Advanced Endgame Guide

If you have survived raids, solar flares, manhunter packs among other things to arrive this far into the game, congratulations! By now you should have a fully fledged colony with strong defenses and a plentiful supply of food and power. This guide discusses bringing a colony to full maturity, including the options of making new settlements and reaching one of the end-of-game scenarios.

See Guides for more basic help.

Defense

Endgame colonies tend to be very rich. This will attract large numbers of powerful raiders who will attempt to plunder your colony to get at the wealth stored within. They can easily overwhelm your colonists, so you must have a strong defense system and clever strategies in place.

You can see Defense tactics for more defensive strategies, or Defense structures for contructed defenses.

Mortar battery

You can build a lot of mortars to bombard any incoming raiders. 12 - 16 should be easily affordable by an endgame colony, as well as the mortar shells needed to operate the mortars.

Mortars can be operated by any colonist as long as they are not incapable of violence.

Killbox

A common and effective method to repel endgame-level raids is to build a wall around the base and then build killboxes. Killboxes funnel the raiders, allowing you to use traps efficiently and concentrate fire on raiders.

Requesting aid

If you feel that you're overwhelmed, don't be afraid to request aid from your friendly factions.

They will be glad to send a few fighters to help your efforts. Even though they aren't that powerful in combat compared to your endgame soldiers, they can still distract them for a while, giving you time to deal with the raiders. At this stage, you can always sacrifice some goodwill; they can be repaired by rescuing any downed survivors of the reinforcement (capturing will bring instant bad will), or gifting them.

If you have a noble in your colony, you can use your permit to call in small squads of empire soldiers to assist you. If you feel really overwhelmed, you can also call these troops during the cooldown at a cost of extra honor.

Construction

By now you should have a vastly expanded base, no matter what playthrough you are going for.

Power

Even if you have geothermal generators sitting around all your steam geysers by now, that may not be enough to power an endgame base. You will need supplementary power sources in order to do so. Solar panels and wind turbines should be built as needed, and you should have a great backup power supply enough for one or two days' worth of power as well. Generally, it follows the same rules as midgame power, except in a much larger scale.

If you want, you can also have some ship reactors to power your base. They provide a constant 1000W power, however they cost quite some resources, take up lots of space and can only be built outside. Even if you can afford it, you will need to consider where to put your reactors.

Equipment

Apparel

You should have all your colonists wear dusters or jackets (preferably dusters, as they also provide protection to the legs) to provide additional insulation and protection. Parkas are not recommended except in very cold climates due to the lower protection it provides.

Soldiers can be equipped with full sets of power armor for maximum protection. You may want to buy power armor instead as crafting it costs a great amount of time, however crafting it can be cheaper than directly buying the armor and more readily available. Keep in mind that a high quality thrumbofur or devilstrand duster and flak vest combo may provide similar protection to lower quality power armor.

Texitles

Hyperweave makes a good choice of fabric as it provides excellent protection. If you have slain some thrumbos then thrumbofur also makes a equally good choice. Their rarity means that you may still have trouble amassing them in endgame even though you can easily afford them. These textiles are not practical, as hyperweave can only be bought for an exorbitant price (or, if you are lucky enough, arrive in drop pods as a random event), and thrumbofur can only be obtained from hunting hard to kill thrumbos.

Devilstrand works wonders in endgame as a high-tier fabric; while synthread is cheaper in market value, it's not as cost-effective as you will need to find it at a trader, while you can mass-produce devilstrand with large enough fields.

Devilstrand and rhinoceros leather are the best, mostly practical fabric to use (rhino leather assumes you are in a temperate biome). Both give decent protection.

Wool, as always, provides excellent insulation in cold areas.

Cloth should be avoided as it has the worst protection of any textile.

Weapons

Your pawns should be equipped with the best weapons possible to survive the coming 15 day onslaught after building the ship. Charge rifles should be given to as many pawns as possible, as it provides large amounts of damage with a decent burst shot count and armor penetration. With enough pawns, a single firing cycle can devastate huge groups of raiders. If charge weaponry is to expensive to equip every pawn with, give the higher shooting skill pawns assault rifles and the lower skill pawns heavy SMGs. These weapons are not as good as the charge rifle, but come very close. Miniguns can also be devastating, spraying bullets throughout the killbox, and is especially effective during the late game because of the bunched up enemies. Equipping every pawn with one of these, though, would be unrealistic because of the massive 20 component cost for each minigun. On the side of a killbox should be a small box with a single pawn with an EMP launcher or EMP grenades to stun any mechanoids coming in. EMPs can be lifesavers, providing a few extra seconds to take down lancers that otherwise would dismember pawns or to stop a centipede from firing another barrage.

Founding a second colony

If you think having only one colony is not stressful enough already and want to found another one, you can send a caravan to a new frontier and have some of your colonists start a new life there. They can serve many purposes, such as:

Production bases

The main purpose for the new settlement could be supplying the origin base with mined resources and other things that are difficult to obtain at your home base. Make sure that the supply base is close enough to your main base, to make resource transfer viable. This usually means it should be in transport pod range.

Ship Quest Preparation Bases

This base can be used to prepare for the ship offer quest from Charlton Whitestone. Multiple of these colonies can be set up, like relay outposts to ferry your colonists to the quest destination once the preparations have been finished.

Note: you need to increase the colony limit in the game settings for this to be possible.

This new settlement can be founded anywhere, as far away from your original base as you want. Make it as challenging or silly as you like.

Supplying the caravan

Your frontier trek will need to bring quite a few things with them to be able to quickly establish themselves at the new colony location. Here is a checklist of a few things that you should bring:

Enough food for the journey, and to get you through a few days after arriving. Pemmican and Packaged survival meal are the best choice, like for any caravan.
Bedrolls for everybody to prevent negative moodlets from sleeping on the ground. They can also become your initial beds when settling down.
All kinds of medicine, including Glitterworld medicine. Bring Penoxycyline if you go into a biome where that is needed, such as jungles. Wake-up and Go-juice can be useful to help with bootstrapping at the destination to increase the amount of hours a colonist can work, but should be taken sparingly to avoid addiction and overdosage. Bring recreational drugs to keep folks happy (beer and psychite tea are your best friends, but smokeleaf joints should be avoided because of the consciousness penalty for smoking one).
Steel and components are required for many initial buildings. You won't know how much of these you will be able to mine at the new location immediately.
Weapons and armor! Each colonist should be provided with a set of mid-tier armor (devilstrand or rhino leather dusters and pants, combined with a flak vest). Power armor can also be used, but anything heavier than recon armor will weigh your colonists down. Heavier power armor can be drop-podded to the new colonists after a basic base has been set up.
Gold, Silver, Flake, Yayo, Smokeleaf joints, and maybe some valuable pieces of art can be brought for sale along the way and after arrival. All these items have a good value-to-mass ratio.
Charged batteries, and a Vanometric power cell if you have one: these are invaluable for quickly getting a functioning settlement from scratch.
A Psychic emanator if available, to help with new colony stress a little. Recreation items that you can use immediately if they are not too heavy should also be brought, such as chess tables, horseshoe pins, or their tribal equivalents. Psychic foil helmets can be useful, too, to block any psychic drones that might hit.
Hauling animals, such as dogs. Bring males and females, so you can keep breeding them. Keep in mind that some of them will require food along the journey (Kibble is good).
Boomalopes, if you have them, as a source of chemfuel for chemfuel powered generators as a first power source. This is especially great if they can graze while traveling, because that means you can bring them along for free.

If your caravan animals will be able to graze along the route, you can bring a lot of food and leather in the form of livestock. Butcher a few of them at the destination, while keeping the rest to breed. Cows are good, so are chickens, or hauling animals. Caravans should depart in the spring, if possible, to allow animals to graze.

If your intended destination is in transport pod range, you do not have a problem because you can send practically unlimited supplies from your origin base. You could even send the materials to build a lot more cargo pods at the destination and repeat the process.

Resource compression

You can "compress" raw resources for loading into caravans by building furniture which is lighter than the resources they will deconstruct into. It is your choice if you resort to such shenanigans as it is a very unrealistic game mechanic.

It means you will lose about 25% of the resources, but allows you to carry a lot of extra effective weight.

Stool compression

You can compress stone blocks by building stools. Each stool is only 3 kg but can be deconstructed into 18.75 stone blocks weighing between 16.88kg for slate, to 23.44kg for granite, meaning you can fit nearly eight times the weight of the stones.

Plant pot compression

You can compress steel by building plant pots. Each plant pot is only 2 kg but can be deconstructed into 15 steel weighing 7.5 kg, meaning that it can fit over three times the weight of the steel.

Flatscreen TV compression

You can compress both steel and components in flatscreen televisions. Each is only 8 kg but can be deconstructed into 105 steel and 12 components for a total of 59.7 kg, allowing you to fit almost 7.5 times its weight in resources.

Colonists

Unlike at the start of the game, you have the choice from a lot of colonists to be your new colony founders. Compose a roster with a wide range of skills. Some skills are more important than others: construction especially is paramount, because you will need to build a lot of structures from scratch at your new home. Mining, cooking and doctoring should be covered at least twice, you will need a grower and a couple of ranged soldiers. Keep in mind that drug production requires intellectual skill, so even if you do not plan to do any research, you still need somebody clever to make drugs.

Do not bring anybody who has any ailments, or otherwise a liability at your new destination (such as mentally unstable people, people with addictions, etc.). Colonists with these issues will slow down the caravan tremendously, as they will generally move more slowly and will probably have frequent mental breakdowns during the journey.

If there are married, engaged, or loving couples in your base, do not split them up. That should be obvious but might be easy to miss until it is too late. If you want to be thorough, split up rivals and bring friends of pawns along to avoid social fights and insults early on.

Trading along the route

Visit as many communities as possible along your route. This will allow you to replenish food and buy all the rare items that you can find, like Advanced Components, Glitterworld medicine, etc. You can even buy more colonists (slaves) and caravan animals, to increase your carrying capacity.

What to do on arrival

Build the colony like how you built the first colony. You can build slightly more than before, as you can bring more than before. On the first day, build a basic shelter with a barracks and a freezer room to store food. Plant some fast growing produce like rice.

If you have some firepower, it is a good idea to seek out and clear the Ancient Danger at the new location immediately after. Build some prison cells and open the cryptosleep caskets. This will get you some possible new recruits and some good gear. You can also take the gear from the survivors and return them into the cryptosleep caskets; recruit them later on. You will probably have some vacant caskets where you can put some of your colonists as well – this will reduce the amount of bedrooms and food needed while you establish the new place.

Building the rest new colony should be straightforward; after all, you have done that at least once already...

Ending the game

There are three ways to officially "win" the game, two of which are DLC-exclusive:

Research and build a spaceship, then launch it.
Travel to Charlton Whitestone's event ship, which is offered to every colony at some point early in the campaign.
House the high stellarch for 12 days after reaching the title of count, protecting him/her from any threats that come your way, and keeping the mood of the stellarch above 40%. Afterwards, everyone may leave the rimworld on a shuttle. This requires the Royalty DLC.
Find the Archo Nexus with aid from other factions in exchange for a wealthy colony and awaken the Nexus. This requires the Ideology DLC

Building a Ship

Main article: Ship

If you were not desperately trying to escape the planet already (e.g. from an incoming planet killer, which thankfully only happens by modifying the starting scenario), building the escape ship has probably not been your main concern so far.

The ship is very research and resource-intensive to build. It requires a lot of plasteel and advanced components. Your colony probably needs an extensive preparation phase just to gather these resources.

Normally there are not enough advanced components available from trade to cover the entire ship construction, so you will need to craft them. This requires regular components, quite a bit of plasteel and many work hours. It is practical to run at least two fabrication benches, possibly even in shifts, to make the components. You also need an AI persona core, which is rare but readily available by calling factions. Plasteel can be acquired readily by either using the ground-penetrating scanner and then deep drilling, or long-range mineral scanner followed by sending a mining caravan. For the latter, remember to bring pack animals to carry the plasteel. Once resources have been gathered up, try to build the ship as close to the center of your base as possible.

Journey Offer

Main article: World Quests Guide#Journey offer

Traveling to the event ship is a very long trip, but spares you the substantial research and resource investment into building a ship yourself. See the main article for more in-depth information about this event, and how to tackle it.

Keep in mind that you get only one shot at the event location. If critical ship parts of the event ship get destroyed during the final assault, it is often no longer practical to end the game, especially if you have not already researched all the ship technology. To prevent any parts from being destroyed, you can tame a large amount of pack animals and caravan over enough pre-made stone blocks to surround the ship in a 3 to 4 layer thick wall, and enough left over to provide living quarters and a killbox.

All of the guidelines given in the section founding a second colony above apply here as well. Treat the event like establishing a new colony from scratch at the event ship location. The old colony will be abandoned, so you can take all the best equipment and gear with you. Bring all the good weaponry and armor you can carry, because you will need it during the 15 day onslaught.

Note that the journey to the event ship can be very long, up to a year in very unfavourable conditions. In many cases it is much shorter however. If there are good road connections you can get there in less than 20 days on many maps. This is not a particularly difficult journey, if well planned. The main dangers on such a long trip include colonists getting sick, the caravan getting ambushed causing medical emergencies, as well as everybody being in a poor mood eventually. These things combined can make the trip much longer than initially planned. These problems can be amended by settling down temporarily and treating any problems if necessary. If the distance is especially long and lacking roads (such as in a very mountainous world), you can set up multiple "relay bases" between the ship and your colony, to ferry your colonists from the main colony to the ship once preparations are done with transport pods.

The caravan food supply will most likely be the least of your worries, because food can be bought along the way (unless everybody on the map is your enemy; in that case the journey will be very difficult).

If you have enough Go-juice and Luciferium, you can use an all-in strategy by getting everybody on both drugs for the entire journey and throughout the ship event. You will need 1 Luciferium every six days for each colonist on the trek, as well as plenty of Go-juice to keep people, well, going and to cover addictions. Some additional Luciferium can probably be purchased along the route, but do not count on it, as your pawns will go insane and eventually die without it.

Royal ascent

If you have the Royalty DLC installed you have the alternative of asking the high stellarch over to your colony for a short stay. He/She will bring along 4 of his/her personal guards, which are very powerful combat units. All stellic wardens and stellic defenders will have a title of knight, special black and red prestige cataphract armor and prestige cataphract helmets, and will be equipped with high end weaponry. Furthermore, they will also spawn with a decent skill for their combat type (shooting or melee between 11 and 16) and will have a 30% chance to spawn with a brain implant.

Both the stellarch and the guards are under your control, enabling you to command them where or when to shoot, move and to retreat into a safe place. In addition, the stellarch and guards are all psycasters, further helping with colony defense.

The stellarch should be protected at all costs. He/She may be equipped with a spacer melee weapon, but should not be used in combat unless in the most dire of situations. They should also be put on a drug schedule, putting them on yayo and flake every day, providing a +70 mood bonus when taken together. The stellarch may develop an addiction, but you will not be penalized for this. The only thing to watch out for is a drug overdose, which may kill the stellarch. Alternatively, you can cheese the game by putting the stellarch in a cryptosleep casket, and opening the casket toward the end of the quest.

Archo Nexus

If you have the Ideology DLC installed and you have at least 4 living faction that are not permanently hostile to you, you can alternatively follow this ending. At random times, a quest will pop up from a random non-permanently hostile faction that will offer an Archo Nexus map fragments in exchange for your colony base of $350k worth of wealth (and be in an ally relation with them). Upon accepting the quest, you will be kicked out of the colony control, but you are permitted to bring up to the following with you:

5 Colonist
5 Creature
2 Relic

If the creature and/or colonist had items in their equipment or inventory, it will be brought with them as well, which is a good way to cheese the advancement of the ending with very expensive gears, as you will need to do this 2 more times. Anything and anyone that aren't brought with you will be gone forever with any known ties and bonds severed, and you will be sent to a new world, acting as a "fresh start" with existing items, experience and colonist/animal/relic with you. Furthermore, any research done from the last map will be required to be researched again, so its recommended to immediately start rebuilding the base the moment the new colony is set up. As this is considered a new world, any title that any colonist had held from the Shattered Empire faction from Royalty DLC will be gone, but any psycast obtained from them will persist.

Upon arrival of a new colony map, to advance further into the quest, a colonist must decipher the archotech structure that lies next to where the new colony is before doing the above again.

Once the third archo nexus map fragment has been obtained, the map to the Archo Nexus will appear but you will not be kicked out of the colony this time. Send every colonist to the archo nexus through any ways, kill off any mechanoid present in the map, and activate the Archo Nexus to end the game. As there are only a few mechanoid present, it is easy to dispatch them with ranged weapon. Be wary that this will end the game after activating the Archo Nexus.

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