Widely acclaimed and generally beloved, the colony simulator title Rimworld is quite unlike most other games, short of Dwarf Fortress itself. The thing is, though, that Rimworld is a lot of things to a lot of people, and that’s at least partially due to its impressive array of mods.
Indeed, most Rimworld players make good use of community mods – as one does – and virtually everyone’s got their own list of must-haves and niche upgrades. In other words, not everyone’s going to want to install each and every popular Rimworld mod, but this did make us think: which mods are the most likely to make their way into the vast majority of mod lists?
15 best mods for Rimworld
#15: Wall Light
Why not kick things off with a true Rimworld classic? The Wall Light mod is, quite simply, the ability to add a simple light onto the walls of your rooms and then customize it however you feel is right. Thanks to its immense utility, however, Wall Light is one of those mods that most players will install and rely on, to the point where we’re surprised the base game didn’t receive something similar over the years.
#14: Door Mat
Is neatness a consideration for you but just a thing to be ignored for your Rimworld pawns? Get the Door Mat mod, which adds – you’ve guessed it – a literal door mat item that prevents your colonists from tracking dirt all over the place. Useful? Not really, but it sure is neat.
#13: QualityBuilder
QualityBuilder is an extremely handy, if a tad complex, mod that allows you to set the baseline minimum quality you want your built objects to have. In turn, this results in a situation where only your most skilled builders will take up specially designated tasks, which leads to higher-quality furniture and better hideouts in general!
#12: Misc. Training
Wanna give your pawns something to do while also training them for crisis situations? Misc. Training is just the mod for you, introducing shooting targets, martial training dummies, and archery targets as buildable objects. The mod also adds a dedicated training task, giving you even more control over your pawns’ free time (or the lack thereof!).
#11: Search and Destroy
Rimworld is a pretty difficult and complicated game, even when you’re not under siege. When the proverbial barbarians are at the walls, though, it’s easy to lose track of who’s doing what and where all the enemies are. Search and Destroy alleviates much of combat’s innate micromanagement by adding the special S&D order that tasks your pawns with seeking out enemies and, well, taking them down. This means your pawns won’t lounge around while mooks are prowling about, and you don’t need to direct them every step of the way!
#10: Ugh You Got Me
Social fights can be a huge pain in some Rimworld survival scenarios, to the point where they can even result in actual pawn deaths and total wipeouts. Ugh You Got Me generally prevents this from happening, making it so that most pawns will stop their social fights if one of them gets badly hurt.
#9: RimHUD
Rimworld bombards you with information, but as you slowly come to grips with the game, you may find that it really could do a better job of telling you what’s actually going on with your pawns. That’s where RimHUD comes into the picture: a comprehensive but remarkably stealthy heads-up display expansion that’s going to let you get more information in a package that’s ever-so-slightly easier to parse. Extremely handy stuff, especially for long survival sessions.
#8: Combat Extended
Rimworld’s combat is functional but decidedly unexciting and driven almost entirely by random number generation. This is fair, for sure, but you’re not totally stuck with it if you want something a bit more interesting. Combat Extended essentially reworks everything about Rimworld’s combat and its adjacent features, going so far as to simulate a ballistics model for projectile weaponry. Expect new features that rival something out of the old X-COM games and a thorough change-up of Rimworld’s medical, inventory, and armor systems.
#7: Smarter Construction
Doesn’t it suck how, during long and/or complex building projects, your pawns will sometimes straight-up build themselves into impassable walls and whatnot? Depending on how complicated your buildings get in Rimworld, this could very well be a huge pain, and the delightful Smarter Construction mod resolves it elegantly. Small issues stack up quickly in this game, and you don’t need your colonists to work against you every step of the way after all.
#6: Share The Load
It’s strange how, by default, Rimworld doesn’t let you assign multiple pawns to do the same thing. Share The Load resolves that strange omission, allowing you to have multiple people delivering resources, clearing out construction spots, and other assorted tasks. This not only makes these jobs substantially faster but also allows you to cut down on potential dilly-dallying, as even your most useless pawns will be capable of carrying stuff to and fro.
#5: Common Sense
Common Sense is a mod that adds a whole new layer of quasi-intelligence to your Rimworld pawns. They will now, for example, prefer using food that’s about to go bad while cooking or seek outdoor recreation when possible. There are a lot of moving parts to Common Sense, so you may wish to avoid it if you want to minimize AI complexity, but it’s a bit of a must-have in our own playthroughs, so we do recommend it.
#4: Save Our Ship 2
The final goal of any given Rimworld match is to escape the planet you’ve been stranded on, but what if you wanted to continue playing, instead, in a New Game+ sort of way? Enter Save Our Ship 2, the complex, somewhat faulty, and often hotly contested mod that massively expands upon Rimworld’s endgame progression and gameplay. It won’t be for everyone, we’ll concede, but those who enjoy the idea of continuing their runs well into the future ought to consider it.
#3: Vanilla Expanded
We are cheating a bit with this one, but the Vanilla Expanded is a widely acclaimed series of mods that feels like a natural upgrade to most things Rimworld. Developed by the prolific Rimworld modder Oskar Potocki, Vanilla Expanded upgrades the game’s textures, furniture, artwork, production modules, weapons… anything and everything, really. If, however, you’d like to keep some things fully vanilla, all of Potocki’s mods are standalone modules, so you can pick and choose what goes into your installation. Neat!
#2: Replace Stuff
By default, Rimworld does not allow you to replace items and walls with, say, upgraded alternatives. This results in situations where you could end up having to move loads of stuff around just to make base upgrades and customizations. No more! Replace Stuff lets you do precisely what it says on the tin, with the added bonus of letting you build over-wall coolers. A huge quality-of-life improvement that you won’t be able to live without after you give Replace Stuff a shot.
#1: Rocketman – Performance Mod
There’s virtually no reason not to install this mod, even if you aim to experience Rimworld in its most vanilla form. You’re getting big loading time reductions, improved stability and performance, and the ability to have way more pawns in the overworld, thanks to Rocketman’s tick rate optimizations. We highly recommend the mod if you can’t tell.
