RimWorld is a sci-fi colony sim by Ludeon Studios. You begin with three survivors of a shipwreck on a distant world. This rimworld beginner guide gives you one clear plan for your first 30 days: the vanilla Crashlanded scenario, a temperate forest map, and the Cassandra Classic storyteller. Our Oxygen Not Included beginner guide covers a similar first-30-days plan for a space colony.
This rimworld beginner guide covers the base game with no mods and no DLC required. Everything below was checked against the official RimWorld Wiki and current version news.
Table of Contents
- Setup
- First Day
- Colonist Roles
- Food
- Power
- Research
- Defence
- Mood and Health
- Mistakes to Avoid
- First Month Checklist
- FAQs
RimWorld Beginner Guide: The Setup That Teaches You the Game
SUMMARY: This section explains the exact starting setup this rimworld beginner guide uses, and which game version the advice covers.
Start with the standard Crashlanded scenario. It gives you three colonists, starting weapons, and Electricity already researched. Pick Cassandra Classic on Adventure Story difficulty. Cassandra builds tension gradually, giving you a grace period before enemies arrive. Phoebe Chillax is the gentler alternative.
Choose a temperate forest tile with a year-round growing period. A temperate forest has wood, wildlife, buildable land, and less disease than a jungle. A year-round growing period almost removes winter as a threat.
One version note. This rimworld beginner guide covers the vanilla base game on the main branch, version 1.6. Update 1.7, announced October 12, 2026, moves the game from Unity to Waylith, Ludeon’s in-house engine. At the time of writing, 1.7 is only on Steam’s unstable beta branch, and no stable release date has been announced. Ludeon says the game looks and plays exactly the same on Waylith. Stay on stable 1.6 for your first colony.
Your First Day: Shelter, Beds, and a Stockpile
SUMMARY: This section gives you the first-day build order in this rimworld beginner guide: shelter, stockpile, crops, beds.
The moment you land, press the spacebar to pause. Hand out weapons first: best shooter gets the rifle, best melee colonist the knife, third colonist the pistol.
Build a small wooden room with a door, near the centre of the map and near rich soil. Rich soil, the darker soil on the fertility overlay, speeds up plant growth. Put a stockpile zone inside the shelter, so supplies stay indoors. Next, plant rice: the fastest-growing crop, and a 5×5 plot feeds one colonist. Finally, build one bed per colonist. Sleeping on the ground hits mood hard. This rimworld beginner guide insists on rice on day one for a reason: hunger kills more first colonies than any raid.
Colonist Roles: Who Does What in Your Colony
SUMMARY: This section of the rimworld beginner guide explains the skills, traits, and work priorities your starting colonists need.
Randomise your starting colonists freely. The four survival skills are Shooting, Construction, Plants, and Medical. Aim for one colonist with 5 skill points and one flame of passion in each of those four skills. Note: Construction 4 to 6 is required to build spike traps and electrical equipment.
Avoid pyromaniacs, who can start fires at any time. Depressive or volatile pawns are more vulnerable to mental breaks. Industrious colonists work faster, and Tough colonists take less damage. Check capabilities too: a colonist incapable of violence cannot fight, and one incapable of dumb labour cannot haul or clean. Cover every essential job twice.
Open the Work tab and set priorities. The classic beginner error in this rimworld beginner guide is leaving everything switched on for everyone. Your best grower then hauls all day, and your cook never cooks. Give each colonist one or two top-priority jobs that match their best skills.
RimWorld Beginner Guide to Food: From Survival Meals to a Working Farm
SUMMARY: This section covers the food clock you start with, why rice comes first, and when to build a freezer.
You start with 50 packaged survival meals, which last roughly eight days for three colonists. Plant rice on day one, and your first harvest arrives before the meals run out. Then plant corn: bigger yield per plant, but slower growth. With Plants skill 8, plant healroot too, your early source of medicine.
Build a campfire, then a fuelled stove, and cook simple meals from your ingredients. Higher cooking skill means faster cooking and less food poisoning, so only your best cook uses the stove. When food spoils faster than you eat it, you need cold storage. Research Air Conditioning, build a small room with a cooler, and set the cooler to freeze. The food rule of this rimworld beginner guide is simple: plant on day one, cook everything, freeze the surplus.
Power: Wood, Solar, and Batteries
SUMMARY: This section of the rimworld beginner guide explains the early power chain, from a wood-fired generator to solar panels and batteries, and why geothermal generators are the long-term goal.
Start with a wood-fired generator. One generator plus a battery will run your early research bench, stove, and lights. Connect generator to battery with conduits, and keep the battery roofed.
In this rimworld beginner guide, solar panels come second: they produce power in daylight and nothing at night. Batteries exist for this: panels charge them by day, and the colony runs off them at night. Wind turbines are another option, but their output varies with the weather. That is why this rimworld beginner guide keeps the early grid small. Later, look for steam geysers on your map. A geothermal generator on a geyser gives constant power, day and night. A geyser produces a lot of heat, so do not build a bedroom on one. Every system in this rimworld beginner guide depends on power.
Research Order: What to Unlock First
SUMMARY: This section sets out a research path for the first month in this rimworld beginner guide: stonecutting, smithing, then cold storage.
Build a research bench once your shelter is up, and assign your highest Intellectual colonist to it. Your first target in this rimworld beginner guide should be stonecutting. Stone walls do not burn, and a wooden base in a thunderstorm is a fire risk.
Next, research smithing for better weapons and armour. Then research Air Conditioning, which unlocks the cooler your freezer needs. Then research what your colony actually needs, not a fixed list. Prioritise defensive tech if raids hurt, generation if power is tight. Research is the quiet engine of this rimworld beginner guide: a bench with no researcher is decoration.
Defence: Surviving Your First Raid
SUMMARY: This section of the rimworld beginner guide explains raid scaling and how to fight your first raid.
Cassandra gives you a grace period, and the game warns you with a “Need Defenses” message. The cheapest defence is a wall with one gap, sandbags behind it, and spike traps in front. Colonists shoot from behind sandbags while traps slow attackers into your line of fire. A detailed community walkthrough of the same first 30 days is also available on RogueWiki.
When a raid arrives, draft your colonists before the enemy reaches you. Ranged colonists take cover, melee guards the gap. Focus fire on one attacker at a time. One honest warning from this rimworld beginner guide: raid strength scales with your colony’s wealth. Hoarding silver early makes raids harder, so spend on what you need.
| Defence piece | What it does | When to build it |
|---|---|---|
| Wooden wall and door | First barrier | Day 1 |
| Sandbags | Cover for shooters | Before the first raid warning |
| Spike traps | Slow attackers at a chokepoint | Before the first raid warning |
| Stone outer wall | Fireproof perimeter | Week 2 |
| Killbox entrance | Funnels attackers into one killing zone | Week 3 to 4 |
Mood and Health: Keeping Colonists Happy
SUMMARY: This section of the rimworld beginner guide covers the mood system that causes mental breaks, and how to handle injuries and illness.
Mood is the hidden health bar of a RimWorld colony. A colonist with low mood can have a mental break. During a break they stop working and may damage your base. The cheap fixes come first: a real bed, a roof, regular cooked meals, and a clean room. Then add small comforts: a table and chairs, a horseshoes pin, and separate bedrooms later.
Herbal medicine suits minor injuries; serious wounds and infections need proper medicine. Your best Medical colonist should tend: higher skill means better tend quality and faster healing. Rest infected colonists in a clean hospital bed and tend them on schedule. This rimworld beginner guide treats mood as a system to manage, not bad luck to endure.
Common Beginner Mistakes to Avoid
SUMMARY: This section lists the mistakes that end the most first colonies in this rimworld beginner guide.
- Building too big, too fast. A huge wooden base burns impressively. Start small and stone-walled.
- Ignoring the food clock. Fifty meals feel like plenty until day nine. Plant on day one.
- Leaving work priorities on default. A grower hauling stone all day never plants. Set priorities to match skills.
- Hoarding wealth. Every stockpile of goods raises raid strength. Spend on defences, not treasure.
- Fighting in the open. Shooters without cover lose fights sandbags would have won.
- Skipping research. No research bench in week one means campfire cooking in week four.
- Taking every wanderer and prisoner. A fourth mouth with terrible traits is a burden. Recruit for skills your colony lacks.
- Forgetting fire. Wood walls, dry grass, and a thunderstorm end runs. Stone walls are not a luxury.
RimWorld Beginner Guide: Your First Month Checklist
SUMMARY: This section turns the whole rimworld beginner guide into a week-by-week checklist.
| Week | Priority | Done when… |
|---|---|---|
| Days 1 to 3 | Shelter, stockpile, rice, beds, weapons handed out | Everyone sleeps indoors, crops planted |
| Days 4 to 7 | Cooking, research bench, generator and battery | Meals cooking, research started |
| Days 8 to 14 | Freezer room, stone walls, sandbags and traps | Food frozen, chokepoint ready |
| Days 15 to 21 | First raid survived, smithing researched, bedrooms built | Wounded healed, gear upgraded |
| Days 22 to 30 | Corn fields, geothermal power, killbox entrance, recreation room | The colony runs itself day to day |
Reach day 30 with food frozen, power overnight, and stone walls. Use this rimworld beginner guide checklist every few days, and keep it bookmarked for your second colony too.
FAQs
Is RimWorld hard for beginners?
Yes, but it is fair about it. Many systems interact at once, so one failure can cascade. The game shows you the cause of almost every problem. Start on Adventure Story with Cassandra Classic, and follow the first-day order in this rimworld beginner guide.
Do I need any DLC to follow this rimworld beginner guide?
No. This guide covers the vanilla base game with no mods and no DLC enabled. The expansions add new systems, but none are needed to survive your first month. Buy DLC later, once the base game feels comfortable.
What is the best starting setup for a first colony?
The teaching setup is Crashlanded, a temperate forest tile with a year-round growing period, and Cassandra Classic. Crashlanded gives you three colonists, starting weapons, and Electricity already researched.
Which version of RimWorld does this guide cover?
The vanilla base game, version 1.6. Update 1.7, which replaces Unity with Ludeon’s Waylith engine, was announced on October 12, 2026 and is only on Steam’s unstable beta branch. Ludeon says the game looks and plays exactly the same on Waylith, so this rimworld beginner guide still applies if you try the beta.
How do I stop my colonists from having mental breaks?
Fix mood before it collapses. The reliable fixes are beds instead of sleeping spots, regular cooked meals, a clean and beautiful base, recreation time, and decent bedrooms. Check the Needs tab, and avoid pyromaniac traits at selection.
Should I build a killbox in my first month?
Build a simple one, not a grand one. A single entrance with sandbags behind it and spike traps in front is enough for your first raids. Shelter, food, and power come first.
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