RimWorld: 15 Tips For Base Building

A player’s base is everything in RimWorld since it is a home for colonists and stores items. Improving a base will allow gamers to survive longer on the unforgiving planet where they have crash-landed. Players have discovered many tips that allow them to benefit from game mechanics unknown to some.

Making a few tweaks to a base will allow it to function better and improve its defenses from pesky raiders. Some of the improvements to a player’s base will also increase food output and allow players to house more colonists. These tips are great for people seeking to improve their base-building skills in RimWorld to progress further in the game.

Updated on March 3, 2024, by Aly Azmy: Players need to change their building style from the early game to later parts of their save. The list now includes changing room sizes for specific rooms such as bedrooms. The list also includes information about hallway sizes as it is an essential component for any large base in RimWorld. The list also touches on building a secondary base to experiment with resource gathering, but it comes with advantages and disadvantages. There are a lot of individual preferences in RimWorld, and this list is meant to assist players in finding what feels right.

15 Base Location

Base Tip: Scout Base Location

Before choosing where to place a base, there are a few things to consider, such as building close to fertile soil and avoiding map corners. Rich soil allows crops to grow 40% faster, giving players a significant advantage in their early game farms. Raiders will spawn in map corners, and keeping a base away from the edges will provide ample time to plan against an enemy attack.

While this last bit of advice is optional, playing in a large hills world will provide a base with natural defenses to play around. Building out in the open will leave any base exposed on all sides.

14 Freezer Room

Base Tip: Preserve Temperatures For Longer Periods

The freezer is the most valuable aspect of a base, as storing the colony’s food is essential. Maintaining the temperature in the freezer room is necessary due to power outages and occasional solar flares. The best way to preserve the temperature in the freezer room is to double-wall it, allowing the area to stay cooler for longer once the power cuts out. Building an airlock leading to a freezer will also help maintain temperatures inside a room.

Place the freezer as close as possible to the kitchen to reduce how much the colonist chef needs to move during cooking, and players can also use auto doors to cut down more time.

13 Recreational And Dining Room

Base Tip: Increase Morale

The moods of colonists are arguably the most important resource after food, as keeping them happy is vital for survival. Combining a recreational room with a dining room allows players to get more use out of each room. Once a colonist uses either room they will receive an impressive dining or rec room bonus.

The best way to improve a room is to add a sculpture made by a talented artist and use a colonist with a high level of construction to build all chairs, tables, and recreational objects.

12 Dedicated Workshop

Base Tip: Better Organization

Creating a large workshop area has several benefits compared to having them spread out. An essential tip for having a fast workshop is keeping a warehouse close to it, allowing colonists to get the necessary resources for their work with less delay.

Having one large room allows players to save space and forces colonists to socialize more frequently. To take it a step further, add some decoration into a workshop to make the environment look better for colonists, providing them with a mood buff.

11 Stone Blocks

Base Tip: Fire Proof

Wood walls and floors will only take players so far in RimWorld since fire is too risky to avoid. Using stone has many advantages compared to wood, such as having an increased beauty factor. Marble blocks have the highest beauty factor, followed by slate blocks.

Using marble flooring is a great investment to increase the beauty factor throughout a base while keeping players safe from fire. Make sure to assign a colonist to maintain the cleanliness of the beautiful new stone floors so that players can profit from them.

10 Walls And Killbox

Base Tip: Improved Defenses

Once a base is large enough, investing resources to wall up areas surrounding the base will increase defenses. Keeping one side accessible will cause most raid attempts to pick this path, allowing players to profit off turrets and sandbags and have a reliable defense system. To ward off Mechanoids, fans have created kill box designs that funnel raiders into a neat line.

Creating a kill box requires players to restrict base access to only one point of entry and create a long hallway to force raiders to attack one at a time. After the hallway, place the colonists as far as possible, giving them cover while they put out firepower. Adding turrets will improve damage output and provide help to colonists. Be sure to give better guns to colonists that have beneficial colonist traits such as toughness that improve combat ability.

9 Hydroponics

Base Tip: Indoor Farming

While rich soil is helpful for early game farming, hydroponics is better later in the world. While they are expensive to build, they allow crops to grow twice as fast as they would on rich soil; not all crops will benefit from the extra growth speed, potatoes do not utilize the full growth speed, but rice does.

Building hydroponics in a circle design surrounding a sunlamp will allow players to take advantage of the area, leaving only four empty spots for heaters. One crucial requirement for relying on hydroponics is creating backup batteries for power outages; this avoids the risk of crops dying.

8 Animal Pen

Base Tip: Alternate Food Sources

Farms provide players with a consistent source of food, but gamers will require animal products to create higher-quality meals for their colonists. Setting up a barn for animals to graze in is easy and requires limited effort. Most animals are herbivores or omnivores and players will have little trouble providing them with consistent food sources. Cows are among the best animals to enclose in a barn, due to their milk production and high meat quantity.

Look for an area full of grass to build the barn on. Build a large fenced area and place a fence gate on one side. After the fence is complete, click on one of the fences and the option to build a fence pen marker. Place the pen marker inside to mark the animal pen. Players can use other solid blocks such as a wall and add an animal pen inside a base.

Players can begin raising animals after completing an animal pen.

7 Prisoner Management

Base Tip: Prisoner Lockdown

Prisoners are a great way to increase future colonist populations or make good money. Building a will allow players to keep numerous prisoners at all times. There are two main prison designs, separate rooms or a joint cell. A joint cell has the downside of having all prisoners break out at once, which could be devastating if they escape at a bad time.

Separate cells are preferred as they are better at preventing a large prison outbreak. A good prisoner cell design has a bed, a light source, and a place to eat. Expanding cell space and adding statues will improve prisoners’ moods, allowing for faster recruitment and lowered escape chances. Building cells within a larger area is essential as prisoners will have to break out of another structure before they are free, this buys players some time to deal with an outbreak.

6 Hospital

Base Tip: Sanitary Room

Taking proper care of injured colonists is crucial to ensure their survival. Using bedrooms as hospitals will increase infection risk and will not accommodate a large number of colonists after defending against raiders. Setting up a hospital is expensive but will pay off in the long term as it will vastly improve survival rates for sick or injured colonists.

Dedicate an entire room for the hospital that will accommodate between 4 to 6 hospital beds. Normal beds will do until hospital beds are researched. Use sterile tiles for the floor as it provides a cleanliness buff and lowers the risk of infection. Add vital monitors when researched close to the beds and be sure to dedicate all beds as medical beds.

Lastly, create a nearby room for storing medicine and keep the room cold to preserve the medicine.

5 Temperature

Base Tip: Stabilizing Temperatures

Depending on where a colony is built, setting up ACs or heaters will be mandatory to survive a hot summer or freezing winter. Colonists will get a mood debuff if they are in unfavorable temperatures and managing colonists’ needs will keep their moods high. When placing ACs, be sure to keep the red arrow pointing outdoors as it will expel heat.

Vents will allow players to equalize temperatures throughout their base and save on electricity. Larger bases will require more ACs and heaters but keeping the entire base connected by vents is mandatory. Players can close vents during cold snaps and preserve heating to vital rooms such as bedrooms.

4 Limit Room Size

Base Tip: Unnecessary Space

Limiting room sizes saves resources and construction time but can bring mood debuffs if a room is too small. Having a larger interior gives a mood buff and requires 41 or more accessible tiles for that room. Having larger interiors increases travel time for pawns and can waste precious time.

Room size matters most for bedrooms as they have a direct effect on each individual pawn. Giving pawns bigger bedrooms gives a mood buff but a smaller room will suffice during the early parts of a game.

3 Wider Hallways

Base Tip: Future Expansion

Having a 1×1 wide hallway indoors becomes problematic in the later stages of the game. Having a wider hallway gives room for lighting and other objects, while also giving sufficient space to fight off any potential invaders. Pawns will also get slowed down when passing one another in a small hallway.

Many players agree that a 3-block wide hallway is the optimal design choice. Main base hallways can be even bigger and players can use the extra space to add artwork to increase morale.

2 2nd Base

Base Tip: Obtain More Resources

Once players have established their primary base, venturing off to find a good location for a 2nd base can bring lots of benefits. New bases give players access to more resources by mining all resources in the area without using deep drilling.

These bases don’t need to be permanent and are generally used by some players to have a smaller base to look after. The drawback of having two colonies is that players must focus on their favorite colony in the event of a simultaneous raid.

1 Experiment

Base Tip: Learning New Possibilities

The best way to improve in Rimworld is to experiment and try new things. Adding personal touches to bases is the defining factor of building in Rimworld as the mechanics allow for a wide variety of designs. Players can build grand and massive bases or choose smaller designs.

Make different base layouts for every playthrough and remember what works best and what does not. Try building inside a mountain in one playthrough and outside in another. Try building something new such as a bar and serve hard-working colonists a cup of beer. Learning to adapt to the harsh planet is the key to improving in Rimworld. Through continuous experimenting, players will find the best base designs that work for them.