User:Gottoni/User guide/Sea Ice

Template:Tocright This guide details how to survive in the most hostile environment in Rimworld - the sea ice. We focus on the 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.

The tribal start in sea ice is the ultimate survival challenge in Rimworld and very close to being impossible, therefore there is not much room for different strategies here, you gotta have to stick closely to the guide.

Introduction

See also: Biomes#Sea Ice

Sea ice is one of the coldest option of cold maps. They have very little animal life and no plants. In fact, you should not expect to find anything more than three snowhares in your start. You should also not expect to see more than one new snowhare every week and one new polar bear per month.

In addition to that, they do not have any kind of soil available and moisture pumps will only generate more ice. It is literally impossible to grow anything on the ground. You will struggle a lot until you get a heater, a sun lamp and a hydroponics basin, then you can plant something indoors.

Maybe the worse part however, is that they do not have ruins, geothermal vents and minerals to mine. Also, deep drills do not work. There is literally nothing anywhere to even build a base with. You will have to rely on trading and random events to get any material to build a base.

Even the warmest ice sheet it really cold. Their average varies from -20 °C (-4 °F) to -30 °C (-22 °F) and they never have growing periods due to the temperature. You still need to eventually make a freezer though, because the summer temperature is hot enough to spoil your food. You should expect to have problems with hypothermia during fall, winter, spring and during cold snaps in summers.

They are particularly bad to travel in caravans. Because they are always placed in the poles of the world, they have a big penalty to caravan speed due to winter, which is most of the year, if not the whole year. But caravans are more important here than any other biome, so you will have to do it anyways whenever you can, because you do not have other options to get the resources your colony needs.

Landing site

Example good landing site.

In all maps you should choose carefully your landing site to increases your resources available. Landing in the wrong spot does not just make your start harder, but also makes your mid-late game frustrating, as it severely limits you from using the whole caravan and quest system. You want to build a colony in an area with some of the following characteristics:

• Near to ice sheet (faster moving around)
• Somewhat near to tundra (faster moving around)
• Near to a friendly faction base (faster trading)
• Not surrounded by mountains (faster moving around)

Sea ices do not have roads or rivers, unfortunately neither does ice sheet. Try to settle close to tundra, it is not gonna be next to your base, but still might help later in quests. Do not settle in an area surrounded by ice sheet mountains, as it erases your chances of doing quests. Being near to a friendly faction base is mandatory here or it will already be impossible to survive.

Starting colonists

There two things to consider while selecting your colonist for sea ice:

• Sea ice is so harsh that you will have to resort to cannibalism, so you wanna have a crew that can tolerate that. That means having one butcher that does not mind butchering people and everyone less vulnerable to mental breaks.

• You can not feed five people, neither can you place them to sleep in crytosleep and people are the only thing you got that is worth something. So, since you can only feed about two people you gonna have to sell the other three. For those, you do not need to worry much about them because they are just merchandise.

Here we add recommendations of traits and traits to avoid, but not following it does not change the guide, it just makes your game harder.

See also: Traits

Your butcher should ideally be either Cannibal, Bloodlust or Psychopath.

And your crew should ideally not be Too Smart, Volatile, Nervous, Very Neurotic, Neurotic, Greedy, Jealous, Depressive or Pessimist.

Your merchandise colonists should ideally be Wimps. That way they will take less damage if they resist getting arrested.

As long as you got a proper butcher and your colonists do not break easily you should be fine.

Since you will only keep two of them, it is likely that you will be lacking people with the skills you need. You do not all skills yet, but you should try to get someone with decent Construction and Medicine skill.

Base area

It does not really matters where you place your base since the whole sea ice map looks the same.

First agenda

• Make your starter base with wood. Give people a place to sleep, eat and play.
• Arrest your three merchandise colonists.
• Send one colonist to sell the merchandise colonists and your starting animals.
• Use the other colonist to hunt the snowhares before they leave the map.
• Whenever you use wood to make campfires, either for cooking or heating up, make sure that after your wood is forbidden so they do not refuel it unnecessarily.
• Buy your basic survival items with the silver you got from selling your people and animals.
• Make your research bench and start researching complex clothing.

Notes

Just make a room to arrest people and go sell them.

Enjoy while it is warm and go visit your nearby friendly base to trade your merchandise colonists, your animals and some useless weapons. You should get something between 2000 and 1500 silver for three colonists and three animals in addition to your starting 200 silver.

Now you gotta buy some food, clothes and material. Since you do not know for sure what you need, you should buy things little by little and return here many times.

Food should be the cheapest option available. Nutrient paste meal, simple meal and vegetables are the best options. Meat is more expensive but still better to cook it than buying fancy meals.

Clothes is just a little basic insulation to save you in the first season. After that, you gonna make your own clothes or use clothes from raiders. You buy the cheapest tuques, later if that is not enough you buy the cheapest parkas, if they do not have parkas you buy the cheapest jackets or dusters.

Materials you need at least 25 steel to make your research bench and some wood to use for cooking. The cheapest options to build your base is buying stone blocks, then wood, then steel. You should be able to carry 25 steel with one person, but those things overall are heavy and gonna require many trips. Try to build two research benches if you can, otherwise your other colonist gonna be very idle.

Since your colonist in base is probably already idle, you can already tell him to make a caravan and come trade too.

Base after the first trade. Still got over 1000 silver.

Second agenda

• Keep trading to get food whenever you need it.
• Keep trading to get materials to make a base.
• Remove and sell the organs of anyone you get alive and you do not care about.
• Eat any raider that shows up.
• Eat any wanderers that decides to join.
• Eat anyone who arrive in a escape pod.
• Offer help to any refugee being chased. Then eat him. Also eat the raiders following him.
• Wear their tainted parkas and tuques.
• Buy cloth from your neighbors.
• Once you done researching complex clothing, make parkas and tuques with your cloth.
• Make human leather bedrolls.
• Make lots of dusters with all the human leather and sell it.

Notes

The first raid should arrive by the end of the first week. Try to have both colonists in your base when that happens, because you really do not have defenses yet.

Now the cannibalism starts, you will eat anyone that is not one of your starting colonists or from a friendly faction. That includes anyone who tries to join your colony, that also means offering help to refugees just so you can eat them later. Unless if you managed to one of your colonists and is now desperate for more people that is. You also better be sure you got clothes before fall starts.

By butchering your enemies you will get food and leather, but that is not enough. Everything you get is through trading, so you should also remove and sell the organs of anyone you get alive before eating them. A colonist with zero social skill can sell a kidney, a lung and a heart for 469 silver on the hardest difficult level. It is worth buying medicine just for that, and when you do it remember to heal them without any medicine first, so they do not bleed out. Then your use medicine to harvest them down. You do not need to do this every time, but that is a lot of money and will greatly speed up your colony building.

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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