Royalty (DLC)
 | This article relates to content added by Royalty (DLC). Please note that it will not be present without the DLC enabled. |
"The Empire has arrived."
— Royalty DLC quote
Royalty is a paid DLC that was released alongside update 1.1.
Description
The Empire has arrived. Their refugee fleet settles the rimworld, and seeks allies. Their honor-bound culture wields hyper-advanced technology, while bowing to the ancient traditions of kings and queens.
The Empire & Nobility
The empire is a new ultratech faction - the main headline of the Royalty DLC. They make for powerful allies, or if you choose to betray them, powerful enemies. All empire soldiers are implanted with a death acidifier, preventing players from (easily) looting their high-tech gear.
Titles
Titles are bestowed by the empire as a sign of nobility. Having a higher title gives you many privileges with the empire, but comes with increasing demands.
In order to rise up the noble ranks, your colonists must gain honor, a new currency entirely separate from goodwill. The primary way to get honor is to do quests for the empire. You can also get honor by selling gold or prisoners to a royal tribute collector.
Noble colonists become haughty and demanding. In order to receive a noble rank at all, you must have a throne room that meets the royal requirements. While most noble colonists remain willing to do all types of jobs, they'll demand royal clothes and luxurious bedrooms. In constrast, the empire's nobles are conceited. They'll refuse to work or eat commoner food. Colonists with the greedy, jealous, or abrasive traits will also become conceited, and come with the same demands.
In exchange, a title comes with various perks. The first is a psylink given by the empire, allowing access to special psycast powers. With permits, you can call in the empire for direct help - this can range aerial bombardment, to a transport shuttle, to a direct drop of glitterworld medicine. Only pawns of a sufficient title (Knight / Dame) will be able to trade with the empire's faction bases, and only pawns of at least Baron rank can interact with the empire's trade ships.
Psycasting
Psycasts are psionic abilities, manipulating reality beyond human understanding. They are "psychic" like how psychic drones and psychic soothes are psychic.
The vast majority of psycasts are not direct, damage-dealing abilities. Instead, they focus on new ways to inhibit enemies or change the flow of combat. Blinding pulse lowers enemies' sight. Skip allows you to move a pawn - friend or enemy - anywhere within range. Other psycasts are useful outside of combat. Word of love creates romantic attraction, while word of serenity ends social fights and mental breaks. No enemy in the game will ever use any form of psycast, even if they have the requisite psylink.
In combat, psycasts are limited by neural heat. You can overload on neural heat, at the cost of gimping your caster for a few days afterward.
Outside of combat, psycasts are limited by psyfocus. In order to replenish psyfocus, your casters must meditate. Higher-level psycasters will have to meditate for hours every day. Thankfully, mediation counts as Recreation - though colonists quickly get bored of it.
The empire is one way to get psylinks, though they can be obtained through a few other ways. Most tribal pawns - those with Natural meditation - have a special connection with the anima tree. If they meditate at the tree for enough time, they can undergo a linking ritual.
You can also get psylink neuroformers from quests. The Deserter quest will allow you to betray the empire for an opportunity to gain 2 psylink neuroformers. Note that there is no special "betray the empire" questline or mechanic, beyond this quest. The empire can be re-allied with enough gifts or peace talks.
Mechanoid clusters
Mechanoids have evolved. Mech clusters are a new type of major threat - stationary encampments which present a new tactical challenge. Like crashed ship parts, mech clusters always start dormant, but you may have to deal with them immediately. They put the player on the offensive, which contrasts with the defense-oriented fights in the base game.
You can split mech clusters into 2 parts.
- The first part is the condition causer. These can range from toxic spewers, which create an everlasting toxic fallout, to EMI dynamos, which disable all electric devices. These serve as incentive for you to destroy the cluster. But you don't have to. In any case, not all mech clusters come with a condition causer.
- The second part is the structure of the cluster itself. Mech clusters can come with walls, explosive unstable power cells, and turrets. They can be protected by mech low-shields or mech high-shields, preventing gunfire or mortar fire until disabled (respectively).
And, of course, clusters come with mechanoids. They can come sleeping, hidden in a mech capsule, or produced by a mech assembler.
Mech clusters start dormant. Unless you shoot at a mech or build near the cluster, they won't wake up. Count-down activators can wake mechs after a certain period of time. Proximity activators will wake mechs if you enter its radius. Without a proximity activator, you can safely walk over a dormant cluster. In any case, the condition causer will activate even if the rest of the mech cluster remains dormant.
Due to their unique structures, mech clusters offer a wide variety of tactical engagement. Sometimes, mortars are the best option. If a mech high-shield is in place, a different sort of strategy is in order. A few can be defeated with a key sniper shot to a critical structure. And who says you need to deal with the cluster? With the right set up, raiders can be lured to fight the cluster or you.
In addition, both mechs and pirates can deploy condition causers from far away. You must caravan or transport pod to its location, destroy the condition causers, and get out.
Quests
The Royalty DLC adds a lot of quests - more quests than what the game already had.
Some are simple. Accept a raid for a reward. Build a structure, for a reward. Others are more intrinsically complex. Host a noble, derpy animals, or desperate refugees. A quest may ask you to fight a huge mechanoid cluster, but also include help from elite Imperial cataphracts to make the battle winnable.
Items
The Royalty DLC comes with a variety of high-tech gear, implants, and other items.
- New ultratech melee weapons. Royalty introduces the monosword, zeushammer, and plasmasword, and their persona variants. Persona weapons come with unique traits that can hinder or help their wielder.
- New armor. Cataphract armor is the heaviest power armor in the game. Royalty introduces 3 variants of existing power armor - the locust armor, grenadier armor, and phoenix armor, each providing a unique ability for a small stat penalty. Prestige armor is another variant of power armor - mostly identical to their base variant, but pleases nobles.
- A large amount of artificial body parts. Drill arms and field hands improve their associated work speed drastically. Neurocalculators and learning assistants help with mental tasks. Circadian half-cyclers will make your pawns never sleep again - though at a steep Consciousness penalty.
- Utility items. Low-shield packs protect against all bullets for its duration, unless it is hit by EMP. Jump packs allowa user to fly across a battlefield.
Many items introduced in Royalty, like cataphract armor, requires a techprint before you can research and create them yourself. The ultratech melee weapons cannot be created by your colony at all, only traded.
Royal Ascent
The Royal Ascent quest is a new endgame quest provided by the Royalty DLC. The High Stellarch - the de-facto leader of the empire - can offer your colony a way off the planet, if their royal demands are met.
Once you have a pawn with the Count title, you can request a customary visit from the High Stellarch, along with 4 imperial guards. This visit lasts for 12 days. Like the ship launch, you'll have to contend with constant raids, from those who want to dethrone the stellarch. An additional challenge is the stellarch themselves - you must keep them happy enough throughout the stay.
Music
This expansion includes a new full album worth of new music by Alistair Lindsay, composer of the original RimWorld soundtrack.
There are 13 new tracks totaling 1:04:14 in length.
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