RimWorld Ideology Review – One of the Best Expansions

The alarms are blazing, and smoke fills the air. I’m making my way toward the escape pods, knowing that the attack on the ship is sure to break it apart. My only hope is to escape onto the Rimworld planet below. I encounter two others on the way, a young woman with a burn on her face and an old man wearing a technician jumpsuit. The old man is waving me in the direction of the pods, and he shoves the woman in just as another explosion rips into the hull.

There isn’t much time left – Fear propels me to leap into and strap in the pod, my only hope of survival. Inside is a bolt-action rifle, some food, and a bit of silver. It’s not much, but it’ll have to do. I… I murmur to myself a prayer to a god I thought I didn’t believe in as I press the Eject button. Two loud pshhhhhhh sounds accompany a metallic thump as the escape pod unlatches itself from the ship and begins an automatic de-orbit burn.

The ride is bumpy, with a constant rumbling of the air pressing against the fragile metal hull, heating it up to extreme levels as it enters the atmosphere at an orbital speed. For seven minutes, I thumbed at the pendant given to me by my mother of a god I found myself repeatedly begging for safe passage down to the planet below. The rattling and groaning of the pod’s metal against the wind grating at my nerves. Finally, the pod touches down, and blast charges blow it open, exposing me to the elements. I immediately fall to my knees and kiss the dirt at my feet, openly sobbing.

I was alive.

As I recovered my wits, I noticed the other two, the young woman and the old man. They, too, had touched down upon this blessed rock, this Rimworld – my new home. I introduce myself to them – and begin sorting through what we have available to try and survive. Once that was settled – we needed a place to stay. I was a structural engineer for an interplanetary construction corporation, so it was time to put those skills to good use.

Here’s to hoping the others share my newfound Rimworld Ideology… I think to myself as I thumbed the pendant once again.

Rimworld Ideology – What’s New?

That was kind of fun to write! Hey there, I’m MonoDex – I write about streaming stuff and occasionally do Game Reviews. In this article, I intend to write about Rimworld Ideology, one of its three major expansions. There are a lot of new things, which you can read in the Rimworld 1.3 – Ideology Full Change Log if you like for a complete rundown, but I’d like to highlight a few specific additions that caught my eye.

Major Quality of Life Improvement – Filtered Search Boxes

One of the biggest changes in terms of improving quality of life in this expansion, especially for those of us who run mountains of mods, is that you can now utilize a filtered search box vs. having to scroll through a massive list of things. This is a very welcome addition to Rimworld.

A New Pen System

Animals are quite endearing to me personally, so I like to be a sort of rancher when playing through RimWorld. While you could always set up a barn and limit the movements of your animals to within the barn, there was nothing decoration-wise that really set a barn apart from the rest of the base.

If you didn’t restrict them to a specific area, they’d simply open the door and walk on through. Rimworld Ideology tackles this issue with a number of cool additions.

• You can now create animal pens using fences rather than walls
• Handlers will now lead animals using rope instead of animals simply following your exact demands.
• Animal flaps to allow animals to pass without leaking temperature.
• Egg boxes now exist – I can’t tell you how annoying it was to find an egg in a large base when your animals hadn’t yet been contained.
• Animal Sterilization – Finally, you can prevent cats from infinitely reproducing and annihilating all the small species on the map. Seriously – I started with two cats and quickly became the crazed cat guy by the sheer number of new cats.
• Animals can now be Released into the Wild – HUZZAH! It was a pain to deal with a self-taming boomrat, and this makes it a bit easier.

New Raid Type – Breach Raids

A Breach raid is one where the pawn logic differs a bit – instead of taking the shortest unobstructed path, raiders will instead work to break down your walls into an undefended spot. This will make defending your base a fair bit more challenging. You’ll need to reinforce external areas of your base, with defensive structures placed throughout.

There is also a new weapon, a mechanoid type specializing in breach raids – be wary.

I had this happen once, and it resulted in the loss of two colonists. They are quite difficult to deal with if you’re breached in a particularly vulnerable area.

Vegan & Carnivore Meal Separation

It was always a challenge to have a colony that was made up of both vegetarians and omnivores. Now, meals will only stack with meals with similar ingredient types. This is especially useful for those of you who… enjoy certain taboo delicacies of the other other other white meat.

This is one of the most helpful changes for managing a colony that has specific culinary tastes that vary.

Gameplay – Social Experiences That Can Evolve Over Time

The Idealogy system activates throughout the entire world. Now, each faction has an ideology system in place. Cannibalistic Raiders, Darklight mole men who love being indoors, nudist nature-lovers who decry chopping down nature, and many others.

You can build your own system of values and precepts that followers of the religion will also share. There are also a lot of different social events that can now be manually triggered by you at the proper location.

• Leader Speech – Inspire all participants of your colony, adding a positive mood effect if it turns out well. It can also have the opposite effect if your leader stumbles over their words. Your leader should have a high social attribute if you want them to be effective.
• Hot Air Lanterns – Ever seen Tangled? Those lanterns are now in Rimworld as a social event you can practice roughly every 20 days. These lanterns can attract new colonists to join you, raise your goodwill with a nearby faction, or attract animals to join your colony. The effects are normally randomized, but they can also be chosen at certain points after completing a certain number of quests in Rimworld.
• Dance Party – Dance parties are simply fun events where colonists can dance and chat while playing chess and other recreational events. It is great for building up the social skills of your colonists, and building relationships
• Ritual Funeral – This event is only available at the passing of one of your colonists who share the same Ideology that practices this. You need at least three members who share the same Ideology as the deceased member to trigger this. They will then mourn their passing, and speak of the times they spent together before laying them to rest.

These are only a few examples that I have available to me in my playthrough so far. Many other possibilities are available if you choose a different precept. For example, a pawn who follows Raidism in my colony likes to host gladiator matches between prisoners. However, I never triggered that event because 1: I don’t take prisoners; I Tend them on the spot without medicine and let them walk away, and 2, I can barely afford to feed my colony, nevermind prisoners. Plus, the medicine use can’t be spared when I’m busy constantly expanding my base.

Abilities Available –

Aside from abilities designed to convert people to your new Ideology, you can counsel pawns into temporarily forgetting the effects of a negative mood effect. This is available to the Counselor role of Individualistic community members. Other abilities are available to these new roles within the community, but again, as there are so many different types of Ideology systems within Rimworld, it’s nearly impossible to list all of them without multiple hours of playtime using each system.

I do know there are things like “Mining Specialist” due to a colonist that joined my community at random having that option, but I don’t know the extent of these more specialized roles in communities. But since you can’t assign a role to a member unless you have three members within your colony, I couldn’t test it.

Conclusion – Ideology is A Great Addition, Made Better By BioTech

Having played multiple playthroughs of Rimworld over the years, Ideology shook the boat on how the game was played quite a bit. There are a lot of different tools now available for building up a community. Paired with the newer Biotech expansion, the system was expanded even further, with things like a community of vampires becoming a possibility.

All these things enhance and expand the ways that you can play Rimworld. I feel like the Ideology expansion is one of the best additions to the game, just because you now have more control over the social interaction between your colonists. This was one area I felt was lacking, and this expansion shored up that weakness and turned it into a strength that fit into the game.

Overall, the Ideology expansion is well worth buying if you enjoy playing Rimworld. It is just an overall better experience that plays at all levels of the game, from beginning to end.