Difference between revisions of "Naked Brutality Guide"

Latest revision as of 18:25, 22 April 2024

In the Naked Brutality scenario, you start with absolutely nothing, not even clothes.

Because of this, it is possibly the hardest scenario of all.

Note: The bulk of this guide was made assuming Core RimWorld, without any of its DLC. See DLC Considerations for how each one applies to Naked Brutality.

Scenario Parameter[edit]

Summary: Naked, alone and utterly unprepared. Can you survive?
Description: You went under anaesthetic for a minor surgery. Now you've awoken in a drop pod crashing into a distant planet. You're naked, alone and utterly unprepared. Can you survive?

Start with one person, chosen from eight
- They will be 'New Arrivals'
Start with no items
Colonist arrives naked

Starting colonist[edit]

Your colonist should be capable of most tasks, even if they aren't good at them. A colonist incapable of Caring can and will die to a single bleeding wound (and is unable to recruit transport pod crashes or raiders). It is certainly possible to rely on spike traps at the start, but being incapable of Violence is ill-advised. And, of course, a colonist should be able to do basic colony-creation tasks like Dumb Labor, Construction, and Growing.

Skills[edit]

The following skills will make survival easier, but being great at them is not essential:

Construction: Building shelter to live in, and deconstructing ruins. You need 3 Construction to build a spike trap, and 4 Construction for electrical equipment like wind turbines.
Plants: Growing crops and harvesting berries. A stable and reliable source of food.
Social: Recruiting new colonists and trading. If you are lucky enough to capture a raider, then you can use your Social skills to recruit them - once you can spare the food and the time.
Crafting: Making equipment and misc. crafting. High crafting is less immediately important than the other stats, but you'll need 2 Crafting to make a short bow.
Mining: Extracting mineral resources like steel. More useful after settling down to begin expansion, though mining rare minerals early on can help you trade for things that are hard to make.

You don't need them to be interested or skilled in any of them, but if you do then it's a plus. Passion in skills you'll be using a lot, such as construction or plant cutting, can also help your colonist's mood.

Some other skills are better left for future colonists. Animals, Intellectual, and Artistic can be useful skills, but are less important than building up a working shelter for survivial. Early on, you shouldn't be making sculptures. Certain research projects might be "essential", like hydroponics, but even an 0 Intellectual pawn can sit in a research bench all day once their initial needs are met.

Traits[edit]

Besides skill, you should also have a colonist with a decent trait selection.

These traits are especially harmful:

Gourmand: 150% hunger means that you'll be spending a lot more time on food production.
Pyromaniac: If your lone colonist breaks, nothing but the rain can extinguish the fires started.
Volatile, Depressive: Having your lone colonist break down is not a good thing to happen, as this will put them right out of action, stagnating progress.

Some traits are more helpful:

Industrious, Jogger: Finishing your work faster means you can get more done. This is especially useful if only 1 colonist's doing everything. Jogger can also be useful in combat.
Fast learner: Improving your skills faster is very handy, as 1 colonist doing everything gives ample opportunity to train up skills.
Super-immune: So that an instance of plague doesn't mean immediate death.
Mood traits: Iron-willed and Sanguine are universally valuable, and more so in Naked Brutality. More off-the-wall traits like Ascetic, Nudist, and Cannibal can also help a lot with mood.

Starting Out[edit]

The Absolute Essentials[edit]

There are four things you must need in order to survive on a rimworld, in order of priority:

Food. Colonists can technically survive for 4.7 days without food, but with a rapidly increasing mood and work penalty.
Shelter. A basic bed and furniture, inside a room. In more extreme biomes, a naked colonist will be vulnerable to heatstroke or hypothermia, so you'll need temperature regulation too.
Security. Randy Random can send raids on day 1. The other storytellers at least give a few days before the first mad animal, but you'll need defenses soon enough.
Mood. A "minor" break as a raid is happening can easily be fatal. With 1 colonist, extreme breaks (catatonic, given up, run wild) are direct colony-ending threats. At the very least, any mental break is a major time setback. While extremely low expectations and initial optimism are significant mood buffs, let your colonist eat, recreate, and sleep to avoid any sort of breakdown.

Remember that your most valuable resource is your starting colonist's time. Use it wisely, including pausing the game as needed. On the first day, your colonist should be focusing on the former two goals.

Food[edit]

Rice plants are the fastest growing food crop, and thus very high on the priority list. While it may not help on day 1, the harvest can be a lifesaver by day 7 or 8. Once you've harvested the first batch of rice, food ceases to be an issue. Focus on growing crops in rich soil, as the first harvest will come quicker. Colonists cut down trees in a growing zone, allowing you to handle wood and food at the same time.

As a rule of thumb, 20-30 tiles of rice in rich soil - less than a 6x6 plot - is enough to sustain a single colonist when cooked into simple meals, harvesting immediately with decent plants skill, until the next rice harvest. This figure gives some leeway, to allow for colonist inefficiency or the occasional blight/fire. It does not account for winter - for biomes with a cold season, you'll need more food.

But it's still day 1, and you'll need food immediately. You have 2 options in this regard:

Harvest berry bushes, or in desert biomes, agave.
Hunt animals with a short bow, made in a crafting spot with some wood. Also some gives leather to make clothing with.

A colonist requires 32 berries or raw meat to survive, per day. Once you have the time to cook, 2 simple meals - or 20 units of raw food - are also enough to satisfy food needs.

If there is a stand of wild berries near your shelter, you can put a growing zone on them and forbid sowing. This way your colonist will automatically harvest the berries when they're ripe, without you having to manually select the plants to harvest.

Even with rice, the amount of work required to grow a colonist's worth of food isn't that much in practice. However, you may want to grow another, slower food crop - do this after you've planted enough rice to feed yourself. Later on, you may want to grow food to sustain more colonists, or survive the winter.

Hunting / Scavenging

Melee hunting risks your colonist's health.

Automatic hunting is inefficient - colonists will shoot as far as possible. It's better to shoot animals with manual draft, until they're bleeding. As the animal bleeds out, you can do other things. With a shortbow, it's safe to hunt any animal with a 0% manhunter chance. You can also scavenge for corpses taken by predators. Look in the Animals tab; if you see a damaged predator, there's likely prey left behind.

If your starting colonist has high melee skill and low shooting, it is possible to manually draft and hunt with a melee weapon. This may be effective for smaller game such as rats (but not boomrats!), or modestly-sized animals such as turkey or raccoons. Even 0% revenge chance animals fight back in melee, although you will be only fighting one alpaca rather than a whole herd.

Shelter[edit]

The first consideration for a beginning base is rich soil. This makes the first batch of rice grow faster, but also helps with any future plant endeavors. The next are ruins - pre-placed walls throughout the map. You can use them to your advantage. Place wooden walls and doors to "complete" the ruin, roof it over, and live inside for some time. Or you could deconstruct the ruin for its steel/stone. Living near steel ore will make the first few mining sessions easier.

Naked brutality means that wooden walls are an acceptable risk. A wood structure is better than nothing, though it remains vulnerable to fire. Upgrade before lightning or raiders take the decision out of your hands. Right now, place a catch-all stockpile zone indoors. If you don't have space, then place them anywhere else. A small roof can preserve items outdoors.

In extreme temperatures, it's worth the time to make double-thick walls in the 1st quadrum. This increases the insulation, so it takes less effort to heat/cool the shelter. A heat-regulated room keeps your colonist alive while avoiding mood penalties.

Steam geysers

If you are in a cold biome or starting in winter, building a shelter around a steam geyser will help you save on wood. In an ice sheet, it may be the only option to survive the first few days. If you need to let heat out, open a few tiles of roof or leave the door open.

Once you are able to expand your structure, keeping the steam vent in a separate room lets you keep it as an optional source of heat. When you don't need heat, the roof can be removed. In cold weather, replacing the roof and adding a vent that leads to your living space can get you heat without using wood or electricity.

Eventually, you can create a geothermal generator for a powerful source of electricity. In any biome, this is worth considering when planning out a future base.

Equipment[edit]

At the beginning, you will need some form of weapon, for both hunting and defense. A short bow is the easiest and only ranged weapon you can create without further research.

After you gather enough leather from hunting, you can make tribalwear to cover yourself up, using 60 of any textile at a crafting spot. Tribalwear covers both torso and legs, takes less work to make, and doesn't require a tailoring bench. Plus, it insulates better against the elements.

Once you've made a hand tailor bench, you'll be able to craft better quality clothing. While you can't make all clothing from leather, there's good options for every biome. Parkas are great against cold, dusters great against heat. Both require 80 of any textile to make. A tuque for cold, or cowboy hat for heat, are good headwear options.

If wood is scarce, you may wish to build a leather bedroll. Alternatively, you can use steel or stone to make a bed, if you have enough left to spare.

If you've changed the scenario to have your sole colonist be Tribal, a bedroll, tribalwear, and scavenged/purchased outerwear will be your only option.

Medicine[edit]

Go to your colonist's Health tab and turn on self-tend. If the "Self-tend" check box is not turned on, your colonist will not treat their own injuries. Diseases and infections need to be treated IMMEDIATELY.

Harvest a few healroot as early as possible, if available in your biome. Once this is finished, click Assign and set your colonist to carry 3 herbal medicine. If your colonist has 8 skill in Plants, it's a good idea to make a small growing zone and plant some heatroot as soon as food is settled. Healroot is the only crop barring trees which is not killed by cold temperatures, so it is always worthwhile to plant more if you can.

With even a few points of medical skill, herbal medicine should be enough to keep your colonist alive. The sooner you tend an injury and the cleaner your living space, the lower the chance of infection. If you're away from your shelter, self-tending where you stand is better than taking a long walk back. Tending with some form of medicine is better than no medicine. And no medicine is much better than letting yourself bleed out from a single squirrel. Allow your colonist to get bed rest after getting an infection or illness; this gives a small, but valuable boost to immunity gain speed.

Next step[edit]

Defense[edit]

Luring raiders across traps means you don't have to risk fighting yourself. If they don't die immediately, be sure to take their clothes.

With only 1 pawn and barely any wealth, raids will consist of only 1 raider. Even as you accrue more colonists and material, raids will remain this small for a while. Alternatively, you can stay 1 colonist / low wealth for years on end, living in squalor until you finish some research and/or find a very desirable recruit.

Without equipment or manpower, the name of the game is spike traps. Luring raiders into traps will make it much easier to win. Place traps at chokepoints or in the corners of buildings, or make a trap tunnel.

Check your raiders' Health tabs often. If they're more injured than your colonist, running around in circles until they're downed can help you win without risking further injury. Terrain can also be used to your advantage if you have even a slight lead on them and your speed is at least equal to theirs. Running across a wet or debris-filled area and turning around to take a shot at them while they're slowed can help you chip away at the raider's health.

New colonists[edit]

All storytellers, including Randy, have a "population intent" factor. They consider 4 colonists to be the 'critical minimum'. With only 1 pawn, they will frequently send events that will net new colonists, such as transport pod crashes and refugee quests. They will also reduce the enemy death on down chance.

The moral of the story is that you can be picky with new colonists. Consider if you can spare the time to feed and/or recruit them. You may want to wait until you get a great colonist, with good traits and/or skills that your colony needs.

If a new arrival has poor or actively harmful traits, then you may need to banish them, which comes with a −3 moodlet. Murder is an alternative - let a murder victim bleed out to death, in order to avoid −5 Witnessed ally's death. If a colonist dies without any witnesses, the same -3 moodlet is given.

Having 3 colonists at all will most likely allow the Man in Black event to occur. It doesn't matter what happens to the other colonist afterwards.

Ways of obtaining new colonists:

Here are the ways a new colonist can be gained. An attempt has been made to start with the worst and end with the best, though this is somewhat subjective.

Off-colony quests - Whenever you're rescuing a prisoner or saving an incapacitated refugee, you'll have to fight some enemy. A colonist with decent weapon and excellent combat skills might be able to pull this off. But dry lightning, raiders, etc. may destroy your base while you're gone.

Taking prisoners: Either from enemy transport pod crashes or downing raiders. Recruiting prisoners can take a lot of time, especially with poor Social skill. During this time, you'll have to feed another mouth that won't do any work. The time your colonist spends wardening is time they cannot spend hunting, harvesting and building defenses. Good colonists are still worth recruiting this way - at least with prisoners, you can choose to save them or not at no penalty.

Wild (human) wanders in: Any colonist with an Animals skill of 6 or higher can attempt to tame a wild human. Wild humans have a fairly high chance to turn manhunter on tame fail, and your colonist will be in close melee range if that happens. On the plus side, wild humans are always naked and unarmed. Note that they will harvest and eat un-walled crops if you simply ignore them.

Man in black: Man in Black events are extremely rare before you get a second and third colonist. This event would technically gain you a new colonist if it ever happened - but it probably won't.

Refugee chased: These are usually worth accepting, if your starting pawn and defenses are in decent shape. Even the slightly stronger raids from this event can be a single raider, or 2-3 relatively weak raiders. If you dislike the new colonist, banish them.

Purchasing humans: Slavers and friendly towns may have enslaved humans for sale. If you can afford one, they can join as a new member. With Ideology, these colonists may join as a proper slave - this is listed in the trader menu. This method has the benefit of knowing what your new colonist's skills and traits are before they join. The main drawback is opportunity cost: on average, with low-to-medium skill in Social, a human will set you back 1000-2000 silver.
- Over time, humans are less and less likely to be available at towns, and slaver caravans are uncommon. In most cases, by the time you can afford a human there are no longer any for sale.
- One possible way to get this money - if your colonist doesn't mind - is organ harvesting. A lung, kidney, and heart from a captured raider are generally enough to buy someone, even at a 1.4x markup. You'll need some medicine first, however.

Transport pod crash: Pod crashes can be part of a present faction, an enemy faction, or be completely unaffiliated. All transport pod crash victims arrive seriously injured. They will almost always die if not rescued. You may need to draft-tend to them on the spot. Rescue them, then strip them and steal their clothes, then decide what you want to do. Pod crashes often have good clothing, such as a duster or parka.
- If they would not be a good addition to your colony, you can just leave them to die.
- If the transport pod crash victim looks like an acceptable new colonist, you should try to rescue them. Members of enemy factions need to be captured and recruited as a prisoner. An unaffiliated refugee or member of friendly faction may choose to join after you've rescued them. You can arrest the victim, but if they are part of an existing faction, then this will anger the faction.
- They will do so as soon as they regain consciousness - if their status changes to "injured" (instead of unconscious / incapacitated / pain shock) and they have not joined, they are not going to. As soon as they are able to walk, you can deconstruct their sleeping spot or uninstall their bedroll, and they will leave on their own.

Wanderer joins: The easiest possible way to gain a colonist. Rejecting a wanderer at the event's prompt will give the same −3 penalty as actually banishing them. There is no reason why you shouldn't accept a wanderer. If you like them, keep them. If you don't like them, take their stuff and then banish them.

After you find an acceptable second colonist, things will start to be much smoother and easier.

Long-term food[edit]

After your first batch of rice is planted, you can consider growing other crops. Both potatoes and corn grow slower, meaning it takes much less work for the same amount of food. With only a single colonist, work time is much more important. It isn't ideal to rely on rice for too long. However, you'll have to grow enough rice to feed your colonist until a slower crop finishes

In winter biomes, corn might grow too slow before winter hits. Only grow corn if you have more than 20 days left before the growing season ends. Otherwise, just grow potatoes. Potatoes are also better in poor soil, such as in the desert, where there is little soil available.

Food security: You will likely not have the time or extra resources to build walls around your crop fields, at first. Separating your crop field in different locations can also help avoid losing all your crops if there is Blight, an unlucky lightning strike, or if a raider spawns close to your field while you are too far away to put out the fire.

Growing zones should be fairly close to your shelter, to cut down on travel time for your colonist. Ideally, you should build your shelter near some rich soil to begin with.

Foreword[edit]

If you've survived with a stable source of food, a small shelter, and some clothes, the initial challenge of Naked Brutality is over. As you recruit colonists and loot/buy/craft gear, your playthrough will slowly start to feel like a Crashlanded playthrough. You'll still need to gather resources like steel and components, but now you have the time to relax and build up.

After death[edit]

It is very likely that your starting colonist will die, even if you've planned well and made prudent choices.

One way to extend this scenario is to choose "Keep playing" after your starting colonist dies. Set the game to speed 3, and wait for a "Refugee chased" or "Wanderer joins" event. Your AI storyteller should send you a colonist-adding event within the next several days.

If anything survives of your base that has not been destroyed by raiders or natural disaster, your new colonist can use what's left to rebuild. As a bonus, refugees and wanderers are often wearing at least a few clothes. Between that and the work done by your starting colonist, the newcomer will have an even better chance of survival.

Extreme Biomes Survival[edit]

The above will work fine in normal biomes, but if you start in extreme biomes, you will need a different set of survival tactics.

Generally, wood and Healroot is scarce or even nonexistent in Extreme Desert and Tundra, so you are unable to make bows for hunting. If you choose these biomes, it's better to choose a colonist with high melee skill instead of shooting.

Extreme Heat Biomes[edit]

The most dangerous threat in hot biomes is the temperature, rather than the lack of food. Heat waves will kill you for sure if you are unprepared.

You need to build a temperature controlled room as soon as possible. Simply a wind turbine and cooler already help.

If you start as a tribe (through changing the scenario), stock enough wood for the passive cooler. Planting saguaro cactus will provide a fast and reliable source of wood, helping you to build up your base and fuel for passive coolers, especially for extreme desert runs.

Food is actually not a big problem here after the first few days. There's gravel everywhere that you can grow potato and other plants. You may get pretty hungry in the first few days or have to eat some raw iguana while your day 1 rice is growing. But after the first harvest, things will go much better. Heat waves will slow down the growth rate of the plant but won't kill them, so the food supply is steady.

Keep an eye on wild animals. In deserts, there's only a few naturally grown plants for the animals to eat, so a group of camels will be a big threat to your farmland. Better hunt them down soonest or enclose the farmland with walls. Thrumbo in particular should be hunted if you can do so safely.

Extreme Cold Biomes[edit]

These recommendations are for Ice Sheet.

An ascetic cannibal is highly recommended. If your colonist has a mental break before you acquire a parka they are very likely to die. Your pawn will need high skill in mining, construction and melee, since there is no wood to make fires or low-tech ranged weapons. Research is more important in this biome, as your pawn will need advanced technologies more quickly to survive the harsh landscape.

The first day[edit]

Look for a steam geyser somewhere on the map. Ideally it should be close to a hill with a deposit of steel, but in a pinch any steam geyser will do. This is where your first shelter should go.

Create a stockpile and butcher spot near where you plan to build the shelter. The only animals on the map will be a handful of snowhares and a predator such as an arctic wolf or arctic fox. Drafting your colonist and punching a snowhare or two right away, before hypothermia sets in, may result in fewer injuries than waiting until you can craft a club. (Be sure to turn on self-tend in the Health tab!) The animals will likely disappear at night when the cold gets more intense, and may not return the second day.

Mine at least 70 steel. A skilled miner can get that from mining 2 tiles but most characters will need 3. Extra is good if you can get it, since hypothermia gives your pawn a penalty to manipulation, which increases the chances of botched construction. But don't spend too long; you have only a few hours before your pawn collapses from hypothermia. Steel is faster to work with than stone blocks, so trying to do this by deconstructing a ruin is more likely to result in death.

This much steel will allow you to build a tiny shelter around the steam geyser. You can build nine wall sections and a door: three tiles long on two sides, two tiles long on the short side, and then one wall segment next to the door.

By the time your pawn's hypothermia is gone, they will have heatstroke. This is fine. Go mine more steel and bring it back to your shelter. Use it to craft a few extra walls, and perhaps a club.

This is fine.

Build a second, larger room connected to your first shelter and set the door between the two rooms to "hold open," the temperature in the outer room will cycle between a little too low and a little too high. This will make it possible for your pawn to get a full night's rest without dying.

The next few days[edit]

Add corners to your shelter and build at least one steel spike trap. Then you can start getting steel and components to build your first wind turbine and electric heater. Deconstructing ruins can get you more stone for stone walls and furniture such as a table, stool and a bed. Double walls around the outside of all your living areas can help retain warmth from steam geysers or heaters.

It is possible to build an indoor grow room even before you have enough power for a sun lamp, as long as you have heat. There is a small amount of usable dirt around the hills on an ice sheet. As long as at least 75% of the roof remains covered, you can remove the roof above your grow zone. The heater will still be able to heat the room slightly faster than the heat is lost through the open part of the roof. If there is a steam geyser close to a patch of stony soil, this can be used as extra heat as well. Over time, an enclosed steam geyser seems to provide about as much heat as 1.5 campfires. (This is an estimate based on experience; testing is needed.)

Within the first few days, there should be a traveler passing by. If you are able to kill them, you can take their clothes and weapons. Even a non-cannibal may need to consume human meat in this instance, particularly if the wildlife has not returned. Be sure to put their parka on (tainted or otherwise) before doing so.

It's best to lure your first raider across a spike trap. A pawn with great melee skill could defeat them in combat, but even if they win, they are likely to sustain injuries which will slow them down.

You may be able to trade un-tainted gear and human leather for better quality clothes, food or even a gun by trading with a nearby friendly settlement.

DLC Considerations[edit]

Royalty[edit]

Most of the empire-related content of Royalty requires a title, which your naked pawn won't have just yet. However, there is 1 quest in particular that is noteworthy - The Deserter.

The deserter will be well-armed, with a flak vest, flak jacket, and a strong firearm, from a heavy SMG to a chain shotgun. The approaching loyalty squad can be taken out with spike traps. If you're lucky, then the empire's soldier will be downed, alowing you to loot a second set of armor and gun. Of course, you'll become enemies with the empire - but the immediate gain in material can be worth it. You don't even need to keep the deserter, nor do you need to actually get the psylink neuroformers.

Other than the deserter, there are 2 new ways of getting a pawn:

Desperate refugees. This quest is usually worth taking if you have the food to spare. The refugee will work for an extended period of time, which is often a huge help - just watch out for betrayal. They may ask join the colony proper.
Paralytic abasia transport crash. 32 - 40 days of doing nothing is not usually worth it. If you don't really want the colonist, then just murder them. If the crash is not part of an allied faction, and you haven't accepted the abasia crash into your colony yet, then murder has no consequences.

If you've started with Tribal Naked Brutality, then you have the option of the anima tree. You can spend a lot of time meditating at the tree, allowing your colonist to gain multiple levels of psycasts while still facing against 1-man raids. It is recommended to build a base right next to the tree, taking the -30% artificial building penalty in the process. This allows you to minimize the time spent traveling, which is very valuable with a single pawn.

Ideology[edit]

Ideoligion can directly take the "brutality" out of being naked. You can set clothing to No Rules, meaning that the −6 mood penalty for being naked is gone.

There are 2 memes that deserve special note:

Pain is virtue - Removes mood penalties for ate without table, slept on the ground, slept in the heat/cold, and uncomfortable, making the process of starting out a whole lot more relaxed.
Proselytizer - Makes it much easier to convert others to your ideoligion, especially when considering the low pop conversion boost.

One of the ritual rewards is a 50% chance for the Wanderer joins event to trigger, who will bring clothes, a few meals, and a weak weapon. You can fill 6 rituals set to Any Time and wanderer join rewards, allowing you to quickly gain colonists. You can always banish/kill colonists you don't want - the bonuses from the good ritual counteract the mood hit. Skylantern festivals only require 4 wood without any other buildings. Social festivals are boosted by a lectern and altar, but don't consume anything.

You can arrest any beggars that appear if you want them as a colonist. While you do have to recruit them, beggars have very low base resistance - around 4-8 - regardless of Naked Brutality or Tribal Naked Brutality. Pick out any great colonists you'll need. Beggars will not attack you when they become "hostile", and they are never part of a permanent faction.

Also, set cannibalism to acceptable (or higher). Human leather is a reliable source of clothing / bedroll material, after all.

Biotech[edit]

You can min-max the xenotype and genes of your starting colonist. Strong Stomach is possibly the most valuable gene, allowing you to ignore food poisoning completely. All the skill genes are worth mentioning, allowing you to sack skills like Art and Animals for other genes, or just reduced hunger. Increased temperature resistance helps in an extreme biome.

If you want, set the "left behind" colonist to your starting xenotype, preferably of the opposite sex. This slightly increases the chance that you'll find another colonist with said xenotype, for the purposes of reproduction. Either way, player-created xenotypes are not very common to find.

If you can take the time to destroy the ancient exostrider midsection, then your colonist can become a mechanitor. It's likely that only a single militor is guarding the mechlink, meaning that kiting tactics can be used with weapons greater than 12 range (or you can just make a few spike traps). You can either get a lifter or constructoid as soon as you install the mechlink. While you won't be able to recharge the mech for a while, both options can help your starting colonist out.