Rimworld is a sci-fi colony simulator that has an immense following and player base. Rimworld also has an extremely active modding community with some players using hundreds of mods in their playthroughs. The Steam workshop is where you can find 99% of these mods and to look through all ~7,000 could be extremely tedious. Some of these mods aren’t even up to date anymore! We’ve compiled a list of some of the best Rimworld mods.
This is not an exhaustive list leave a comment below after you’ve read through and let us know what great mod we’ve accidentally left out.
If you’re interested in more Rimworld content, check out our other posts here!
Guards For Me
A relatively new mod, Guards For Me lets you designate colonists to be patrol guards, bodyguards, and standing guards.
Patrol guards will follow set waypoints and attack any threats they see. You can make patrol guards walk the outside of your base to keep an eye out for any mad animals or incoming raiders.
Bodyguards will follow a colonist you designate and protect them from any enemies.
Standing guards will stay in one spot and attack any hostiles that come their way.
Guards For Me is a great way to defend your colony at all times. Sure, a kill box and some turrets should get the job done, but sometimes you need a human to make some rounds or follow your level 20 crafter around and make sure their arm doesn’t get ripped off by a mad bear.
This is also a great way to roleplay! Maybe your new colony has a drug operation and you want someone to guard the stockpile 24/7. Or maybe your new colony is an organ far… I mean prison and you need guards to walk the halls and beat would-be escapees with uranium maces (why haven’t you removed their legs yet?). The possibilities are endless!
Vanilla… Expanded
Vanilla… Expanded is a huge repository of mods by Oskar Potocki that add a variety of things to the game. From new armor, new factions, new animals, new furniture etc. these mods have it all! There are 15 (!) total mods in this collection to subscribe on the Steam Workshop and we highly recommend subscribing to all 15.
Here is a list of all 15 with links to their pages on the Steam Workshop.
- Vanilla Factions Expanded – Medieval
- Vanilla Factions Expanded
- Vanilla Animals Expanded – Extreme Desert
- Vanilla Animals Expanded – Desert
- Vanilla Animals Expanded – Arid Shrubland
- Vanilla Animals Expanded – Cats and Dogs
- Vanilla Animals Expanded – Livestock
- Vanilla Furniture Expanded- Security Module
- Vanilla Furniture Expanded – Spacer Furniture
- Vanilla Weapons Expanded – Combat Extended Patch
- Vanilla Armor Expanded
- Vanilla Apparel Expanded
- Vanilla Weapons Expanded
- Vanilla Furniture Expanded – Medical Furniture
- Vanilla Furniture Expanded
EdB Prepare Carefully
EdB’s Prepare Carefully mod is a must-have for anyone playing Rimworld that wants to customize their colonists. Typically, you just have to keep rerolling colonists till you get one you like, but with Prepare Carefully you can choose what traits your colonists have, their skills, even their appearance.
Prepare Carefully also has the option of using a point system so that you don’t start with overpowered pawns or items. If you want a balanced playthrough but also want to customize your pawns then this feature was made for you. That’s right, you can customize your starting items or animals too with this mod!
Prepare Carefully also has the option of saving your setup so that you can use it again for your next colony if you find yourself wanting to use the same pawns or traits over and over again.
This is one of the most popular mods on the Steam Workshop and should be one of the first mods you mess around with after a quick vanilla playthrough. Prepare Carefully is without a doubt one of the best Rimworld mods.
Expanded Prosthetics and Organ Engineering
This is an automatic install for me whenever I am reinstalling mods. If you like bionics, prosthetics, and organ harvesting then this is the mod for you. Expanded Prosthetics adds 4 new workbenches that let you craft simple prosthetics like peg legs all the way to advanced ones like bionic arms. One workbench even lets you craft your own organs! Synthetic kidneys and livers created right in your very own organ lab.
This mod is huge. While it does have a lot of late-game research and crafting, the basic prosthetics table does offer you some flexibility letting you tap into this mod early on. Pawn lose a leg? Craft them a peg leg at the basic prosthetics table!
I find myself constantly harvesting organs from prisoners to sell to caravans and trade ships. Expanded Prosthetics also adds two new traders – the textile and prostheses trader. Of course, this pairs well with another mod called Prisoner Harvesting. Prisoner Harvesting gets rid of the annoying debuff your colonists get from harvesting organs from prisoners.
Tilled Soil
While this mod technically hasn’t been updated since release it is still one of the most subscribed mods on the Steam Workshop. It is really simple and only does two things. Tilled Soil adds… well, tilled soil.
In the flooring menu, you will find “tilled soil” which is a buildable version of fertile soil. Tilled soil gives plants grown on it the same bonuses as fertile soil. Your crops will now grow with 200% fertility allowing you to focus more on base building and less on massive farms. Some consider the 200% overpowered, so it depends on your playstyle. Some players like to stick to the more “realistic” 100%.
You will also find that you now have the ability to rehabilitate stone floors into dirt so that you can make underground greenhouses.
Color Coded Mood Bar
This is a simple quality of life fix that lets you check your pawns mood very quickly. Color Coded Mood Bar adds at the top of the screen, you will see a colored bar behind each colonist’s figure. It should look something like the above image. The higher the bar, the happier the colonist. The lower the bar, the closer they are to having a mental break.
The colors are as follows:
| Red | Extreme Mental Break Threshold |
| Orange | Major Mental Break Threshold |
| Yellow | Minor Mental Break Threshold |
| Gray | Neutral Mood |
| Light Blue | Content |
| Green | Happy |
It’s a simple mod that really helps you keep track of who is happy and who is about to have a tantrum and smash their room.
Wall Light
Another simple mod, Wall Light adds a new light that can be constructed on walls. They can be rotated so that they face any direction and are perfect for placing above workbenches or next to beds. I find that they look neater than your standard floor lamps.
Wall lights follow the same research requirements of the regular standing lamp. There are also colored wall lights so you can still make that disco room your colonists are dying to have.
This mod is also extremely compatible with old saves. Simply install it and load up your old save and you will see the option to build them in the furniture menu. If you ever want to uninstall this mod you can either remove the wall lights in your save before uninstalling or simply just uninstall it. You’ll get a few errors on the first load in and your colony will be dark unless you remembered to build standing lamps before but otherwise, you’ll be fine.
This version does not include a wall sun lamp. If you want to get that as well, head on over to this link and install it. It essentially works the same as the above.
RPG Style Inventory
RPG Style Inventory is a great mod that replaces the original gear tab with an RPGesque inventory screen. It makes checking your colonist’s loadout a breeze. The color denotes the quality of the item and there is also a small icon in each square that tells you if the colonist is being forced to wear that item or if it was worn by a corpse.
Be aware that it may not be compatible with mods that add other slots on pawns. Check the mod page for more information on which mods it has been made compatible with.
While You’re Up
How many times have you seen a pawn walk by something that could be hauled to the destination they are going to? Not anymore! While You’re Up helps keep your colony running efficiently. Colonists will scan the surrounding area before starting a new task for anything that needs to be hauled to the area that their task is in.
So say your colonist is at point A and there is a stack of meals that need to get hauled to point B. Well, it just so happens that your colonist is the cook and point B is the freezer/cook area. Your colonist will grab that stack of food on their way to point B and drop it off before starting their job.
Its a really simple mod that helps out immensely and should be an auto-install for everyone.
And that wraps up what we believe are some of the best mods in Rimworld! We couldn’t list all of our favorites here, but these mods are a great place to start.