Hey everyone, here's the next RimWorld update for the weekend! Thanks for the ongoing feedback.

It should be compatible with all saves and mods.


- Added temperature tough issue and precept. This makes some believers mind extreme temperatures less.
- Added Alert for likely slave rebellion.
- Mining yield now caps at 125%.
- Clarified in description that the medical specialist won't do violence.
- Clarified spacedrone self-destruct delay info in quest description.
- Gauranlen tree pruning is dictated by a new stat, affected slightly by plants skill. Tree connection pawns have a 25% boost to pruning speed.
- Increase berrymaker dryad production from 32 to 40 berries per batch. Increase medicinemaker dryad production from 3 to 4 herbal meds per batch.
- Archonexus quest now warns players beforehand that research will reset
- Tuned down apostate memory thoughts and adjusted labels.
- Rebalance tree connector thoughts.


- Inspect pane now automatically resizes when tabs are added or removed.
- Changed JobGiver_DeliverPawnToBed to check for reservation before issuing job.
- Changed GenColor.InstinguishableFrom difference threshold to 0.005 and removed optional parameter.Removed the custom value from call sites.
- Error mitigation for districts not having their map index decremented correctly until problem is found.
- Added difference threshold parameter to method signator on GenColor.IndistinguishableFrom and replaced uses of GenColor.ApproximatelyEqual with calls to IndistinguishableFrom with custom threshold.


- Fix: Dryads are affected by disease incidents.
- Fix: Gauranlen pod seed yield is affected by difficulty.
- Fix: ArgumentOutOfRange exception on Precept_Role.
- Fix: Ancient junk remains can wipe important quest structures.
- Fix: Apostasy from any ideo triggers knowsmemorythoughts in ideos with apostasy.
- Fix: A case where bad mods can easily make a savefile unloadable (Building_TurretGun).
- Fix: Check order in ThoughtWorker_Precept_TreeDensity.
- Fix: In desert areas, Gaumaker dryads never form a gaumaker pod.
- Fix: Gauranlen seeds can be assigned to plant under a roof.
- Fix: Fungus darktorch description says it is refueled with wood. It is actually refueled with raw fungus.
- Fix: TreeDensityReduced thought stages are incorrectly calculated.
- Fix: IdeoRelic issue no longer has an iconPath assigned in XML.
- Fix: Prisoners lost during farskip.
- Fix: Ideoligion UI overlap.
- Fix: Drum circle is ignored by pawns if only Ideology is installed.
- Fix: Doctors administring drugs to a pawn that has just died of an OD throws exception.
- Fix: 'Scarification' is not translated.
- Fix: Weird ancient barrel shadow.
- Fix: Some ancient junk is rotatable but should not be.
- Fix: Portrait cache not dirtied on changing style item in styling station dialog.
- Fix: Default parameter added to GenColor.IndistinguishableFrom() instead of overload, causing mod errors.
- Fix: Tree connection meme doesn't require Gauranlen connection: Strong.
- Fix: Animals being lead by ropes can be stopped to have their wool/chemfuel/milk gathered.
- Fix: Gauranlen moss can spawn over anima grass and Gauranlen pods.
- Fix: High life meme ideos generate with a warning about conflicting apparel.
- Fix: Cancelling a biosculpter cycle before a pawn has started it will still consume nutrition.
- Fix: Ideo is left in broken state if player escapes without having selected any memes.

Hey everyone, we're here with another update. Tons of great feedback has been coming in and we're working to translate that into high-value improvements as fast as possible.

It should be compatible with everything.

Thanks to those who helped test it on the Official Dev Discord. Come join us!

Improvements:

- Desired apparel now uses the same faction restrictions as role apparel does. Tribal-Only: War mask, Tribal Headdress. Non-tribal only: Slicecap, Beret. Removed visage mask restriction to non-tribal only.
- Slaves no longer slight or insult non-slaves
- Slaves never start social fights with non-slaves if insulted.
- Allowed saving all ideos and allowed saving ideos in-game.
- Allow non-ideo members to participate in leader speech.
- Melee-ing a slave now increases suppression.
- Rebellion chance per slave now relates inversely to the number of slaves on the map, so overall rebellion chance shouldn't climb so aggressively with higher slave counts.
- Adjust slave rebellion base MTB 50 days back to 45 days.
- Change animal products and processed food to not generate negative thoughts related to meat-eating precepts. Vegetarians and carnivores alike can now eat these without being bothered.
- Beggars can now be given items when they are traveling to their wait destination.
- Prevent thrumbos from eating Gauranlen trees in addition to anima trees.
- Ideo UI Role apparel requirements float menu now lists the incompatibility reason.
- Added confirmation dialogs in ideo config UI when precepts will change.
- Dryads of not the correct caste will return to the tree first when connection strength drops enough to be unable to support the current number of dryads.
- Integrate art for rough living issue and set it to medium importance.
- Gauranlen pod sprouts now happen much earlier for tree connector ideoligions.
- We are now more selective about which weapons increase rebellion chance (exclude wood, emp, smoke...)
- Allow black color to be selected for apparel coloring.
- Integrated new mod source and warning graphics for the mod menu.
- Integrated new meal graphics.
- Improvements to ideoligion save/load UI.
- Ensure Tunneler meme always has the MiningYield_High precept.

Technical:

- Optimized QuestNode_Root_WorkSite.
- Removed _NewTemp suffix from PreceptWorker methods and made optional parameter non-optional.
- Renamed def Nutrifungus to Plant_Nutrifungus per standard.
- Changed ThoughtWorker_Precept_IdeoDiversity to not iterate over spawned pawns list twice.
- Removed unused 'Notify_MemberSpawned' methods.
- hairColor -> hairOnly.
- Mark PlaceBlueprintForBuild as [Obsolete].
- Improvements to pawn blindness checks.

Fixes:

- Fix: ProblemCauser quest can fire with mech cluster even if mechanoids disabled.
- Fix: Incorrect requireOne usage for PainIsVirtue.
- Fix: Some bad requireOne usages.
- Fix: Diversity of thought calculates the percentage of pawns with another ideo by dividing against all spawned pawns of the faction including animals, slaves and prisoners.
- Fix 5218: Some ancient doodads are rotated when they shouldn't be.
- Fix: Lovers/Spouses sharing a bed in barracks get "sleeping alone" thought.
- Fix: Initial player ideo can be set multiple times on different ideos if the user revisits the configure ideo page before starting a game.
- Fix: Pawns under 18 can use age reversal.
- Fix: Starting leader speech from a ritual focus bypasses some checks, like being able to speak.
- Fix: Funerals are expected to be held for slaves if they have same ideo as colonists.
- Fix: Farskip with Relic gives debuff from losing the relic.
- Fix: Hermetic crate missing opening completed sound. Applied the same sound as security crate.
- Fix: Slaves and prisoners will not be carried to slave medical beds after a duel ended in which they got wounded.
- Fix: Ancient complex world objects remain on world map after archonexus cycles making it potentially hard to generate a new site as a ritual reward.
- Fix 5232: Wimpy Noble quest generated with generic tags rather than text.
- Fix: Apparel color buff is gone after save / load.
- Fix: NullRefException when abandoning royal title.
- Fix 5234: Pawns can build turrets when prohibited by precepts.
- Fix 5225: Undefined 'spritElement' text element.
- Fix: Ideo creation warning about incompatibility between apparel requirement and desired apparel even if both apparel are the same.
- Fix: Collapsed rocks have 'attack to destroy' inspect pane and disabled deconstruct message.
- Fix 5216: Minor text overlap issue in ideo config UI.
- Fix: Bestower pawns can engage in social fighting, breaking the ceremony.
- Fix: Misc small copy errors.

Hey all, another update! This one hits a lot of various points game-wide. See change list below.

It should be compatible with everything. Please let us know on the official dev Discord if you have a problem and we'll get right on it!

We're continuing to collect feedback and improve everything we can. I much appreciate everyone who has helped out!

Change list:

- Having 1 or 2 colonists of a player's original ideoligion boosts conversion chance for that ideoligion and reduces it for conversions against that ideoligion. This is configurable in difficulty settings. This makes it easier to expand an ideoligion starting from just one person.
- When a pawn is connected to multiple gauranlen trees, they prioritize pruning the tree with the biggest difference between desired connection strength and current.
- Tune slave rebellion chances a bit lower, and reduce the effects of some factors. Slave weapon noticing distance reduced from 10 to 6.9.
- Burka now covers neck and shoulders.
- Gauranlen pod sprouts can happen even when no tree connector pawns are present. They will occur roughly every 60 days. Roughly every 30 days for tree connectors. Gauranlen pod sprouts can occur on desert or extreme desert biomes, but not ice sheet or sea ice.
- Auto-slaughter config allows you to control bonded animal slaughter specifically.
- Gauranlen trees heal slowly over time.
- Suspend dryads currently in cocoons.
- You can no longer change the color of lodgers' apparel if they refuse to change their apparel at all.
- Improvements to styling station dialog based on feedback.
- Added darker black hair color option. Moved hard-coded hair colors to ColorDefs.
- Use faster HasHead property instead of GetNotMissingParts().Any(x =>...)
- Fix: Women constantly using the styling station to get a beard that they are not allowed to have.
- Fix: Animals portraits blank on ritual setup dialog.
- Fix: Dryads prioritize rest over drafted follow.
- Fix: Potential NRE when ritual participants target a bed.
- Fix: Pawns can extract skulls from corpses that have lost their head since designation.
- Fix: Royal titles wanting personal bedrooms don't like love clusters. Bed room owners are now calculated by love cluster rather than pawn relationship pair.
- Fix: Missing reservation check.
- Fix: Potential error when ritual participants target a bed.
- Fix: Checking all beds instead of just humanlike ones for room owner.
- Fix: Checking reachability in ClosestThing_Global_Reachable.
- Fix: Members of a love cluster that have a single bed get "slept alone" thoughts.
- Fix: Couples made of a slave/colonist pair want to sleep together, despite not being able to share a bed.
- Fix: Missing translation key.
- Fix: Animals portraits blank on ritual setup dialog.
- Fix: Checking reachability in ClosestThing_Global_Reachable.
- Fix: Tattoos add transparency to pawn skin background.
- Fix: Iterating forwards through knownExpansions instead of backwards.
- Fix: Not using local map variable in Alert_IdeoBuildingDisrespected.
- Precept.PlayerWarning -> GetPlayerWarning.
- MayRequire="Ideology" -> MayRequire="Ludeon.RimWorld.Ideology" in a few places.

EDIT: Saturday night/Sunday morning, I pushed a quick update to 1.3.3071. This fixes a single bug where pawns would get stuck at the styling station.
--------------------------

Hey all, another quick update before the weekend.

I've just released version 1.3.3069b to everyone. This is the same as 1.3.3069 from earlier today, with the addition of a feature that lets you save and load ideoligions within the ideoligion customization screen.

If you have a complicated ideoligion you want to use from now on, you can save it during creation and load it in future games.

You should be able to get the update by restarting Steam. It'll be compatible with everything.

Look forward to more updates soon!

-Ty
Twitter: @TynanSylvester

Hey all, just a quick update. This is yesterday's unstable test build with some fixes and stabiliztion.

Everything should be compatible.

Another bit of news - we have completed our first pass of the ideoligion save and load feature. EDIT: This feature is live on the 'unstable' Steam branch.

Thanks for the feedback everyone, and to our very diligent devs!

You can come help us test the unstable version or report any bugs you found on the official development Discord.

Changelog since last main version:

- Reduce nutrition required for biosculpting from 20 to 10 for healing and age reversal cycles.
- Adjust trees-related thoughts. Negatives for killing trees are reduced. Positives for seeing trees are amplified.
- Bug mitigation for null map in QuestPart_SubquestGenerator_RelicHunt.
- Fix: Pawns will attempt to harvest trees in growing zomes marked as no cutting.
- Imported new player creative content.
- Reversed meme order in UI. Low impact at top, high at bottom.
- Assign mapPawns.FreeColonistsAndPrisonersSpawned to a local variable in Alert_RitualObligation to avoid repeated expensive calls.
- Add caching to pen-related calcualtions related to WorkGiver_TakeToPen to address large performance spikes when having many animals in a pen.
- Chance of resentment on failed conversion attempt reduced from 36% to 20%. Chance of fight reduced from 4% to 2%.
- If a pawn has sight under 50%, he should gain a psychic sensitivity bonus of up to 50%.
- Assign mapPawns.FreeColonistsAndPrisonersSpawned to a local variable in Alert_RitualObligation to avoid repeated expensive calls.
- Add caching to pen-related calcualtions related to WorkGiver_TakeToPen to address large performance spikes when having many animals in a pen.
- Change back HomeFaction to Faction in JobDriver_TakeToBed, improve related comment.
- Changed all culture icon colors to full white.
- Changed implementation of delivering pawns to their bed after gladiator duel.
- Small optimization: Check a flag before calling a complex function when checking for repeating memes during ideo generation.
- Add short comments for couple recent fixes.
- Skulls are stackable.
- Clarified 'right-click' info in beggars quest.
- Removed duplicate blind check in ThoughtWorker_Dark.
- Connecting to a Gauranlen tree gives 25`45% connection strength to the connector depending on ritual quality.
- Psychically deaf pawns cannot connect with Gauranlen trees.
- Bonsai trees no longer are auto-harvested on reaching max growth
- Added debug tool to stop timed raids once started.
- Text fixes for certainty tooltip.
- Fix: Missing eye wound graphic and tattoos visible on beheaded pawn.
- Fix: 'The maximum number of (role) is xx' flickering on edit ritual dialog
- Fix: Dueling slaves without beds assigned results in errors
- Fix: Possible string concatenation issue.
- Fix: Failing to generate a new unique name for a precept can leave it with a null name.
- Fix: When a styled standing lamp is failed to build, a non-styled blueprint replaces it.
- Fix: Inverted desired connection strength check in alert.
- Fix: Slave ideo buildings lacking causes empty alert.
- Fix: Another quest node relating to animals could possibly use dryads.
- Fix: Dryads can show up as animals for hospitality quests.
- Fix: Cannibal tribes can sometimes generate without cannibal precept.
- Fix: Sterilized roosters can still fertilize eggs.
- Fix: Female pawns can infrequently gain beards on style change.
- Fix: Exception when selecting leader with building precept that has no requirements.
- Fix: Wrong zone checked for auto cut
- Fix: Duplicate building precepts from multiple ideos only shows first building in architect menu.
- Fix: Missing body parts constantly draw bandages on pawns. Now they go away once it has been tended to.
- Fix: Typos.

The release of Ideology and 1.3 have brought a massive surge of new players and new energy in the RimWorld community. It's awesome and slightly overwhelming. We've been hard at work translating feedback into fixes and improvements to try to make the best play experience possible, both in the short and long term.

To that end, there's currently a testing branch of the next update up on Steam's unstable beta branch. (Changelist below.)

We test these builds and take feedback directly on the official development Discord server. Anyone who is willing to help out should please join us there, try out the build and tell us what you find! Many thanks to all who have participated and all who join.

Thanks
-Ty

Change log since the last main version:
Current unstable build: 1.3.3068

- Chance of resentment on failed conversion attempt reduced from 36% to 20%. Chance of fight reduced from 4% to 2%.
- If a pawn has sight under 50%, he should gain a psychic sensitivity bonus of up to 50%.
- Assign mapPawns.FreeColonistsAndPrisonersSpawned to a local variable in Alert_RitualObligation to avoid repeated expensive calls.
- Add caching to pen-related calcualtions related to WorkGiver_TakeToPen to address large performance spikes when having many animals in a pen.
- Change back HomeFaction to Faction in JobDriver_TakeToBed, improve related comment.
- Changed all culture icon colors to full white.
- Changed implementation of delivering pawns to their bed after gladiator duel.
- Small optimization: Check a flag before calling a complex function when checking for repeating memes during ideo generation.
- Add short comments for couple recent fixes.
- Skulls are stackable.
- Clarified 'right-click' info in beggars quest.
- Removed duplicate blind check in ThoughtWorker_Dark.
- Connecting to a Gauranlen tree gives 25`45% connection strength to the connector depending on ritual quality.
- Psychically deaf pawns cannot connect with Gauranlen trees.
- Bonsai trees no longer are auto-harvested on reaching max growth
- Added debug tool to stop timed raids once started.
- Text fixes for certainty tooltip.
- Fix: Missing eye wound graphic and tattoos visible on beheaded pawn.
- Fix: 'The maximum number of (role) is xx' flickering on edit ritual dialog
- Fix: Dueling slaves without beds assigned results in errors
- Fix: Possible string concatenation issue.
- Fix: Failing to generate a new unique name for a precept can leave it with a null name.
- Fix: When a styled standing lamp is failed to build, a non-styled blueprint replaces it.
- Fix: Inverted desired connection strength check in alert.
- Fix: Slave ideo buildings lacking causes empty alert.
- Fix: Another quest node relating to animals could possibly use dryads.
- Fix: Dryads can show up as animals for hospitality quests.
- Fix: Cannibal tribes can sometimes generate without cannibal precept.
- Fix: Sterilized roosters can still fertilize eggs.
- Fix: Female pawns can infrequently gain beards on style change.
- Fix: Exception when selecting leader with building precept that has no requirements.
- Fix: Wrong zone checked for auto cut
- Fix: Duplicate building precepts from multiple ideos only shows first building in architect menu.
- Fix: Missing body parts constantly draw bandages on pawns. Now they go away once it has been tended to.
- Fix: Typos.

UPDATE: An issue with this hotfix where health conditions would appear on the wrong body part has been fixed. It may appear one more time if you saved today but not thereafter. Older saves will not have the issue. I'm sorry that bug occurred.

---

Hi all,

The Ideology release has been great - thanks for all your feedback! We've been working hard to translate this torrent of feedback into a set of improvements for you as fast as possible. Today we've got an update with miscellaneous improvements and fixes. This patch improves the base game, Ideology, and Royalty.

EDIT: It should be compatible with all saves and mods. (A few mods were incompatible but have been updated - thanks to the authors CrashM, Void, and avil!)

Non-English languages have also been updated with the latest translations from the gracious volunteer translators (you can join them here).

Big thanks to everyone who helped test the unstable build on the official testing Discord. Love to have more people come help, so if you're willing please.. join us. The improvement process is ongoing.

-Ty
@TynanSylvester


Improvements

- Blind people no longet get the darkness mood debuff.
- Reduced min colony wealth to 150k for firing archonexus endgame quest.
- Adding new desired apparel no longer regenerates role apparel.
- Ancient non-deconstructible stuff has disable deconstruct command tooltip and inpect pane information on how to remove it.
- Avoid repeating normal memes when generating non-player factions.
- Make arrested pawn a prisoner as soon as we start carrying them to bed instead of waiting to arrive.
- Allow starting the bestowing ceremony via right click.
- Added anima grass growth rate from meditiation penlaty to anima tree based on proximity to artificial buildings.
- Pregnant animals are slaughtered after other animals in order from most recent to least recent pregnancy.
- Building damage factors are drawn for projectile weapons in their info card.
- Optimize ritual obligation alert to not generate unused text anymore, significantly reducing performance spikes for larger pawn counts.
- Dying hair requires dye
- Metallic fence and walls now use stuff-specific ui and blueprint graphics.
- Mechanoid breach raids spawn with one breacher.
- Improvements to the junk spawning scatterers.
- Breach raids never have 'drop-in' arrival mode.
- Prisoners now produce a mood malus if they escape.
- Shuttle and spacedrone can now overlap zones and adjusted other impassable buildings so they cannot overlap zones.
- Mortars don't drop their barrels if under 50% fuel.
- Gray out pawns that can't take any role in ritual.
- Biosculpter pod plays a sound when nutrition is added.

Fixes

- Fix: Typo 'skill' instead of 'skull'.
- Fix: After a gladiator duel, the downed prisoner will be carried back to their bed but they won't actually be put in the bed, they will remain downed on top of the bed instead
- Fix: LordJob_LoadAndEnterTransporters blocking rituals.
- Fix: "Parsed 34.9 as int" warning on startup.
- Fix: Pawns can end up with overlapping apparel requirements.
- Fix: Desired apparel was generated as apparel requirement but not available when manually selecting it.
- Fix: Bestowing quest can get bugged if accepting it on a different map from one it was generated on.
- Fix: If you design an ideoligion which has two words in its pawn "noun" you will not be able to bring people to trial.
- Fix: Inverted anyMemeRequired condition in PreceptApparelRequirement.
- Fix: Dromedary description mentions it is not rideable, but it is.
- Fix: Portrait did not update after look change.
- Fix: Ideology background doesn't display after installing Ideology.
- Fix: Pawns walking over structures causes construction to halt.
- Fix: Trees adjacent to no-cut growing zones are cut down.
- Fix: Players can edit deities outside normal+dev ideo configurations.
- Fix: Error spam when trying to add some ideo buildings.
- Fix: Essential roles can be removed.
- Fix: Rituals with no spectators can show weird numbers in the quality factors preview. Disabled ritual seat outcome effect for rituals without spectators.
- Fix: Stacking building damage factors don't display if they have the same value.
- Fix: PreceptComp descriptions can be uncapitalized.
- Fix: Modded factions cause ideo errors.
- Fix: Gender supremacy memes have opposite agreeing traits.
- Fix: Typo on anima tree linking ritual.
- Fix: NullReferenceException on unequipped low-shield pack.
- Fix: Ability.Activate only starts cooldown if there are any ability components.
- Fix: Ritual ambience sound preview kept playing the old one after changing style categories that affected it.
- Fix: Deep drills produce chunks over themselves and their interaction cells.
- Fix: Authors label is not truncated with '...' on mod ui.
- Fix: Animal sacrifice ritual cancelled just before it ends.
- Fix: Enter closes form caravan UI.
- Fix: Inspect pane overlap when canceling, or removing a pawn from, a caravan.
- Fix: Musical instruments don't give recreation.
- Fix: Plant cutting toggle on growing zones causes plants to never be harvested.
- Fix: 'Copy CSV' button is broken on some debug tables.
- Fix: Biosculpter pod only shows pawn label for an occupant not who it is biotuned to.
- Fixes to anima tree linking feedback for spectator role.

Technical

- Added explicit look mode parameter to CompSpawnImmortalSubplantsAround
- Sanitize the mod load folder slashes.
- Fix: Uncapitalized letter after colon.
- Faction -> HomeFaction in JobDriver_TakeToBed.
- Graphic_Appearance now checks things for IConstructible to determine stuff rather than the IConstructible implementations.
- Added missing TKey's on tips.
- Move ShowingGizmosForRitualsTmp field.
- GetHairMats -> CalculateHairMats
- Removed debug code in GenStep_ScatterGroup.
- Fix: Back-compatibility not preserving prisoner status.
- Fix: Null reference exception in Need_Indoors for pawns with null ideo.
- Fix: No-expansion ideos are shared between factions.
- Fix: Uncapitalized property.
- Fix: A divide by zero in PawnWeaponGenerator.
- Small fix to Command_BestowerCeremony feedback code.

What do you believe? RimWorld - Ideology is now available. Check out the Ideology Steam store page for the full description and details.


Players can now update to RimWorld version 1.3 for free. This version was previously tested in a beta branch for 2 weeks. Find the full change log here.

On savegame compatibility:

• 1.3 will load 1.2 saves no problem.
  
• You can load a non-Ideology game with Ideology loaded.
  
• You can run either expansion, neither, or both - all configurations will work.

On mod updating: There's no need to break compatibility with 1.2 while adding support for 1.3! It's quite easy to make a mod support multiple versions of the game, just by putting the old version's files in one folder and the new version's files in another.

If you want to be more efficient and share identical files between versions, you can do that too. You can even define your own custom folder structure for full control.

This document explains the details on how to do it: Multi-version mods in RimWorld


Join the community! I would love it if you guys posted screenshots of your new colonies and belief systems. Please tell me all your stories from your experiences in Ideology.

• RimWorld - Ideology store page
  
• I’m on Twitter as @TiaPixel and you can follow Tynan at @TynanSylvester.
  
• Discuss this post on Reddit here!

Hi again! Tia here, your resident bug whisperer and announcement bringer.

First, the big announcement. We’ll be releasing RimWorld - Ideology on Tuesday, July 20! At the same time, the free 1.3 update (which is currently in public beta) will become the default version.
You can wishlist Ideology now on its Steam page here! And also look at the original Ideology/1.3 announcement and the social roles update.

If you want to continue on 1.2, you can do that using the Steam betas feature. To do it: Right click RimWorld in the Steam library, click Properties, then on the Betas tab select the branch called version-1.2. This will stay on version 1.2 forever.

For modders: No need to break 1.2 support while adding support for 1.3! Keeping 1.2 support is as easy as leaving the old files in a folder. This document explains how to do it.

As for savegames, saves from 1.2 (and before) will load on 1.3 (assuming no mods break anything). In addition, non-Ideology savegames will load with Ideology. (However, if you do this you won’t be able to customize or randomize your belief system on startup, since the game is already started.)

Let's talk about another feature of Ideology!


Every now and then, a unique Gauranlen pod may sprout near your colony. From this pod you can harvest a Gauranlen seed, and in turn plant a Gauranlen tree wherever you like.

Gauranlen trees are unique because they produce creatures called dryads. The tree nourishes the dryads and, in turn, the dryads protect the tree from predators and fire. These dryads are born from a dryad queen who lives inside the tree (and isn’t seen in gameplay). Each dryad says attached to its mother tree for life.

The first dryads your colonists ever see will be immature dryads. While adorable, these aren’t very useful. They become much more useful after they transform into their various specialized castes.

For this to happen, though, a human must influence the tree. This means carrying out a special ceremony to connect with the Gauranlen tree. While others look on, the connector will approach the tree, touch it, speak to it, and generate a subtle psychic link. This psychic link allows the connector to control which caste the dryads will grow into.

Choose your caste according to your needs. Some castes focus on combat:

• Clawer dryads are extremely vicious, with high damage output from their long claws. However, they are also quite fragile.
  
• Barkskin dryads a chunky and well-armored to soak up incoming damage for your soldiers.

Both kinds of dryads will dutifully enter battle to try and protect your colonists with their lives. The connector can command them like trained animals.



Not all dryads are suited for battle. Some are more useful at home.

• Carrier dryads are big and gentle, and good at tidying up by hauling items for you.
  
• Woodmakers produce wood for you over time. This is important if you worship trees and hate to chop them down!
  
• Medicinemaker dryads have large bulbs on their backs that sprout herbal medicine.
  
• Berrymaker dryads gradually shed piles of ripe berries.

The tree-connector must maintain and strengthen their bond with the tree by pruning it now and then. A stronger connection means the tree can support more dryads at once - up to four for the strongest connection.

Beliefs matter! Any human can create the above dryad castes. However, some people venerate trees in a special way. For these people, destroying any tree is a crime, and trees have important spiritual significance. This creates challenges - it’s hard to find wood without chopping trees down. However, this belief also has advantages. Tree-lovers can connect with the Gauranlen trees more deeply than others and gain several unique bonuses.

First, a tree-believer can prune faster and better, and thus maintain more dryads in less time.

More importantly, though, only tree-believers can specialize dryads into the gaumaker caste. Gaumakers can come together and produce new Gauranlen pods, which can be planted to create even more Gauranlen trees.

In this way, a colony of tree-venerating nature lovers can grow their Gauranlen orchard over time and become powerful from it, both economically and militarily.



Dryads are awesome. They make quirky ribbit noises, they get tuckered out and fall asleep like other animals, they work hard, and they care about your colonists.

But trees live and die, like everything else. So what happens when a Gauranlen tree dies? The screams of the queen and her children will haunt you…

Bug you later!

Tia

Links:

• Wishlist Ideology on its Steam page here!
  
• For more info on the expansion and 1.3 update, read the announcement of Ideology/1.3 and the preview of social roles
  
• I’m on Twitter as @TiaPixel and you can follow Tynan at @TynanSylvester.
  
• Discuss this post on Reddit here!

Just a quick PSA for all the modders out there valiantly updating their mods to 1.3.

There's no need to break compatibility with 1.2 while adding support for 1.3! It's quite easy to make a mod support multiple versions of the game, just by putting the old version's files in one folder and the new version's files in another.

If you want to be more efficient and share identical files between versions, you can do that too. You can even define your own custom folder structure for full control.

This document explains the details on how to do it: Multi-version mods in RimWorld

Thanks all,
Ty