User:Hordes/Sea ice

The sea ice is RimWorld's harshest biome, much worse than the extreme desert.

This guide details how to survive and get to a stable position, using the Lost Tribe start, on Losing is Fun, without using any DLC. In particular, the Ideology DLC has features that make sea ice survival significantly easier - even Naked Brutality sea ice is possible if you know how to use it. Details on DLC will be included in the bottom of this guide.

Briefing

Sea ice is the coldest biome, with almost no animal life, no rock, no soil, and freezing temperatures. Travel by caravan is slow. There are no geothermal vents to use as free heat. In most places, there will be 23 hour days in the summer, and 23 hour nights in the winter.

You can argue that sea ice isn't challenging, in that it doesn't take much player skill to survive. Once you get your food, heat, and mood situations stable, a sea ice colony becomes like any other. At that point, the only practical differences are that resource gain is slower, that mistakes are punished more, and that colonists need to wear a parka all the time. These are more tedious than anything. Thus, once you know how to solve these earlygame problems (by following this guide), sea ice isn't much harder than other starts.

In any case, you may wonder how living in the sea ice is possible at all. Here are the main ways you survive in this biome:

Food:

• Animal hunting. You might get 3 snowhares at the start, and shouldn't expect more than one hare per week. You might also get a polar bear, who you can kill using door exploits.
• Trade. Slow, but an extra source of food at the start of the game, and you'll need to trade anyways.
• Humans. Raiders will come every once in a while, even in the sea ice. Also, all storytellers have a population intent. If you're at 1 colonist, they'll constantly send new colonist opportunities (drop pods, wanderers...), which equate to free human meat. This is what makes survival possible.
• Hydroponics are the ultimate long-term goal. They allow you to grow food, enough to support more colonists than human meat would. Crops also act as a renewable source of money.

Heat:

• Lost Tribes are stuck using campfires to heat a room. However, wood is finite, so you can't use a campfire forever.
• Warm clothing, like parkas and tuques, will let pawns survive without needing to burn wood. You can get warm clothes from raiders and colonist arrivals.
• Once you get to Electricity, heaters are your main solution.

Mood:

• Use a pawn with great traits.

If you survive for 60 days, note that mechanoid raids will be prevalent. Once 60 days have passed, if the average temperature is below -40 °C (-40 °F), and if you have enough wealth for mech raids, then human raids won't spawn at all. Therefore, you can only get mech raids. This may be an advantage to living in a colder part of the map, since as of 1.4, mechs cannot have drop pod raids.

Landing Site

Believe it or not, sea ice tiles are not identical.

• Tiles closer to the equator are warmer.
  • If you're close enough to the equator, temperatures may rise above freezing during the summer. This makes it easier to begin the game. However, it can spoil your food.
• Tiles may be closer to faction bases. Without trade, survival is much more difficult. To make things better, you should settle close to two faction bases. You will expand much faster in the mid-late game.
• There are no rivers, mountains, or roads, but you can spawn near the coast, a minor benefit (raiders cannot enter through the ocean).

In a regular world, all sea ice tiles are located near the poles, which causes days to be extremely long in the summer and night to be extremely long in the winter. However, if you change your world generation to reduce the world temperature to the minimum, then sea ice tiles can appear closer to the equator, which makes the day/night cycle more normal.

You may also want to increase the population setting, to increase the number of faction bases available.

Starting Colonists

It's impossible to feed 5 colonists at the start of the game, and there are no ancient cryptosleep caskets to preserve them. Thus, you should focus on having 1, maybe 2, colonists who are good.

• Sea ice is so harsh that you will have to resort to cannibalism, slavery and organ harvesting, so you want to have a crew that can endure that.
• At least 3 of your colonists will be sold. To be optimal, these colonists should have no health problems.
• For the lone colonist(s) who won't be sold, you'll want:
  • Someone with good Shooting skill, and at least 4 Construction skill. Also, having a passion for Crafting and/or Intellectual (regardless of current standing) also helps.
  • If you have a second colonist, somebody with good Medical helps.

To make colonist generation easier, you may want to edit your scenario to force all starting colonists to have Cannibal (among other beneficial traits, like iron-willed, industrious, etc.). To do this, open the scenario editor, select Lost Tribe, then add the "Forced trait" modifier.

Day 1-2

Your first agenda should be:

• Make your starting base out of wood. Remember to cut corners!
• Hunt the snowhares before they leave the map.
• Arrest three colonists. Sell these colonists, and any starting animals, at a faction base. Use the money to buy essential survival goods.
• Make a research bench. This requires 25 steel, which you should remember to buy.

When you first start the colony, you'll want to multitask. Have a colonist good at Construction build a small room. Have a colonist good at Shooting start hunting hares. Other colonists should be hauling goods to a central location. If you start with any pen animals, you'll want to place a caravan hitching spot so that they don't wander off.

When hunting, use manual drafting instead of the automatic hunt command. Have the hunter stay as close to the target as possible. Hares and artic foxes won't retaliate, so doing so increases accuracy. As animals run away when attacked, you want to stand "behind" the animal (so that the animal is between the colonist and your base).

Construction

You'll want to build, in order of priority:

• A big enough room (8x8 interior, can go smaller if you want).
• A campfire, so that colonists don't freeze to death.
• A table and a stool, classic RimWorld necessities.
• A hoopstone ring, so colonists can recreate indoors.
• A butcher table, so you get more meat when butchering.

Selling Out

Once you have built a room and campfire, you can start arresting three of your colonists. Place enough sleeping spots in the room, set them for prisoners, and have your best Social pawn start arresting. Let everyone warm up for a bit, to reduce any existing hypothermia. Then, set a caravan to the nearest faction base. You'll need a fourth pawn, one who is not imprisoned, along with the three prisoners.

You'll want to set each prisoner to eat no food. To do this, go to their Health tab, and change the food restriction (just above the medicine selection tab). A pawn can survive 2 days without food. Doing this will reduce their market value, but the conserved food should make up for it.

Once you arrive, sell the 3 prisoners and any starting animals. You'll want to buy food, warm clothing if available (parkas, tuques, etc.), at least 25 steel (to create a research bench), and perhaps some wood and industrial medicine. Nutrient paste meals, insect meat, human meat and vegetables are the cheapest (best) options for food.

Week 1-2

(verify this with actual gameplay)

• If possible, keep trading to get food & materials
• Butcher any dead bodies you get, eat the meat, use human leather for bedrolls & tribalwear.
• If you have medicine & decent medical skill: harvest the organs of those you capture alive.
• (Optional): Activate the man in black