This site already has two RimWorld pieces: a guide to the Odyssey gravship, an endgame mobility problem, and a breakdown of the 1.7 Waylith engine, a performance problem. Neither covers the thirty days before either matters. This one does: trait triage, Ideology precepts whose mood value exceeds their cost, and the freezer-and-power order.
Everything below assumes version 1.6, the branch the main game still runs. The wiki’s current PC version entry is 1.6.4850, dated 9 June 2026. Ludeon’s 12 October 2026 post puts 1.7 on the “unstable Steam branch” and says “the main branch that most people play on is unaffected and still on version 1.6 for now.”
What this covers: the first 30 days of a RimWorld 1.6 colony on a hard tile — which traits to refuse, which Ideology precepts refund their own cost, and the freezer-then-power build order. Why it matters: the opening month is the only stretch where the storyteller discounts threats and hands out free mood. Spending it on the wrong buildings is how a run dies on day 34. Who should care: players starting fresh after a break, Ideology owners who pick memes by flavour, and anyone who has bounced off a tundra or desert start.
The first 30 days are a discount, and wealth spends it
Three systems make the opening month easier than the rest of the game.
Raid points are the storyteller’s budget for threats. The wiki’s formula is (Wealth Points + Pawn Points) × Difficulty × Starting Factor × Adaptation Factor, and the Starting Factor is a plain schedule: 0.7 at day 10 and earlier, 1.0 at day 40 and after. For ten days every raid is bought at a 30% discount. By day 40 it is gone permanently.
Adaptation is the second. The score grows over time and drops when you take damage; it “starts at 0.8” and there is “a grace period of 30 days before the AdaptDays can go above 0.” The first month is the only month the storyteller is not tracking your success. The factor’s full range is 0.4 to 1.47, narrowed at “Losing is Fun” to an effective 0.75 to 1.19.
The third system is expectations, and it is the one players rarely name. Mood is partly a function of what colonists think they deserve, set by total colony wealth:
| Colony wealth | Expectation thought | Mood |
|---|---|---|
| 0 – 15,000 | Extremely low | +30 |
| 15,000 – 31,000 | Very low | +24 |
| 31,000 – 81,000 | Low | +18 |
| 81,000 – 182,000 | Moderate | +12 |
| 182,000 – 308,000 | High | +6 |
| 308,000 and up | Sky-high | 0 |
A new colony starts with +30 mood on every colonist. That is larger than a Sanguine trait (+12). It is also not on a timer — it is on your bank balance. Every silver of unused steel and every spare building moves you down that table.
Hence the first rule of the opening month: build what removes bad moodlets, not what adds wealth. A freezer and a roofed bed add a little wealth and delete recurring penalties. A stockpile of 900 unused steel adds wealth and does nothing.
Difficulty matters here: threat scale runs from 10% on Peaceful to 220% on Losing is fun, passing 100% at Strive to survive.
Colonist trait triage
Adults have one to three traits, and the wiki is blunt: “Adults cannot gain new traits, and there is no way to remove traits.” A starting pawn’s trait list is the shape of the run. Rerolling three colonists is the highest-return time you will spend.
The useful split is not good versus bad. It is mood floor versus work rate, because the month-one failure mode is a mental break, not a slow build.
| Trait | Sourced effect | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Sanguine | +12 permanent mood | Take |
| Depressive | −12 permanent mood | Skip |
| Iron-willed | Mental Break Threshold −18% | Take |
| Volatile | Mental Break Threshold +15% | Skip on a three-colonist start |
| Very neurotic | Work speed +40%, break threshold +14% | Only with two Sanguine or Iron-willed pawns |
| Too smart | Learning +75%, break threshold +12%; blocks nerve traits | Good, but no Iron-willed pairing |
| Industrious | Work speed +35% | Take |
| Quick sleeper | Rest Rate +50% | Take |
| Pyromaniac | Cannot firefight; only extreme break is a fire starting spree, MTB 50 days | Skip on a wooden start |
| Gourmand | Hunger rate +50%; food binges at MTB 50 days | Skip on a hostile tile |
| Sickly | Random disease at MTB 30 days | Skip — medicine is your scarcest input |
| Wimp | −50% Pain Shock Threshold; cancels Pain: Idealized mood | Skip for fighters, never with Pain is virtue |
Pyromaniac is the one to refuse outright: it cannot firefight, and its only extreme break is a fire-starting spree with a mean time of 50 days. In a wooden start that ends runs. Too smart is mutually exclusive with the nerve traits, so the best researcher in the pool may lock you out of Iron-willed.
Crashlanded gives three pawns chosen from eight; the one-pawn starts cannot carry a pawn with no construction or plants.
Ideology precepts that pay for themselves
Ideology is a separate expansion; the base store page lists five (Royalty, Ideology, Biotech, Anomaly, Odyssey). Do not assume the reader owns any of them. Without Ideology, world selection still offers “Ideology system inactive,” which disables most of the system while leaving leaders, a funeral and two party rituals. The rest of this section assumes the expansion is on.
The design principle: a precept pays when the condition it rewards is already true in your colony’s default state. One that demands a building you cannot afford, or a resource your tile lacks, is a permanent mood tax.
| Precept | What it does | Gate | Why it pays in month one |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pain: Idealized | Replaces −5 / −10 / −15 pain moodlets with +3 / +5 / +7 / +9 | Pain is virtue, or Guilty | Wounds are near-inevitable; the first raid’s aftermath becomes a buff |
| Comfort: Ignored | Disables the comfort need and all comfort thoughts | Pain is virtue | Deletes a need you cannot satisfy in a shack |
| Rough living: Welcomed | Nullifies −3 ate without table, −4 slept outside, −4 slept on ground, −3 soaking wet | Tree connection or Pain is virtue | The penalties a new colony eats daily |
| Temperature: Tough | Nullifies −4 slept in the cold and −4 slept in the heat | Tree connection, Pain is virtue, Shipborn | Any tile with a winter or summer; the wiki notes it changes only those moodlets, not hypothermia tolerance |
| Eating nutrient paste: Don’t mind | Prevents the −4 nutrient paste thought | Transhumanist or Inhuman | The dispenser uses less food and time than any other meal method |
| Neural supercharge: Preferred | −6 want thought at moderate expectations and above | Transhumanist | Trap — charges you for a building you will not have for dozens of hours |
Read it as a package, not a menu. Pain is virtue is a high-impact meme requiring Pain: Idealized, Comfort: Ignored and Slab bed: Preferred, and it unlocks Rough living: Welcomed and Temperature: Tough. One meme, five precepts, four of them subtracting penalties a starting colony would otherwise eat. Its only real cost is a preference for slab beds.
The catch is fluid ideoligions: a fluid one “only has access to 1 meme at the start of the game, which cannot be a high impact meme,” so it cannot open on Pain is virtue. It can buy its way there. Reformation costs 10 development points the first time and +2 per reform, to a maximum of 20, and rituals are the main source: an anytime ritual gives 1 point for a good outcome and 2 for a great one. You cannot store points — “once you can reform, no more points are gained” — so reform the moment you can.
Rituals are the other reliable mood source in the expansion. A dance party or drum party that lands on Fun gives +8, Unforgettable +16. Which party you get is scenario-locked: the wiki lists dance parties as “only available to non-tribals, unless playing in classic mode” and drum parties as “only available to tribals, unless playing in classic mode.” A Lost Tribe start has a good ritual a Crashlanded start cannot use, and vice versa.
The freezer-and-power order
The build order is decided by your scenario, because the scenario decides your starting research.
| Package | Scenarios | Already researched | Tech level |
|---|---|---|---|
| New Arrivals | Crashlanded, Rich Explorer, Naked Brutality | Passive cooler, stonecutting, complex clothing and furniture, electricity, air conditioning, nutrient paste | Industrial |
| New Tribe | Lost Tribe | Passive cooler, tree sowing, recurve bow, psychoid brewing, pemmican, fishing | Neolithic |
A New Arrivals colony can build a powered freezer on day one without researching anything. A New Tribe colony has no electricity at all, starts at Neolithic, and pays +50% research per level above Neolithic, capped at 200% at Industrial — so air conditioning costs double.
New Arrivals: freezer before stove. Spoilage slows below 10 °C, the rate between 10 °C and 0 °C is the temperature divided by ten, and at 0 °C “plant growth and food spoiling stopped.” A freezer is a room held at or below zero.
The cooler holds it there: 90 steel, 3 components, construction 5, air conditioning research, and 200 W while actively cooling, 20 W at target. Its default target is 21 °C, so set it down. It occupies a wall tile, cools its front face and heats its back face; “without a way to exhaust the heat, it will leak back to the cooler room.” Point the hot side outdoors or into an unroofed 1×1 “chimney.” At 46 °C outdoors, a 5×5 room with a single wall held −3 to −2 °C; the same room with double walls held −14 to −12 °C.
The passive cooler is not a substitute. It costs 50 wood, burns 10 wood per day, and cannot go below 17 °C — above the spoilage threshold, so passive coolers “are unable to preserve food.” It prevents heatstroke, not rot. On a Lost Tribe run, pemmican is the answer; that scenario starts with 400 pemmican, which the wiki estimates at “slightly more than 2 day’s worth of food.”
Power second, sized to the freezer:
| Building | Output | Cost | Research / skill | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wood-fired generator | 1000 W constant | 100 steel, 2 components | Electricity, Construction 4 | 22 wood/day; 75 fuel = 3.27 days per fill |
| Wind turbine | 2300 W, variable | 100 steel, 2 components | Electricity, Construction 4 | Scales with wind; needs clearance |
| Solar panel | 1700 W peak | 100 steel, 3 components | Solar panel, Construction 6 | Daylight only |
| Battery | storage | 70 steel, 2 components | Battery | 50% efficiency; “Zzztt” if rained on |
A minimal New Arrivals grid is one wood-fired generator. The load: cooler 200 W, nutrient paste dispenser 200 W, heater 175 W — 575 W against 1000 W, with the cooler idling at 20 W most of the time. That costs two components, which matters because components are the real constraint: Crashlanded starts with 30 and 800 silver; Lost Tribe starts with 500 wood and no components.
The dispenser costs 125 steel, 3 components, 200 W and construction 5, and consumes “less ingredients and time than any other meal production method.” Its drawback is a −4 thought — exactly the thought the Pain is virtue or Transhumanist package deletes.
The heater (50 steel, 1 component, 175 W, construction 5) comes before the freezer on a cold tile, and never on a hot one.
A build order for the first 30 days
My recommendation, assembled from the numbers above rather than from any single source.
- Days 0–3 — roof and stockpile. Get the meals and starting steel under a roof behind a door. Crashlanded starts with 50 packaged survival meals, which the wiki estimates at around 8 days of food, plus 720 steel and 3 ship chunks scattered nearby. Do not cook yet.
- Days 3–8 — the freezer shell. Small room, double wall on the exposed side, cooler in the wall, hot side into an unroofed chimney, target at or below 0 °C. The 3 components go here.
- Days 5–10 — the generator. One wood-fired generator, filled to its 75 capacity so nobody tops it up daily, with conduit to the freezer first.
- Days 8–15 — food infrastructure. Dispenser if your precepts allow it, stove and a cook if not. Keep raw stock adjacent to the freezer, not inside it.
- Days 15–25 — the mood floor. Beds, a table, one ritual. An Unforgettable party is +16 mood across every participant, more than a Sanguine trait.
- Days 25–30 — second exit and stone walls. Stone, not wood, anywhere adjacent to the freezer and generator. A fire-starting spree is survivable in stone.
Two mistakes account for most day-30 collapses. Building the impressive base first raises wealth — and therefore raid points — before anything removes a moodlet. And treating the freezer as a convenience: on a New Arrivals start it is a day-five building.
What is not confirmed
The precept values come from the RimWorld Wiki, whose current PC version entry is 1.6.4850; the wiki can lag a patch. Ludeon’s 1.7 announcement describes an engine swap and says the game “looks and plays exactly the same,” but 1.7 is unstable-branch only, so every number here is 1.6 behaviour until the main branch moves.
I have not verified any price or sale, and this does not assume you own any expansion. Biotech genes and Anomaly entities override several of these interactions, and I did not fetch those systems.