Aug 28, 2018
RimWorld beta 19 out now, adding bridges and new turrets
RimWorld - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Alice O'Connor)

The “Ah c’mon don’t pretend the possibility of cannibalism isn’t part of why you were interested in spacelife in the first place” colony simulator RimWorld has launched a big early access update focused on expanding the most important thing in life: being near water. Beta update 19 lets players build bridges and build light buildings atop them, and baselords can also build power-generating watermills and run power cables under rivers. Let us abandon this terrible landlife. The update also adds new turrets, lets you rename animals, and lets your beloved Cow spot get diseases. Happy days.

(more…)

Aug 27, 2018
RimWorld Beta 19 – Polish the Cannons released!
RimWorld - Tynan
RimWorld Beta 19 - Polish the Cannons is released!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FH5tLLJXbg8
If you want to keep playing Beta 18 on Steam: Right click RimWorld in the Library list -> Properties -> Betas -> Choose beta18 from the drop-down menu.

You can play savegames from Beta 18 (and probably before), though some details will change upon loading.

I did want this build to be 1.0 for a while, but it became apparent the game would benefit from one more refinement round, so we're doing Beta 19 first. I very much want the 1.0 version to be worthy of its version number, which means not rushing it.

You can discuss this post in this forum thread on the Ludeon forums or in comments below.

Below is a list of notable changes. If anything below seems to change game balance, you can bet that related variables were adjusted to maintain roughly the same challenge as before - I just don't write down every single change because otherwise this list would be way too long. This list also does not including a ton of more behind-the-scenes optimization, refactoring, fixing, and adjustments we did.
  • Added bridges. You can build bridges over rivers and non-deep lake/ocean water. Bridges support all but the heaviest structures, can burn, and collapse under damage.
  • Added new "Messages" section of the History tab. This section shows the last 200 messages and letters you've received.
  • Added low-tech plate armor.
  • New scenario: Naked Brutality - Start naked with no items.
  • New main tab: Wildlife. Allows easy counting, finding, and designating of wild animals.
  • Ship end sequence: Starting up the ship reactor now takes 15 days, during which you will be attacked constantly by desperadoes and mechanoids.
  • New raid arrival mode: Multiple groups.
  • New raid arrival mode: Enemy pods scattered all over the map.
  • Split mechanoid scyther into scyther (close combat specialist) and lancer (fast sniper)
  • Split tribal warrior into warrior (mid-range melee) and penitent (poverty melee, similar to drifter)
  • Faction relations are now categorized as hostile/neutral/ally instead of just hostile/neutral. Allies will randomly send military aid and will respond to certain special requests.
  • You can now offer gifts to improve faction relations by using transport pods, sending caravans, or giving gifts to their traders. Gifts can be silver, items, or slaves. No more magical teleporting silver gifts.
  • Visitors of allied factions will now occasionally leave gifts before leaving.
  • New buildings:
    • Watermill generator: Generate power from moving water.
    • Autocannon turret: Heavy medium-range turret.
    • Uranium slug turret: Armor-penetrating long-range turret.
    • Fabrication bench: Craft advanced components and some advanced tech items.
    • Waterproof conduit: Transmit power under water for bases on both sides of a river.
    • Butcher spot: Butcher without building a bench, at an efficiency penalty.
    • Double sleeping spot: Sleep with your partner, even in crushing poverty.
  • New traits:
    • Undergrounder: Don't mind never seeing the sky, don't mind being in darkness.
    • Great memory: Slower skill decay.
    • Tough: Take less damage.
    • Gourmand: Eat a lot, random eating binges, cooking skill bonus.
    • Sickly: Get sick often.
    • Quick sleeper: Take less time to sleep.
  • New items:
    • Flak pants
    • Prosthetic heart
    • Bionic spine/heart/stomach
    • Archotech eye/arm/leg
    • Tornado generator
    • Patchleather: Poor-quality leather made from any combination of other leather
  • New incident: "Wild man wanders in”.
  • New terrain: Soft sand - doesn't allow building medium or heavy structures.
  • New designators: Mass-forbid and unforbid.
  • Infestations now begin with the insects tunneling towards the colony, which gives the player time to respond.
  • You can now write job titles for your colonists.
  • New type of attack: Kick sand/water in eyes.
  • Condensed leathers together into fewer types. Instead of a separate type for each animal, there are categories.
  • You can now smooth natural rough rock walls into high-quality walls.
  • Trained animal skills and tameness now decay over time. Animals can revert to the wild, depending on their natural wildness.
  • Deep drill use will now sometimes cause insect attacks (by tunneling through the ground near the drill, with a warning).
  • New edge shader for blueprints looks much nicer and more visible than before.
  • Workbench bills can now be assigned to specific colonists.
  • Added "Show what will buy" window which shows all items a trader will buy.
  • Trees’ color now depends on the current season.
  • Added tainted-apparel thing filter.
  • Increased prisoner recruitment chance and added a resistance which must be reduced to zero before recruitment can begin.
  • Animals can now be renamed.
  • Animals can now get diseases.
  • Added an automatic destroyed building replacement toggle. When active, a destroyed building will leave behind a blueprint and be automatically rebuilt.
  • Added translation report tool: Generates a report about the currently-loaded language data stating which translations are missing, which are unnecessary, and lots of other useful information.
  • Added translation cleaner tool: Corrects many common problems in translation files and adds/updates English language reference for every string in the game.
  • You can mass-toggle various checkboxes and drop-down selections by clicking and dragging the mouse over them.
  • Workbench bills can now be copied and pasted.
  • Colonists now opportunistically haul items while working if their current target is roughly in the same direction.
  • The player can now request AI-core quests from allies.
  • It's now possible to craft prosthetic and bionic body parts, grenades, and molotovs.
  • It's now possible to mass-cancel all designations with a designator's right-click menu.
  • It's now possible to forbid/unforbid all items and rearm all traps with a designator's right-click menu.
  • You can now drag and reorder colonists in the colonist bar.
  • Social interaction log now has flavorful randomized text instead of the same repeated interaction text every time.
  • Mods page now has a search bar so you can easily find one mod in your list of hundreds.
  • In some very bad situations, a mysterious Man in Black may arrive. Can he set things right in these parts?
  • Armor system reworked into a 3-outcome system with armor penetration. The armor penetration of the weapon is subtracted from the armor value of the armor. This gives an effective armor rating, measured as a percent. We roll a RNG out of 100%. If the result is under half the effective AR, the hit is totally deflected. If the result is over half the effective AR, but under the effective AR, the hit is mitigated - damage is reduced by half and sharp hits are converted to bruise. If the result is over the effective AR, the hit passes the armor and applies normally. As before, armor is applied in sequence from the outside in. AR maxes out at 200%. Default armor penetration is 1.5% per point of damage, but some weapons vary from this.
  • Totally reworked how plants grow; they now grow everywhere at once instead of reproducing plant-by-plant. Wild plants after several in-game years should now look more or less as good as at the beginning.
  • Long-range mineral scanner can now be tuned to seek specific minerals, and must be worked by a researcher.
  • Battles in the Combat tab are now named.
  • Items of the same type in the Items tab are now grouped together.
  • Items in the Items tab can now be sorted by mass, market value, etc.
  • Instead of shooting them, hunters now execute downed creatures with a neck cut (except explosive creatures).
  • When placing or selecting work stations where pawns can sit while working, the spot where the pawn goes is indicated by a chair outline so the player realizes that a chair can be built there.
  • Removed tornado incident.
  • Improved caravaning:
    • Redesigned how world movement speed is fed back per-world tile.
    • Pack animals now follow colonists to speed up the packing process.
    • Added Caravan tab with caravan loading progress.
    • Redesigned "Form caravan" window: stats like carried mass, caravan speed, days worth of food, and visibility are now explained better.
    • Caravans now automatically forage for food while traveling.
    • Added "Remove from caravan" command: remove people or animals from the caravan even if it hasn't left the map yet.
    • Added "Load into caravan" right-click option: designate extra items to be picked up by the caravan before leaving.
    • Caravan speed now depends on the carried weight.
    • Caravan members now slowly gain social recreation when the caravan is not moving.
    • Caravan visibility is now explicitly expressed and better explained than the old caravan stealth. This makes small caravans more relevant.
    • Quest prompts now give much more information about what kinds of challenges to expect.
    • When reforming a caravan, we now list colonists' inventory separately so the player can choose what to take and what to leave.
    • Caravans who are not moving now have a lower chance of being attacked.
  • Transport pods now have a contents list which allows removing things from the pod.
  • Blunt weapons now have a chance to stun the target.
  • Joy is renamed to 'recreation'.
  • Using deep drills can cause insect attacks.
  • Changed deep moving water to chest-deep moving water: walkable but slower than shallow water.
  • Turrets are cheaper and more powerful, but now consume steel/uranium for maintenance after firing a lot.
  • Character log now integrates log messages from combat and social interactions.
  • Deadfall trap redesigned to Spike trap: Much more powerful with a 100% chance to spring on targets, and has armor penetration (depending on what it's made of) but requires resources to replace.
  • Insects will now go into an insect-specific "hypothermic slowdown" instead of getting hypothermia and dying on the first winter.
  • Alphabeavers incident now only occurs in biomes with sparse plants so they're not meaningless.
  • The refugee from the "downed refugee" world quest can be instantly recruited by offering help.
  • Removed scyther blade.
  • Mechanoids now always die on downed.
  • Doing passionate work now affects mood instead of recreation.
  • Deep drills now yield stone chunks if no resource is below.
  • Firefoam poppers will now pop whenever there's a fire in a 3-cell radius, instead of only when the fire touches them.
  • Food poisoning now has three stages it moves through over the course of a day.
  • Pawns hit by ranged attacks now stagger the same way as pawns hit by melee attacks. This effect only happens if the weapon's stopping power stat is equal or greater than the target's body size.
  • Most crafting benches are now uninstallable and reinstallable.
  • Removed shiv since it's basically a low-quality knife.
  • It's now possible to craft knives at crafting spots.
  • "autostart.rws" is now automatically loaded on start in dev mode, for faster testing.
  • Techprof subpersona core now completes current research instead of random research.
  • Combined rib body parts into rib cage.
  • Reworked the "advanced map options" dialog layout, extreme game-breaking map sizes are now disabled by default and must be enabled in the options.
  • Tribal factions can now do sapper raids.
  • Added medical care column to the Assign tab.
  • Removed shoddy and superior item qualities.
  • Rebalanced and refactored quality generation. Masterwork/legendary level items never generate on enemies, traders, bases. Masterwork items are extra hard to craft, and legendary requires an inspiration.
  • Removed the distinction between allowed areas and animal areas.
  • Wearing new apparel now takes time. Colonists now take off the colliding apparel first (which takes time) before wearing the new one.
  • Added minimum crafting skill to various weapon and apparel crafting recipes.
  • Removed the requirement to pay fee to initiate the item stash quest.
  • Various floors now require research.
  • Settling very near another faction base will now cause faction relations loss every quadrum because of anger due to territorial encroachment.
  • Fulfilling trade requests now gives goodwill.
  • Destroying a faction base of a mutual enemy now gives goodwill.
  • All traders are now unwilling to buy tainted apparel and short-life meals.
  • Improved animal fleeing behavior
  • No human enemies spawn with weapons above industrial tech.
  • Charge lance is now craftable and usable by humans.
  • Explosive weapons now explode when set on fire.
  • Wood-powered fires and coolers no longer vanish when fuel is exhausted; they wait to be refueled.
  • Tons of art has been redone and adjusted.
  • Many, many other bugfixes, interface and balance adjustments
Jan 15, 2018
RimWorld s next big update will be version 1.0
RimWorld - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Alice O'Connor)

Sci-fi colony catastrophe sim RimWorld is finally almost ready to leave early access and launch in full with a shiny version 1.0, creator Tynan Sylvester has said. It’s a game that one could keep adding to forever, he says, but after five years of development he’s ready to draw a line in the sand and call it ready. Sounds fair, really. He still plans to work on it, mind, but it will officially be finished. Additions and tweaks coming with v1.0 include reworking caravans, a water-driven power generator to make rivers useful, and improved loading times for mods. (more…)

Jan 15, 2018
RimWorld creator says 'next version will be 1.0', outlines what to expect
RimWorld

Back in November, RimWorld mastermind Tynan Sylvester declared the colony sim as in its "final stretch" of development. Now, the creator has confirmed Ludeon Studios is working towards version 1.0, and is "furiously refining the hell out of this thing" along the way.

That's according to this Reddit post, wherein Sylvester explains at length why implementing every player-made suggestion is unfeasible. Here, he also explores some of what Ludeon is currently working on ahead of full release. 

The game's interface is in the process of being heavily redesigned, says Sylvester, as is balance measures for caravans. A new watermill power generator and accompanying underwater power cables allow rivers to be "meaningfully playable", while mod loading has been improved substantially. 

The economy for trading animals has also been redesigned, as have the animals themselves. "I reworked the doctor AI so they'll prioritize tending people differently," adds Sylvester, "and not go to get food while someone's bleeding to death."

Sylvester's thoughts can be read in full here, where he also considers how long he's likely to grow RimWorld in the face of an "endless treadmill of requests."  

After listing the above and more, he continues: "That's just some random stuff off the top of my head. We made hundreds of other changes wrought by watching dozens of hours of play videos and reading thousand of suggestions. There are so many things to refine in a game like this; it's almost unbelievable! Still working on it. Oh yeah, the most critical change of them all: Sheriff backstory is no longer ridiculously awful."

Browse the rest of our RimWorld coverage in this direction.  

Nov 20, 2017
After five years in development, sci-fi colony sim RimWorld is on the "final stretch" to release
RimWorld

After five years in development, superb Wild-West-flavoured sci-fi colony sim RimWorld has launched its first beta update, putting it on the "final stretch before the 1.0 release", according to developer Tynan Sylvester.

RimWorld's newest build, known as A World of Story, is the 18th major update for the game, and marks the 1,722nd day of development since work began in February 2012. "It's come a very long way since the first public look in September 2013," Sylvester said in his latest blog post celebrating the update's arrival, "It's time to start bringing it to a close, which is why version 0.18 is Beta 18 instead of Alpha 18."

As such, A World of Story will be RimWorld's last major content update before version 1.0, and all sorts of stuff is included. The traversable world map, for instance, now features procedurally generated place names to add a bit of extra colour to your miserable survivalist adventures, and there's a new swamp biome, improved melee combat, and new events to bring still more variety to RimWorld's already absurdly rich story generator.

Read more…

Nov 20, 2017
RimWorld s beta adds swamp biomes and story combat
RimWorld - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Fraser Brown)

rimworld

RimWorld has left its awkward alpha stage, blossoming into a beta with update 18. It s called A World of Story, but the update really dabbles in everything, from crazy weather to orbital super weapons. Hitting beta also means that it s in the final stretch, says developer Tynan Sylvester, and there won t be any major new additions like entirely new systems before launch, though there will still be future updates.

(more…)

Nov 19, 2017
RimWorld enters beta with new biomes, weapons and revamped combat
RimWorld

Sci-fi colony sim RimWorld's latest update finally brings the game into beta, adding features big and small. Alongside three new biomes and a revamped melee combat system is a chance for your colonists to go on a "targeted insulting spree" if they have a mental breakdown, where they "follow around a specific other colonist, insulting them repeatedly". Excellent stuff.

The new additions come in the Beta 18 update, which signals that the game is in its final stretch of development, and there won't be any "major content additions" before a 1.0 release.

The big changes include three new swamp biomes filled with plants, a handful of new 'incidents'—including tornadoes and meteor strikes—and a rework of melee combat. A new combat log will chronicle each strike, miss and block so you can review it after the action.

But the minor changes interest me more. The beta adds a lot of 'mental breaks' including the aforementioned barrage of insults, bedroom tantrums, corpse obsessions (colonists dig up a random corpse and drop it in a high-traffic area) and murderous rages.

It also adds new mental inspirations, basically the opposite of mental breaks. A colonist might work extra hard for a day, walk extra fast or shoot more accurately.

The full list of changes is here, and you can watch the developer go into more details on the changes in the video above.

Nov 17, 2017
RimWorld Beta 18 – A World of Story is released!
RimWorld - Tynan
RimWorld Beta 18 - A World of Story is released! Here's the video (where I accidentally call it Alpha 18 - old habits die hard).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPI2vUqdZFY

To get the update: If you're on Steam, the game will update automatically. If you're DRM-free, you can re-download from the same link you got the game from originally. It always has the latest version.

It's finally in Beta! This is build 0.18.1722 of RimWorld. That last number is the number of days since I first started working on RimWorld in February 2012. 1722 days - almost five years. It's come a very long way since the first public look in September 2013. It's time to start bringing it to a close, which is why version 0.18 is Beta 18 instead of Alpha 18.

The "Beta" designation means that we're on the final stretch before the 1.0 release, and that there won't be major content additions like whole new game systems. Of course we will almost certainly add more content, before the 1.0 release or after. We will also continue seeking feedback so we can fix those little bugs and design problems that only become apparent after tens or hundreds of hours of play. RimWorld has become an exceptionally complex game, and it takes a long time and a huge amount of play to understand how to improve it. So it'll keep evolving for a while.

In any case, enjoy Beta 18. There is a lot of new stuff. See the features list below for details, and watch the video.

Compatibility: Saved games from non-modded Alpha 17 should still be loadable, though some things may change upon loading (e.g. characters may forget their orders; buildings that have changed size might be instantly deconstructed if there's nowhere to fit them, and so on). Complex mods made for A17 won't be usable and will need to be updated. Very simple mods may still load.

Rough features list:
  • New swamp biomes: Swamp biomes are hard to move through due to choking vegetation, and hard to build in due to swampy terrain. Many new plants were added to fill out these and other biomes.
    • Tropical swamp
    • Temperate swamp
    • Cold bog
  • New incidents:
    • Meteorite impact. A meteorite impacts, leaving a lump of mineable ore.
    • Aurora. A beautiful aurora lights up the night sky, improving mood.
    • Tornado
    • Peace talks quest
    • World refugee quest
    • Prisoner rescue quest
  • Storyful combat: A major rework of melee combat, and a new way to report all combat interactions. Storyful combat generates a combat log that reports each blow, miss, swipe, block and fall in the combat. During or after a fight, you can review the combat log to see what happened, to generate a richer story.
  • Various research has been split up
    • Gun research is now broken into several stages, so making advanced guns like assault rifles takes more research than making simple revolvers
    • Melee weapon research is now broken into several stages
  • New furniture
    • Bedroll: Portable bed
    • Dresser: Passively improves room
    • Endtable: Passive improves room
    • Various new table sizes
  • New quest reward special items:
    • Psychic emanator
    • Vanometric power cell
    • Infinite chemreactor
    • Techprof subpersona core
    • Healer mechanite superdose
    • Resurrector mechanite superdose
    • Orbital bombardment targeter
    • Orbital power beam targeter
  • Tribal content upgrade:
    • Ikwa melee weapon
    • War mask
    • Tribal headdress
    • Recurve bow
    • Tribal hunter
    • Tribal heavy archer
    • Tribal berserker
  • New world site components (used in various situations):
    • Sleeping mechanoids
    • Animal ambush
    • Enemy ambush
  • New mental breaks:
    • Insulting spree. Randomly go around and insult people.
    • Targeted insulting spree. Follow around a specific other colonist, insulting them repeatedly.
    • Tantrum. Go around randomly smashing furniture, buildings, and damageable items.
    • Bedroom tantrum. Go to your own room and randomly smash furniture, buildings, and damageable items.
    • Targeted tantrum. Go to destroy a single, specific, randomly-chosen, valuable item or building.
    • Sadistic rage. Melee attack prisoners for a while. Fists only. Only occurs when there are prisoners to attack. Does not attack downed prisoners.
    • Corpse obsession. Dig up a corpse and drop it on a meeting spot table or in a random high-traffic area. The mental break then ends.
    • Catatonic. Collapse on the spot into a downed state with a psychological breakdown. Recover some days later. This can be implemented by a “catatonic breakdown” hediff.
    • Jailbreaker. Colonist goes to a random prisoner (who is capable of prison breaking), and upon doing a special “spark jailbreak” action with them, induces an immediate prison break in that prisoner.
    • Slaughterer. Slaughter random colony animal(s) periodically.
    • Murderous rage. Hunt down a specific colonist or prisoner (randomly chosen) and attempt to kill them by melee attack. Uses melee weapon or fists, as equipped. Keep attacking until the target is dead.
    • Run wild. The pawn basically starts acting like an animal. You can tame him to try to get him to rejoin.
  • New mental inspirations. Basically reverse mental breaks - these give temporary bonuses to colonists in high moods.
    • Work frenzy (1 day): Global work speed 2.5x
    • Go frenzy (1 day): Walk speed 1.5x
    • Shoot frenzy (3 days): Shooting hit chance improved as though the pawn is 10 skill levels higher.
    • Inspired trade
    • Inspired recruitment
    • Inspired surgery
    • Inspired art
  • World features like lakes, mountain ranges, and bays are now detected and named. Names are displayed in the world view.
  • Caves now form sometimes in mountainous maps. Inside there are special cave plants. There can also be dormant insect hives.
  • Many new tale types were added. So, the game will record many new types of events, and colonists can make art about them. Art descriptions should be much more diverse.
  • Crop blights now appear and spread over time instead of instantly destroying crops
  • Spaceship is now bigger and has one more component, the sensor cluster
  • Spaceship quest ending phase: When going to the hidden space ship to finish the game, the game does not end instantly on arrival. The map generates with the ship intact. To take off, first you must power up the ship, which takes some days, during which you must survive raids.
  • Space ship construction now requires advanced components, which have their own tech tree and production method
  • Split pistol into revolver and autopistol
  • Boomalopes can be milked for chemfuel
  • Added chemfuel generator, which generates electricity from chemfuel
  • Artillery works differently now. There is one type of mortar, which can fire any type of shell, with each shell creating a different effect. The shells are explosive, incendiary, firefoam, and antigrain (a special high-tech warhead).
  • Seasonal latitudes: Seasons now more reasonably adjust depending on latitude. Instead of flipping at the equator, there is a seasonless crossover zone.
  • Redesigned alert letter types and sounds to be more specific.
  • Pawns can now be banished. This is analogous to abandoning pawns in caravans.
  • Technical: The save file now contains the actual contents of the planet map, instead of just the seed to generate it. This speed up loading, makes forward compatibility possible, and makes it technically possible to modify the world map during play.
  • Many many tunings, bugfixes, and redesigns.
Nov 17, 2017
RimWorld Beta 18 – A World of Story is released!
RimWorld - Tynan
RimWorld Beta 18 - A World of Story is released! Here's the video (where I accidentally call it Alpha 18 - old habits die hard).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPI2vUqdZFY

To get the update: If you're on Steam, the game will update automatically. If you're DRM-free, you can re-download from the same link you got the game from originally. It always has the latest version.

It's finally in Beta! This is build 0.18.1722 of RimWorld. That last number is the number of days since I first started working on RimWorld in February 2012. 1722 days - almost five years. It's come a very long way since the first public look in September 2013. It's time to start bringing it to a close, which is why version 0.18 is Beta 18 instead of Alpha 18.

The "Beta" designation means that we're on the final stretch before the 1.0 release, and that there won't be major content additions like whole new game systems. Of course we will almost certainly add more content, before the 1.0 release or after. We will also continue seeking feedback so we can fix those little bugs and design problems that only become apparent after tens or hundreds of hours of play. RimWorld has become an exceptionally complex game, and it takes a long time and a huge amount of play to understand how to improve it. So it'll keep evolving for a while.

In any case, enjoy Beta 18. There is a lot of new stuff. See the features list below for details, and watch the video.

Compatibility: Saved games from non-modded Alpha 17 should still be loadable, though some things may change upon loading (e.g. characters may forget their orders; buildings that have changed size might be instantly deconstructed if there's nowhere to fit them, and so on). Complex mods made for A17 won't be usable and will need to be updated. Very simple mods may still load.

Rough features list:
  • New swamp biomes: Swamp biomes are hard to move through due to choking vegetation, and hard to build in due to swampy terrain. Many new plants were added to fill out these and other biomes.
    • Tropical swamp
    • Temperate swamp
    • Cold bog
  • New incidents:
    • Meteorite impact. A meteorite impacts, leaving a lump of mineable ore.
    • Aurora. A beautiful aurora lights up the night sky, improving mood.
    • Tornado
    • Peace talks quest
    • World refugee quest
    • Prisoner rescue quest
  • Storyful combat: A major rework of melee combat, and a new way to report all combat interactions. Storyful combat generates a combat log that reports each blow, miss, swipe, block and fall in the combat. During or after a fight, you can review the combat log to see what happened, to generate a richer story.
  • Various research has been split up
    • Gun research is now broken into several stages, so making advanced guns like assault rifles takes more research than making simple revolvers
    • Melee weapon research is now broken into several stages
  • New furniture
    • Bedroll: Portable bed
    • Dresser: Passively improves room
    • Endtable: Passive improves room
    • Various new table sizes
  • New quest reward special items:
    • Psychic emanator
    • Vanometric power cell
    • Infinite chemreactor
    • Techprof subpersona core
    • Healer mechanite superdose
    • Resurrector mechanite superdose
    • Orbital bombardment targeter
    • Orbital power beam targeter
  • Tribal content upgrade:
    • Ikwa melee weapon
    • War mask
    • Tribal headdress
    • Recurve bow
    • Tribal hunter
    • Tribal heavy archer
    • Tribal berserker
  • New world site components (used in various situations):
    • Sleeping mechanoids
    • Animal ambush
    • Enemy ambush
  • New mental breaks:
    • Insulting spree. Randomly go around and insult people.
    • Targeted insulting spree. Follow around a specific other colonist, insulting them repeatedly.
    • Tantrum. Go around randomly smashing furniture, buildings, and damageable items.
    • Bedroom tantrum. Go to your own room and randomly smash furniture, buildings, and damageable items.
    • Targeted tantrum. Go to destroy a single, specific, randomly-chosen, valuable item or building.
    • Sadistic rage. Melee attack prisoners for a while. Fists only. Only occurs when there are prisoners to attack. Does not attack downed prisoners.
    • Corpse obsession. Dig up a corpse and drop it on a meeting spot table or in a random high-traffic area. The mental break then ends.
    • Catatonic. Collapse on the spot into a downed state with a psychological breakdown. Recover some days later. This can be implemented by a “catatonic breakdown” hediff.
    • Jailbreaker. Colonist goes to a random prisoner (who is capable of prison breaking), and upon doing a special “spark jailbreak” action with them, induces an immediate prison break in that prisoner.
    • Slaughterer. Slaughter random colony animal(s) periodically.
    • Murderous rage. Hunt down a specific colonist or prisoner (randomly chosen) and attempt to kill them by melee attack. Uses melee weapon or fists, as equipped. Keep attacking until the target is dead.
    • Run wild. The pawn basically starts acting like an animal. You can tame him to try to get him to rejoin.
  • New mental inspirations. Basically reverse mental breaks - these give temporary bonuses to colonists in high moods.
    • Work frenzy (1 day): Global work speed 2.5x
    • Go frenzy (1 day): Walk speed 1.5x
    • Shoot frenzy (3 days): Shooting hit chance improved as though the pawn is 10 skill levels higher.
    • Inspired trade
    • Inspired recruitment
    • Inspired surgery
    • Inspired art
  • World features like lakes, mountain ranges, and bays are now detected and named. Names are displayed in the world view.
  • Caves now form sometimes in mountainous maps. Inside there are special cave plants. There can also be dormant insect hives.
  • Many new tale types were added. So, the game will record many new types of events, and colonists can make art about them. Art descriptions should be much more diverse.
  • Crop blights now appear and spread over time instead of instantly destroying crops
  • Spaceship is now bigger and has one more component, the sensor cluster
  • Spaceship quest ending phase: When going to the hidden space ship to finish the game, the game does not end instantly on arrival. The map generates with the ship intact. To take off, first you must power up the ship, which takes some days, during which you must survive raids.
  • Space ship construction now requires advanced components, which have their own tech tree and production method
  • Split pistol into revolver and autopistol
  • Boomalopes can be milked for chemfuel
  • Added chemfuel generator, which generates electricity from chemfuel
  • Artillery works differently now. There is one type of mortar, which can fire any type of shell, with each shell creating a different effect. The shells are explosive, incendiary, firefoam, and antigrain (a special high-tech warhead).
  • Seasonal latitudes: Seasons now more reasonably adjust depending on latitude. Instead of flipping at the equator, there is a seasonless crossover zone.
  • Redesigned alert letter types and sounds to be more specific.
  • Pawns can now be banished. This is analogous to abandoning pawns in caravans.
  • Technical: The save file now contains the actual contents of the planet map, instead of just the seed to generate it. This speed up loading, makes forward compatibility possible, and makes it technically possible to modify the world map during play.
  • Many many tunings, bugfixes, and redesigns.
Oct 23, 2017
Backstory in game sales will close
RimWorld - Tynan
We'll be closing sales for to the Backstory-in-Game package and Pirate King packages on November 7, 2017. The Name-in-game package will remain on sale. Anyone who already purchased any of these packages won't be affected, only new sales will be closed.

I'm closing these sales because the game is maturing and it's coming to the right time to make the content final. In addition, closing these will free up more time for us to work on the game itself.

Thanks everyone for all the great content submitted over the last few years! As any player can tell you, it's really enriched the game.
...