It's really hard to put biotech as anything but S tier due to one reason It properly opened up a completely new way to play. Previously single/few pawn colonies struggled to function, it required extensive micro to progress and advance. Now with biotech it's entirely possible to have an advanced, thriving colony fully functional with just a single mechanitor, especially since most of the earliest mechanoids specifically do labour intensive tasks.
That’s so true. Before Biotech I always struggled to keep with advancement without mods since there was just not enough people to handle all things and hazards at the same time. Now with biotech my every run even without mods eventually ends up as self sufficient luxury factory and it’s so nice. The only thing I need is caravans and transport improvement since for now these are pain in the ass that’s slow everything
I think it's important to say it opens a new avenue of play, *that easily fits into a normal run.* Like Anomaly also adds a new avenue of play, but you basically have to dedicate a run to it
Ideology is great, but the setup time for it takes way too long. And i dont like how it puts restrictions on your colony forcing you to play a certain way for no real benefit: we live in a cave, we can only recruit women, we can only eat mushrooms, we can never leave the cave, bla bla.
Biotech doesn't even feel like Rimworld, it feels like the dev just took one good look at the most beloved mods (While not noticing wall light) and decided to add all of them, children, robots, alien races, it's exactly what Rimworld missed at the time and needed the most
A bunch of sapient alien races don't exactly fit the vibe of RimWorld, which is why they went with Xenohumans. Children is a controversial subject in a game like this, so it makes sense to wall it off for the most dedicated fans. Robots however, it honestly feels like a huge oversight that the base games robotics are so limited.
Aliens were specifically mentioned as not existing by the official lore documents, but xeno humans were mentioned in it even before biotech’s release, so they were a natural thing to add
@@caltheuntitled8021 The definition of alien is otherworldly or coming from outer space, so xenotypes are aliens as many of them were created outside of earth
To me, a small but noticeable value (to me at least) DLCs add is immersion. Even if in a playthrough I decide to not use psycasting, interact with the Empire, or have any of my colonists have a kid, to think that those things canonically exist in the Rimworld setting makes me feel immersed. That every action a faction takes may have diplomatic consequences, that bombing a enemy settlement, unless it is a military installment, will most likely have civilians, children even. Despite Rimworld players having the rep of being war criminals with no care in the world, these little things do matter for me as someone who try to balance my actions in-game. This makes me crave a DLC that deepens the pawn-to-pawn interaction, and how they react to different scenarios.
Honestly I think anomaly is more focused on people who REALLY love the combat and storytelling aspects of the game. The new threats like the devourers and chimeras can really destroy one of your colonists if you are caught by surprise by them. Anomaly makes the game HARDER! If you enjoy the more tragic stories the game can generate DO buy the anomaly DLC, you are gonna have a blast playing that.
This is why I'm so obsessed, yet equally scared of it, I'm the real target audience fr, because I love the idea of starting with bruised up baseliners that fights to the top, I'll even add VOID to games or have CE for difficulty spikes, I'll sleep thru weddings and check social tabs for fun, to see who hates who, but the game has my fullest attention when I see a red notification and it pauses, I almost never pick anyone else but Cassandra because I know fighting is guaranteed, But the true beauty of Anamoly for me, is it's unpredictable combat situations, I can deal with everything now outside of the DLC, but having to hide my whole colony in a room because I didn't know what a revanant does or where it was 😂 sightseekers swarming me in a hallways because I ignored the weirdo visitor and when I think it's over, 10 more pop up so I had to save the swarmed Highmate, shamblers swarm walls and beat on them even when they can path directly into your base, forcing me to abandon formation, devours or gores slow creep as they tank tank tank and create so much tension. Cults unlike Sieges need a full disruption, I usually pick off a guy or two and the Siege turns into a regular raid, cults don't, you have to stop the invoker/chanters and they'll send pawns to get in your way. One Chimera raid and I start kissing everyone goodbye, in some of these encounters, that precious kill box collects dust and I love it and I don't like horror because I can't suspend my disbelief and immerse when I don't feel fear, but rimworld has me in a chokehold because it's using lack of vital information and constant uncertainty. So now I over prep and use items I usually don't use
Rimworld definitely needs a general combat and raid system overhaul though, because it is definitely the weakest and most frustrating aspect of the game. It doesn’t feel dynamic or like the world is responding appropriately to you, and it heavily favors being very cheesy and exploitative of the AI due to how high and quickly things can scale
I completely agree here, except i would've put royalty and ideology the same. I think i take a lot of the royalty stuff for granted sometimes because it's personally so integral to the game, especially if you get into modding where a lot of them expand on aspects brought in by royalty such as the empire and psycasting. I think ideology is better, but it's a close margin personally Either way really good stuff as usual! I'm glad to see you giving advice like this to new rimworld players who may be dipping into the dlcs for the first time, and you've presented it in your usual enjoyable way!
I love how depsite Biotech, Royalty and Ideology being dlc's, they seem like an inseparable part of Rimworld playthrough. Anomaly (and Royalty in some ways) is truly an only dlc that does it job, and instead of adding mechanics that should be in the base game, it adds an interesting concept for your stories. At this point playing base Rimworld just doesn't seem right. It really suprises me how there are players in the community who play the base game and never bother to buy the dlc's.
@@mikim_xSome of us are stuck on console and so don't really get a choice. We have Royalty and Ideology... I wouldn't care, if it weren't for the fact that the only DLC i REALLY wanted was biotech.
I was a bit surprised anomaly got put so low, but with the caveat of it being the first dlc you get i totally agree. biotech definitely deserved s tier. Anything that can shift the gameplay so much it adds two new starts deserves nothing less.
The thing about royalty, I really love the mechanoid clusters, for me it is thee most interesting threat to deal with. I love chaotic close combat and you often get it when fighting with clister
For me, It's something around: S tier : Biotech A tier : Royalty and Ideology C tier : Anomaly Biotech for obvious reasons. Royalty because I enjoy the new technologies like implants, armor etc. Ideology because it opens up a lot of possibility for roleplay and try out new colony concepts. And Anomaly is fun and I recommend if you have the spare money but it adds the least amount of content and you could easily play without it. Love your videos, best of luck to you.
I love anomaly generally because of the atmosphere it adds to the game, like neverending horror you defend against hordes of nighmarish creatures and in the end you either destroy their nexus or become like them
As someone who owns all DLC, while I agree with your tier list I have to say that Biotech is the DLC I've done the least to interact with, mostly only using the mechanitor feature for solo-survival challenges. Something about managing genetics adds decision paralysis that I just cannot commit to. I feel like I am missing out, but what Biotech has added has greatly enhanced my play experience already, and have even made me stop using race mods entirely. I also completely agree that Anomaly is the DLC that is the most open for skipping simply because it sharply increases the difficulty of survival and management due to much less predictable hazards that demand specific resources to deal with. It is definitely something that is more for people with a level of expertise and who are okay with the game taking the reins away from colony-building to focus on problem-solving instead.
The good thing about xeno genes is that if you do regret the ones you chose for a pawn, you can just make a new xenogerm and implant them with it, and it will remove all existing xeno genes as if they were never modified. Xenogerms don’t even cost anything other than time if you aren’t using archogenes. So long as you can handle a pawn going into a coma for a day or two, you don’t need to stress about getting the perfect genes.
I love anomaly for that it gives an actual antagonist - sure in any other worldrim you could just headcanon that X faction is your worst enemy for whatever reason but only the darkotech is actually *evil*, its fun to have a big bad like that to defeat.
Another benefit of anomaly is that it tanks your performance by single handedly making the game like 40% slower oh and shamblers cause a permanent performance drain even if you kill them and destroy their corpses, they just kill your save lol
I've been a RimWorlder since a very early Alpha: S - Ideology - Everything you said about customization. We get to hand-pick our pawns, to tell them what to wear, to adjust every threat and difficulty, it just makes sense to dictate belief systems! Plus I like the Archonexus New Game Plus style way too much. A - Biotech. I love it a lot, yes, but unlike Ideology I CAN go back to playing without it. It expands upon the game but isn't essential to it, which just makes me love it more. B - Royalty - You described it rather well. I barely interact with the Empire, but the Royalty-exclusive quests alone bump it up to this tier. C - Anomaly - You said it best, it's a very specific DLC. One of the biggest criticisms is that it overrides the game rather than synergizing with it, and that's my experience as well. It's by no means a bad DLC, none of them are, just not for every player, especially not fresh ones.
Thanks for this video! I recently got Rimworld and I have been on the fence about buying Ideology and Biotech but this video convinced me it is worth it :)
Hey is the guy who said they did a trial by fire with ideology! personally i would have ideology and biotech be DLC you should get first at either very close intervals or at the same time, as they both add very nice expansions that lay the groundwork of everything you can do in rimworld. they are THE expansions that one should have. and then royalty and anomaly. which only add reactive content like spel- Psycasts and SC- Anomalies. Also that final bit about channel members did make me rather happy, im quite egalitarian when it comes to things like this so knowing there isn't a video i wont be able to see makes me quite happy.
Definitely true that the dlcs are worth the price. There are individual games out there that cost nearly as much yet don't have the staying power that Rimworld has.
Thoroughly enjoyed the financial analysis of the game at the beginning of the vid. I've never thought of it that way! Though I guess it really doesn't matter all that much to me now since I'm already at 1600 hrs 😅
agreed, i can't do a game without possibly encountering slaves or cannibals or cultists. I really love the story it adds and just can't do without it. Biotech is nice and all but honestly i think Ideology adds core gameplay mechanics that should already be in the game by default.
Thank you for making this video! I've been thinking of buying my first DLC for rimworld. I play with a lot of mods that change the game into a medieval one. I try to see what features of the DLCs I could replace with mods, which is something that I've taken heavily into consideration.
I hope the either the next or some future DLC will add proper multiplayer to rimworld. being able to start co-op colonies, or allied colonies, or even rival colonies with friends sounds awesome. its the only thing I can complain about in rimworld is the lack of multiplayer. every game is funner with friends.
100% agree with this ranking. I started playing Rimworld shortly after royalty came out, and as much as I love the shattered empire, I don't think the DLC was worth the money in hindsight. Ideology is must-have, although I think it was kinda shallow in a lot of ways. The ritual system in particular gets incredibly samey, and the restrictions on precepts based on the "memes" system are too constricting. Every transhumanist colony, for example is forced into too-narrow of a set of beliefs, which is why I always run mods that disable all those restrictions. Biotech is a work of art. The tradeoff system for positive and negative genes feels really good in terms of gameplay, the colonist-childhood mechanics feel really deep and well-integrated with the gameplay, the xenohuman races are creative and well-written, and the mechanics for making your own xenotypes in game, either through selective breeding or genetic engineering, require meaningful sacrifices and infrastructural investments to pull off. As if that wasn't good enough, the Mechanitor gameplay is a great exploration of people making more and more extreme sacrifices for power as they loose themselves to their own creations. To make the highest tier mechanoids, you have to literally destroy the brains of prisoners to form the higher tier subcores, and the pollution mechanic makes mechanoids a powerful, but costly strategy that requires foresight and sacrifice. I didn't bother to purchase Anomaly just based on the trailer. It's got a lot of cool mechanics, but none of them fit well into the kind of stories I like to play. Rimworld is already a challenging game where the challenge comes from managing the needs of imperfect people coming together to survive an unforgiving world. Apocalyptic challenges such as anomalous events like the darkness event or the flesh heart or similar just aren't compatible with that other kind of narrative tension. Anomaly feels like annoying intrusions into colony management, and while the events and enemies and mechanics within anomaly are absolutely well made and designed, Rimworld just isn't the game they belong in.
Man i cannot play this game without Ideology. After playing this game and so many times getting mods to tell colonists what is consireted wrong or right. Ideology for me is what makes this game have infinite replayability, the different ideology is what makes the runs different from each other.
I would rate the dlcs as follows: Ideology>Biotech>Anomaly>Royalty. I think they’re all really fun and add good ways to diversify the way the game is played, especially with almost 3k hours played. That being said, Ideology and biotech add the largest variety of mechanics which is why I like them. I rate Anomaly over royalty because I love the horror theme and it is very fun to deal with all the new threats that it adds. Royalty is still good even though I rated it last because I feel like I end up engaging with its contents the least. I only really want to work for the royal titles if I setup a playthrough to work well with the dlc and if you don’t work with the empire it doesn’t change your gameplay that much. I love them all though and I will likely buy any further expansions that Ludeon studios decides to make.
based on my mods and colonies my tierlist is biotech on s tier: so many mods need it, so many cool colonists, messing with genes is cool royalty on A tier: not many mods need it but the magic mods are cool and the shatered empire is a cool faction for the worldmap ideology is d: its either a BIG deal or a small if you gonna use it or not, guess if you want to make a canibal colony run its great cause you dont have to be as picky with recruits anomaly for now is e tier, when the vanilla expanded team start releasing some anomaly expanded it will bump up but for now its, eh, least i can set to ambient horror instead of having to babysit this strange geometrical shape from space, for now is just there and i occasiany get raided by chimeras or a bunch of shamblers
I pretty much agree with all of this, switching Ideologies with Biotech (to me they're close but I use Ideology's mechanics more than Biotech's). Adding onto the Anomoly's criticism; it feels more like a really detailed expansive mod made for a few specific potential gameplay scenarios, but nothing expansive like ideology. I think it could be massively improved with toggles and pregame scenarios like some kind of "Zombie apocolypes" mode or "eternal darkness" to help expand the DLC into many many different scenarios. The same can be said for the Royalty DLC, but the Royalty DLC doesn't exactly force you to interact with it's content like Anomoly does. I think once we get the final two DLC for rimworld, it'll be seen that Anomoly was the weakest of the bunch... visually impressive, pretty cool in certain scenarios but lacking that something which turns it from good to great. But also that's assuming the next two DLC are Biotech-Ideology like, enhancing the Roleplay and depth potential rather than expanding on Roleplay possibilities.
For me after the base game its ideology, royalty, biotech, and anomaly. These are in order of how well they feel like they fit into and add to the feel and identity of rimworld. Anomaly is, however, excellent for something new.
In my opinion ideology and biotech add so much that they're basically a must have for the full experience. Anomaly and royalty are the true DLC experience.
I truly do think Biotech is the greatest value out of all of the expansions it is ofc not going to be for everyone but genetics add so much to the game for me i cant imagine rimworld without that dlc, it would be so vastly different and depleted of so many interesting mechanics, far from just genes similarly im so in love with building a psycaster cult i cant imagine a playthrough without royalty. the empire is a great addition no matter how im feeling anomaly i personally do love for its themes ideology is frustrating at times and i think even limiting sometimes in its base implementation but that could be partly on me as well, not exploring its systems as much as i could be. i cant deny it adds a ton of connection between your decisions and your colonists tho, fantastic for all RP/immersion value Biotech - S+ Royalty - S Anomaly - A Ideology - A
lmao, I agree with so much of this. only thing I would change is ideology being S tier, just because I feel like religion is one of the things the base game is missing.
Personally, but I'm so glad we agree... A - Biotech - Hug amount of content that can be tailored to varying playstyles. B - Ideology - Lots of RP potential. C - Royalty - Has some neat stuff, though Psycasts aren't something I tend to go for. D - Anomoly - Not my taste
honestly i'd put all of these DLC's as an equal A for me! they're all their own seperate gamestyles and are suitable for different people, and i like variety gameplay and not a single colony i have are the same for that very reason. anomaly - very combat and story based, great for horror and ambience lovers! planning my defences and colonists equipment around possible anomalous threats is really interesting, and there's more use for fire weapons now which i love. also super fun to go entirely SCP foundation/lobotomy corp roleplay mode and design the entire base around these terrifying creatures, however it doesn't fit very well with the other DLC's. royalty - good for people who love building and roleplay, as you essentially can make your own castles and royalty systems, and children are super fun when you mix them with the biotech DLC as you can make hybrids of the different xenotypes! also psycasters are a super fun addition to combat. ideology - the ULTIMATE variety DLC, works super well with other DLCs, and i'd say it's very suited for people who get super bored of a colony really quick and rarely make it to late-game, because you can change everything up so quickly! my favourite ideology mixes so far are blindsight, cannibal and human primacy and transhumanist, raider and supremacist. also like to mix it up with some nature based tribal colonies though! biotech - for people who really like the mid-to-late game, and MORE VARIETY! i adore the xenotypes for adding so much more to different gameplays, and mechanoids are awesome for the transhumanist playthroughs! good for roleplay for the same reasons. honestly for which one to buy first as the og video answers, i'm gonna say in my opinion it's ideology! simply because it allows you to experiment with different areas of the game and base styles, like there's such different gameplay between building an underground base, a massive complex and a town with separate buildings, not to even mention the different gameplay between transhumanism, cults, tribes, supremacists, etc. and i agree with the video that anomaly goes last as it's more of an added experience to the game than more content, and you'll probably need hundreds of hours of gameplay to enjoy it to it's full potential of a horror game as it gives back that fear of the unknown that you got when you had your first raid and you weren't prepared at all!
Personally I'd put Ideology on the lowest tier I know Ideology roleplay potential is enormous compared to most other DLCs combined in the form of Ideologies, but aside from that, it adds so little to the game. You can enslave prisoners and grow trees that spawn cute helpful animals. That's pretty much it. I also want to point out that the Archonexus ending is... disappointing. It could've been similar to the artifact quests where you hack ancient complexes, but they are guarded by the archotech's security system making it way harder. And the resulting finale could've been either a boss fight against the godly nexus where it controls a giant long-forgotten war machine, and if you beat it, the nexus rewards you said machine out of respect, and requests you let it return to it's slumber. Or alternatively, it changes the entire world grating archotech level technology to everyone on the planet, yourself and other factions included, making enemy raids much trickier, but also allowing you to get those sweet archotech limbs much more easily. But no, just soft reset your save 3 or so times and gain a insta-win button. Even it's saving grace, the ideoligions, barely even change the other factions. Maybe a specific faction that believe usage of drugs is the way to ascend, but some of their communities don't have the soil to grow the required plants, so instead they turn to anyone willing to trade, allowing for easier diplomatic gains. But no, gain/lose faction relationship over time based on shared/conflicting memes Again, best DLC for roleplay potential, but for me it falls a bit short in terms of content...
Honestly the only change I would make here is switching Biotech and Ideology, but even then they’re so close to me that I can definitely go either one (personally love how much customization I have with my pawns with Biotech, especially with genes from mods)
For me it would go Biotech > Royalty > Ideology > Anomaly Biotech is #1 because it just improves the game in so many ways that don't take away from the base game. Being able to have and raise children is S tier alone, but also the different genetics and mech improvements are just amazing to have. No reason not to have this enabled Royalty in terms of quality of a DLC should probably be at the bottom, but I always have it enabled because of the empire. New weapons and armour, better quests, more music, etc. Just some nice quality of life features. The royalty questline and psycasts can be a hit or miss but even if you avoid those; the rest of the features are great to have regardless. Ideologies is probably second best in terms of quality and is a gamechanger. However, designing your religion everytime you start a playthrough can be a bit much so sometimes I just disable this dlc when I don't want to deal with the stuff it adds. Amazing dlc though if you have it enabled Lastly anomaly for the reasons you said. Best in terms of quality but it feels too different from the base experience and I rarely have it enabled. Amazing for a once in a while anomaly playthrough though
i always tell people ideology royalty then biotech because biotech is the most expensive and some parts of biotech work better if you have royalty anomaly is fun but only if you want to do a specific playthrough so i also say that one as last as you need to know the game before playing that one so good Tier List
Preface: I haven't purchased Anomaly. Biotech feels like it should've been part of base game. Ideology feels like it fleshes out the RP and backstory aspects of the game. Sometimes it can feel a little like it drags on, especially if you have more than one colonist who is in need of conversion. Still havent quite played all the way through Royalty, but it echoes the point of Ideology. Rather than expanding the backstory and internal identify of a playthrough, it feels structured around building the world externally through play.
Thank you for the great content❤. I would only swap Biotech and Ideology around, as I cannot imagine playing without Ideology today. And Anomaly is the only DLC I don't want to purchase😅 because I don't like tragic stories, I like stories about Empire Growth.
11:00 My first xenohuman playthrough was "Ancient Toxidizer" (my made up name) One Sanguophage like creature but focused for darkness/mines, long range, no animals handle, no art and plenty of toxicity and spreding it to others. So it was plenty of bugs bugs and bugs. F if i do think about it, i could make somethink like that again + with new dlc and plenty mods that improve playing with toxicity I would put ideology to biotech level or maybe Biotech below. Not that Biotech would be worse, but if i would have to have only one DLC. It will be ideology because with, "no trees killing","no slaughtering animals","no slaves".... And so on, you can make every new game completly different, without... I mean, to get all pawns night owls, psychopats etc. is hard, or you need mods. If i would play Rimworld first time, and could buy only one dlc with it, yeah in that case it would be Royalty or Biotech. If i would play 50-100h only vanilla Rimworld, it would be Ideology as first and only DLC. Because with first playing you wouldn't enjoy/understand those Ideology things that much. But what i could know, i have only 980h, rookies numbers.
I could put Anomaly at the B tier to be honest... For me this DLC adds something that I very wanted in my game... Chaos! Anomaly events are much better at creating chaos then any other dlc or mods... And I just love it
Hard disagree with Royalty not being in A tier, and its only there because Biotech adds so much content that it has to take the top spot. Royalty doubles the total number of quests - not just the ones available from the empire specifically, adds a ton of music, opens up multiple colony builds that actually play differently (unlike a lot of Ideology where you can play still play way the same in Core, Ideology just makes it give you mood buffs), and all the other secondary items it adds. People focus too much on psycasts and the empire, when it adds so much more. Biotech>Royalty>(Ideology>Anomaly if you've been playing a long time or dislike the theme of anomaly) or (Anomaly>Ideology if you're new to the game or like the theme of Anomaly)
The thing about Anomaly is that it got a bad rap for being overbearing upon it's initial release because frankly, it was. Having run numerous other colonies since it got adjusted to be more inline with the base game I can say for certain that the handful of utilities that Anomaly adds are well worth the price of admission.
I pretty much agree with your list, however I found the Royalty more impactful than Ideology. Royalty's age is starting to show but the psycasts change combat in a bunch of interesting ways. However I think of it as a "Combat Expanded" DLC as it didn't add much to the story. Ideology added a bunch of new ways to interact with the story but to me it felt a lot like a cosmetic DLC over something that changed the way I played. Biotech is the best by a wide margin. its basically Rimworld 2.0. While Anomaly has a ton of fun stuff but it being gated behind the anomaly questline really limits its playability. Personally i would love to see Sanguophage being given the ability to make a thrall (Edit: as an option) over just transferring their xenogerm; as not only is it thematically but mechanically appropriate. IMO one of Rimworld's biggest weaknesses is the games insistence on DLCs remaining separate. until they patched it (during biotech iirc) the game would totally ignore new DLC whenever old DLC story beats would occur. I would prefer a game state where all the DLCs existed out in the world and you would just need the DLC installed to interact with the system. IE even if I didn't have Anomaly installed I might still encounter a Cultist raid or a rogue Revenant that I wouldn't be able to capture. If nothing else it would be a breadcrumb to encourage me to purchase the DLC after seeing something cool in my own game.
You could make thralls for the Sanguophages. Just have a second ideoligion that worships bloodfeeders, along with maybe the guilty meme or others that would fit. Then have a "thrall-master" pawn belong to that ideology and convert the prisoners to "thralls". You could even change their member's name to Thralls.
@@thenightarchives4148 the benefit to the thralls is the the mechanics they bring. unlimited limb regeneration as well as the thrall recovery rate largely fixed the issue with melee in Rimworld and after playing with it in full I'm really hesitant to go back to Pawn blockers. That being said having a standing army of prisoner blocker fodder sounds fun, however the investment might not match the usefulness as you progress to endgame.
What I personally think is slightly different from what he says, but overall the same. This is my specific list of opinions on the matter. S: Ideology. Very important for any playthrough imo. Rimworld is primarily a story-telling game, and Ideology allows you to guide your colony's story in a very important way, that being the colonist'' beliefs and ideas. I would recommend getting this DLC before even starting your first plathrough. A: Biotech. Robots are cool, and xenotypes majorly affect pretty much everything. (If you actually have them in your colony, that is) I would definitely recommend this one if you like the base game B: Royalty. The empire is cool, and so is being a noble, but the psycasts are really underwhelming in my opinion. If you include the (free) Psycasts Expanded mod, this would probably be my A-tier pick. C: Anomaly. Great for an eldritch horror playthrough, but not very replayable. If you do like the horror vibes it's pretty good, but there are free mods that are about 25% as good. You should get it if you liked the other DLCs, but overall wouldn't recommend.
I have royalty and it actually makes the game easier somehow. I rely on royal members more than the buildings I have. You just do things that shouldn't be possible in cost of high wealth demand and bigger raids. Recently bought biotech and some it's even better than royalty. I can literally have immortal pawns or indestructible pawns unless it's a decapitation
My opinion is that if you're more roleplay kind of a player, you should buy "Ideology" first, but if you like min-maxing more then you should buy "Biotech".
The problem with anomaly for me is that its so overpowering, when you have it installed its not something you can just ignore. it kind of takes over the whole game. unlike the other dlcs that help flesh out the game in ways of roleplaying anomaly almost forces you to fight against large overbearing foes often taking up whole parts of the map
I have all DLC expect anomaly: 1. Biotech-adds some sort of new races and it really limitless, and being a mechanaitor is very fun experience 2. Ideology- adds more story telling options, in the past if you wanted to play as cannibalistic underground tribal it was painful because not everyone was cannibal, know you can make them by cannibal, and overall good dlc for storytelling 3. Royalty- good dlc but not the best, the empire is fun mechanics but basic not modded psychist are just kinda bad, I was thinking this is the best dlc but after I realised the psychic powers are form Vanilla Psychist Expanded I change my mind. 4. Anomaly- yes as a person who didn't play i shouldn't talk about it but.... In my opinion this dlc not suits Rimworld lore or my personal view on the game, And I don't really like cosmic-horror stuff or Cthulhu. Putting aside cosmic horror and my preferences, I would said this dlc is 1 or mayby 2 time to play, it is not very replayable the storyline is liner and not very options to chose , compare to sandbox DLC like Biotech ore Ideology. I wrote my opinion before watching your film, and I am glad that I am not only one that seas DLC like this.
Anomaly and Ideology are S tier for me, they are truely revolutionary and something that haven't been done years ago with mods like Biotech and Royalty is basically bunch of mods adapted into a game in Tynan's own way
i had a completely different reason for disliking anomaly, i thought making them useful would mean using that entities specific powers for my own uses, however almost every entity is the same in how you are supposed to use them
I bought biotech first because I had been craving having children in the game for so long. I had always been wondering why your pawns could get into relationships and have "lovin'" without resulting in children. I absolutely love biotech, and it was my only DLC for a long while. Just recently I bought Ideology which I am also absolutely loving. I love playing around with the different religions and belief systems that allow you to dictate how your colony feels about things. I had been wanting to play as a tribe of cannibals for a long time, but the problem was figuring out how to give them all the cannibal and psychopath traits. Now I don't need to have them, I can just make it part of their religion.
Here with the mandatory console pity. Consoles still only have the first two "royalty and ideology". IDK what exactly came of the people in charge of developing the port, whatever happened I get the feeling console is stuck back in time.
@@thenightarchives4148 Believe it or not, no. Like, one thing the people who were in charge of the port did REALLY well, was making sure the controls translated over properly for console. Ambiguousamphibian I believe made a really good batch of videos on the console port, it really isn't all that terrible, especially compared to other console ports.
Heres my opinion Ideology is probably the best - it gives you the most flexibility to create new colonies and can have the most or the least impact depending on what you want Biotech is my number two - I really like genetic modification and mechanitors. Also really fun to merge with ideology, my favorite colony ever was a Mechanitor sanguophage who maintained an army of worshipping slaves and prisoners with cut off legs to act as bloodbags Royalty is number three - I played through it once and did its ending. Mostly I just end up having a royal and having to go thru trouble to satisfy them and I also get a bunch of quests that just have honor as reward and I don't always wanna play the empire - also the mechanoid clusters always fuck me up Anomaly is my least favorite - I've played it the least and I'm already pretty bad at the game anyway. I kinda feel like I'd just lose if I try to engage with the content
S: Biotech A: Ideo, Royalty B: Anomaly I like Anomaly, and try to use it in all my playthroughs, HOWEVER, it is definitely the weakest. For most people, I would say that it is situational. Edit: Yes, I did post this prior to watching to the end.
Anomaly is a good mod But that's what it is You should buy it last, unless what you're looking for from Rimworld is SCP simulator And it should be bought with the knowledge that, unlike the other DLC, it's not really one you can slot into any run. If it's active, every run will be an Anomaly run
Funny, the way you ranked them, was the order in which I bought them last year. Play base game until you're sick of it, even with mods. Then add Biotech and play Sims with guns, no wait, play with baseliners that become genetic Gods, no wait, why do we need.... ppl?... The robots never die... Nah let's play out Underworld, in Rimworld.. *Selects crashland start and does everything all at once* Keep he baby out of the pollution and turn that 80yr lady into a vampire, the stats on that thing. 😂 Ideology. get confused as why everyones pissed because we don't have a.. A what? Oh a moral guide. How do I ADD that? okay added. 80k+ wealth.. my colonist protesting outside - WE NEEED STATUSES! WE NEED STATUSES! Royalty. Empire asshats think they're hot...no I won't save your lil goof running from the rodent early game to kiss your ass forever... *Takes in the desserter* . HA! SUC-Empire drop pod raid = colony whip. I see. I will not make that mistake again 😅 Anamoly = WTF IS GOING ON?! *pauses game* ayo this music is lit 🔥🔥 anyways. Why are we scared again?oh right that rev kissed someone and ghosted. Wow. Player. My fav by list tho Biotech Anamoly Ideology and Royalty I like that anamoly, once you turn it on, it corrupts whatever you were doing, playing a tree people run? Now it's a pink trees graveyard, perfect trans humanist run, well they do love a fleshy lungs to eh it's chaotic lol
I would've placed Royalty above the Ideology, mostly because of favors that i can call in (couple more hands with guns are always welcome) and Vanilla Expanded mod series. Having a more fleshed out Empire is essential to every playthrough of mine. And fighting them in the jungles and rainforests is certainly something i'd want to experience again and again. Though, not in first person(Look up ARMA 3 APEX Protocol gameplay). Still, the never ending feeling that i'm racing against time when fighting them, even when i'm "safe", the feeling of being powerless when aerodrones finally find my location, the dread when they start to fire their missles, and the only thing that i can do is command my men to gear up and run away, or die? That is what i love about the Empire. When you fight the Empire, you fight against an unstoppable, clumsy but at the same time surgically accurate foe. Every rebel knows that alone they are weak, on their own, incapable of engaging imperials in a straight up fight, and the only way for them to survive is through heavy use of guerilla warfare tactics. The feeling that i am a part of a laughably small and spread too thin rebellion... and yet can be such a pain in the ass that the imperials would use literal planet-scorching satellites *just to get rid of ME?* TOTALLY SELLS ME THE DLC AND ALL THE MODS THAT DEPEND ON IT. Long live the rebellion. Down with the Empire.
Makes sense. I was also tempted to place Royalty above Ideology, but then I ran a mental test and thought "Which one I could do without out of those two?" and I just couldn't imagine playing with Royalty but without Ideology
Ideology is the one I don't like the most. It adds a lot to the table, idea is good but somehow I don't quite enjoy ideology system. I do keep it on and play with it but I always try to sustain classik-like ideology so I won't bother with it.
From what I can tell, Biotech is the most beginner friendly, it adds a lot of stuff, but nothing to wildly complicate the game. Ideology is better for more experienced players who want more playstyles. Combining the two is best.
As I’ve always said, when doing anything Rimworld related, it depends. Every Rimworld DLC adds something entirely different over the other and buy the DLC you wish you want in your Rimworld gameplay. For example, Biotech adds genetics/xenotypes, expands the mechanoids also allowing you to make your own mechanoid army, and raise your own children as future colonists along with plenty of new factions (though they’re just core factions with slightly different changes) which allows for more variety of threats. Not to mention a huge variety of mods that expand around these features. In all honesty let the video explain the variety of features but in shorter terms, get the DLC that you believe you want within your Rimworld gameplay. Take it from me, I always wanted to raise children and have them as future colonists which is why I bought Biotech first.
I do not like royalty. I find it very annoying to deal with the room size requirements. I also find the noble clothing useless since they don't offer any protection from enemy fire. I find the psycasting to be cumbersome to master. However, the thing that I dislike the absolute most is the mechanoid cluster. They do so much damage and they are always so much more powerful than my pawns no matter what. I am always taken heavy damage which takes so long to heal from. Royalty having extra quests is nice, but you can add mods for that.
![[RimWorld] Top 25 RimWorld QoL Mods (Anomaly & 1.5)](/img/n.gif)
With all these hours invested you must be a master of rimming
Rim rim master
There's something wrong with that statement, but I just can't place my finger in it.
@@Nomenius1 It's because you don't use the finger for it
@@soluslunes2241 believe me, I'm familiar with the concept, I was just trying to be witty.
@@soluslunes2241 my mouth feels really strange right now, I guess I should play rimworld
It's really hard to put biotech as anything but S tier due to one reason
It properly opened up a completely new way to play. Previously single/few pawn colonies struggled to function, it required extensive micro to progress and advance.
Now with biotech it's entirely possible to have an advanced, thriving colony fully functional with just a single mechanitor, especially since most of the earliest mechanoids specifically do labour intensive tasks.
That’s so true. Before Biotech I always struggled to keep with advancement without mods since there was just not enough people to handle all things and hazards at the same time.
Now with biotech my every run even without mods eventually ends up as self sufficient luxury factory and it’s so nice.
The only thing I need is caravans and transport improvement since for now these are pain in the ass that’s slow everything
I think it's important to say it opens a new avenue of play, *that easily fits into a normal run.* Like Anomaly also adds a new avenue of play, but you basically have to dedicate a run to it
Ideology is a must have, the good thing of rimworld is the roleplay, and it's expands
Yeah, ideology is perfect for that.
Ideology and biotech rank way up there
Ideology is great, but the setup time for it takes way too long. And i dont like how it puts restrictions on your colony forcing you to play a certain way for no real benefit: we live in a cave, we can only recruit women, we can only eat mushrooms, we can never leave the cave, bla bla.
@@z0h33y The base game already does that, it's just arbitrary what the restrictions are. Ideology at least lets you choose.
Those kinds of restrictions have long been a part of RimWorld. This system just formalizes it.
Biotech doesn't even feel like Rimworld, it feels like the dev just took one good look at the most beloved mods (While not noticing wall light) and decided to add all of them, children, robots, alien races, it's exactly what Rimworld missed at the time and needed the most
A bunch of sapient alien races don't exactly fit the vibe of RimWorld, which is why they went with Xenohumans. Children is a controversial subject in a game like this, so it makes sense to wall it off for the most dedicated fans. Robots however, it honestly feels like a huge oversight that the base games robotics are so limited.
Aliens were specifically mentioned as not existing by the official lore documents, but xeno humans were mentioned in it even before biotech’s release, so they were a natural thing to add
@@caltheuntitled8021 The definition of alien is otherworldly or coming from outer space, so xenotypes are aliens as many of them were created outside of earth
Bro 14,000 hours is wild thats 1.6 years of just playing
To be fair, the game is like 11 years old. I'm sure gamers play multiple games for as long without it being tracked as easily. For example, Minecraft.
Could be botted or just having the game open in main menu.
I have 16,000 hours in Minecraft lol
To me, a small but noticeable value (to me at least) DLCs add is immersion. Even if in a playthrough I decide to not use psycasting, interact with the Empire, or have any of my colonists have a kid, to think that those things canonically exist in the Rimworld setting makes me feel immersed. That every action a faction takes may have diplomatic consequences, that bombing a enemy settlement, unless it is a military installment, will most likely have civilians, children even. Despite Rimworld players having the rep of being war criminals with no care in the world, these little things do matter for me as someone who try to balance my actions in-game. This makes me crave a DLC that deepens the pawn-to-pawn interaction, and how they react to different scenarios.
Honestly I think anomaly is more focused on people who REALLY love the combat and storytelling aspects of the game. The new threats like the devourers and chimeras can really destroy one of your colonists if you are caught by surprise by them. Anomaly makes the game HARDER! If you enjoy the more tragic stories the game can generate DO buy the anomaly DLC, you are gonna have a blast playing that.
Agreed
This is why I'm so obsessed, yet equally scared of it, I'm the real target audience fr, because I love the idea of starting with bruised up baseliners that fights to the top, I'll even add VOID to games or have CE for difficulty spikes, I'll sleep thru weddings and check social tabs for fun, to see who hates who, but the game has my fullest attention when I see a red notification and it pauses, I almost never pick anyone else but Cassandra because I know fighting is guaranteed,
But the true beauty of Anamoly for me, is it's unpredictable combat situations, I can deal with everything now outside of the DLC, but having to hide my whole colony in a room because I didn't know what a revanant does or where it was 😂 sightseekers swarming me in a hallways because I ignored the weirdo visitor and when I think it's over, 10 more pop up so I had to save the swarmed Highmate, shamblers swarm walls and beat on them even when they can path directly into your base, forcing me to abandon formation, devours or gores slow creep as they tank tank tank and create so much tension. Cults unlike Sieges need a full disruption, I usually pick off a guy or two and the Siege turns into a regular raid, cults don't, you have to stop the invoker/chanters and they'll send pawns to get in your way. One Chimera raid and I start kissing everyone goodbye, in some of these encounters, that precious kill box collects dust and I love it and I don't like horror because I can't suspend my disbelief and immerse when I don't feel fear, but rimworld has me in a chokehold because it's using lack of vital information and constant uncertainty. So now I over prep and use items I usually don't use
Rimworld definitely needs a general combat and raid system overhaul though, because it is definitely the weakest and most frustrating aspect of the game. It doesn’t feel dynamic or like the world is responding appropriately to you, and it heavily favors being very cheesy and exploitative of the AI due to how high and quickly things can scale
i love anonaly
@@courier6960 i play on community builder and i don’t need cheese and it’s great
I completely agree here, except i would've put royalty and ideology the same. I think i take a lot of the royalty stuff for granted sometimes because it's personally so integral to the game, especially if you get into modding where a lot of them expand on aspects brought in by royalty such as the empire and psycasting. I think ideology is better, but it's a close margin personally
Either way really good stuff as usual! I'm glad to see you giving advice like this to new rimworld players who may be dipping into the dlcs for the first time, and you've presented it in your usual enjoyable way!
I love how depsite Biotech, Royalty and Ideology being dlc's, they seem like an inseparable part of Rimworld playthrough. Anomaly (and Royalty in some ways) is truly an only dlc that does it job, and instead of adding mechanics that should be in the base game, it adds an interesting concept for your stories. At this point playing base Rimworld just doesn't seem right. It really suprises me how there are players in the community who play the base game and never bother to buy the dlc's.
@@mikim_xSome of us are stuck on console and so don't really get a choice. We have Royalty and Ideology... I wouldn't care, if it weren't for the fact that the only DLC i REALLY wanted was biotech.
I was a bit surprised anomaly got put so low, but with the caveat of it being the first dlc you get i totally agree. biotech definitely deserved s tier. Anything that can shift the gameplay so much it adds two new starts deserves nothing less.
how funny we basically have same thoughts on the DLCs, it is exactly how i'd rank them.
The thing about royalty, I really love the mechanoid clusters, for me it is thee most interesting threat to deal with. I love chaotic close combat and you often get it when fighting with clister
the voices wont stop
The cube be like:
The voices of the void
Oh we have some chanters outside. They won't leave even when we shoot at em, kinda weird
I modified my brain to be a cube because I used all my colony ground into cube structures
real
Pov you come back from a fight when the go juice effect is vanishing and the marble large sculpture (exelent) is starting to talk
Bought rimworld with the biotech DLC a few days ago and already sunk 16 hours into it. Great game
Only 16
Spread the Word!!!! It's such a shame Rim world is still niche after all this time
For me, It's something around:
S tier : Biotech
A tier : Royalty and Ideology
C tier : Anomaly
Biotech for obvious reasons. Royalty because I enjoy the new technologies like implants, armor etc. Ideology because it opens up a lot of possibility for roleplay and try out new colony concepts. And Anomaly is fun and I recommend if you have the spare money but it adds the least amount of content and you could easily play without it. Love your videos, best of luck to you.
So still pretty similar
I love anomaly generally because of the atmosphere it adds to the game, like neverending horror you defend against hordes of nighmarish creatures and in the end you either destroy their nexus or become like them
As someone who owns all DLC, while I agree with your tier list I have to say that Biotech is the DLC I've done the least to interact with, mostly only using the mechanitor feature for solo-survival challenges. Something about managing genetics adds decision paralysis that I just cannot commit to. I feel like I am missing out, but what Biotech has added has greatly enhanced my play experience already, and have even made me stop using race mods entirely.
I also completely agree that Anomaly is the DLC that is the most open for skipping simply because it sharply increases the difficulty of survival and management due to much less predictable hazards that demand specific resources to deal with. It is definitely something that is more for people with a level of expertise and who are okay with the game taking the reins away from colony-building to focus on problem-solving instead.
The good thing about xeno genes is that if you do regret the ones you chose for a pawn, you can just make a new xenogerm and implant them with it, and it will remove all existing xeno genes as if they were never modified. Xenogerms don’t even cost anything other than time if you aren’t using archogenes. So long as you can handle a pawn going into a coma for a day or two, you don’t need to stress about getting the perfect genes.
I love anomaly for that it gives an actual antagonist - sure in any other worldrim you could just headcanon that X faction is your worst enemy for whatever reason but only the darkotech is actually *evil*, its fun to have a big bad like that to defeat.
aint you the rain world guy
Yes they are🥲
Another benefit of anomaly is that it tanks your performance by single handedly making the game like 40% slower
oh and shamblers cause a permanent performance drain even if you kill them and destroy their corpses, they just kill your save lol
I agree with mostly everything you said, I would just add that even the basegame, without any DLC's feels compleat and is really enjoyable.
I've been a RimWorlder since a very early Alpha:
S - Ideology - Everything you said about customization. We get to hand-pick our pawns, to tell them what to wear, to adjust every threat and difficulty, it just makes sense to dictate belief systems! Plus I like the Archonexus New Game Plus style way too much.
A - Biotech. I love it a lot, yes, but unlike Ideology I CAN go back to playing without it. It expands upon the game but isn't essential to it, which just makes me love it more.
B - Royalty - You described it rather well. I barely interact with the Empire, but the Royalty-exclusive quests alone bump it up to this tier.
C - Anomaly - You said it best, it's a very specific DLC. One of the biggest criticisms is that it overrides the game rather than synergizing with it, and that's my experience as well. It's by no means a bad DLC, none of them are, just not for every player, especially not fresh ones.
@@nitzan3782 :) Im glad you enjoyed the video. Yeah, Ideology and Biotech are big S contenders
Thanks for this video! I recently got Rimworld and I have been on the fence about buying Ideology and Biotech but this video convinced me it is worth it :)
Glad I could help!
Agree with you on Anomaly. I had a ton of fun, but was really hoping for a DLC that expands the world or the universe.
Hey is the guy who said they did a trial by fire with ideology!
personally i would have ideology and biotech be DLC you should get first at either very close intervals or at the same time, as they both add very nice expansions that lay the groundwork of everything you can do in rimworld. they are THE expansions that one should have. and then royalty and anomaly. which only add reactive content like spel- Psycasts and SC- Anomalies.
Also that final bit about channel members did make me rather happy, im quite egalitarian when it comes to things like this so knowing there isn't a video i wont be able to see makes me quite happy.
Definitely true that the dlcs are worth the price. There are individual games out there that cost nearly as much yet don't have the staying power that Rimworld has.
24,000 mods in the steam workshop alone is absolutely insane. I had no idea it was that many. Love this game.
Thoroughly enjoyed the financial analysis of the game at the beginning of the vid. I've never thought of it that way! Though I guess it really doesn't matter all that much to me now since I'm already at 1600 hrs 😅
Personally i'd say
1-ideology
2-biotech
3-royalty
4-anomaly
agreed, i can't do a game without possibly encountering slaves or cannibals or cultists. I really love the story it adds and just can't do without it. Biotech is nice and all but honestly i think Ideology adds core gameplay mechanics that should already be in the game by default.
Agree but switch BT and Ideology, Ideology and royalty is equal for me
I mostly agree but, i would put ideology in a must have category, it's essential for roleplay.
I would have done that, but there's plenty of people who don't roleplay funnily enough.
I may be in the minority here but i really enjoy anomaly. Moreso than ideology. It's the lore rabbit hole that led me to your videos.
Thank you for making this video! I've been thinking of buying my first DLC for rimworld. I play with a lot of mods that change the game into a medieval one. I try to see what features of the DLCs I could replace with mods, which is something that I've taken heavily into consideration.
Glad I could help!
Royalty if you want to use a lot of mods
Ideology if you want customiseable content or wanna be cult
Biotech for fun. Anomaly is not really needed
I hope the either the next or some future DLC will add proper multiplayer to rimworld. being able to start co-op colonies, or allied colonies, or even rival colonies with friends sounds awesome. its the only thing I can complain about in rimworld is the lack of multiplayer. every game is funner with friends.
i would have made the exact same tier list, definitely agree on your choices
100% agree with this ranking. I started playing Rimworld shortly after royalty came out, and as much as I love the shattered empire, I don't think the DLC was worth the money in hindsight.
Ideology is must-have, although I think it was kinda shallow in a lot of ways. The ritual system in particular gets incredibly samey, and the restrictions on precepts based on the "memes" system are too constricting. Every transhumanist colony, for example is forced into too-narrow of a set of beliefs, which is why I always run mods that disable all those restrictions.
Biotech is a work of art. The tradeoff system for positive and negative genes feels really good in terms of gameplay, the colonist-childhood mechanics feel really deep and well-integrated with the gameplay, the xenohuman races are creative and well-written, and the mechanics for making your own xenotypes in game, either through selective breeding or genetic engineering, require meaningful sacrifices and infrastructural investments to pull off. As if that wasn't good enough, the Mechanitor gameplay is a great exploration of people making more and more extreme sacrifices for power as they loose themselves to their own creations. To make the highest tier mechanoids, you have to literally destroy the brains of prisoners to form the higher tier subcores, and the pollution mechanic makes mechanoids a powerful, but costly strategy that requires foresight and sacrifice.
I didn't bother to purchase Anomaly just based on the trailer. It's got a lot of cool mechanics, but none of them fit well into the kind of stories I like to play. Rimworld is already a challenging game where the challenge comes from managing the needs of imperfect people coming together to survive an unforgiving world. Apocalyptic challenges such as anomalous events like the darkness event or the flesh heart or similar just aren't compatible with that other kind of narrative tension. Anomaly feels like annoying intrusions into colony management, and while the events and enemies and mechanics within anomaly are absolutely well made and designed, Rimworld just isn't the game they belong in.
Anomaly soundtrack makes up for a lot of its weaknesses. Sometimes I want to use that Monilith to just hear those bangers.
Man i cannot play this game without Ideology. After playing this game and so many times getting mods to tell colonists what is consireted wrong or right.
Ideology for me is what makes this game have infinite replayability, the different ideology is what makes the runs different from each other.
This is like my new favourite channel
I would rate the dlcs as follows: Ideology>Biotech>Anomaly>Royalty. I think they’re all really fun and add good ways to diversify the way the game is played, especially with almost 3k hours played. That being said, Ideology and biotech add the largest variety of mechanics which is why I like them. I rate Anomaly over royalty because I love the horror theme and it is very fun to deal with all the new threats that it adds. Royalty is still good even though I rated it last because I feel like I end up engaging with its contents the least. I only really want to work for the royal titles if I setup a playthrough to work well with the dlc and if you don’t work with the empire it doesn’t change your gameplay that much. I love them all though and I will likely buy any further expansions that Ludeon studios decides to make.
That's a fair rating
based on my mods and colonies my tierlist is
biotech on s tier: so many mods need it, so many cool colonists, messing with genes is cool
royalty on A tier: not many mods need it but the magic mods are cool and the shatered empire is a cool faction for the worldmap
ideology is d: its either a BIG deal or a small if you gonna use it or not, guess if you want to make a canibal colony run its great cause you dont have to be as picky with recruits
anomaly for now is e tier, when the vanilla expanded team start releasing some anomaly expanded it will bump up but for now its, eh, least i can set to ambient horror instead of having to babysit this strange geometrical shape from space, for now is just there and i occasiany get raided by chimeras or a bunch of shamblers
I pretty much agree with all of this, switching Ideologies with Biotech (to me they're close but I use Ideology's mechanics more than Biotech's). Adding onto the Anomoly's criticism; it feels more like a really detailed expansive mod made for a few specific potential gameplay scenarios, but nothing expansive like ideology. I think it could be massively improved with toggles and pregame scenarios like some kind of "Zombie apocolypes" mode or "eternal darkness" to help expand the DLC into many many different scenarios.
The same can be said for the Royalty DLC, but the Royalty DLC doesn't exactly force you to interact with it's content like Anomoly does. I think once we get the final two DLC for rimworld, it'll be seen that Anomoly was the weakest of the bunch... visually impressive, pretty cool in certain scenarios but lacking that something which turns it from good to great. But also that's assuming the next two DLC are Biotech-Ideology like, enhancing the Roleplay and depth potential rather than expanding on Roleplay possibilities.
For me after the base game its ideology, royalty, biotech, and anomaly. These are in order of how well they feel like they fit into and add to the feel and identity of rimworld. Anomaly is, however, excellent for something new.
In my opinion ideology and biotech add so much that they're basically a must have for the full experience. Anomaly and royalty are the true DLC experience.
I truly do think Biotech is the greatest value out of all of the expansions
it is ofc not going to be for everyone but genetics add so much to the game for me i cant imagine rimworld without that dlc, it would be so vastly different and depleted of so many interesting mechanics, far from just genes
similarly im so in love with
building a psycaster cult i cant imagine a playthrough without royalty. the empire is a great addition no matter how im feeling
anomaly i personally do love for its themes
ideology is frustrating at times and i think even limiting sometimes in its base implementation but that could be partly on me as well, not exploring its systems as much as i could be. i cant deny it adds a ton of connection between your decisions and your colonists tho, fantastic for all RP/immersion value
Biotech - S+
Royalty - S
Anomaly - A
Ideology - A
lmao, I agree with so much of this. only thing I would change is ideology being S tier, just because I feel like religion is one of the things the base game is missing.
Personally, but I'm so glad we agree...
A - Biotech - Hug amount of content that can be tailored to varying playstyles.
B - Ideology - Lots of RP potential.
C - Royalty - Has some neat stuff, though Psycasts aren't something I tend to go for.
D - Anomoly - Not my taste
honestly i'd put all of these DLC's as an equal A for me! they're all their own seperate gamestyles and are suitable for different people, and i like variety gameplay and not a single colony i have are the same for that very reason.
anomaly - very combat and story based, great for horror and ambience lovers! planning my defences and colonists equipment around possible anomalous threats is really interesting, and there's more use for fire weapons now which i love. also super fun to go entirely SCP foundation/lobotomy corp roleplay mode and design the entire base around these terrifying creatures, however it doesn't fit very well with the other DLC's.
royalty - good for people who love building and roleplay, as you essentially can make your own castles and royalty systems, and children are super fun when you mix them with the biotech DLC as you can make hybrids of the different xenotypes! also psycasters are a super fun addition to combat.
ideology - the ULTIMATE variety DLC, works super well with other DLCs, and i'd say it's very suited for people who get super bored of a colony really quick and rarely make it to late-game, because you can change everything up so quickly! my favourite ideology mixes so far are blindsight, cannibal and human primacy and transhumanist, raider and supremacist. also like to mix it up with some nature based tribal colonies though!
biotech - for people who really like the mid-to-late game, and MORE VARIETY! i adore the xenotypes for adding so much more to different gameplays, and mechanoids are awesome for the transhumanist playthroughs! good for roleplay for the same reasons.
honestly for which one to buy first as the og video answers, i'm gonna say in my opinion it's ideology! simply because it allows you to experiment with different areas of the game and base styles, like there's such different gameplay between building an underground base, a massive complex and a town with separate buildings, not to even mention the different gameplay between transhumanism, cults, tribes, supremacists, etc.
and i agree with the video that anomaly goes last as it's more of an added experience to the game than more content, and you'll probably need hundreds of hours of gameplay to enjoy it to it's full potential of a horror game as it gives back that fear of the unknown that you got when you had your first raid and you weren't prepared at all!
Personally I'd put Ideology on the lowest tier
I know Ideology roleplay potential is enormous compared to most other DLCs combined in the form of Ideologies, but aside from that, it adds so little to the game.
You can enslave prisoners and grow trees that spawn cute helpful animals. That's pretty much it.
I also want to point out that the Archonexus ending is... disappointing. It could've been similar to the artifact quests where you hack ancient complexes, but they are guarded by the archotech's security system making it way harder. And the resulting finale could've been either a boss fight against the godly nexus where it controls a giant long-forgotten war machine, and if you beat it, the nexus rewards you said machine out of respect, and requests you let it return to it's slumber. Or alternatively, it changes the entire world grating archotech level technology to everyone on the planet, yourself and other factions included, making enemy raids much trickier, but also allowing you to get those sweet archotech limbs much more easily. But no, just soft reset your save 3 or so times and gain a insta-win button.
Even it's saving grace, the ideoligions, barely even change the other factions. Maybe a specific faction that believe usage of drugs is the way to ascend, but some of their communities don't have the soil to grow the required plants, so instead they turn to anyone willing to trade, allowing for easier diplomatic gains. But no, gain/lose faction relationship over time based on shared/conflicting memes
Again, best DLC for roleplay potential, but for me it falls a bit short in terms of content...
Fair points
I want to see more gameplay from you if possible.
And thxs. Videos are great
Personally, I hold ideologically at S, Biotech at A, Royalty at B, and Anomaly at C.
I haven’t done an Ideology free run since the DLC came out tbh.
Same! I couldn't play without Ideo
Honestly the only change I would make here is switching Biotech and Ideology, but even then they’re so close to me that I can definitely go either one (personally love how much customization I have with my pawns with Biotech, especially with genes from mods)
valid, really valid
Thanks! Also many thanks for your support! Greatly appreciated!
Above 5k! For Rock and Stone!
For me it would go Biotech > Royalty > Ideology > Anomaly
Biotech is #1 because it just improves the game in so many ways that don't take away from the base game. Being able to have and raise children is S tier alone, but also the different genetics and mech improvements are just amazing to have. No reason not to have this enabled
Royalty in terms of quality of a DLC should probably be at the bottom, but I always have it enabled because of the empire. New weapons and armour, better quests, more music, etc. Just some nice quality of life features. The royalty questline and psycasts can be a hit or miss but even if you avoid those; the rest of the features are great to have regardless.
Ideologies is probably second best in terms of quality and is a gamechanger. However, designing your religion everytime you start a playthrough can be a bit much so sometimes I just disable this dlc when I don't want to deal with the stuff it adds. Amazing dlc though if you have it enabled
Lastly anomaly for the reasons you said. Best in terms of quality but it feels too different from the base experience and I rarely have it enabled. Amazing for a once in a while anomaly playthrough though
i always tell people ideology royalty then biotech because biotech is the most expensive and some parts of biotech work better if you have royalty anomaly is fun but only if you want to do a specific playthrough so i also say that one as last as you need to know the game before playing that one so good Tier List
Preface: I haven't purchased Anomaly.
Biotech feels like it should've been part of base game.
Ideology feels like it fleshes out the RP and backstory aspects of the game. Sometimes it can feel a little like it drags on, especially if you have more than one colonist who is in need of conversion.
Still havent quite played all the way through Royalty, but it echoes the point of Ideology. Rather than expanding the backstory and internal identify of a playthrough, it feels structured around building the world externally through play.
The fact that Biotech feels like that speaks volumes on how good of a DLC it is
Thank you for the great content❤. I would only swap Biotech and Ideology around, as I cannot imagine playing without Ideology today.
And Anomaly is the only DLC I don't want to purchase😅 because I don't like tragic stories, I like stories about Empire Growth.
Interesting, and nice video
👍
Thank you 👍
11:00 My first xenohuman playthrough was "Ancient Toxidizer" (my made up name)
One Sanguophage like creature but focused for darkness/mines, long range, no animals handle, no art and plenty of toxicity and spreding it to others. So it was plenty of bugs bugs and bugs. F if i do think about it, i could make somethink like that again + with new dlc and plenty mods that improve playing with toxicity
I would put ideology to biotech level or maybe Biotech below. Not that Biotech would be worse, but if i would have to have only one DLC. It will be ideology because with, "no trees killing","no slaughtering animals","no slaves".... And so on, you can make every new game completly different, without... I mean, to get all pawns night owls, psychopats etc. is hard, or you need mods.
If i would play Rimworld first time, and could buy only one dlc with it, yeah in that case it would be Royalty or Biotech.
If i would play 50-100h only vanilla Rimworld, it would be Ideology as first and only DLC.
Because with first playing you wouldn't enjoy/understand those Ideology things that much.
But what i could know, i have only 980h, rookies numbers.
I could put Anomaly at the B tier to be honest... For me this DLC adds something that I very wanted in my game... Chaos! Anomaly events are much better at creating chaos then any other dlc or mods... And I just love it
Hard disagree with Royalty not being in A tier, and its only there because Biotech adds so much content that it has to take the top spot.
Royalty doubles the total number of quests - not just the ones available from the empire specifically, adds a ton of music, opens up multiple colony builds that actually play differently (unlike a lot of Ideology where you can play still play way the same in Core, Ideology just makes it give you mood buffs), and all the other secondary items it adds. People focus too much on psycasts and the empire, when it adds so much more.
Biotech>Royalty>(Ideology>Anomaly if you've been playing a long time or dislike the theme of anomaly) or (Anomaly>Ideology if you're new to the game or like the theme of Anomaly)
I feel like I could play without Royalty just fine, but I wouldn't want to miss on Biotech for anything.
The thing about Anomaly is that it got a bad rap for being overbearing upon it's initial release because frankly, it was. Having run numerous other colonies since it got adjusted to be more inline with the base game I can say for certain that the handful of utilities that Anomaly adds are well worth the price of admission.
I pretty much agree with your list, however I found the Royalty more impactful than Ideology.
Royalty's age is starting to show but the psycasts change combat in a bunch of interesting ways. However I think of it as a "Combat Expanded" DLC as it didn't add much to the story.
Ideology added a bunch of new ways to interact with the story but to me it felt a lot like a cosmetic DLC over something that changed the way I played.
Biotech is the best by a wide margin. its basically Rimworld 2.0. While Anomaly has a ton of fun stuff but it being gated behind the anomaly questline really limits its playability. Personally i would love to see Sanguophage being given the ability to make a thrall (Edit: as an option) over just transferring their xenogerm; as not only is it thematically but mechanically appropriate.
IMO one of Rimworld's biggest weaknesses is the games insistence on DLCs remaining separate. until they patched it (during biotech iirc) the game would totally ignore new DLC whenever old DLC story beats would occur. I would prefer a game state where all the DLCs existed out in the world and you would just need the DLC installed to interact with the system. IE even if I didn't have Anomaly installed I might still encounter a Cultist raid or a rogue Revenant that I wouldn't be able to capture. If nothing else it would be a breadcrumb to encourage me to purchase the DLC after seeing something cool in my own game.
You could make thralls for the Sanguophages. Just have a second ideoligion that worships bloodfeeders, along with maybe the guilty meme or others that would fit. Then have a "thrall-master" pawn belong to that ideology and convert the prisoners to "thralls". You could even change their member's name to Thralls.
@@thenightarchives4148 the benefit to the thralls is the the mechanics they bring. unlimited limb regeneration as well as the thrall recovery rate largely fixed the issue with melee in Rimworld and after playing with it in full I'm really hesitant to go back to Pawn blockers.
That being said having a standing army of prisoner blocker fodder sounds fun, however the investment might not match the usefulness as you progress to endgame.
What I personally think is slightly different from what he says, but overall the same. This is my specific list of opinions on the matter.
S: Ideology. Very important for any playthrough imo. Rimworld is primarily a story-telling game, and Ideology allows you to guide your colony's story in a very important way, that being the colonist'' beliefs and ideas. I would recommend getting this DLC before even starting your first plathrough.
A: Biotech. Robots are cool, and xenotypes majorly affect pretty much everything. (If you actually have them in your colony, that is) I would definitely recommend this one if you like the base game
B: Royalty. The empire is cool, and so is being a noble, but the psycasts are really underwhelming in my opinion. If you include the (free) Psycasts Expanded mod, this would probably be my A-tier pick.
C: Anomaly. Great for an eldritch horror playthrough, but not very replayable. If you do like the horror vibes it's pretty good, but there are free mods that are about 25% as good. You should get it if you liked the other DLCs, but overall wouldn't recommend.
All of them a tier I just love em
I have royalty and it actually makes the game easier somehow. I rely on royal members more than the buildings I have. You just do things that shouldn't be possible in cost of high wealth demand and bigger raids.
Recently bought biotech and some it's even better than royalty. I can literally have immortal pawns or indestructible pawns unless it's a decapitation
My opinion is that if you're more roleplay kind of a player, you should buy "Ideology" first, but if you like min-maxing more then you should buy "Biotech".
Cant really rank them since I dont have all of them, but ideology best suits my style of play, it makes for great stories
I was lucky enough to get all dlc except anomaly on sale bought rimworld during a sale too
Royalty DLC is my beloved
The problem with anomaly for me is that its so overpowering, when you have it installed its not something you can just ignore. it kind of takes over the whole game. unlike the other dlcs that help flesh out the game in ways of roleplaying anomaly almost forces you to fight against large overbearing foes often taking up whole parts of the map
I have all DLC expect anomaly:
1. Biotech-adds some sort of new races and it really limitless, and being a mechanaitor is very fun experience
2. Ideology- adds more story telling options, in the past if you wanted to play as cannibalistic underground tribal it was painful because not everyone was cannibal, know you can make them by cannibal, and overall good dlc for storytelling
3. Royalty- good dlc but not the best, the empire is fun mechanics but basic not modded psychist are just kinda bad, I was thinking this is the best dlc but after I realised the psychic powers are form Vanilla Psychist Expanded I change my mind.
4. Anomaly- yes as a person who didn't play i shouldn't talk about it but.... In my opinion this dlc not suits Rimworld lore or my personal view on the game, And I don't really like cosmic-horror stuff or Cthulhu. Putting aside cosmic horror and my preferences, I would said this dlc is 1 or mayby 2 time to play, it is not very replayable the storyline is liner and not very options to chose , compare to sandbox DLC like Biotech ore Ideology.
I wrote my opinion before watching your film, and I am glad that I am not only one that seas DLC like this.
Anomaly and Ideology are S tier for me, they are truely revolutionary and something that haven't been done years ago with mods like Biotech and Royalty is basically bunch of mods adapted into a game in Tynan's own way
id swap ideology with royalty, and it'd be my tierlist perfectly same
So we all agree Biotech is the best DLC?
Biotech is my favorite, though it's quite complicated compared to Royalty.
i'm late to the yap session but i shall start it now
I would switch royalty and ideology but probably because of the mods I have installed
i had a completely different reason for disliking anomaly, i thought making them useful would mean using that entities specific powers for my own uses, however almost every entity is the same in how you are supposed to use them
Each DLC is tier S for me. Can't play without em now. Even though I rarely touch most things from Biotech.
anomaly is the first dlc i got and for me personaly it was one of the best things i have done i got it before i even opened rimworld
Finally caught a video has it releases
i was not expecting lob corp to be mentioned
Well, Anomaly was inspired by Lobcorp, the SCP foundation and The Cabin In The Woods
@@thenightarchives4148 oh i didnt know it was litterally inspired, i thought it was just similar
In Brazil it's 320 Real's for everthing, it's like 25% of my wage...
Still worth it
I bought biotech first because I had been craving having children in the game for so long. I had always been wondering why your pawns could get into relationships and have "lovin'" without resulting in children. I absolutely love biotech, and it was my only DLC for a long while. Just recently I bought Ideology which I am also absolutely loving. I love playing around with the different religions and belief systems that allow you to dictate how your colony feels about things.
I had been wanting to play as a tribe of cannibals for a long time, but the problem was figuring out how to give them all the cannibal and psychopath traits. Now I don't need to have them, I can just make it part of their religion.
What Sucks Is That It’s Literally Taken Them More Time to release Biotech on Console then actually porting the Game to Console
Here with the mandatory console pity. Consoles still only have the first two "royalty and ideology". IDK what exactly came of the people in charge of developing the port, whatever happened I get the feeling console is stuck back in time.
The worst part about a console must be having to use a controller for Rimworld
@@thenightarchives4148 Believe it or not, no. Like, one thing the people who were in charge of the port did REALLY well, was making sure the controls translated over properly for console. Ambiguousamphibian I believe made a really good batch of videos on the console port, it really isn't all that terrible, especially compared to other console ports.
“I cannot imagine playing Rimworld without this.” Puts it in A tier…
@@willisverynice S tier was already taken 🤷
@@thenightarchives4148that’s not how tier lists work though…
Heres my opinion
Ideology is probably the best - it gives you the most flexibility to create new colonies and can have the most or the least impact depending on what you want
Biotech is my number two - I really like genetic modification and mechanitors. Also really fun to merge with ideology, my favorite colony ever was a Mechanitor sanguophage who maintained an army of worshipping slaves and prisoners with cut off legs to act as bloodbags
Royalty is number three - I played through it once and did its ending. Mostly I just end up having a royal and having to go thru trouble to satisfy them and I also get a bunch of quests that just have honor as reward and I don't always wanna play the empire - also the mechanoid clusters always fuck me up
Anomaly is my least favorite - I've played it the least and I'm already pretty bad at the game anyway. I kinda feel like I'd just lose if I try to engage with the content
S: Biotech
A: Ideo, Royalty
B: Anomaly
I like Anomaly, and try to use it in all my playthroughs, HOWEVER, it is definitely the weakest. For most people, I would say that it is situational.
Edit: Yes, I did post this prior to watching to the end.
Great video can you do a mod tier list ?
With all 24 thousands of them? Yeah sure why not
@@thenightarchives4148 maybe just with the most popular modsets, etc
They're all like 30-40 aud. I don't quite remember. All in all it's like a little less than 200 bucks
Anomaly is a good mod
But that's what it is
You should buy it last, unless what you're looking for from Rimworld is SCP simulator
And it should be bought with the knowledge that, unlike the other DLC, it's not really one you can slot into any run. If it's active, every run will be an Anomaly run
Funny, the way you ranked them, was the order in which I bought them last year.
Play base game until you're sick of it, even with mods.
Then add Biotech and play Sims with guns, no wait, play with baseliners that become genetic Gods, no wait, why do we need.... ppl?... The robots never die... Nah let's play out Underworld, in Rimworld.. *Selects crashland start and does everything all at once* Keep he baby out of the pollution and turn that 80yr lady into a vampire, the stats on that thing. 😂
Ideology. get confused as why everyones pissed because we don't have a.. A what? Oh a moral guide. How do I ADD that? okay added. 80k+ wealth.. my colonist protesting outside - WE NEEED STATUSES! WE NEED STATUSES!
Royalty. Empire asshats think they're hot...no I won't save your lil goof running from the rodent early game to kiss your ass forever... *Takes in the desserter* . HA! SUC-Empire drop pod raid = colony whip. I see. I will not make that mistake again 😅
Anamoly = WTF IS GOING ON?! *pauses game* ayo this music is lit 🔥🔥 anyways. Why are we scared again?oh right that rev kissed someone and ghosted. Wow. Player.
My fav by list tho
Biotech Anamoly Ideology and Royalty
I like that anamoly, once you turn it on, it corrupts whatever you were doing, playing a tree people run? Now it's a pink trees graveyard, perfect trans humanist run, well they do love a fleshy lungs to eh it's chaotic lol
The anomaly music really is lit
I would've placed Royalty above the Ideology, mostly because of favors that i can call in (couple more hands with guns are always welcome) and Vanilla Expanded mod series. Having a more fleshed out Empire is essential to every playthrough of mine.
And fighting them in the jungles and rainforests is certainly something i'd want to experience again and again. Though, not in first person(Look up ARMA 3 APEX Protocol gameplay). Still, the never ending feeling that i'm racing against time when fighting them, even when i'm "safe", the feeling of being powerless when aerodrones finally find my location, the dread when they start to fire their missles, and the only thing that i can do is command my men to gear up and run away, or die? That is what i love about the Empire.
When you fight the Empire, you fight against an unstoppable, clumsy but at the same time surgically accurate foe.
Every rebel knows that alone they are weak, on their own, incapable of engaging imperials in a straight up fight, and the only way for them to survive is through heavy use of guerilla warfare tactics.
The feeling that i am a part of a laughably small and spread too thin rebellion... and yet can be such a pain in the ass that the imperials would use literal planet-scorching satellites *just to get rid of ME?*
TOTALLY SELLS ME THE DLC AND ALL THE MODS THAT DEPEND ON IT.
Long live the rebellion. Down with the Empire.
Makes sense. I was also tempted to place Royalty above Ideology, but then I ran a mental test and thought "Which one I could do without out of those two?" and I just couldn't imagine playing with Royalty but without Ideology
Ideology is the one I don't like the most. It adds a lot to the table, idea is good but somehow I don't quite enjoy ideology system. I do keep it on and play with it but I always try to sustain classik-like ideology so I won't bother with it.
From what I can tell, Biotech is the most beginner friendly, it adds a lot of stuff, but nothing to wildly complicate the game. Ideology is better for more experienced players who want more playstyles. Combining the two is best.
I would buy them all, unfortunately I only have the console edition of Rimworld
Fuck that shit, all of rimworld dlc are MUST HAVE
As I’ve always said, when doing anything Rimworld related, it depends. Every Rimworld DLC adds something entirely different over the other and buy the DLC you wish you want in your Rimworld gameplay.
For example, Biotech adds genetics/xenotypes, expands the mechanoids also allowing you to make your own mechanoid army, and raise your own children as future colonists along with plenty of new factions (though they’re just core factions with slightly different changes) which allows for more variety of threats. Not to mention a huge variety of mods that expand around these features.
In all honesty let the video explain the variety of features but in shorter terms, get the DLC that you believe you want within your Rimworld gameplay. Take it from me, I always wanted to raise children and have them as future colonists which is why I bought Biotech first.
I do not like royalty. I find it very annoying to deal with the room size requirements. I also find the noble clothing useless since they don't offer any protection from enemy fire. I find the psycasting to be cumbersome to master. However, the thing that I dislike the absolute most is the mechanoid cluster. They do so much damage and they are always so much more powerful than my pawns no matter what. I am always taken heavy damage which takes so long to heal from. Royalty having extra quests is nice, but you can add mods for that.
See i don't have any of the DLCs but Anomaly looks the most fun to me as I love Xcom.