The ship fell from the heavens, only three survived, and it’s up to you to ensure their survival on a new and mysterious planet. Rimworld puts players in control of a science-fiction colony simulation that is deeply complex and incredibly adaptive. In addition to dealing with your colonists’ needs, mental states, physical states, and any illnesses that may arise, you also deal with an intelligent AI storyteller that introduces events into the world to ensure that you’re always considering what will come next.
Of course, as deep as Rimworld is already, it could always be deeper. Thankfully, the game features mod support and that option is mere clicks away. There’s already a ton of mods for RimWorld and we’ve taken the liberty of sifting through quite a few of them to bring you some of the most interesting ones we could find. Whether you’re looking for new tools, options, starting scenarios, or cosmetic features, we have a cornucopia here to help you keep your habitats on the cutting edge of colony living.
Updated 30.08.2016
EdB Prepare Carefully / Created by edbmods
Wouldn’t you like a little more say in what your colonists will be like? This is your opportunity to come into the world ready and rearing to go! This mod allows you to customize your colonists. Everything from personal cosmetics to skill points to gear is at your fingertips. Prepare for a specific scenario or make things a bit more difficult. The choice is yours.
Medieval Times / Created by Vindar
Ready to take your colony back to the Middle Ages? Swords, arrows, and brutal diplomacy will decide the fate of this harsh land. Societies will seek to survive while warbands will seek to plunder and everyone in between will scavenge what they can and pull together to ensure they see tomorrow. In this world, will you be king, tyrant, or will your loyal subjects fall before the combined might of your savage enemies?
RT’s Weapon Pack / Created by RT
For those who have no interest in diplomacy or simply require a new and expanded arsenal by which to keep the peace by any means necessary, we’ve got you covered. This mod brings numerous melee weapons and blades, pistols, submachine guns, shot guns, rifles, and other heavier ordinance into your world, to ensure that you’ll be packing whatever kind of heat you need to get the job done right.
MoreFloors / Created by Telkir
For the interior designer in you with a passion for the perfect, this a little mod that offers a serious slew of selectable flooring for you to use when constructing your dwellings. Between numerous additoins wood, stone, tile, and carpet flooring for any given abode, you’ll have plenty to keep your community nice and varied with. Chequered options and numerous colors also come with applicable floorings.
RT Fuse / Created by Ratysz
Tired of getting ruined by short circuit events that often cause many of your electronic installations to explode? This mod is here to not only balance short circuit events, but also offer a solution to curtail them before they become a problem. With this mod, short circuit events will consider all batteries, including modded ones and not just vanilla ones. Furthermore, you gain the ability to craft two different kinds of fuses that can help dissipate electrical energy and keep your installations more safe.
Combat Realism / Created by skyarkhangel
Now this is a mod for those of you that a little annoyed by RimWorld’s bending of physics when it comes to firearms. It brings extensive changes to combat and weapons in RimWorld based on real world values. Scopes won’t cause bullets to have more impact. A limb shot has a higher chance of survival while organ damage is more severe. Effective range is more carefully considered. These are just a few of the many changes meant to make your RimWorld’s weapons as effective or ineffective as they should be.
Efficient Light / Created by Rimfire
Simply a mod meant to make the world a brighter place at a much less severe cost. This mod changes the power usage of the standing lamp from 75 to 25. Don’t suffer that badly just to see. Don’t hinder vital systems just for the sake a little ambiance. Take this mod and give light to your humble abodes with less worry of hefty repercussion!
More Furniture / Created by Anonemous2
There’s always room to make things that much more cozy in RimWorld! With this mod, you’ll get a wonderful array of new furniture to really spruce up the colony and make it your own. With it, you’ll get new tables, chairs, dressers, and cabinets to name a few. These pleasant new styles will go great in your kitchen, living room, dining room, and workshop set ups, depending on what you need.
More Trade Ships / Created by PinoChemicali
For you hardcore entrepreneurs looking to get ahead of the curve and make the most of every resource you can get, this mod is well worth your time. It will increase the rate at which orbital trade ships arrive for your interaction and benefit. This mod is versatile. It can be activated without need of a new scenario. So if you have an itch to barter that must be scratched immediately, this is a good bet.
Faction Discovery / Created by R5L Orion
Tired of creating new factions only for the realization that you’ll just have to start a new game if you want to see it in action? With this mod, you won’t have to start fresh anymore. It ensures that once you create a faction and load your game again, you’ll have enough recommended bases on the map for your new faction to be active. It certainly makes adding groups you create into any given game a lot easier.
Miscellaneous ‘CORE’ / Created by Haplo_X1
Now this isn’t so much of a mod on its own. It’s a few interface changes that will allow you extra options when it comes to directing your colonists, organize them into teams, or disband them. However, it is an integral part of all the other “Miscellaneous” mods on this list, of which there are quite a few good ones. Plus, a little extra organization is always nice.
The Exiled Tribe / Created by Blitz
This mod will offer a new starting scenario to your RimWorld game. Having committed crimes against your former village leader, you and your friends were forced to flee with everything you could carry. Will you live long enough to build your own tribe and create a new life out but nothing but four people and a few primitive supplies?
Tilled Soil / Created by Sam
Tilled soil has been around as long as anyone can remember. It was one of the most important agricultural innovations humanity has ever undertaken. It strangely absent in current vanilla RimWorld, but no worries. This mod will allow you access to tilled soil, which acts as a buildable fertile soil. Not only that, but you’ll be able to access a few other unique agricultural innovations to keep your farms fresh and flowing.
Practise Target v2.06 / Created by Itchy Flea
A colonist in an unfamiliar world must be ready for anything! At least a select few must hone themselves to be a force that can go out and forage or a bastion that will protect against outside danger. With this mod, you’ll be able to craft targets and dummies that your colonists can train their shooting and melee skills with. Hunters will automatically train with this new equipment and it will ensure that your more combat-oriented colonists are in peak form when the chips are down.
Follow Me! / Created by Fluffy
Eventually you’ll get to the point where you’re going to have much more than three colonists to look after. When that time comes, don’t you want to have an easier way to keep track of your precious little ones? With this mod, you’ll get some much needed help. When you select any object, pressing a key will attach the camera to them as they roam about. You can even go between colonists in the Colonist Bar to switch between them on the fly. Handy!
Medical Tab / Created by Fluffy
Keeping track of the health of your colonists is about to get a heck of a lot easier. This mod adds a comprehensive new medical tab that will offer you easy looks at each of your colonists’ health with ease. More than that, this tab will also help you to keep track of medical care, operations and health schedules in order to ensure you won’t miss taking care of your favorite sickly buddy ever again.
Misc. Robots / Created by Haplo_X1
Don’t feel like cleaning up messes or doing the heavy lifting? Get a robot to do it for you! We’re living in the future, baby! This mod will add the cleaning robot and hauling robot to your creative toy box. With these two fancy new machines to help you out, you’ll be able to automate and relegate a couple more functions of your colonists’ everyday lives in order to free them up for other tasks.
Misc. Incidents / Created by Haplo_X1
Get ready to face new challenges in the unknown head-on. This mod brings in a few new incidents that can occur randomly in addition to the ones already present in the game. Will you activate the mysterious artefact one of your colonists found? Will you explore a nearby mysterious anomaly? What truly awaits your colonists if you choose to explore the rumours they’ve been sharing? Get ready to make new decisions and face the consequences.
Hangover From Hell / Created by EnterElysium
Not all journeys start with the most fortuitous of circumstances, nor is it always simply fate at fault. In this scenario, you and your colonists drank far too much the night before and the only thing you can remember is that you awoke to your ship in flames. Escaping with what you could carry, all of you went for the lifeboats and landed on the planet below. If you’re going to survive this, you’ll need to make due with what you’ve got, and deal with these terrible hangovers before something far worse than pounding headache comes.
Enhanced Defense-Phoenix Edition / Created by Jaxxa
When prominent problems come (and they will), you’d better have some solid defences to keep those troubles from marching over everything you’ve created. This mod will lend you a helping hand. It allows you to create shield generators. They’re power hungry, but the can turn the tides of a doubtful situation, repelling incoming bullet fire while allowing your colonists to shoot out from behind them.
Turrets Package / Created by Kilroy232
Feel like the regular turrets in RimWorld just aren’t enough to sate your desire for aggressive defence? Well then it’s time to buff your arsenal! This mod adds four more turrets to your tool box, allowing for escalating degrees of stationary violence to be delivered to those foolish enough to march on your colony. Send them packing with better and more versatile options for all situations.
Rimfire (A8e-A13) / Created by Alistaire
Sometimes you just have to take matters into your own hands. When that time comes, you’d better make sure your defending colonists are armed to the teeth with an arsenal that would make Rambo blush. This mod adds 33 new weapons from handguns and other small arms, to rifles and shotguns, all the way up rocket launchers and chainguns. You’ll have everything you need to turn all that come to your doorstep with ill intent into smouldering piles of death.
Clutter / Created by Mrowka
Just because you crash landed on some god forsaken world that was inhospitable at first doesn’t mean you can’t make it feel more like home once you’ve settled in. This mod offers you some cosmetic options for bedrooms, workshops, and other types of establishments to give them a more personal feel. Just don’t forget to take care of your colonists while you’re off on your interior design spree.
CentralHeatingMod / Created by mrCarlton
Don’t get trapped outside on those cold winter nights! Get inside where it’s nice and cozy. What’s that? No fireplace? No problem! Get this mod to offer your colonists the availability of industrial heaters and ventilation systems. Get that warmth flowing across your compounds and make your colonists all roasty toasty when it’s time to call it a night after a hard day’s work.
Quarry / Created by Ominus
Looking for a more in-depth way to mine for precious materials in the hard, deep terrain? Maybe it’s time you considered a quarry. This mod will add the option to be able to create quarries after you’ve completed research of most mining practices. With it, you can designate areas of rock to mine for resources and bring up better loads of what you need for all your other projects.
RimworldOverhaul / Created by Archerbob
As with many of our mod pages here on GameWatcher, we realize that sometimes it’s a hassle to pick and choose mods and find the ones that play nicely together. That’s why there’s overhauls and we’ve got one for you right here. From new furniture, to workplace systems, to better power supply and even the a few of the mods on this list, you’ll be able to get quite a few treats for your RimWorld game that come together into one easy to use package.
Expanded Prosthetics and Organ Engineering / Created by Ykara
Listen, when you’re on a planet trying to survive and make sure that those you’re responsible for do the same, we’re willing to turn a blind eye when you need to play god. With this mod, you’ll be able to research all the most incredible medicine in order to ensure that those in your crew who are sick, diseased, or prone to terrible accidents will never go without their vital organs or limbs again. You can craft everything from simple wooden or metal parts to full on working and complex organs. Just be sure you’re sewing more kidneys in than you’re taking out, you medical renegade, you.
Hospitality / Created by [R5L] Orion
When it comes down to it, what do weary travellers love more than good drinks, warm food, and a fine bed? Well, they’ll love you enough to join you if you have this mod. It allows your colonists to tend to the needs of your guests more thoroughly. With this new system, you’ll be able to establish your colony as a regular hub for travellers. What’s more, if you gain their trust and respect enough, they might even give up on their previous lives and come to stay with you and your colonists! Just make sure you have enough supplies to feed the extra permanent mouths.
Colony Manager / Created by Fluffy
Getting tired of micromanaging most aspects of your colony? Well, there’s a way to make it all quite a bit easier. The Colony Manager mod brings a slew of new and useful options to the tedious process of getting workers to do their part and come through on their responsibilities. From production, to huting, to forestry, most every important job gets some new features to make it quite a bit easier.
Xeva’s Rimhair / Created by [R5L] Orion
Tired of the regular old buns, tails, and crews on each of your colonists? We’ve got a little something that will help you to spruce things up a bit. This mod adds a slew of new hairstyles to your selection for you colonies, from simple new styles to outright amusing and outlandish. Your colonists will be strutting in style with their brand new hairdos.
SuperiorCraftingA11b / Created by Abrexus
We’ve got another overhaul for all you crafting, research, and tech tree fiends out there. This mod redoes most of the research and tech progression in the game with a comprehensive addition of new skills, sciences, practices, and items to go with all of them. There are a ton of fantastic paths to go down and it’s the kind of mod that rewards those who explore it thoroughly on several run-throughs of the game.
RimWorld Zombie Apocalypse / Created by Justin C
Say hello to the rabid wasteland, weary colonist. The undead have risen and they won’t rest until they’ve devoured all living flesh. This mod doesn’t just bring zombies to RimWorld. It also brings a comprehensive system of all the things that should come with them. Colonist gets bit? They’ll turn, unless you make the call to cut off the limb. Persistent characters in the world could become zombies. Amassing zombies might raid your colony. Fight, prepare, plan, and fortify… and you just might survive another night.
That’s our list for now, but have no fear if you didn’t quite find what you were looking for. RimWorld is a versatile and malleable game and modders are working hard to introduce new things to the game on the regular. If you’re looking for new toys, systems, and cosmetics for your colony, stay tuned and we’ll be sure to bring the best of the best here for your enjoyment.
