RimWorld – Gameplay Tips and Style + Rituals Guide

 

DISCLAIMER

Warning: Humor ahead. I’ve done my best to avoid offense.
Warning: Unnecessarily gratuitous minmaxxing ahead.
Warning: Possible balance patches could render this entire guide outdated at any time.
Warning: Many aspects of Ideology are poorly documented and not yet fully understood.

This Only Affects Symbols – It Does Not Affect Gameplay

Structural symbols are indeed cosmetic. They don’t impact gameplay. JK, of course not. This is rimworld, EVERYTHING can be min maxxed!

Four of the ideological symbols come with a ritual. This benefit is minuscule. All of these rituals are nearly identical to eachother, are inferior in most respects to the rituals that are already unlocked by default, and can all be unlocked with memes later.

This does not change the fact that objectively speaking, there is no difference between <REDACTED FOR POLITICAL CORRECTNESS> and furries.

Styles

Click on image to enlarge.

Styles are incredibly important. Being near objects with style make pawns happy. Therefore, the more items you can plaster your style onto, the easier life will be.

Note that style is a separate and unrelated choice to your Symbol. Even if you select a Christian symbol, for example, you can right click on the Christian Style to remove it or swap it out for a different style.

There are three S tier styles. Each offers something no other style does.

Spike is the only style to improve Dusters, and is the only way to add style to metal floors.
Techist is the only style to improve Plant Pots, Shelves, and Autodoors.
Totemic is the only style to improve Dining Chairs. Improving wooden floors is a nice bonus. It also improves Power Armor, Slabs (beds for ascetics), and Statues, making it arguably the best of the three S Tier styles.

Morbid is a barely acceptable alternative to Totemic… if you don’t mind highly flammable floors and missing out on Dining Chairs, that is.

Animalistic is worse than Morbid, as it can’t improve Columns, tables, or light sources. They have a niche role in no-research tribal playthroughs due to improving the War Mask.

Rustic is just plain bad. It’s only draw is highly flammable rugs of awkward dimensions.

NOTE: You can right click on any Style to remove it or swap it out with a different style. Your choice of Structural Symbol does not restrict your Style choice in any way.

Rituals 101

I recommend removing the Funeral ritual with the right click menu. It gives a lousy mood buff, no special benefits, and can only be performed if you have a freshly dead colonist AND a grave.

(ToDo: Do funerals have no cooldown timer? Can they stack? If so, they might be viable under special circumstances. Bypassing the “unburied colonist” and “colonist died” debuffs would require some creative problem solving. More research needed.)

There are two kinds of rituals: “Any Time” rituals and “Scheduled Holidays”. They each have pros and cons.

“Any Time” Ritual

Pros: You can trigger this ritual at any time, such as during a psychic drone. You’re only limit is that each ritual has a cooldown of 20 days. This cooldown is NOT shared across rituals. If you have 3 Social Festival rituals, you could trigger one of them every 8 days to experience a constant mood buff. After 8*3=24 days, the cooldown on the first ritual would have already expired.

“Scheduled Holiday” Ritual.

Cons: This ritual can only occur once per year (one year is 60 days). If the date of the holiday arrives and the ritual cannot be performed for any reason, the colonists will be unhappy.

Note that most rituals can be copied. You can have 6 Drum Party rituals if you really want to, though 3 Drum Party rituals is sufficient to maintain a permanent +16 mood boost. The rituals that can’t be copied have no cooldown (claim not tested).

Rituals 102

Click to enlarge.

Much is unknown about rituals, so I will refrain from subjecting them to a tier list. It should be fairly easy to draw your own conclusions just by looking at this chart, but bear in mind that much is unknown about which mood bonuses do and don’t stack.

“Reward” refers to the choice of reward you can choose when editing your rituals with a right click. It is recommended to have at least one ritual offering each of the rewards you are interested in, and multiple rituals with a reward that you are likely to want more than once every 20 days.

Rewards require that the quality of the ceremony is “positive” or one of the two best outcomes. These are synonymous, as only the best two outcomes are positive. When performed with the help of a ritual leader, a room of 120 impressiveness or more, and all prerequisites, the odds of a good outcome are nearly guaranteed.

Rewards consist of the following:

(F) None. Why would you choose this?
(C) Nearby Faction Goodwill. Improves goodwill of the closest faction by +20.
(A) Recharge Psyfocus. Recharge the psyfocus of all participants to full.
(A) Random Recruit. A random recruit that shares your ideology will join the colony.*
(A) Discover Ancient Complex. Discover a nearby ruin.
(A) (Plant Meme) Gauranlen Pod Sprout. A Guayawhateva sprouts nearby.
(A) (Animal Meme) Farm Animals Wander In. What is says on the tin.
(D) (Tunneler Meme) Insect Jelly. Summon 20 insect jelly.

Faction goodwill is a questionable reward when it’s so easy to gift large quantities of junk. Insect Jelly is likewise questionable, generating a mere 20 jelly every 20 days is kinda sad.

You will probably want at least one ritual that discovers ruins, and at least one that recruits colonists. Other than that, all of the rewards are good. What is best depends entirely on your playstyle.

*This usually applies to prisoners, but presumably applies to any guests or friendly traders you manage to proselytize or convert. Recruiting friendly guests without the usual betrayals has great synergy with the Sky Lantern ritual.

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