Difference between revisions of "Extreme Desert Guide"

Latest revision as of 06:15, 28 October 2024

This guide details how to survive in one of the most hostile environments in Rimworld - an extreme desert.

Brief[edit]

Extreme deserts are even hotter than regular deserts. Temperatures can be high enough to cause heatstroke for colonists who are not dressed for hot weather.

In an extreme desert plants are scarce and there is a lack of fertile soil to grow plants in. While there are small patches of arable land in normal deserts, in extreme deserts the only available soils are gravel patches.

Starting area[edit]

It is important to consider the terrain of your extreme desert. The main two options are flat maps and hilly/mountainous maps.

Flat maps will have growing zones scattered randomly across the map, while high-altitude maps will mostly place growing areas at the foot of the mountains. This means that on a flat map it may be possible to centralize your colony, while on a high-altitude map your growers will have to travel further.
Flat maps will have more animals like Dromedaries, Fennec foxes, and Iguanas. Foxes will be the only threat present when hunting. There may also be some Megascarab on the map which, while slow, can cause a lot of damage to your colonists, so it is important to take care of them early on.

It is not recommended to pick flat maps near the sea since they have less area available for building and the water cannot be used for fishing.

Lost Tribe[edit]

Main Article: Scenario system - Lost tribe

Extreme desert mountainous growing zones layout
Extreme desert flat growing zones layout

Find and claim an intact structure that can fit five characters. The starting wood should be reserved for doors and coolers only.
Prioritize mining and crafting. It is important to conserve materials therefore place all production benches inside one large room.
Hunting will be one of the main food sources at the beginning since the starter pemmican will run out quickly. Hunt everything on the map and build a butchers table. Harvest any agave and other resources on the map. Starter animals can also be a source of food.
Immediately start growing rice at the beginning.
Only build essential production benches such as a stonecutting bench and a butchering bench. Try to use steel that can be found on the map instead of the starter wood.
At the beginning feed your colonists raw food until you research electricity.
If there is a heatwave build passive coolers. This is the reason wood needs to conserved since a heatwave can easily wipe out your entire colony.
Using a tailor bench, craft cowboy hats and dusters as soon as you can from leather, and later on once you have a good supply of food, from cotton you have planted.
Research: If playing on a flat map, stonecutting will be important to allow you to build more walls. If playing on a mountainous maps, it is possible to build a colony inside the mountain and start researching electricity first.
The very first visitor will be your savior as will be bringing some pemmican, but with just 200 starter silver, you can only buy about 55 units which isn't much or 60 if selling the spare weapon.
Saguaro cactus can now be grown by characters with Plants skill level 6, those placed on gravel will reach maturity fast. The process is slow but rewarding with just above five to ten units of wood.

Food[edit]

Immediately start growing rice or you won't make it past a week. Rice is not a good choice of crop in poor soil, but they grow fast. Once you have decent food stocks, replace this with potatoes as they perform better in poor soil.

Somewhere around your fifth day, your colony will have no food available at all and your only chances for survival will be opening an ancient shrine and hope there is at least one hive that has a spelopede or megaspider to hunt. These creatures will chase any intruder up to some 30 tiles away from their hive so they won't chase you forever, but they are very fast. Since you only start with two short bows and a bundle of pila, it is still possible to hunt without harm but will require good concentration and familiar tactic knowledge of kitting. To kite, means having a fast bait run towards a direction where nobody else is, while at the same time, the others shoot at the chasing creature. Use the Plan grid to draw their attack range.

Opening ancient structure purely for survival
Hive guardians pursuit range of 30 tiles

If you are lucky, the same moment you need to open the ancient shrine will coincide with the timing of your first newcomer who might be better equipped to hunt, most likely a pistol. Which means you can go to up a max of four hunters. One more mouth to feed but safer hunting. The newcomer may likely as well arrive with some packaged survival meal, but it won't be enough for more than a day.

Insect jelly will start spawning, which will become another nutritional source, and this one never rots. But, hives will live so long as there is a guardian keeping maintenance, and if you kill them all, they will stop producing jelly. Soon after, by the time you might be picking them up. Glow pods will appear too, replacing torch lamps. It is possible to sneak in every night and steal the jelly as a steady source of food. While not risk free, this avoids killing them which both can be dangerous and removes a potential food source.

Animal herds may also help you survive from starvation.

Check your rice plantation periodically, as the plant can be harvested as early as 66% growth. While it may not yield much food, it's still better than nothing.

Check on the few agaves, they may be ready for harvest by now.

Check if any other life form has ventured to your territory.

Reached your first 100% ready harvest? Congratulations, you made it!

Managed to reach your first 100% harvest ready means you made it!!!

Gathering materials[edit]

Stone lined up as primitive 1st line of defense

Due to the lack of trees, instead of using wood (Saguaro cactus provide merely 13 wood), it is best to build with steel as there's abundance in comparison, so it is wise to start mining this resource before you need them. Later on after researching stonecutting, you can upgrade to stone. This also means that you can already start hauling stone chucks from before construction the stonecutting bench, so that once you can start producing stone blocks all the raws are gathered close and not still scattered across the map. While doing this, use the dumping zones to line them up as your most primitive line of defense.

Those in high elevation areas should start caving in. During this process you may likely strike other minerals, which are slower to mine. But their empty space will do better for laying out a proper cave system, otherwise you will find yourself mining too much when going after said minerals gaining more work afterwards with the increasing need to build walls where those minerals were located to avoid mountain roof collapse.

Remember that ancient shrine? That room can also be used to build more facilities.

Continuing research[edit]

Did you notice winter temperature is around 30 Celsius? Imagine peak summer time. Double time on research to get electricity. Lucky if you have a night owl in the team.

Summer[edit]

Summer is going to start soon, and while the season itself is not a threat, heat wave is as it rises temperature up to 60 degrees Celsius. You will need to build passive coolers which require 50 wood each so that your colony doesn't die of heatstroke. Any temperature below 30 degrees Celsius will allow your people to recover at night.

Base relocation or upgrade[edit]

After you have gone past your first heatwave, it's time to make life more comfortable so that none of your people are psychologically nor emotionally disturbed. Try to make the most of the whole map with as less effort as possible. And the rest it's up to you. Good luck!

Ancient structure converted into primitive private rooms.
Base relocation close to six geysers.

Guides

Progression: Quickstart Guides • Basics • Intermediate Midgame Guide • Advanced Endgame Guide • Ending the game
Scenarios: Lost Tribe Guide • Rich Explorer Guide • Naked Brutality Guide • The Mechanitor Guide
Survival: Extreme Heat Guide • Extreme Cold Guide • Extreme Desert Guide • Ice Sheet Guide • Sea Ice Guide • Events Guide
Combat: Defense tactics • Offense tactics • Weapon Guide
Construction: Colony Building Guide • Defense structures
Production: Food production • Money making guide
Other: Skill Training • Permadeath save conversion guide •
Ideology Min-Maxing

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-{{Tocright}}
+{{TOCright}}
-This guide details how to survive in one of the most hostile environments in Rimworld - an extreme desert. We focus on the [[Scenario_system#Lost_Tribe|Lost Tribe]] start because it is the hardest one to thrive in hostile environments since you got more people to feed and less technology to help you.
+This guide details how to survive in one of the most hostile environments in Rimworld - an extreme desert.
-== Introduction ==
+== Brief ==
+Extreme deserts are even hotter than regular deserts. Temperatures can be high enough to cause heatstroke for colonists who are not dressed for hot weather.
-{{see also|Biomes#Extreme Desert}}
+In an extreme desert plants are scarce and there is a lack of fertile soil to grow plants in. While there are small patches of arable land in normal deserts, in extreme deserts the only available soils are gravel patches.
-Extreme deserts are the most arid option of hot maps. They have the least amount of animal and plants. In fact, you should not expect to find anything more than three [[iguana]]s and a single [[saguaro cactus|cactus]] in your start. You should also not expect to see more than one new [[iguana]] per week and not a single plant ever growing in the wild.
+== Starting area ==
+It is important to consider the terrain of your extreme desert. The main two options are flat maps and hilly/mountainous maps.
+* Flat maps will have growing zones scattered randomly across the map, while high-altitude maps will mostly place growing areas at the foot of the mountains. This means that on a flat map it may be possible to centralize your colony, while on a high-altitude map your growers will have to travel further.
+* Flat maps will have more animals like Dromedaries, Fennec foxes, and Iguanas. Foxes will be the only threat present when hunting. There may also be some Megascarab on the map which, while slow, can cause a lot of damage to your colonists, so it is important to take care of them early on.
-In addition to that, they do not have any soil available, if you wanna grow something you will be doing it in stony patches around hills and mountains.
+It is not recommended to pick flat maps near the sea since they have less area available for building and the water cannot be used for fishing.
-They are not necessary hot though, their average varies from {{Temperature|30}} to {{Temperature|10}} and growing periods varies from all year to half year days due to the temperature. You should expect to only have problems with heatstroke during summer and during [[events#heat wave|heat wave]]s.
+==  Lost Tribe ==
+: ''Main Article:'' [[Scenario system#Lost Tribe|Scenario system - Lost tribe]]
+<gallery widths="400px" heights="400px" class="center" mode="nolines">
+File:Extreme desert mountainous growing zones.png|'''Extreme desert mountainous growing zones layout'''
+File:Extreme desert flat growing zones.png|'''Extreme desert flat growing zones layout'''
+</gallery>
-== Landing site ==
+* Find and claim an intact structure that can fit five characters. The starting wood should be reserved for doors and [[cooler]]s only.
+* Prioritize mining and crafting. It is important to conserve materials therefore place all production benches inside one large room.
+* Hunting will be one of the main food sources at the beginning since the starter pemmican will run out quickly. Hunt everything on the map and build a butchers table. Harvest any agave and other resources on the map. Starter animals can also be a source of food.
+* Immediately start growing rice at the beginning.
+* Only build essential production benches such as a stonecutting bench and a butchering bench. Try to use steel that can be found on the map instead of the starter wood.
+* At the beginning feed your colonists raw food until you research electricity.
+* If there is a heatwave build passive coolers. This is the reason wood needs to conserved since a heatwave can easily wipe out your entire colony.
+* Using a tailor bench, craft cowboy hats and dusters as soon as you can from leather, and later on once you have a good supply of food, from cotton you have planted.
+* Research: If playing on a flat map, stonecutting will be important to allow you to build more walls. If playing on a mountainous maps, it is possible to build a colony inside the mountain and start researching electricity first.
+*The very first [[Events#Visitors|visitor]] will be your savior as will be bringing some pemmican, but with just 200 starter silver, you can only buy about 55 units which isn't much or 60 if selling the spare weapon.
+* Saguaro cactus can now be grown by characters with Plants skill level 6, those placed on gravel will reach maturity fast. The process is slow but rewarding with just above five to ten units of wood.
-[[File:extremedesertsite.png|300px|thumb|right|Example of good landing site.]]
+<center>[[File:Saguaro cactus can now be planted.png|400px]]</center>
-In all maps you should to choose carefully your landing site to increases your chances of survival. You want to build a colony in an area with some of the following characteristics:
+== Food ==
+Immediately start growing rice or you won't make it past a week. Rice is not a good choice of crop in poor soil, but they grow fast. Once you have decent food stocks, replace this with potatoes as they perform better in poor soil.
-* Near to a friendly faction base (faster trading)
+Somewhere around your fifth day, your colony will have no food available at all and your only chances for survival will be opening an [[ancient shrine]] and hope there is at least one hive that has a [[spelopede]] or [[megaspider]] to hunt. These creatures will chase any intruder up to some 30 tiles away from their hive so they won't chase you forever, but they are very fast. Since you only start with two short bows and a bundle of pila, it is still possible to hunt without harm but will require good concentration and familiar tactic knowledge of kitting. To kite, means having a fast bait run towards a direction where nobody else is, while at the same time, the others shoot at the chasing creature. Use the Plan grid to draw their attack range.
-* Near to a road (faster moving around)
-* Without many mountains around (faster moving around)
-* With a river (enable watermills)
-* With coast (to turn into large growing areas later)
-* With [[caves]] (early food source)
-While you should not be surrounded by mountains, the landing site itself can be mountainous.
-Of course you do not need to land in an area in all those characteristics, but try to get as many of them as you can.
+<gallery widths="400px" heights="400px" class="center" mode="nolines">
+File:Ancient structure opening purely for survival.png|'''Opening ancient structure purely for survival'''
+File:Hive guardians persuit range 30 tiles plan grid.png|'''Hive guardians pursuit range of 30 tiles'''
+</gallery>
-== Base area ==
+If you are lucky, the same moment you need to open the ancient shrine will coincide with the timing of your first [[Event#Wanderer joins .2F .28relationship.29|newcomer]] who might be better equipped to hunt, most likely a pistol. Which means you can go to up a max of four hunters. One more mouth to feed but safer hunting. The newcomer may likely as well arrive with some packaged survival meal, but it won't be enough for more than a day.
-Once you choose your landing site you should also choose your base area. It is important to notice that this area does not need to be final, it is just the area where you are more likely to survive the early game.
+[[Insect jelly]] will start spawning, which will become another nutritional source, and this one never rots. But, hives will live so long as there is a guardian keeping maintenance, and if you kill them all, they will stop producing jelly. Soon after, by the time you might be picking them up. [[Glow pod]]s will appear too, replacing torch lamps. It is possible to sneak in every night and steal the jelly as a steady source of food. While not risk free, this avoids killing them which both can be dangerous and removes a potential food source.
-You want to find an area with the characteristics: '''more growing areas''' and '''more easily defendable'''.
-More growing areas means more stony patches and more easily defendable area is an area with few entrances where you gonna lay down your traps.
+[[Events#Herd migration: .28Animal.29|Animal herds]] may also help you survive from starvation.
-Since you do not have trees, you can not build a big base yet. You can then either take a ruin, make a cave or make a small steel base. Ruins might look like good starting locations but are often on undesirable areas. It is easier to make a cave in a good location, since choke points are always surrounded by hills and mountains. But if you happen to get a ruin in the right place, then go for it. If you can not find a hill or a ruin in a good area then just make a small steel base.
-[[File:extremedesertarea.png|400px|thumb|center|Area between the two hills make a good choke point.]]
+Check your rice plantation periodically, as the plant can be harvested as early as 66% growth. While it may not yield much food, it's still better than nothing.
-== First Agenda ==
+Check on the few agaves, they may be ready for harvest by now.
-* Get some easily accessible [[steel]] and use it to build your stuff, so you do not have to use [[wood]].
+Check if any other life form has ventured to your territory.
-* Make your starter base. Give people a place to sleep, eat and play.
-* Hunt those [[iguana]]s before they leave the map.
-* Kill your starting animals.
-* Only use [[wood]] to make [[campfire]]s and [[passive cooler]]s, for cooking and cooling down respectively. Make sure your [[wood]] is forbidden so they do not refuel them unnecessarily.
-* Plant [[rice]]. You can not survive long enough to wait grow anything else yet.
-* Plant [[strawberry plant|strawberries]], if you do not have much growing area then plant [[potatoes]].
-* Make your [[research bench]] and start researching stone cutting so you can start using stone instead of [[steel]].
-=== Notes ===
+Reached your first 100% ready harvest? Congratulations, you made it!
-Surviving until your first [[rice]] harvest is the hardest part. Your [[pemmican]] plus your hunting plus your starting animals is not enough. If you have [[caves]] in your map, you can go insect hunting and that might be enough, but if you do not... You gotta go visit your nearby friendly base to trade whatever you can for food. For that, you gotta get something you can trade:
+[[File:Managed to reach your first 100 percent harvest ready means you made it.png|800px|thumb|center|Managed to reach your first 100% harvest ready means you made it!!!]]
-* You can mine expensive things like [[component]]s, [[plasteel]], [[uranium]], [[jade]], [[silver]] or [[gold]].
+== Gathering materials ==
-* You can open the [[ancient shrine]] and sell whatever you find there.
+[[File:Early defense.png|thumb|Stone lined up as primitive 1st line of defense]]
+Due to the lack of trees, instead of using wood (Saguaro cactus provide merely 13 wood), it is best to build with steel as there's abundance in comparison, so it is wise to start mining this resource before you need them. Later on after researching stonecutting, you can upgrade to stone. This also means that you can already start hauling stone chucks from before construction the stonecutting bench, so that once you can start producing stone blocks all the raws are gathered close and not still scattered across the map. While doing this, use the dumping zones to line them up as your most primitive line of defense.
-One smart way to reduce your food consumption is to put some colonists inside the ancient [[cryptosleep casket]]s until your first harvest.
+Those in high elevation areas should start caving in. During this process you may likely strike other minerals, which are slower to mine. But their empty space will do better for laying out a proper cave system, otherwise you will find yourself mining too much when going after said minerals gaining more work afterwards with the increasing need to build walls where those minerals were located to avoid mountain roof collapse.
-[[File:meatshield.png|400px|thumb|center|Opening the ancient structure is dangerous! Bring them one by one and use your animals as meat shield.]]
+Remember that ancient shrine? That room can also be used to build more facilities.
-You can also go to the closest base outside the extreme desert and attack them. Hunt the animals and harvest the plants around the base and run back to your base. You can make peace with them later.
+== Continuing research ==
+Did you notice winter temperature is around 30 Celsius? Imagine peak summer time. Double time on research to get electricity. Lucky if you have a night owl in the team.
-Another more undesirable option is to sell some colonists. They are usually worth a lot and it results on a lower food consumption which makes things much easier, but do not expect to see them again.
-Likewise, another even worse option is to kill some colonists, but they are not worth many meals.
+== Summer ==
+Summer is going to start soon, and while the season itself is not a threat, [[Events#Heat Wave|heat wave]] is as it rises temperature up to 60 degrees Celsius. You will need to build [[passive cooler]]s which require 50 wood each so that your colony doesn't die of heatstroke. Any temperature below 30 degrees Celsius will allow your people to recover at night.
+== Base relocation or upgrade ==
+After you have gone past your first heatwave, it's time to make life more comfortable so that none of your people are psychologically nor emotionally disturbed. Try to make the most of the whole map with as less effort as possible. And the rest it's up to you. Good luck!
-If you do survive though... Now life will be much easier.
+<gallery widths="400px" heights="400px" class="center" mode="nolines">
+File:Ancient structure converted into primitive private rooms.png|'''Ancient structure converted into primitive private rooms.'''
+File:Base relocation close to six geysers.png|'''Base relocation close to six geysers.'''
+</gallery>
-[[File:firstrice.png|400px|thumb|center|First [[rice]] harvest is a glorious moment.]]
-== Second agenda ==
-* Plant [[cotton plant|cotton]]. Later you will use it to make [[duster]]s and [[cowboy hat]]s.
-* Plant [[healroot]].
-* Make stone [[deadfall trap]]s.
-* Plant [[saguaro cactus|cactus]]. Your future wood source.
-* Plant [[smokeleaf plant|smokeleaf]]. This will help your guys relax later.
-* Research complex furniture. Once you done, make [[steel]] or stone [[bed]]s.
-* Research complex clothing. Once you done, make [[duster]]s and [[cowboy hat]]s with your [[cloth]].
-=== Notes ===
-Hopefully, now you grow [[strawberry plant|strawberries]], so you will not need to worry about [[wood]]. If you decided to stick with [[potatoes]], you gonna have to make some extra visits to your nearby friendly base and buy [[wood]] for cooking because your [[saguaro cactus|cactus]] plantation gonna take a while to kick in.
-Summer is coming, focus on getting [[cloth]] to give your colonists [[duster]]s and [[cowboy hat]]s. After that you can replace their [[tribalwear]]s for [[button-down shirt]]s and [[pants]].
-You can also make some [[smokeleaf joint]]s to help with the moods.
-Always keep a stock of [[wood]] with you because if a [[events#heat_wave|heat wave]] happens you will need those [[passive cooler]]s.
-If you want, now you can accept more people in your colony.
-Now the usual threats start, time to make some [[deadfall trap]]s to defend your base. Since you do not have [[wood]] and probably not enough [[steel]], you will have to go for stone [[deadfall trap]]s.
-[[File:firsttrap.png|400px|thumb|center|First defenses with stone.]]
-== Third agenda ==
-* Research eletricity.
-* Research [[battery]].
-* Research air conditioning.
-=== Notes ===
-Your colony is looking better, you have food, [[wood]], clothing, drugs and defenses. You should focus on making a [[Colony_Building_Guide#Freezer|freezer]] for all that food you got.
-Since the worse is gone, you can now move to a proper area, a more central location where you can build that huge colony you always dreamed of.
-[[File:dreambig.png|550px|thumb|center|Moving out of caves.]]
-If your map has coast you should focus on [[moisture pump]]s, with them you can create larger crops fields so you do not need to stick to stony patches around mountains.
-[[File:crops.png|300px|thumb|center|Before a beach (left) and later a crop field (right).]]
 {{nav/guides}}
-[[Category:Gameplay]]
+[[Category:Guides]]