Would you call yourself a RimWorld fan? If so, chances are you’ve already dabbled in modding it to fine-tune your experience with it.
See, as great as RimWorld is, it’s not perfect for everyone. Some people want a wholesome management sim they can play with friends. Others want a ruthless disaster generator that will keep them on their toes.
That’s where mods come in. Thanks to a vibrant modding community, there are hundreds of ways to tweak the game to your liking. From basic quality-of-life changes to new mechanics, your options are endless.
Looking for the best RimWorld mods to get your feet wet? Here’s our list of mods every new or experienced RimWorld player should try!
EdB Prepare Carefully
Starting a new RimWorld run is a big deal, so you’ll want to give yourself the best odds of success. Unfortunately, the game won’t always work with you. How many times have you rerolled your colonists to find a useful one?
With EdB Prepare Carefully, this is no longer a concern. This mod allows you to modify your starting colonists and items to your liking. You can even forgo the optional point limits to create a crew that will blitz everything!
Realistic Rooms
If there’s one flaw with classic RimWorld, it’s the required room sizes. Rooms tend to be massive, and your colonists will insist they stay that way. For a game that’s ostensibly about living in hard conditions, this is a bit silly.
The Realistic Rooms mod brings room sizes in line with reality. With smaller rooms, it’s easier to make a compact base. The mod also stops your colonists from getting upset over finding a single peck of dirt in their home.
1-2-3 Personalities
Do you enjoy RimWorld for its intricate web of organic storytelling? If the answer is yes, 1-2-3 Personalities is perfect for you. It adds more flair to your colonists’ traits without being too intrusive to regular gameplay.
With this mod, each colonist becomes more of a unique being. They get new beliefs and characteristics that come into play in every interaction. They can even form rivalries or friendships based on their personality types.
Vanilla Expanded
Vanilla Expanded is a collection of mods designed to tweak the classic RimWorld experience. They’re all made by the same team, so they work together seamlessly. You can also mix and match all mods to your liking.
As a collection, Vanilla Expanded adds a staggering amount of new content. You get new furniture, more animals, fresh textures, expanded armor and weapons, improved cooking, and a whole lot more.
Colony Manager
As fun as playing RimWorld can be, some facets of the game can get tedious. One of them is having to track your vital resources like wood and meat. It’s a lot of busy work that has little tangible effect on gameplay.
The Colony Manager mod fixes this issue by adding managers to the game. If you appoint a manager, they’ll automatically assign pawns to keep the colony stocked. That said, you’ll need to start a new game after installing this mod.
RimHUD
If you’re a data nerd, few mods on this list will appeal to you more than RimHUD. This UI mod shows all sorts of details about your colonists. For instance, food levels are now shown as graphs rather than static numbers.
The great thing about RimHUD is that it’s very customizable. It’s integrated into the inspect pane which you can resize to fit your screen. The HUD will also display a separate floating window that you can dock anywhere.
Wall Light
With so many glamorous mods in this guide, Wall Light can seem a bit boring. All it does is add wall-mounted lights to the game. With over a million downloads, though, it’s clear there’s more to this one than meets the eye.
The reason why Wall Light is great is that it gets rid of wall lamps that take up valuable space. This mod also allows you to change how much lights cost to build, as well as their colors and radius. Simple, yes, but effective!
RimWorld Multiplayer
Remember when we said you could play RimWorld with friends? Well, the Multiplayer mod allows you to do just that. You can play with as many people as you want, but stick with eight or fewer to keep the chaos under control.
Keep in mind this is a co-op mod, so you can’t attack rival colonies. What you can do is have many settlements running at once. Learning how to play RimWorld with this mod turned on can be a whole new experience.
Interaction Bubbles
How often do you check the game’s social logs? If you don’t do it often, you’ll miss out on all kinds of fascinating things your colonists say to each other. They’ll talk about everything, from the weather to battlefield amputations.
If you think constantly checking the logs gets annoying, there’s a solution! With the Interaction Bubbles mod, everything colonists say will appear over their heads. Installing this mod won’t break your save file, either.
Replace Stuff
As far as Steam Workshop mods for RimWorld go, Replace Stuff is one of the most sneakily powerful ones. It allows you to replace anything in the game with anything else, as well as put things on top of each other.
The possibilities for creativity here are endless. For example, you can upgrade walls or furniture without having to dismantle them. You can also build over rocks or water to make space for new construction.
CM Color Coded Mood Bar
As any experienced RimWorld player will tell you, managing colonists is a full-time job. To learn what’s troubling them, you need to keep checking their “Need” tab. Otherwise, they could drop dead for a bunch of reasons.
The CM Color Coded Mood Bar mod takes the tedium out of this process. It adds a mood meter to colonist portraits, providing a quick view into their psyche. Blue and green indicate happiness, while red means danger.
RunAndGun
There’s no denying that battles in RimWorld can be clunky to take part in. One big reason for it is that your colonists can’t seem to multitask. If they’re moving, they won’t be able to fire their guns, and vice versa.
The RunAndGun mod puts an end to it by allowing colonists to shoot while moving. For game balance purposes, these shots won’t be perfectly accurate. You can also tweak this mod to make it as strong or weak as you like.
Grim Reality
For someone who’s just survived a crash landing, your colonists can be very fussy. Their moods take huge penalties for even the slightest inconvenience. A simple spot of rain shouldn’t make them question their life choices!
Grim Reality brings a dose of realism to your colonists’ mindsets. Weird drawbacks like getting upset over tables are now scaled back. At the same time, truly terrible occurrences may make even more of an impact.
Dubs Bad Hygiene
If there’s one thing the RimWorld experience has lacked, it’s toilets. The Dubs Bad Hygiene mod aims to change that by adding a functional hygiene system. This includes toilets, sewage, bathing, irrigation, you name it!
Of course, this infrastructure isn’t there as eye candy. Your colonists will now feel the need to stay clean and waste-free. They’ll have all kinds of hygiene-related mood effects and needs you’ll have to attend to.
Set up Camp
Traveling across the planet in RimWorld can get boring. You’ll usually need to haul gear, food, and other colonists. And to make matters worse, you’ll need to “settle” in an area every time you want to set up camp.
Well, the Set up Camp mod fixes this by allowing you to camp anywhere. You’ll simply select your caravan on the map and choose the campsite option. That way, you can hunt, mine, and forage to your heart’s liking.
Hospitality
One gripe many RimWorld players have with the game is that visitors don’t have much purpose. They’ll arrive, stick around for a while, then wander off. The only exceptions are the traders, but they’re quite rare.
If you’re tired of how useless visitors are, install the Hospitality mod! It lets you build guest rooms to improve your relations with them. This can be a great way to make yourself more likable to another faction.
Common Sense
Your colonists are a lot of things, but they’re rarely clever. They’ll cook food in dirty rooms but will refuse to bring in all the ingredients they need at once. This can be cute the first few times, but it will soon start to annoy you.
The Common Sense mod makes your pawns slightly more sensible. For example, they’ll no longer stand around in the rain while idling. And if you want them to act even sillier, there’s an option for that as well!
These Are the Best RimWorld Mods
As you can see, the best RimWorld mods come in all types and sizes. The above list is a great place to get started with them! Keep in mind that not all mods will be compatible with each other, so test them one at a time.
Want to know more about what makes RimWorld such a joy to play? Keep checking out our RimWorld-related content!
