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

Introduction[edit]

Immediate Survival[edit]

Colonists have needs, without the which they get a mental break or die. In the ice sheet, food and temperature are low,

Food[edit]

When starting out, colonies can use their starting resources, the initial animals, and trading, but all of these will run out eventually. The two reliable sources of early game food are:

Cannibalism: The storyteller will send raids and events at the normal rate, even in the brutal sea ice. This is particularly sustainable with a single colonist; not only are there less mouths to feed, but the storyteller will constantly generate new recruit events due to PopulationIntent, which can be converted into human meat.
Fishing: Provided there is a body of water, your colonists can survive the temperature, and fishing is researched, fishing can be a potentially year-round source of food.
- By creating a room with water inside it, it is possible to fish year-round, in a temperature-controlled environment. This can be done by enclosing the body of water, or building a small room on top of it (place bridges, make a room on top of the bridges, have a gap of water inside said room, then heat up the room. This allows access to the full lake's worth of fish, even if most of the lake is frozen).

Once you can provide enough electricity to power a sun lamp and heaters, it becomes possible to grow food by planting in the stony soil indoors. Hydroponics can be used to create growable, fertile land, but are not strictly required.

Temperature[edit]

Steam geysers are a quick, free, and easy way for any start to generate heat - just enclose a vent and it will heat up the room it's in. Be careful not to overheat, though. Alternatively, New Arrivals can build heaters so they do not need to use a steam geyser.

Any pawn that arrives in your map (allied or enemy) will typically wear parkas and other warm clothing. Enough sufficient-quality clothing should let colonists survive the cold outside.

Landing site[edit]

Example good landing site.

In all worlds, you should carefully choose a landing site with resources as a priority. You want to build a colony in an area with some of the following characteristics:

Near to tundra, ideally with roads and no mountains blocking the route (faster moving around, can harvest plants from the tundra)
Near to a friendly faction base (faster trading)
With coast (for easier defense, and fishing)
With caves (early food source)

Ice sheets themselves do not have roads or rivers, but that does not mean you can not settle close to a road. 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 with all those characteristics, but try to get as many of them as you can.

Starting colonists[edit]

Ice sheet is so harsh that you will have to resort to cannibalism, so you want to have a crew that can tolerate that.

If playing with ideoligions, it is easy to have everyone be fine with human butchering and cannibalism with the Cannibalism: Acceptable precept.
Without Ideology, your butcher should have a trait that prevents human butchering debuffs (Cannibal, Bloodlust or Psychopath), and rest of your crew should have a mood-boosting trait or a trait that prevents human debuffs. Not all five colonists need one of these traits, but more is ideal.

Base area[edit]

Once you choose your landing site and colonists, you should also choose your base area to begin with. It is important to notice that this area does not need to be final location, it is just the area where you are more likely to survive the early game.

You want to find an area with the characteristics:

On top of a steam geyser: Steam geysers generate heat, thus keeping the temperature warm without needing to burn wood or make electric heaters. This is the most essential part.
Near steel: For easier development.
More growing areas and more easily defendable: By settling near hills/mountains, you'll be closer to stony patches and can more easily defend.

In order to not freeze, the initial base must be kept small. You can either refurbish a ruin, use a cave, or make a small steel base. It all comes down to what you have near the steam geysers. If you have a ruin, take it. If you have a hill, make a cave. If you have none of these, make a small steel base.

If the base is especially small, then the geysers may be prone to giving colonists heatstroke. This can be mitigated by opening up parts of the roof.

Good starting area near the geyser.

Tribal Start, no DLC[edit]

We now focus on the Lost Tribe start because it is the hardest one to thrive in hostile environments, since you have more people to feed and less technology to help you.

First agenda[edit]

Get some easily accessible steel and use it to build your stuff, so you do not have to use wood.
Make your starter base on top of a steam geyser. Give people a place to sleep, eat and play.
Hunt those snowhares before they leave the map.
Kill your starting animals.
Only use wood to make campfires, either for cooking or heating up. Make sure your wood is forbidden so they do not refuel it unnecessarily.
Get rid of some colonists.

Notes[edit]

Now you are going to be struggling for food for a long time. If you have caves in your map, it will help a lot. You want to keep the insects alive. Enjoy while it is warm and go visit your nearby friendly base to trade whatever you can for food. For that, you gotta get something you can trade:

You can mine expensive ores like components, plasteel, uranium, jade, silver or gold.
You can open the ancient shrine and sell whatever you find there.
You can sell humans and (when there is enough time) human organs.

Regardless, you still will not have enough food for five people for so long, you simply have to get rid of some of them. The best way is to put some of them inside the ancient cryptosleep caskets.

Opening the ancient structure is dangerous! Bring them one by one and use your animals as meat shield.

You can also send some people out while it is warm to raid the closest base outside the ice sheet, try to not raid your closest friendly neighbor. Hunt the animals and harvest the plants around the base and run back to your base. You can make peace with them later. You have to bring the colonists back in the beginning of next season before it gets too cold.

Another more undesirable option is to sell some colonists. They are usually worth a lot, 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.

But you gotta do something, feeding five people will not happen. Three people is about what you can you feed.

Base on top of geyser. Two colonists were sent on a raid mission.

Second agenda[edit]

Make a killbox.
Make steel spike traps.
Eat any raiders, wanderers, and escape pod refugees, etc.
Wear their parkas and tuques, tainted if you must.
Buy cloth from your neighbors.
Make your research bench and start researching complex clothing. Once that is done, make parkas and tuques with your cloth.
Make human leather bedrolls.
Make lots of dusters with all the human leather and sell it.

Notes[edit]

Now for the cannibalism. You will eat anyone that is not one of your starting colonists or from a friendly faction, unless you manage to lose most of your colonists that is. That includes anyone who tries to join your colony. It also means offering help to refugees just so you can eat them later. You also better be sure you got clothes before fall starts.

You will not have time to make your own clothes, you will have to use the clothes from raiders and would-be recruits. Try to strip pawns before they die so their clothes won't be tainted. You may want to buy cloth in advance for when you finish Complex Clothing.

Early raid. Time to feed!

Since you are going to often offer help to refugees, you better make a proper killbox with lots of spike traps. The fighting starts outside though, with all the ice and snow the raiders are going to be really slow. Shot them while they are approaching because it takes a while for them to move to cover. Then once they are in cover, go back to your killbox.

Remember that human leather is worth a lot and it is better to make something with it first, then sell it. First give your colonists bedrolls to sleep, then make dusters since they are more profitable then anything else. Cannibal and Bloodlust colonists will want to wear human leather clothes, give them human leather button-down shirts and human leather pants. However, human leather parkas are not insulating enough; only wear them with nothing better.

Colonists sent to raid mission barely came back before freezing.

Third agenda[edit]

Research complex furniture. Once you done, make steel beds.
Go get item stashes so you can hunt and harvest in the area.
Go help incapacitated refugees so you can hunt and harvest in the area. Then eat him.
Go rescue prisoners in outposts so you can hunt and harvest in the area. Then eat them all.
Go destroy enemy outposts so you can hunt and harvest in the area. Then eat them all.
Replace the less insulating parkas for cloth parkas.
Research stone cutting so you can start using stone instead of steel.

Notes[edit]

Once you have your colonists with parkas and tuques, you should take every opportunity available to go to another map. If you placed your colony near tundra, then it is likely that the quests will appear in tundra maps and that they will have much more resources than your frozen home.

Look at all those delicious-looking animals and people.

Whenever you reach a quest location, you want to look for berries, healroot, animals and wood. Animals should be butchered before leaving, if the meat is too heavy and you still have time you can use the local wood to make lots of campfires and turn all into meals to reduce weight.

Winter is coming, it is going to be so cold that not any parka will do. Anything with worse insulation than cloth should be replaced by cloth, which is average in insulation but really cheap to buy and fairly common.

We are here to rescue you... not.

Fourth agenda[edit]

Replace the cloth parkas with better insulating parkas.
Use stone to reinforce your walls with a second layer for better insulation.
Research electricity.
Research batteries.

Notes[edit]

Now it is cold, so cold that even cloth parkas are not enough. Try to replace your cloth(cold insulation 18) for higher insulation textiles, and only send people out on quests if you got a strong insulating parka for them.

Raiders are now more numerous and if you keep doing quests you should have enough food to feed five people.

So so cold... that raiders might freeze before start attacking.

Fifth agenda[edit]

Make your first greenhouse with a sun lamp and heaters.
Plant potatoes.

Notes[edit]

Finally, you are ready to make a greenhouse and plant potatoes. Ideally, try to connect it to your steam geyser.

Since you got a reliable food source, you can now accept more people. You are not free of cannibalism yet, but you can stop eating the refugees.

First greenhouse.

Sixth agenda[edit]

Research hydroponics.
Research nutrient paste dispenser.
Research air conditioning.

Notes[edit]

With hydroponics basins, you may make greenhouses without having to stick to stony patches. Getting anything planted here is expensive, so you should make a nutrient paste dispenser to save on food, once you got one you may stop doing cannibalism. Alternatively, you can use moisture pumps on a lake to create large areas of stony soil, although this takes a while. Archean trees, while unlikely to obtain at this point in the game, can also convert any natural tile into soil, even ice.

It is nice to research air conditioning in order to build a freezer, as the summer is warm enough to spoil food. However, doing so is not necessary, as plant food can survive 40 days in the heat.

With food stabilized, the worst is gone. The game will now play like any other biome, just less forgiving and with a harsh outdoor environment. You can now move to a proper area, a more central location where you can build that huge colony you always dreamed of.

Moving out.

Before a pond (left) and later a greenhouse (right).

Other Scenarios[edit]

Crashlanded, Rich Explorer, Mechanitor: The starting supplies are enough for a room, electricity, and some electric equipment including heaters. In addition, with less mouths to feed, starting sacrifices are less necessary.

Naked Brutality: Brutal and RNG reliant, but not impossible. Great Mining is a must, in order to make a steel room on top of a steam geyser, then have enough steel for spike traps. Before the first humans show up, it is possible to get food through the early snowhares, events, and/or by temporarily settling on different tiles (settling on a tundra can be done for berries, although may be against the spirit of the challenge).

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