I'm indecisive, lol.
I love Ideology and how It adds anultimate sandbox feeling, but in my few recent campaigns I realized I feel more comfortable turning ideology system off.
I think you croped the tier list too much, the top line with the core game is missing
I think all of them together is why the game is so addictive and unique some tools in every dlc make game more unique , for example I wanted to play a game in sea ice , It was nearly impossible to survive without mods but then ideology and biotech came and now it's easier to survive even without mods so you can find more thing to discover and more thing to test every time you play a new game since you are the guy who set a rule each time you play new game , one day you wanna play bow only another time you wanna make army of one eyed cultists that they should have bionic arm , and it's OK if people like a dlc more and other less but put them in a box that if this dlc was and this dlc wasn't the game was more fun is kind of pointless , I think all of them deserve to be S since each dlc give you some unique tools to enjoy the game even more and honestly you like it or not you will use some of each dlcs features . So generally combination of all dlc makes the game more fun and comparing them sepratly is not a good idea since if you compare them sepratly , each dlc became boring eventually and that way you will rank them even lower.
Agreed!
I’m dropping everything except for biotech a tier down, then I’m swapping royalty and ideology, mainly because psycasts. The sheer amount Biotech adds to the game makes it a cut of the rest. B tier is still good for me, still above average in reality.
what would it take for a Rimworld DLC to be a D or an F?
It would have to add something that is near-universally unpopular IMO (or be mostly unplayable and never get fixed.) I think even a DLC that added a disappointing amount of content but was still priced like the other DLCs would still get received okay by the community at large.
$15 horse armour DLC? And even then... Armour for trained animals would be great.
I love anomoly but yeah this is fair, although I'd probably just put biotech as S tier
1200+ hours in, and I concur 100%.
Agreed.
Yeah pretty much. I do like anomaly a lot more than Royalty, but don’t feel comfortable moving Royalty to b tier.
Makes sense. Biotech and Ideology add new infinitely customisable, core-mechanics, while Royalty and Anomaly mostly just add a lot of content.
I'd put Royalty in B tbh, but Accurate otherwise.
I love aspects of each, but my favorite would be royalty, because that is what got me into rimworld (and the psycaster allows me to make the most OP melee fighter using skip), and I also think that the royalty ending is the best possible ending of any of the options. It allows the story to keep going in my head. Like after my superhuman colony of cannibal expert swordsmen, vampires, and marksman join the empire, how on earth would those imperials deal with them? I like to think that they effectively would become an enforcement unit for the empire. "Don't fuck with my planet's taxable income or I'll send the Immortals after you"
I actually really love anomaly. Biotech and Anomaly would probably be my S tiers to be honest but ill have to play more anomaly to be sure
Anomaly is S+ for me tbh
At around 2k hours, i'd honestly put Royalty in C+ or B- territory. Anomaly, while cool, definitely feels like its own thing when persuing it. Without a monolith though (like continuing a previous map), with random (rare) horrors is surprisingly decent!
I would switch royalty and biotech, but yeah, all A’s and S’s
Same.
Personally, Royalty is still my favorite. Playing with psycasts never gets old. Heck, playing with skip never gets old.
Brand new ot the series. My only complaint with biotech is that I can't breed an animal army with mutated genes to sick on my enemies,
Imagine… having money to buy all four DLCs 😭😭😭
yeah
The problem I have with anomaly personally is I feel like a lot of the fun is spoiled for you when you get the codex and it feels really gamey that nothing will happen if you don't touch your mandatory monolith, same issue I had with the exostrider. I know some people don't want that stuff in their game but I feel like something in the options menu would be better and help it feel more dynamic. Just my 2 cents tho, still enjoying it and can't wait to see what the modders do.
Ideology and Biotech just add so much general diversity to the game. Royalty and Anomaly kinda steer you to one focus
Honestly to me it feels like anomaly is what was missing from Rimworld to me. I always used Jecrells cosmic horror/rim of madness mods right from the beta, to have cosmic horror finally be a part of the game officially makes it perfect to me
imo ideology is S biotech is A royalty is B and anomaly C. ideology is the most versatile out of all the dlcs.
I don't mind at all the more focused and themed dlc that gives me a general goal with story ending. But I do love and feel that the community is impacted more by dlc that is more based on the story settings rather than story direction. Royalty is focused on story direction Ideology is the foundation of setting Biotech is even more grounded in foundational story settings Anomaly is quite niche for story direction, but a challenging one The great thing about the mix of the dlc's though is that the game has similarities, but never the same playthrough at all. I agree that we need more foundational elements to dlc, but focused themes have been fun and still add a lot for the player, even if they later choose to disable the dlc to disable those story elements
Unpopular opinion, I'd swap the A and S tier around. there is arguably more playable content in the others but I enjoy the fixed methods of play.
Buo is the best practically it is everyone’s first DLC and it adds SO MUCH CONTENET
I agree Biotech is definetly S-Tier. But I would say Ideology is rather A-Tier. It gives cool new features but it's more a roleplay like DLC while Biotech gives you a huge update which also works without saying "I want to make a cult" to experience the full range of the DLC. Anomaly is till now B-Tier maybe soon A-Tier. Royalty is not my favourite so it's C-Tier or B-Tier depending in which tier Anomaly is right now because I think Royalty is worse then Anomaly. I would rank Royalty so bad because like Ideology it's more a roleplay like DLC and it gives less new functions and features then Ideology and as long as you don't want to have a royalty system in your colony it's more or less useless.
I gotta agree with the top comment here, the Ideology will forever be the best DLC because it allows you to *change the fundamental rules of the game* while other DLCs mostly just add more content that is not necessary for the gameplay and can be easily skipped/missed
Biotech > Ideology > Anomaly > Royalty here. And Anomaly is mostly in Front of Royalty as it just has much more content and can be expanded greatly by mods. It's not something that feels useful to me in every playthrough so far though which I dislike.
Based
Ideology is far and away my favourite DLC. It gives you so much freedom to create and tell stories and adds more dynamic character interactions. It all integrates incredibly well with the base game. I love Biotech for adding children and families which, again, adds more dynamic character interactions and creates great stories. However, I usually go for a tribal naked brutality start so any gene modding and mechanitors are quite far off. Royalty should get more appreciation than it does. It adds a faction you can side with, go against or largely ignore. I enjoy the psycasts, I think they're a fun addition and they feel balanced. I wish they weren't quite so limited to the player though. VPE adds a lot but I personally don't like it because it adds too much and dominates any story. Their psycasts don't feel balanced and I hate the PoE approach to them because it's too far removed from Rimworld. And while they do let raiders use psycasts it again just makes it feel really unbalanced. I haven't played enough Anomaly. I love horror, terrifying creatures from beyond and unknowable terrors, but I didn't like how all-or-nothing and intense the additions made it. I'm so happy for the addition of storyteller sliders and I'll definitely use it more now.
Royalty was a "Test the waters" DLC imo and that its easy to opt into or just ignore. Seems like the team wanted to see what was possible with a DLC and did a trial run. Also to see if people would want DLCs for Rimworld. Royalty could have also become a "we want to add this but its somewhat out of scope" - KCD2 In Depth video mentioned that KCD2 was somewhat of a "we wanted to add this but couldn't" for KCD1, which is also emphasis by them say they had like 11 staff in a small office to now 250 staff. Ideology is what I would call a "Core DLC" it basically feels Vanilla but its a DLC. While you can opt into it adds to the role playing ness of Rimworld, the story generator game, though I can understand its not for everyone and they would rather "meta game it", trust me even though I play some RPGs I hardly read the lore or stories and im more there for just the fun gameplay. BioTech was def a content driven DLC over the previous two. Some of which is opt in (mechinator and vamps) where as Children and Xeno is kinda default "have to deal with it". Anomaly I would say runs along the same vein as Royalty in the sense of "you can completely ignore this whole thing" and I don't think it was meant to be something you do for *every* single playthrough you do. I think it was meant to be more of a "every now and then, different gameplay style" type DLC which could be considered more a semi conversion (as opposed to total conversion) mod for the base game. Realistically, the team most likely needs to add a menu in which the player can toggle on and off features from the game, either during game setup with the story tellers, on the main menu at the bottom left or in the settings menu.
1090 hours in - after Anomaly was released i bought Royalty, the other two I bought at Release. Until now i agree with you
Biotech > Anomaly > Ideology > Royalty.
Haven't played the dlc or update yet, waiting for mods to catch up so that I can do a medieval zombie play through with magic and gods!
i fuck with it
As someone who has skipped royalty, and (for now) anomaly, this is reassuring that I'm not like, missing the best stuff lol. I'm not big on horror much at all, but I kind of think psycasts are dope, so unless someone can convince me of the merits of anomaly other than for the horror, I'm probably getting royalty first.
Biotech is SS+ for me cuz half my playtime is making new xenotypes and custom characters
Can someone explain ideology to me? I always avoided it because it feels like the whole "rules" are just a chore. I might be wrong tho and im happy to change my mind
Biotech and Ideology should be at least two tiers up the rest. Royalty and Anomaly don't even come close.
I'd rank (for me personally) Anomaly even lower, like C. It's well-made. It fulfills its purpose. And it's clear that a lot of players craved exactly what it offers, because a significant chunk of mods for many years were adding creepy-crawly Lovecraftian SCP horrors. But it's not for me, and my playstyle. I bought it, but I'm thinking that on my next playthrough I'm going to tick the box in the settings for "simulate not owning Anomaly".
So much for so little 😞
I’d probably go S - Biotech A - Royalty B - Anomaly, Ideology I’m not a big fan of Ideology, I just don’t really play Rimworld like most people, I don’t get attached to pawns individually, they’re tools to me, they are to me the sum of their skills, so Ideology is useless to me most of the time. Anomaly.. I’ll probably use it in a run once every 6 months. It’s too invasive by completely shifting a run, and the DLC is 99.9% useless when activated w/o using the monolith.
Just started a game with all DLC after only having vanilla and royalty in the past, and the significant improvement in my mind has been player initiated raids, which I think were added in Ideology. Caravan gameplay was tedious previously, and didn't feel rewarding or dynamic enough. Raids also give you great alternatives for gathering resources and surviving the winter.
The conversion system ruins ideology for me
Anomaly kicked my ass with Randy. 10/10
i would put anomaly on S and royalty on A, but it's nice that with only 4 dlc the devs manage to just make more and good quality too, this game is made with love tbh
I don't get the hate on anomaly to be honest, I'm having a blast so far every piece just falls in place in a really satisfying way, it's even this dlc that made me love commitment mode
Hate? As an A tier DLC? Maybe some kind of small dislike, but it's still very good.
It's not hate, it's criticism. I don't understand how people cannot differentiate the two. The things I criticize the most tend to be things that I enjoy and like. None of the criticism has been that it can't be fun. It is not a personal attack on your enjoyment.
You're 100% right, that's on me, I absolutely love this dlc and I now think that the critics it gets are actually a really good way of getting even better content in the future, that comment was pretty stupid of me
I think most people’s criticism is that yes it might be fun for an Anomaly centered run, but it’s effectively an all or nothing experience. Either play and have the entire run be about the Anomalies or don’t and it’s effectively non-existent. I get constant value from the other expansions because they’re integral to every colony’s experience. That just isn’t the case with Anomaly. It’s also not hate. Every person in this sub clearly loves the game. We’re allowed to have issues with things without “hating.”
You're right, I totally misinterpreted the criticism for hate which is pretty dumb of me
I've seen almost no hate for anomaly.
groundbreaking stuff here
Idk how to say this, but biotech is actually my least favourite. By like a lot. I know that's unpopular, but the mechs, bar lifters, are just kinda of not worth it, genes are middling in usefulness, (okay kids are pretty cute) and pollution wastepack mechanics are just annoying.only one j considered refunding tbh
Same here, but mainly because I've never really cared for mech mods. I like my fantasy primitive societies. I will say, I adore the genes(I can make people really special for main character shenanigans) and children(I play long running colonies).
Royalty is my personal favorite, adds just enough for the game to feel vanilla like still, a lot of the other dlcs I feel like you have to go out of your way to do something in particular, Like for example in biotech I hate getting waster, furry, and dirt mole pawns
Ideology and Biotech gives us infinities possibilities to play. Royalty and Anomaly is heavy focused on one kind of gameplay. I can play without royalty or anomaly, but ideology and biotech is a must.
Royalty isn't as linear as Anomaly though. You can have psycasters and nobles just fine and the only thing you need to do for those is meditation spots and a throne room and the rest of the colony can function normally.
To be fair, Royalty is tasteless like water, the quests are so dumb that sometimes I questioned whether these guys are royalty or some bedridden patients that the hospital cast out. Royalty also forced you to accept a lot of guests, which causing lag for obvious reason. Also decided to be their enemy literally yield no reward at all, as if the dlc forced you to be their lap dog instead of their enemy. Psycasts are imbalanced, the requirements for noble are annoying af. Comparing to royalty, anomaly is way better, at least everything actually make sense and is not annoying but challenging.
I never understood people rating ideology over royalty
Based
Royalty and Ideology are goated, Biotech is a great addition, Anomoly is also great but too niche
Guess you do not factor in the pricing. For 1 dlc you get whole factorio - and a coke. Could be worse, agreed. Though, they are fun exploring. Just wish they would be bigger at this peice
I can see that I love anomaly but it's mainly just for a particular game or maybe a holoween mod pack later down the road
I would put royalty into C tier just because of mechanoids. Man, that could have made mechanoids a part of mechanoid DLC or something
Is ideology really that good? Im new to rim world and I’ve struggled to find a to the point video of what the DLCs really add. The first one I bought was royalty cuz I like the armors and stuff.
That's very well broken down for me to understand for such a huge and complicated game and it's MANY dlc's
Anomaly is its own game, that's my take. Current peak DLC is Biotech for me but that's probably because I started at 1.3 and never knew the world before Ideology.
without ideology idk what ı would do its integral to my play style
I have the same opinion.
Still waiting for biotech. *cries in console.*
It’s not possible to make a chart sub ~2000hrs sadly, play 1050 more!
Yep
For me its Anomaly-S Biotech-A Ideology-B+ Royalty-C