RimWorld Access

RimWorld Access is a mod that makes RimWorld playable with a screen reader and a keyboard. It adds keyboard navigation and spoken announcements to the game's interface, so the same things you would do with a mouse, from building a base to running a colony, you can do by listening and pressing keys.

A note on the people behind this

The mod was started by Shane Earley, who built the foundation and did the early work that made everything else possible. Shane transferred the project to me, Aaron Ramirez, in early 2026, and I've been the main person working on it since. If you get something useful out of this, a lot of the credit belongs to Shane.

Why existing guides work here

The mod was built to mirror the way the game's interface is structured rather than create a separate path through it. The screens you reach, the menus you open, the names of things: they line up closely with what a sighted player sees. That matters because RimWorld has a huge community and a detailed wiki, and most of what's there applies directly.

I learned the game by watching sighted players on YouTube. These docs are not meant to replace the wiki, and they are not the best strategy advice available. For playing well, the RimWorld wiki is the better resource. These docs cover how to work the mod's controls. For everything else, including getting good at the game itself, see Where to learn RimWorld.

What you are getting into

RimWorld is deep. It was inspired by Dwarf Fortress, which gives you a sense of the territory. People put hundreds of hours into it and still find new things. The learning curve is real.

The difficulty is adjustable, though, and that helps a lot. Turn it down and raids get rare and mild, you get room to learn the controls, and the game plays a bit like a darker, more grown-up Sims: build a home, keep people fed and mostly happy, watch small dramas unfold. Someone will have a mental break over a bad haircut, and you will learn to live with that.

If you are new to this, especially if colony sims are new to you, start on a low difficulty or peaceful mode. Learn the keyboard first, get a colony on its feet, and turn the pressure up later. You can raise or lower difficulty at any point in a running save, so there is no need to commit to anything right away.

For context, the closest prior reference in blind gaming for this kind of depth is Castaways by Aprone, a survival and colony game that has been a community favorite for years. Other complex management games have since become accessible too, including Oxygen Not Included. RimWorld sits in that same territory, with a lot of systems to learn. These docs exist because that learning curve is worth some guidance.

Download

Download the latest release, then follow Installation to set it up. A Steam Workshop release that installs and updates automatically is planned for later. The one setup step you should not skip is turning off the Steam in-game overlay, so keys like Shift+Tab actually reach the game.

Where to go next

You do not have to read these docs cover to cover. Here is where most people should start.

• New here? Start with Installation, then First launch to get the mod set up and find the RimWorld Access options.
• Want to understand how the controls work? The Core Concepts section is the foundation. If you understand how menus, the map, the scanner, gizmos, the context menu, and the info card work, you can find your way around any screen in the game.
• Just need a key? The keyboard reference lists every shortcut, organized by where you are when you press it.
• Want to get good at RimWorld itself? See Where to learn RimWorld for the wiki, the YouTubers, and the advice that turns a struggling first colony into something that survives.

If you would rather not jump between pages, the whole thing is also available as one long page. That is the place to read it all at once. I would hold off on saving a copy to read offline, though, since I expect to be updating these docs often and a saved copy will fall behind.

Getting Started

Installation

This page walks through what you need to do before the mod will work: turn off the Steam overlay, then install the mod files.

Turn off the Steam in-game overlay

Do this before anything else.

Steam's in-game overlay grabs certain key combinations (Shift+Tab is the main one) before they reach RimWorld. The overlay itself is not screen-reader accessible, so when it is on, some of the mod's keys will silently do nothing and you will have no way to tell why.

Turn it off:

1. Open Steam.
2. Go to Steam menu > Settings.
3. Select the In-Game tab.
4. Uncheck "Enable the Steam Overlay while in-game."
5. Close the Settings window. There is no save button; closing is enough, and nothing gets disabled.

If a key like Shift+Tab ever seems to do nothing, come back and check this first.

Install the mod

Steam Workshop (coming soon)

The plan is to put RimWorld Access on the Steam Workshop so it installs and updates automatically. That is not ready yet.

Manual install

Manual install has two parts: putting the mod files in the right place, and installing Harmony (a required dependency).

Place the mod files

Download the latest release and unzip it into RimWorld's Mods folder, so you end up with a RimWorldAccess folder inside Mods. With a default Steam install, the Mods folder is here:

• Windows: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\RimWorld\Mods
• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Steam/steamapps/common/RimWorld/RimWorldMac.app/Mods

If you installed RimWorld to a different Steam library, the path up to steamapps changes, but everything after it stays the same.

Then download ModsConfig.xml and place it in RimWorld's Config folder. This file comes ready-made with Harmony and RimWorld Access already enabled, so you do not need to turn anything on inside the game afterward. The Config folder is here:

• Windows: %localappdata%low\Ludeon Studios\RimWorld by Ludeon Studios\Config
• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/RimWorld/Config

You can paste either path as-is and it will resolve to the right folder. On Windows, paste it into the Run dialog (Win+R) or the File Explorer address bar. On macOS, paste it into Finder's Go to Folder box (Cmd+Shift+G). You do not need to substitute your username or hunt for the folder by hand.

Install Harmony

Harmony is a library the mod depends on. You need it separately.

On Steam: Log into your Steam account in a web browser, open the Harmony Workshop page, and click Subscribe. Steam will download it automatically the next time the game launches.

Without Steam: Install Harmony manually from its GitHub releases page and place it in the same Mods folder. Legitimate copies of RimWorld exist outside Steam, bought from a reputable shop or from Ludeon Studios directly, and those are fine. But if you are playing a copy you did not get from Steam, another reputable shop, or Ludeon themselves, most of the mod will probably not work, and that is not something that can be supported.

Launch the game

Once the files are in place, launch RimWorld. With your screen reader running, the main menu should start talking immediately. If it does not, the most common cause is the Steam in-game overlay, covered at the top of this page.

Next steps

Head to first launch to go through the initial settings and find the RimWorld Access options.

First launch

Launch RimWorld with the mod enabled and your screen reader running. The main menu should start talking right away. Use Up and Down to move through the menu items and Enter to select one.

If nothing speaks, make sure your screen reader is running and the Steam in-game overlay is turned off. Both are covered on the installation page.

The RimWorld Access settings

The mod's settings live at Main Menu > Options > RimWorld Access. You can open that same screen from inside a game too: pause, open Options, find RimWorld Access.

The defaults are sensible, so there's nothing you have to change before playing. If you want to look around, the settings reference explains what each option does.

Tutorial series

I've recorded a tutorial series walking through the game from the beginning. Part 1 is up now, and more parts are coming. If you're new to RimWorld, it's worth watching as you find your feet.

Next steps

To understand how the mod's controls work, read the Core Concepts section. It covers menus, the map, the scanner, and the handful of ideas that let you find your way around any screen in the game. To get better at RimWorld itself, see Where to learn RimWorld.

Core Concepts

Navigating menus

RimWorld has many screens, but they share a small set of navigation shapes. This page covers all of them. When you open something new, the first question is: which shape is it?

• Tabs: separate panels, moved between with Tab and Shift+Tab.
• Columns or categories: sections moved between with Left and Right arrows.
• Tree views: lists that expand and collapse to reveal nested details.
• Tables: a grid of rows (usually pawns) and columns (usually attributes or policies).

A few things work regardless of shape: you can start typing to jump to an item (type-ahead), and press Escape to back out. The rest of this page walks through each shape and the rules that connect them.

Tabs (Tab / Shift+Tab)

Many screens are split into panels. Tab moves to the next panel; Shift+Tab moves to the previous one. This is not the classic "tab through every field" behavior from web forms. It moves between whole sections of a screen.

For example, the Work tab uses Tab and Shift+Tab to move between pawns, and the caravan formation screen uses them to move between the summary and formation panels. Once you land on a panel, arrow keys navigate within it.

A single tab can itself contain any of the other shapes: a panel might hold a tree view, a table, or a set of columns. Some screens are several tables side by side. Tab and Shift+Tab always move between the panels; once inside one, you navigate it by its own shape.

Columns and categories (Left / Right arrows)

Some screens lay content out as sections you step through sideways. Left and Right move between those categories; Up and Down move within the current one.

The Quest menu is a clear example: Left and Right move between Available, Active, and Historical. Tables also use this pattern, where Left and Right move between columns.

Tree views

A tree view is a list where items can contain other items. RimWorld uses these frequently because much of its information is dense and hierarchical. Expanding an item reveals everything inside it.

• Right arrow expands the current item (reveals children).
• Left arrow collapses it (hides children).
• Up and Down move between items at the current level.
• Shift+8 (asterisk / *) expands all expandable siblings at the current level, so you can arrow across them without expanding each one individually.
• Ctrl+Home / Ctrl+End jump to the absolute first or last item in the tree, regardless of nesting level.

When an item is collapsed, the mod speaks a short summary of what's inside, so you can decide whether to expand it. Some tree items hold controls (a checkbox, an adjustable value) as well as readable content, so expanding can reveal things you act on as well as things you read.

Level announcements

As you move up and down the tree, the mod announces the depth level when you change levels. This tells you where you are in the hierarchy without requiring you to track it mentally.

The "Rashad Hates Treeviews" mode

There is an option that changes how trees behave, named after a fellow accessibility-mod developer. The label is "Rashad Hates Treeviews (Submenu-Style Navigation)" and it lives under Main Menu > Options > RimWorld Access. It is off by default.

With the setting off (standard mode): pressing Right on a collapsed item expands it and keeps the parent in view, with children listed below. Pressing Right on an already-expanded item drills into the first child.

With the setting on (submenu mode): pressing Right expands an item, hides the parent, and drops you onto the first child, like stepping into a submenu. Pressing Left collapses back to the parent. The mod remembers your position inside each parent, so stepping back in returns you to where you were.

Tables

A table is a grid. Rows are usually your pawns; columns are usually attributes or policies (medical care, apparel, a skill, a checkbox). Up and Down move between rows; Left and Right move between columns.

Sorting (Alt+S)

Press Alt+S to sort the table by the column you are on. Press it again to cycle: descending, ascending, no sort. This is how you find, say, your best constructor or your highest shooting skill.

Painting a column

To copy one cell's value down (or up) an entire column without setting each cell individually:

• Shift+Up / Shift+Down: paint the current cell's value onto the row above or below.
• Shift+Home / Shift+End: paint from the current row to the top or to the bottom.
• Ctrl+Shift+Home / Ctrl+Shift+End: paint the value across every row in the column, regardless of your current position.

Editing cells

• Enter or Space toggles a checkbox cell.
• = and - nudge a numeric cell up or down by one; Enter lets you type a number directly.
• ] on a column header or cell opens a context menu of options for that category. See the context menu page for how that menu works.

Type-ahead: start typing

In any menu or list, start typing and the mod jumps to the first matching entry. This is one of the fastest ways to navigate. In a long Architect menu, type "wall" or "stock" to land directly on what you want instead of arrowing through dozens of entries. Type-ahead also works inside filter screens and search boxes when adding items by name.

The Enter-vs-Alt+S rule

The question is always: on this screen, does Enter already do something to the current item?

• If Enter selects or deselects items (checking a pawn into a caravan, toggling a choice), Enter is "busy." In that case, Alt+S confirms the screen and moves you to the next one. The starting-pawns and caravan-formation screens work this way.
• If Enter does not do anything special to the current item, Enter finishes the screen. World-map site selection works this way: Enter settles on the tile.

Before assuming Enter will advance you, notice whether it is already doing selection work. If it is, use Alt+S to confirm. In tables, Alt+S is also the sort key, which fits the same logic: you are toggling and editing cells, so Enter is busy and Alt+S takes the confirm role.

Escape

Escape cancels or closes the current screen and steps you back one level. On the main map with nothing else open, Escape opens the pause menu.

A quick checklist for any new screen

1. Press Tab once. If it moves you to a different panel, Tab and Shift+Tab navigate between them.
2. Try Left and Right. If they move between sections while Up and Down move within a section, it is a columns or categories layout. If Up and Down step through rows (usually pawns) while Left and Right change which column you are reading, it is a table.
3. Try Right on an item. If it expands, you are in a tree view (and Left collapses).
4. Start typing. Type-ahead jumps to a match.
5. To finish: check whether Enter is already doing selection work. If yes, confirm with Alt+S. If no, Enter finishes. Escape backs out.

The map

The map is your colony: a grid of tiles where most of the game takes place. A cursor moves over it with the arrow keys, terrain under the cursor plays a distinct sound, and number keys provide on-demand information about a tile. This page covers getting around the map and controlling game time. For finding and jumping to specific things, see the scanner.

Moving the cursor

The arrow keys move the cursor one tile at a time, with the camera following. Up, Down, Left, and Right work as you would expect.

As you move, the tile underfoot plays a terrain sound. Soil, stone, sand, water, and built flooring each have distinct audio cues, so with practice you can tell where you are by ear. Moving against a wall plays its own sound, which helps you trace room edges.

As you arrow around, the mod announces the name of what is under the cursor. Number keys are for deeper, on-demand detail rather than something you press after every step.

What is on this tile? (number keys 1–7)

With the cursor on a tile, press a number key to hear a specific category of information about that tile. These are spot-checks; most of this information is also announced as you move.

• 1 = items and pawns at the cursor
• 2 = terrain (fertility, path cost, beauty, cleanliness)
• 3 = harvestable things (plants and their growth, and with the right DLC or equipment, fish and deep-scanner mineral targets)
• 4 = light (brightness) and temperature
• 5 = room stats
• 6 = power
• 7 = areas

On the world map, the same number keys report different categories. That mapping is covered on the world map page.

Jumping to coordinates (Ctrl+G)

Press Ctrl+G to open the coordinate-jump dialog. Type an X coordinate, press Comma or Space to advance to the Z field, type a Z coordinate, and press Enter to jump. Leaving a field blank keeps the current coordinate. Entering +N or -N moves that many tiles relative to the current position. Escape cancels.

Jump modes: covering ground fast

Tile-by-tile movement is fine for close work, but crossing the map one step at a time is slow. Jump modes let a single keypress leap to the next thing in a given direction. Two jump modes are available:

• Preset distance: jumps a fixed number of tiles in the direction you choose.
• Adjacent to wall: jumps to the next tile adjacent to a wall in the chosen direction.

Controls:

• Ctrl+arrow jumps in that direction using the active mode.
• Shift+Up / Shift+Down cycle to the next or previous jump mode. The cursor does not move; the mod announces the new mode.
• Shift+Left / Shift+Right adjust the preset distance by 1.
• Shift+Ctrl+Left / Shift+Ctrl+Right adjust the preset distance by 10.

Jump modes are also used when sizing a wall or zone during building placement. See the Architect menu page for that flow.

Controlling time

RimWorld runs in real time when unpaused. You will pause often to think and give orders.

• Space pauses and unpauses.
• Shift+1 sets normal speed, Shift+2 sets fast, Shift+3 sets super-fast.
• T announces the current in-game time, date, weather, and season. Press it twice: if the time has not changed, the game is paused.
• Alt+T announces the current game speed and performance: speed name (Normal, Fast, etc.), actual and target ticks per second, and whether a threat is causing a forced slowdown.
• ? (question mark) opens the Learning Helper, RimWorld's own built-in tips. Press Enter on a lesson to read it, Down to keep reading, choose "Mark as learned" and press Enter to dismiss a lesson. Escape closes the helper. These are the game's tutorial nudges, separate from this documentation.

Where to go next

• The scanner finds and jumps to anything on the map: a stretch of stony soil, a dropped weapon, the nearest geyser.
• Checking on pawns covers selecting colonists and reading their health, mood, needs, gear, and skills.
• The Architect menu is how you place buildings and zones.

The scanner

The scanner finds and jumps to things on the current map or world map without hunting tile by tile. Looking for the nearest geyser, a dropped rifle, every patch of stony soil, or all the temperate forest tiles on the world? The scanner organizes what is out there into categories and lets you jump directly to any of it.

It works by drilling through levels: broad categories, then subcategories, then item types (ordered by distance), and finally individual instances of a type. Home jumps the cursor to whatever the scanner is currently pointing at.

Key scheme

• Ctrl+Page Up / Ctrl+Page Down: move between categories (the broadest grouping).
• Shift+Page Up / Shift+Page Down: move between subcategories within the current category.
• Page Up / Page Down: move between item types within the current group, ordered by distance (nearest first).
• Alt+Page Up / Alt+Page Down: step through the individual instances of the current type, one at a time (for example, "grass, 1 of 39").
• Home: jump the cursor to the scanner's current target.
• End: announce the distance and direction from the cursor to the current target.
• Alt+Home: toggle scanner auto-jump mode (the cursor follows the scanner automatically as you step through items).

As you move through levels, the mod announces what you have landed on and how many there are. You might hear "12,977 grass tiles" at the type level, or "grass, 1 of 39" as you step through instances.

Not every category has subcategories. When one does not, work with categories, item types, and instances only.

Clumps and the Home double-press

Many terrain types and items appear as contiguous patches rather than isolated tiles. The scanner groups these into a single clump entry and reports the tile count (for example, "fertile soil, 200 tiles").

Pressing Home once jumps the cursor to the tile in the clump nearest your current position. If you are now standing on the clump and it is large enough to have a distinct center, pressing Home a second time jumps to the clump's center. The mod offers the "press Home for center" hint only when a center jump is available.

A typical flow

1. Use Ctrl+Page Up/Down to find the right category.
2. If the category has subcategories, narrow down with Shift+Page Up/Down.
3. Use Page Up/Down to pick the item type you want (nearest first).
4. Press Home to jump the cursor to it. If there are many instances of the type, use Alt+Page Up/Down to step to the specific one you want, then Home.

Examples

On the world map, finding biomes. Move to the biomes category with Ctrl+Page Up/Down, then use Page Up/Down to reach temperate forest. The mod reports how many there are, and Alt+Page Up/Down steps through each patch. Home jumps the cursor to the current one so you can check its tile info. Roads and settlements are available as their own categories.

On the colony map, finding terrain. Looking for stony soil to build a foundation? Drill into the terrain category, pick the terrain type (sorted by distance, so the closest patch appears first), and press Home to land on it. Press Home again from within the patch to jump to its center.

On the colony map, finding an item. You dropped a weapon somewhere in the chaos. The scanner groups items into categories and types; find weapons, narrow to the rifle, and Home jumps the cursor straight to it.

Pairing the scanner with search

Sometimes it is faster to name the thing you want. Press Z to open the map search, type what you are after, and press Enter to dismiss the search field. Matches become available as you type, so the scanner is then pointed at your results: step through them with the scanner keys and press Home to jump the cursor to one. Get in the habit of pressing Enter to close the field first, otherwise a later Enter just closes it when you meant to do something else.

Where to go next

• The map covers cursor movement, terrain audio, the number-key tile info, and jump modes.
• The world map and choosing a site uses the scanner heavily when picking a landing spot.

Gizmos (the G key)

Gizmos are the contextual command buttons that appear when you select something: deconstruct a wall, reinstall a bed, form a caravan, rename a zone, and so on. Whatever is under the cursor, its gizmos are the actions available for it.

Press G with the cursor over an object to open its gizmo menu.

Opening and using the menu

Place the cursor on an object (a building, furniture, a pawn, a caravan) and press G. The mod reads the gizmos available for that object. Arrow Up and Down to move through them and press Enter to activate the one you want.

What appears depends entirely on what is under the cursor. A wall offers deconstruct. A bed offers reinstall and deconstruct. A finished caravan hitching spot offers "Form caravan." If an object has no actions available, the menu will be short or empty.

Gizmos can carry their own shortcuts

As you arrow through the menu, the mod announces a gizmo's keyboard shortcut when it has one. These shortcuts come from the game, but RimWorld Access uses the plain letter keys for its own navigation. So it delegates a gizmo's shortcut to Shift plus that letter: if a gizmo's vanilla key is B, you press Shift+B to fire it.

You can trigger a gizmo this way without opening the menu at all. With the right object under the cursor, press Shift plus the gizmo's letter and the action runs immediately. Once you know an object's common shortcuts, you can skip the G menu.

When two gizmos share a shortcut

Sometimes two gizmos share the same shortcut. Pressing it opens a short menu of the choices: arrow to the one you want and press Enter. You pick from the menu rather than pressing the shortcut a second time.

A worked example: moving a bed

1. Place the cursor on the bed.
2. Press G to open its gizmos, arrow to "Reinstall," and press Enter. (Or press the reinstall gizmo's Shift+letter shortcut directly.)
3. You are now in placement mode. Move the cursor to where you want the bed to go.
4. Press Space to place it, then Enter to confirm.

Deconstruct works the same way: it is another gizmo in that same menu. For the full walkthrough of moving and removing things, see moving and reinstalling.

Where gizmos appear

• On the colony map, gizmos command buildings, furniture, and pawns.
• On the world map, gizmos command caravans: settle, split, rest, merge, and more.
• During building placement, the gizmo menu is unavailable. You cannot open it until placement is finished.

When you have selected an object and want to know what you can do with it, press G.

The context menu

Press ] (right bracket) to open the context menu. Arrow Up and Down through the options and press Enter to choose one. [ (left bracket) fires the top option immediately without opening the menu. Shift+[ queues the top option instead of doing it right away.

The context menu lists the actions available for the selected pawn at the cursor tile. It is the keyboard equivalent of a right-click menu. With a colonist selected, pressing ] on a tile or object shows what that colonist can do there. Point the cursor at a weapon on the ground, press ], and the menu might offer "Equip bolt-action rifle." Press Enter to issue the order.

The list changes with context. A pawn near a door, a downed colonist, or a stack of steel each produce different options. On a designation type in the Architect menu (such as a chop-wood order), the menu offers bulk actions like "Cancel all designations," which wipes every matching order at once.

On the world map

The context menu works the same way on the world map. Select a caravan with comma and period, move the cursor to a destination tile, and press ]. You get options such as "Travel to," "Trade with," or "Attack," depending on what is on that tile. The selected caravan is the actor and the cursor tile is the target, exactly as a selected pawn acts on a tile back home. For commanding the caravan itself (settle, split, rest, merge), use its gizmos with G.

A DLC example: picking a xenotype (Biotech)

During character creation with the Biotech DLC active, the context menu is how you change a colonist's xenotype. Place the cursor on a pawn, press ], and the menu includes the pawn's current xenotype (usually "Baseliner"). Press Enter on it to open a list of every xenotype.

For more on pawns, see selecting pawns.

The info card (Alt+I)

The info card is the detailed stats screen for whatever the cursor touches. It exposes the numbers that drive the simulation: a terrain's fertility and movement cost, a wall's material and hit points, a pawn's full stat sheet, an item's value and quality.

Press Alt+I to open the info card for the thing under the cursor. Alongside G (gizmos) and ] (the context menu), it is one of the keys you reach for constantly.

On the map

Point the cursor at almost anything and press Alt+I to open its info card: terrain, a pawn, a wall, an item. When a tile holds more than one thing, the mod opens a small menu so you can choose which one's card to read.

The card shines when you want numbers a quick readout won't give you. Making a growing zone? Press Alt+I on the available plants to compare their stats. Outfitting a colonist? Press it on a piece of clothing to see its protection and insulation. Press it on a colonist for their full stat sheet, or use Ctrl+Alt+I to open the info card of the pawn currently selected on the colonist bar, wherever your cursor happens to be.

In other places

Alt+I appears on several screens beyond the map:

• Quest rewards. On a quest's reward buttons, Alt+I opens the info card for a specific reward item so you can inspect what you would receive before accepting. See quests.
• Caravan stat values. In caravan formation and info screens, Alt+I on a value breaks it down into the contributing factors. For example, caravan speed or carry capacity is the sum of several contributions, and the info card shows each one.

Coverage

Alt+I works in most places, but not absolutely everywhere yet. If you press it somewhere you expected an info card and nothing happens, that spot may not be wired up. If that happens on a screen where you think it belongs, let me know and I can take a look.

Selecting pawns

Colonists (the game calls them pawns) are the heart of a RimWorld colony. This page covers how to select them, navigate the colonist bar, jump the cursor to a specific pawn, and build combat groups. For reading a pawn's health, mood, and other stats at a glance, see checking on pawns.

The colonist bar

The colonist bar is a persistent strip along the top of the screen that shows all your colonists and mechs. You can navigate it, select individual pawns, reorder it, and page through larger groups without touching the cursor.

Cycling through colonists (comma / period)

Period selects the next colonist; comma selects the previous one. This is the game's own vanilla cycling behavior: it steps through your colonists in bar order and announces the selected pawn. When you reach the mech section of the bar, the same keys cycle through mechs instead.

Selecting by number (Alt+1–0)

Alt+1 through Alt+9 select the colonist at positions 1–9 on the current bar page. Alt+0 selects position 10.

Pressing the same Alt+number twice within about half a second also moves the cursor to that pawn's tile and snaps the camera to them. The single press selects and announces; the double press is the cursor jump.

Paging through more than ten colonists (Alt+Down / Alt+Up)

When you have more than ten colonists or mechs, they are organized into pages. Alt+Down pages to the next group; Alt+Up pages back. After paging, use Alt+1–0 to select within the new page.

Navigating the bar one pawn at a time (Alt+Left / Alt+Right)

Alt+Left and Alt+Right move through the colonist bar one pawn at a time, crossing page boundaries. This is a linear walk across the entire bar rather than a page-at-a-time jump.

Reordering the bar (Ctrl+Alt+Left / Ctrl+Alt+Right)

Ctrl+Alt+Left and Ctrl+Alt+Right move the currently selected pawn earlier or later on the bar. This lets you arrange colonists in an order that makes sense to you, so the numbers fall where you expect.

Ctrl+Alt+Down and Ctrl+Alt+Up move the pawn between pages on the bar.

Focusing the cursor pawn on the bar (/)

Press / to focus the pawn under the cursor on the colonist bar. If the cursor is on a colonist or mech that appears on the bar, the bar jumps to that pawn's position. This is how you move quickly from "cursor on pawn" to "pawn selected on bar."

Jumping the cursor to the selected pawn (Alt+C)

Press Alt+C to move the cursor and camera to the currently selected pawn. This is the reverse of /: it takes you from "pawn selected on bar" to "cursor on pawn." When several pawns are multi-selected, Alt+C opens a picker so you can choose which one to jump to.

Multi-select (Alt+Space)

Alt+Space toggles the pawn under the cursor (or the currently focused bar pawn) into or out of a multi-select group. Once multiple pawns are selected, orders issued via ] or gizmos apply to all of them.

Multi-select is mainly useful for combat: sending a group to attack a position, drafting several colonists at once, or setting up combat groups. Many gizmos expect a single pawn and will produce unexpected results (or not work at all) when multiple pawns are selected. If a gizmo behaves strangely, check whether multi-select is active.

Ctrl+Alt+Space selects all colonists at once, or clears the multi-select if already active.

Alt+Shift+Right and Alt+Shift+Left extend the current selection contiguously to the next or previous pawn on the bar.

Combat groups (Ctrl+Shift+F1–F4 / Ctrl+F1–F4)

You can save and recall named groups of pawns for fast combat deployment.

• Ctrl+Shift+F1 through Ctrl+Shift+F4 save the current multi-select group to slot 1–4.
• Ctrl+F1 through Ctrl+F4 recall the saved group from slot 1–4, re-selecting those pawns.

Note: F1 by itself opens the Work menu; F2 opens the Schedule menu; F3 opens the Assign menu; F4 opens the Animals/Mechs menu. The combat group keys require Ctrl to avoid conflicting with those.

Going further

• Checking on pawns: health, mood, needs, gear, and skills at a glance.
• The context menu: issuing orders to a selected pawn at the cursor tile.
• Gizmos: the command actions available for a selected pawn or object.

Checking on pawns

Colonists (the game calls them pawns) need attention constantly: who is hurt, who is in a bad mood, who should be on the guns. This page covers how to get a fast read on any pawn from the map without opening a full screen.

For selecting pawns, cycling through colonists, and building combat groups, see selecting pawns.

The at-a-glance info keys

These keys give a quick spoken summary of the pawn under the cursor, or the currently selected pawn if the cursor is not on a specific one.

• Alt+H: quick health readout, focused on what matters in combat or triage: consciousness, movement, manipulation, and whether the pawn is bleeding. Use this to decide who needs immediate attention.
• Alt+M: mood.
• Alt+N: needs.
• Alt+G: gear (what they are wielding and wearing).
• Alt+K: top 3 skills.
• Alt+B: the pawn's recent combat log (their last several fights).

These prioritize the thing under the cursor first, then fall back to the pawn you selected with comma/period or an Alt+number. Place the cursor on an enemy raider and press Alt+H to get the raider's health, not your selected colonist's. Move the cursor off anything specific and the keys report on the selected pawn instead.

Finding conditions with type-ahead

For a deeper read on a pawn's health state, open the pawn's inspect view (press Enter on the pawn under the cursor, or Ctrl+Alt+Enter on a pawn selected via the colonist bar). From the top section of the inspect screen, start typing to jump to a condition:

• "inf" jumps to infections.
• "leg" or "arm" or "head" (or even "hea") jumps to everything wrong with that body part.

Arrow Up and Down through matching results. This is the fastest way to find a specific injury or condition without scrolling through the full list.

The skills table (Alt+P)

To compare every colonist's skills side by side, press Alt+P to open the skills table. It lists all your colonists against all their skills.

Inside the table, Alt+S sorts by the column you are on, so you can jump to a skill column and find your strongest pawn for it. Press Alt+S again to flip the sort direction, and once more to clear it.

This pairs naturally with setting up work priorities: find your best cook in the skills table, then assign cooking to them.

Where to go from here

These keys assume you are on the colony map. For the basics of moving the cursor and camera, see the map. For a deeper read on a single pawn (full health detail, operations, traits, relationships), open the relevant tab via the inspect view. The at-a-glance keys above are for the constant spot-checks that keep a colony running.

Starting a Game

Starting a new game

Selecting New Colony from the main menu opens a short setup flow: choose a scenario, then a storyteller, difficulty, and save mode, then configure the world. This page covers those screens in order. The next two pages cover choosing a landing site and creating your colonists.

Each screen advances with Enter when you are done, and Escape goes back to the previous screen.

Choosing a scenario

A scenario sets the starting rules: who your colonists are, what equipment they begin with, and what conditions apply throughout the game. When the screen opens, the mod announces the current scenario's name, summary, and category.

Use Up and Down to move through the scenario list. The mod announces the name, summary, and category of each scenario as you navigate. Type letters to jump to a scenario by name (typeahead search).

The default, Crashlanded, starts you with three survivors and some basic supplies. The Rich Explorer starts with one well-equipped colonist; Lost Tribe starts with more people and less technology. The choice has a meaningful effect on the early game.

Reading the scenario details

Press Tab to switch to the detail panel for the selected scenario. The detail panel is a tree view listing the starting colonists, starting items, items scattered on the map, and any special conditions. Use Up and Down to move through the entries, Right to expand a node, and Left to collapse it. Press Tab or Escape to return to the scenario list.

Editing or copying a scenario

Press Alt+E to open the selected scenario in the editor. If the scenario is a built-in or another user's Workshop upload, the mod creates an editable copy for you and says so. If it is your own custom or Workshop scenario, it opens directly for editing.

The scenario editor is a separate page with its own navigation. When you are done in the editor, the screen returns you to the scenario list.

Selecting a scenario

Press Enter on the scenario list to confirm the highlighted scenario and advance to the next screen. If the Scenario Builder entry is selected, Enter opens the Scenario Builder instead.

Choosing a storyteller, difficulty, and save mode

This screen contains three sections cycled with Tab and Shift+Tab: storyteller, difficulty, and save mode. The mod announces which section you are in when you switch.

Within each section, press Up and Down to move between options, and type to search by name.

Storyteller

The storyteller controls the pacing and style of events that hit your colony.

• Cassandra Classic sends a steadily escalating challenge. This is the default and the most common choice.
• Phoebe Chillax spaces events out and gives more breathing room. A calmer pace if you want to build without constant pressure.
• Randy Random does whatever it wants. Sometimes quiet, sometimes three raids in a row.

For the differences in how each storyteller behaves, see the Storyteller article on the RimWorld wiki.

Difficulty

Press Tab to move to the difficulty section, then Up and Down to choose. Each option reads its name and a short description.

There is also a Custom difficulty option. Press Enter on Custom to open the custom difficulty editor, which exposes individual sliders for threat scale, population cap, disease frequency, trade prices, and many other factors. You can adjust these sliders at any time during a running save, so there is no pressure to get them exactly right before you start.

For a description of what each preset difficulty changes, see the Difficulty article on the RimWorld wiki.

Save mode

Press Tab to move to the save mode section, then Up and Down to choose:

• Reload anytime lets you save and load freely.
• Commitment mode keeps a single rolling save you cannot reload. Events are permanent.

When all three sections are set, press Enter to advance to the world configuration screen.

Anomaly settings (Anomaly DLC)

If the Anomaly DLC is active, a fourth section appears after save mode. Press Tab to reach it. The Anomaly Settings dialog is already open at that point, so there is nothing to confirm to open it: you are placed directly in the dialog, which lets you set the anomaly playstyle and adjust related sliders. Press Alt+S to accept your changes, or Escape to discard them and return to the storyteller screen.

World configuration

This screen lets you set the world seed and adjust parameters such as planet coverage, rainfall, and temperature. It is a list of sliders; press Up and Down to move between them and Left and Right to adjust the current one. Press Enter on the Seed field to type a seed directly.

The defaults produce a valid world, and the seed is randomized automatically. This screen is mainly useful for experienced players who want a specific type of world.

Press Enter to generate the world. After generation, the world map opens for you to choose a landing site.

For information about how world generation parameters affect the planet, see the World generation article on the RimWorld wiki.

Next steps

• Choosing a landing site on the world map.
• Creating your colonists, the screen after you settle.

Choosing a landing site

After the world generates, the world map opens so you can pick where your colony will be. Your job here is to find a tile you like and settle it. The navigation you learn here carries over to the same map you will use later for caravans and travel.

Moving around the map

Arrow keys move the cursor one tile at a time and the camera follows. When you move onto a tile, the mod announces the biome name and a short summary of conditions. Use this to get a quick read on the terrain as you explore.

A few shortcuts make navigation faster:

• R jumps the cursor to a random valid starting tile and reads its details. A generated world holds tens of thousands of tiles, so this lands you somewhere new each time you press it.
• Space re-announces the current tile.
• Ctrl+Up/Down/Left/Right jumps to the next biome boundary in that direction, useful for finding the edge of a desert or the start of a forest.

Reading tile details

When the cursor is on a tile, the number keys 1 through 5 each read a specific category of information. These are on-demand spot checks; much of this information is already announced as you arrow around, so you do not need to press these after every move.

• 1 reads growing conditions: the growing period, rainfall, forageability percentage and food type, whether animals can graze, and stone types available for mining.
• 2 reads movement and travel cost: movement difficulty (including any road multiplier and winter penalty), terrain and hilliness, elevation, roads, and rivers.
• 3 reads disease frequency: how often diseases strike here per year, plus pollution and haze data if the Biotech DLC is active.
• 4 reads time zone and global coordinates: the tile's latitude and longitude, and its UTC offset.
• 5 reads regions and landmarks: the region or feature name, plus any landmarks (DLC only).

For how each biome plays and what a good starting climate looks like, see the Biomes article on the RimWorld wiki.

Finding a site with the scanner

The scanner is the fastest way to locate anything on the map without arrowing across it. On the world map its categories include biomes, roads, and settlements. Switch categories with Ctrl+Page Up and Ctrl+Page Down, move between entries with Page Up and Page Down, and press Home to jump the cursor to the current entry.

When the scanner lands on a clump of related tiles (such as a biome spanning many tiles), it reports a tile count. Press Home once to jump to the nearest edge of the clump. If the clump has a distinct center, the mod offers a hint: press Home a second time to jump to the center.

To find neutral factions nearby, switch the scanner to the settlements category. The scanner announces each settlement's faction name and whether it is hostile or friendly.

For the full set of scanner keys, see The scanner.

Where you can and cannot settle

• You cannot settle on a tile already owned by a faction. The game will refuse and explain why.
• Settling within 5 tiles of another faction's settlement incurs a goodwill penalty for crowding them. Settle at least 5 tiles away to avoid it. There are no friendly factions to settle near at this stage: other factions are hostile or neutral.

If a tile is otherwise invalid (an ocean tile, for example), the game tells you when you try to settle.

Settling

When the cursor is on a tile you want, press Enter to settle there. The mod validates the tile first. If it is invalid, you hear why and stay on the map to pick somewhere else. If it is valid, you hear "Starting site selected" and move to the next screen.

If settling would affect a nearby faction's opinion of you, the game may prompt you to confirm. Confirm to proceed.

Next steps

After you settle, you choose who comes with you. See Creating your colonists.

Creating your colonists

This is the last screen before the game starts: the character setup screen, where you decide who lands with you. You can read each candidate's background, reroll ones you dislike, set filters to control what the game generates, and rename anyone. The colonists you keep here are the ones you will be keeping alive for the rest of the game.

The screen is a tree view (see Navigating menus). Use Up and Down to move through the list of candidates, Right to expand one and read its details, and Left to collapse it again.

The slots: Selected and Left Behind

The screen shows up to eight candidate slots even if your scenario only starts you with three colonists. The list is divided by two markers: Selected and Left Behind. Pawns in the Selected group come with you when the game starts. Pawns in the Left Behind group do not. As you arrow across the boundary, the mod announces which group you have entered.

The extra slots exist for rerolling. You can reroll a Left Behind slot as many times as you like looking for a good candidate, then move that pawn up into the Selected group.

Moving a pawn between groups

Press Ctrl+Up and Ctrl+Down to move the current candidate up or down the list. When a pawn crosses the Selected/Left Behind boundary, the mod announces which group they landed in and who their new neighbors are.

Reading a pawn's details

Press Right on a candidate to expand them. Inside you find categories you can expand in turn:

• Bio: their backstory and background.
• Age: RimWorld tracks two ages. Biological age is how old the body is; chronological age is how many years have passed since birth. The two can differ due to cryptosleep stasis.
• Relations: other pawns this candidate knows, with opinions in each relation's detail. Press Enter on a relation to jump to that pawn in the list.
• Traits: personality traits. Most pawns have at least one, up to three.
• Incapable of: work types this pawn refuses to do. Worth checking before you commit to keeping someone.
• Skills: their twelve skill levels (0 to 20) and passions. A passion makes a pawn learn a skill faster and gain a mood boost from doing it. Skills come with no passion, a single passion, or a double (burning) passion.
• Health and possessions round out the picture.

When a category is collapsed, the mod reads a short summary so you can decide whether to expand. The collapsed pawn entry itself carries age, gender, traits, and top skills inline.

Comparing the same detail across pawns

Once you have expanded to a particular detail on one pawn, Page Up and Page Down jump to the same spot on the previous or next pawn. If you are on the Construction skill for candidate one, Page Down takes you to Construction on candidate two, and so on. This makes it easy to compare one attribute across everyone without re-navigating each pawn's tree.

Rerolling and filtering

If you do not like a candidate, you can generate a new one. Filters let you tell the game what to look for before it generates.

Pressing ] on a candidate opens a context menu gathering these actions in one place: randomize (the same as Alt+R), rename (the same as Alt+N), and edit the pawn filter (the same as Alt+F). With the Biotech DLC it also includes the developmental stage and xenotype options described below. Each has a direct key as well, so you can use whichever you prefer.

Reroll (Alt+R)

Press Alt+R to reroll the candidate you are on. A new pawn replaces them. If you have filters active, the game rerolls behind the scenes until it finds someone who matches (or hits the roll limit), then tells you how many attempts it took.

Filters (Alt+F)

Press Alt+F to open the pawn filter editor. Filters constrain what reroll will accept. You might ask for a colonist with Shooting 8 and no Pyromaniac trait, then reroll until you get one. This is not a native RimWorld feature: it is a rebuild of Random Plus, a mod popular with sighted players. New players can ignore it and just reroll by hand; it is here for when you want finer control. Filters persist across new games.

The editor is a flat list grouped into sections. Use Up and Down to move through it.

• Minimum skill levels: for each of the twelve skills, use Left and Right to set a minimum level, or Shift+Left and Shift+Right to jump in larger steps. Press Enter on a skill row to cycle the required passion (none, then single, then double). Shift+Home and Shift+End snap a value to its minimum or maximum.
• Passion counts: set a minimum and maximum number of total passions across all skills, adjusted with Left and Right.
• Age: minimum and maximum, adjusted with Left and Right.
• Required traits and excluded traits: navigate to the "add required trait" or "add excluded trait" row, then press Enter to open a trait picker. Type to search (typing "pyr" finds Pyromaniac, a trait you do not want), then press Enter to select. To remove a trait you have added, navigate to it and press Delete.
• Roll limit: the maximum number of reroll attempts before the game gives up and keeps the last result.

Press Alt+S to save your filters and close the editor. Escape also closes the editor.

Presets

Near the bottom of the filter list are preset options. You can save the current filter set as a named preset and load a saved one later. Because presets persist across games, you can build a "balanced starter" filter once and reuse it for every new colony.

The Team Skills summary (Tab)

Press Tab to switch to the Team Skills summary, which covers everyone currently in the Selected group. It lists the skills the game treats as important for a starting colony, which is most but not all of the twelve. For each listed skill it tells you the best pawn at that skill, their level, and their passion. Press Up and Down to move through the skills, or type to jump to one by name. Press Tab again to return to the candidate list.

Renaming a pawn (Alt+N)

Press Alt+N to rename the candidate you are on. You can set their first name, nickname, and last name. The nickname is what the game usually uses, so a clear, distinct nickname makes everyone easier to track. This is your chance to set a pawn's first and last name: you cannot change those once the game starts. With the Biotech DLC there is a brief 24-hour window to name a newborn child, but otherwise names are fixed at the start.

Starting the game

When you are happy with your roster, press Enter to confirm. The game asks you to confirm starting with the colonists you have chosen. Confirm, and the game begins.

Picking a xenotype (Biotech DLC)

With the Biotech DLC, each candidate has a xenotype representing their genetic makeup, with most baseline humans set to Baseliner. To change it, press ] on a pawn to open its context menu and choose the xenotype option. That opens a list of every xenotype in the game, plus an option to create a custom one in a gene editor. Picking a xenotype rerolls the pawn as that type. Developmental stage (baby, child, adult) is also on this menu. For how the context menu works, see The context menu.

Managing Your Colony

The Work tab

The Work tab is where you decide who does what. Hauling, cooking, mining, doctoring, art: every job in the colony gets assigned here. Press F1 to open it.

Two views

There are two ways to look at the same information. Switch between them with Ctrl+Tab.

• Focused view shows one pawn at a time. You move through that pawn's jobs and priority levels, then Tab to the next pawn. It is a straightforward place to start, and most of the instructions below assume it.
• Table view is the multi-column layout: every pawn as a row, every job as a column. It covers the whole colony at a glance and adds a few bulk tools, but the concepts are the same. It suits players who are comfortable with large tables.

Whichever view you pick becomes the default for next time.

Basic mode and manual priority mode

Press Alt+M to toggle between the two assignment modes:

• Basic mode uses on/off checkboxes. A pawn either does a job or doesn't. The game then decides the order on its own, working left to right across the jobs (the leftmost enabled task is attempted first). Basic mode is perfectly fine for a new colony: you can leave it here, get comfortable with the rest of the game, and come back to manual priorities later.
• Manual priority mode lets you set a number from 1 to 4 on each job, giving you direct control over the order. It is more work up front, but it is the only way to say "doctor first, haul only when there is nothing better to do." The docs assume manual mode once you are ready for it.

Setting priorities in manual mode (focused view)

In manual mode, in the focused view, jobs are organized by priority column:

• Up/Down move between priority levels (columns 1 through 4, plus Disabled).
• Left/Right move between jobs within the current priority level.
• Tab/Shift+Tab move to the next or previous pawn.

To set a priority, press a number key:

• 1 is the highest priority.
• 2, 3, and 4 step down from there.
• 0 turns the job off entirely.

As you arrow left and right through a priority level, the mod announces each job's name, skill level, passion, a description, and the specific sub-tasks it includes, in the order the pawn performs them. Some of those sub-tasks are spoken with an "E" in front. The "E" is a spoken marker, not a key you press: it flags a task the game treats as an emergency (such as firefighting or rescuing a downed colonist), which a pawn will drop other work to attend to.

Bulk operations and bracket cycling

These keys work the same in both the focused view and the table view.

[ cycles the current job's priority up (lower number, more important). ] cycles it down (higher number, less important).

Add Shift to apply the same cycle to every eligible colonist at once: Shift+[ raises the priority for every pawn, Shift+] lowers it for every pawn.

Shift+number (0 through 4) sets that job to the chosen priority for every eligible colonist at once.

How execution order works

The game runs all priority-1 jobs first, reading them left to right across the row, then all priority-2 jobs left to right, and so on down to 4. Two jobs at the same priority number resolve by their left-to-right position. This is why the order within a priority level matters alongside the number.

Table view

The table view gives a colonist-per-row, job-per-column layout. The same concepts as the focused view apply, plus a set of painting tools that exist only here. All the standard table controls apply:

• Up/Down move between colonists.
• Left/Right move between jobs.
• Alt+S sorts by the current column.
• Shift+Up/Down paints the current cell's value onto rows above or below as you move.
• Shift+Home/End paints from the current row to the top or bottom of the column.
• Ctrl+Shift+Home/End paints the value across every row in the column at once.

Painting (the Shift+Up/Down and Shift+Home/End keys above) is available only in the table view. The bracket keys ([ / ] and their Shift variants) and Shift+number behave the same in both views.

See navigating menus for the full table grammar.

The unskilled-job warning

When you enable a job the pawn has no skill in, you will hear a warning sound. It is not blocking you, just a notice. Sometimes assigning unskilled work is exactly what you want (someone has to haul rocks). Other times it signals that you are about to let your best researcher attempt surgery.

Learn more

Deciding which priorities to give which pawns is a strategy topic in its own right. The RimWorld wiki's Work page covers the trade-offs in depth.

Related pages

• The Schedule tab decides when pawns work; the Work tab decides what they do.
• Checking on pawns shows a pawn's skills and passions, which is useful to have open while assigning work.

The Schedule tab

The Schedule tab sets each pawn's daily rhythm: when they work, when they rest, and when they sleep. The day is divided into 24 hours, and you decide what each hour is for. Press F2 to open it.

The default schedule is usually fine for a new colony. Most colonies run for a long time without needing changes here, so if this screen feels like extra work, leave it alone until you have a concrete reason to tinker.

Brushes

You assign hours by picking a "brush" and painting it onto the schedule. A brush is a time assignment type, and you choose one by pressing a number key: 1 through 9 and 0.

The list typically looks like this:

• 1 Anything
• 2 Work
• 3 Recreation
• 4 Sleep

The list comes directly from the game, so the exact order can vary, and DLCs can add more entries. Trust what the mod announces when you press a number over what is written here.

Applying a brush

Move to the hour you want, then:

• Space or Enter applies the current brush to that single hour.
• Shift+Left and Shift+Right paint the brush across the hours toward that side as you move.
• Shift+Home paints the brush from the current hour back to hour 0.
• Shift+End paints the brush from the current hour to hour 23, the last hour of the day.

Filling a night

A night is not a single stretch on this screen, because the row runs from hour 0 to hour 23 and a night spans the wrap between them: the late-evening and early-night hours sit at the right end of the row, while the late-night and early-morning hours sit at the left end. Filling a full sleep period therefore takes two passes, not one. Pick the Sleep brush with 4, then paint each edge of the night separately: from your pawn's bedtime use Shift+End to paint to hour 23, and from hour 0 use Shift+Right (or Shift+Home from the wake-up hour) to paint the early-morning hours. Painting from a single hour cannot wrap across the end of the day in one move.

Copying a schedule

Once you have built a schedule you like, you can apply it to the whole colony without rebuilding it for each pawn.

• Ctrl+C copies the current pawn's schedule.
• Ctrl+V pastes it onto another pawn.

Related pages

• The Work tab decides what each pawn does during their work hours. The Schedule tab decides when those hours are.

The Assign tab

The Assign tab is where you set the standing rules your pawns follow on their own: what medicine they receive, which clothes they are allowed to wear, what food they will eat, and which drugs they take. You set policies once and pawns follow them automatically. Press F3 to open it.

The layout

Assign is a table. Rows are your pawns; columns are the policy categories:

• Medical care
• Apparel
• Food
• Drugs
• Reading
• Medicine carry amount
• Allowed medicine quality
• Allowed meal quality

Each column holds a policy name, and several pawns can share the same one. If you want most pawns on an "anything goes" food policy but two pawns on a strict diet, you create two food policies and assign each pawn the one they need.

The Reading column appears with the Anomaly DLC. A reading policy controls which books and tomes a pawn is allowed to read. This matters because some reading material in Anomaly is dangerous, so you can keep risky tomes away from pawns you would rather not expose to them.

The standard table controls apply here: Alt+S sorts by the column you are on, and painting a value down a column works the same way it does everywhere. See navigating menus for the full table grammar.

Managing policies with the context menu

To create, rename, copy, or delete a policy, press ] on a policy category. The available options depend on the category and are announced as you arrow through them:

• On Medical care, ] offers "Change defaults."
• On Apparel, ] offers New (Alt+N), Rename, Copy, Delete, and Edit.

Food and drug policies offer the same kind of options. This is also how you create a new policy before assigning it to anyone. See the context menu for how the ] menu works in general.

Editing a policy

Choosing Edit (or opening any policy for editing) opens a large tree view where you specify what is allowed. Type-ahead works throughout, so you can jump to an item by typing its name.

The hit-point requirement filter

Apparel and weapons lose hit points as they take damage. This filter sets the condition range a pawn is willing to wear or carry.

Press Enter on the hit-points entry (it reads something like "65% to 100%"), then:

• Up/Down move between the minimum and maximum bound.
• Left/Right adjust whichever bound you are on.
• Enter confirms.

One reason to adjust this: a piece of clothing's resale value drops noticeably once it falls below roughly 60% hit points. Setting the lower bound above that point means pawns will swap out of their clothes while the items are still worth selling.

The quality filter

Items have quality levels ranging from awful up to legendary. The quality filter works exactly like the hit-point filter: Enter to open, Up/Down between min and max, Left/Right to adjust, Enter to confirm.

Allow and forbid checkboxes

The tree includes checkboxes for broad categories, such as burnable apparel or bio-coded items. Toggle them to allow or forbid whole groups at once.

One thing to watch: forbidding burnable apparel sounds tidy, but most cloth and leather clothing is burnable, so that single checkbox can leave pawns with almost nothing they are allowed to wear. Read what you are forbidding before you commit.

Expandable items for precise control

When a broad category is not precise enough, expand it. Armor categories expand into specific pieces, so you can allow flak vests but forbid flak pants, or any combination you like. Right expands, Left collapses.

Food and drug policies

Food and drug policies follow the same tree-view pattern. A food policy lets you specify which meals a pawn is allowed to eat, useful for keeping fine meals away from the hauler who would just eat them standing over the pots. A drug policy sets which drugs a pawn takes and how often.

Learn more

Policies go deep, especially drug schedules and the finer points of apparel management. The RimWorld wiki's Assign page covers the strategy and the edge cases. For specific policy types, see the wiki's Food and Drug policy articles.

The Animals tab

The Animals tab is where you manage every tamed creature in the colony: who trains them, what they are allowed to do, where they can go, and how many of each species you want around. Press F4 to open it.

With the Biotech DLC and mechanoids in your colony, F4 may open the Mechs tab instead. If you have both tamed animals and mechs, F4 first shows a chooser. The two tabs are nearly identical tables with slightly different columns, so everything below applies to both.

The table

Each animal is a row, and the columns are its settings. Sorting, painting a value down a column, and moving around all work the way they do in any table. See navigating menus for the full set. The short version:

• Alt+S sorts by the column you are on. Press again to toggle descending, then clear.
• Shift+Up/Down paints the current cell's value onto the rows above or below.
• Shift+Home/End paints from your row to the top or bottom of the column.
• Ctrl+Shift+Home/End paints the value across every row at once.
• Enter or Space toggles a checkbox cell.

Training

Many columns represent trainable skills you turn on with a checkbox. Checking one tells your handlers to begin training that animal. Training takes time and depends on your handler's Animals skill.

The standard training categories are:

• Tameness (keeping the animal from reverting to wild)
• Guard (the animal follows a master and stays near them; this is the prerequisite for the other training types)
• Attack (the animal can be released to attack distant targets instead of only guarding)
• Rescue (the animal retrieves downed colonists)
• Haul (the animal carries items)

How attack training actually behaves

By default, an animal trained to guard and assigned a master will follow that master and guard them: it attacks foes that come close, but it does not go looking for enemies. Guard mode is usually the safer choice, because an animal that charges into a firefight can catch your own gunfire.

Once an animal has learned Attack as well, has a master assigned, and is set to follow, a gizmo appears on the master (not on the animal) when that master is drafted. The gizmo toggles between guarding and being released to go attack, so you can decide whether the animals hold their position or charge the enemy. To reach it, select the master, draft them, and press G to open their gizmos. See gizmos for how to navigate gizmo commands.

With the Odyssey DLC, an additional attack target training type lets you point attack-trained animals at one specific target. When trained, a separate gizmo appears on the drafted master; activate it and press Enter to pick the target the animals should attack.

Hunting and the Animals tab

Hunting is designated in the Wildlife tab, not here. When a hunter kills an animal, they collect meat and may collect other resources such as hides, wool, or leather depending on the species. Not every animal yields leather.

The auto-slaughter screen

Auto-slaughter lets you set population caps per species. Whenever your count exceeds a cap, the game automatically slaughters the surplus until you are back under the limit. You set it once and the colony manages its own herd sizes without ongoing micromanagement.

The screen lists every animal species in the game, including species you do not yet own. You can pre-set caps before you have a single animal of that type.

Setting a cap

Find the species you want to limit. For each numeric cell, press Enter to type a value directly, or nudge it one at a time with = to raise and - to lower. The columns are:

• Maximum population: the total of that species you will keep.
• Maximum males
• Maximum young males
• Maximum females
• Maximum young females

The per-sex columns let you keep plenty of breeding females while capping surplus males. Leave a cap blank and that count is not limited.

Pregnant and bonded animals

Two checkboxes determine whether certain animals are spared from auto-slaughter:

• Allow pregnant slaughter: off by default. Pregnant females are protected until you turn this on. The screen shows how many are currently pregnant.
• Allow bonded slaughter: same idea for animals that have bonded with a colonist. Enabling this when a bonded animal is over the cap will cause a mood hit when that colonist loses their companion.

Who gets slaughtered

When you are over a cap, the game removes the oldest animals first and works down until you are back within the limit. This means auto-slaughter trims the elderly before the young, which generally makes sense for a herd you are managing for meat or breeding.

Learn more

Bonding, training mechanics, and which animals are worth keeping are covered on the RimWorld wiki's Animals page.

Related pages

• The Wildlife tab is for untamed animals: marking creatures to hunt or tame.
• Navigating menus covers the full table mechanics including sorting, painting, and type-ahead.
• Gizmos explains how to navigate and use the command buttons on a selected animal.

The Wildlife tab

The Wildlife tab lists the untamed animals on your map and lets you decide which ones to hunt and which ones to try taming. Press F5 to open it.

The table

Wildlife is a table built the same way as the Animals tab, so all the same controls apply. Each animal is a row; you sort with Alt+S, paint values down a column with Shift+Up/Down, and toggle checkboxes with Enter or Space. See navigating menus for the complete rundown.

Hunt and tame

Two checkboxes do the real work:

• Hunt: marks the animal to be killed. A colonist who has the Hunting work type assigned and a ranged weapon equipped will go shoot it. Successful hunts yield meat and other resources from the carcass, which vary by species (leather is common but not guaranteed). See the Work tab to make sure Hunting is assigned.
• Tame: marks the animal for taming. A handler will approach it and attempt to win it over. Success depends on the animal's wildness and your handler's Animals skill.

Revenge chance

One column to check before committing to anything is revenge chance. This is the probability that the animal attacks instead of cooperating when a hunt or taming attempt goes wrong. A high revenge chance means a failed shot or botched taming is likely to start a fight. Some animals can seriously injure or kill a colonist before help arrives.

Low revenge chance means an easier and safer target. High revenge chance means bring backup, or leave it alone.

Predators

Predators on the map hunt your animals and occasionally attack colonists. They show up in the Wildlife tab like any other animal. You can designate a predator for hunting to remove the threat, or tame it if your handler is skilled enough. Predator behavior is covered in depth on the RimWorld wiki's Animals page.

Learn more

Which animals are safe to hunt, which are worth taming, and how predators behave on the map are all covered on the RimWorld wiki's Animals page.

Related pages

• The Animals tab manages the creatures you have already tamed: training, allowed areas, and auto-slaughter.

The Research tab

The Research tab is where you choose what your colony learns next. Almost everything advanced in the game requires completing research first, from stone cutting to ship engines. Press F6 to open it.

The game lays research out as a large node graph. The mod presents it as a tree view instead: arrow Up and Down through projects, expand and collapse with Right and Left.

Categories

The tree groups projects into three categories:

• Available: projects you can start right now because their prerequisites are met.
• Completed: everything already researched.
• Locked: projects you cannot start yet because a prerequisite is unfinished.

With the Anomaly DLC, a second research tree sits alongside the standard one for the DLC's own projects.

Project details

Press Enter on a project to open its full details, then arrow through them. You will find:

• A description of what the project does.
• Its prerequisites: the projects that must be finished first.
• Any other requirements beyond prerequisites, such as a specific workbench or building.
• What it unlocks: the buildings, items, or abilities the research grants.
• Its dependent projects: what becomes available once this one is done.
• A "start research" action to queue it up.

Jumping along the tree

The prerequisites and dependent projects listed in a project's details are navigable links. Press Enter on one to jump directly to that project in the tree. This lets you trace a chain backward to see what you need first, or forward to see where a line of research leads.

When you have followed a link and want to return, press Escape. It steps you back one level at a time, so you can chase prerequisites three projects deep without losing your place.

A note on hidden prerequisites

A few research projects have prerequisites that the game itself never displays on screen. Because the mod reports what the game exposes, it cannot announce a requirement the game keeps hidden, so a project may occasionally depend on something that is not listed in its details. The RimWorld wiki's Research page documents every project's full requirements, including the ones the game leaves out, so it is the place to check when a project will not unlock and you cannot tell why.

Learn more

What to research first, and the order that gets a new colony established quickly, is a strategy question of its own. The RimWorld wiki's Research page lays out the full tree and common opening priorities, and lists every prerequisite, including any the game does not show in-game.

Related pages

• Navigating menus covers tree views in general, including the submenu navigation mode if expand-and-collapse feels cumbersome.

Quests

Quests are the offers and jobs the world sends you: a faction requesting help, a wanderer who wants to join, a request to host a refugee in exchange for goods. Press F7 to open the Quests menu.

Moving around the menu

The menu has two parts: the list of quests on one side and the reward preferences on the other.

• Left/Right move between the quest categories: Available, Active, and Historical. Available holds new offers, Active shows accepted quests in progress, and Historical is the archive of finished or expired ones.
• Tab/Shift+Tab move between the quest list and the reward preferences panel.

Reading and accepting a quest

Arrow up and down through the quest list to hear each quest's details. For short quests this works well. For longer ones, press Enter to expand the quest and arrow through its details one piece at a time instead of hearing everything in one announcement.

To accept a quest, press Alt+A.

Choosing among reward options

Many quests offer several reward packages to choose from.

After pressing Alt+A, arrow through the reward options that appear.

Alternatively, expand the quest with Enter, arrow down to the bottom, and activate one of the per-option buttons: "Accept reward 1," "Accept reward 2," and so on.

When the cursor is on a reward button, press Alt+I to choose which item in that reward to open the info card for. The info card shows full stats so you can compare what each reward option contains.

Reward preferences

Tab over to the reward preferences panel to set which kinds of rewards you will accept. This steers what the game offers. For example, refusing goodwill prompts the game to substitute a different reward type instead.

(Royalty) With the Royalty DLC, refusing honor here nudges the Empire toward offering higher-quality items.

Learn more

For what specific quests do, how rewards are generated, and the strategy of which to accept, see the Quests page on the RimWorld wiki.

The info card works the same way here as on other screens: Alt+I opens it on a reward item. The context-menu key ] does nothing on the quests screen, so do not expect it to act here.

Health and medical care

Sooner or later someone gets shot, bitten by a wild boar, or wakes up with the flu. This page covers how to check a pawn's health, how treatment works, and how to schedule surgery. For the medical mechanics themselves (what each injury does, how infections progress, which prosthetics are worth installing), see the Health and Medicine pages on the RimWorld wiki.

The quick health readout: Alt+H

Press Alt+H on the map to hear a fast health summary for a pawn. The mod checks the tile under the cursor first; if no pawn is there, it falls back to whoever you have selected via the colonist bar. It works on colonists, enemies, and animals.

The summary is built for combat triage, not paperwork. It reads the name, then: pain level, bleeding rate with a time-to-death estimate when they are losing blood, any of consciousness, movement, or manipulation that has dropped below full, injured body parts with their remaining hit points, and whole-body conditions such as diseases. If nothing is wrong, it says the pawn is healthy.

When multiple pawns are selected and the cursor is not on anyone, Alt+H opens a small picker to choose whose health to read.

For a deeper look, open the pawn's inspection tree and go to the Health category. Type "inf" to jump to infections, "leg," "arm," or "head" to jump to everything wrong with that body part. Arrow up and down through the matching results. For how the inspection tree works in general, see navigating menus.

Reading the full health tab

To open the inspection tree for a pawn, put the cursor on them and press Enter, or select the pawn via the colonist bar and press Ctrl+Alt+Enter. Then arrow to the Health category and expand it.

Inside Health you will find, in order:

• Operations and Health Settings: the two action items described below.
• Pain and bleeding lines, when they apply.
• A node for each injured body part. Expand a part to hear its condition and remaining hit points, plus the specific conditions on it. Identical wounds are grouped, so you hear "gunshot wound x3" rather than three separate entries. If the pawn has no conditions, it says so.
• A Capacities section: sight, manipulation, moving, consciousness, and the rest, each with a percentage and a plain-language rating. Expand a capacity to hear what is dragging it down.

Learn more about what specific conditions mean on the wiki: Injury and Disease.

How treatment works

Treatment is a job your colonists perform on their own, controlled through the work system. A pawn who is hurt or sick needs to be tended by a doctor. The doctor is whoever has the Doctor work type enabled and a free moment. The patient needs the Patient work type enabled so they will go rest in a bed and accept care. Both are columns in the Work tab (F1). If nobody is tending the wounded, the usual causes are that no colonist has Doctor turned on, or the patient will not lie down because Patient is off.

A few details:

• Tend quality depends on the doctor's Medicine skill and the medicine used. Better medicine and a more skilled doctor mean wounds heal cleaner and infections are less likely.
• Medical beds and a clean, well-lit room improve outcomes. Mark a bed as medical from its inspection menu.

See Doctoring on the wiki for tend quality and surgery, and Medicine for the medicine types and when to use each.

Scheduling surgery

Surgery in RimWorld is a bill placed on a pawn, the same way a crafting bill sits on a workbench. Queue the operation, and a doctor performs it when they get to it. This covers everything from amputating an infected limb to installing a peg leg, a bionic eye, or harvesting an organ.

To schedule one:

1. Open the pawn's inspection tree (Enter on them, or Ctrl+Alt+Enter when selected), expand Health, and activate Operations with Enter.
2. A list shows operations already queued for this pawn, with an Add operation entry at the bottom. Arrow with Up/Down, and type to search.
3. Move to Add operation and press Enter to see every operation available for this pawn right now. Each entry announces the operation's name, description, the skill it requires, its ingredients, and a warning if you are missing a required medicine or part.
4. Press Enter on the operation you want. If it applies to a specific body part and more than one valid spot exists, you then pick the part from a list that reads each part's name, condition, and hit points. If there is only one sensible part, or the operation is not tied to a part, it is added immediately.

Back on the operations list, press Enter on a queued operation to reach View details, Remove, and Go back. Reorder the queue with Ctrl+Up and Ctrl+Down to control which operation a doctor performs first.

Two things to know before queuing surgery:

• The operation only happens if you have the right ingredients on hand (medicine, and the prosthetic or organ being installed) and a colonist with enough Medicine skill. The list flags missing ingredients, but it will not conjure a bionic arm you do not own.
• Surgery can fail, and a failed operation can injure or kill the patient. Higher Medicine skill and better medicine reduce that risk.

See Doctoring for success chances and Prosthesis for what can be installed.

Health Settings: per-pawn medical rules

The other action under Health is Health Settings. Open it to set three things for this pawn:

• Allowed food: which food policy the pawn follows.
• Medical care: the highest quality of medicine a doctor is allowed to spend on this pawn, from no medicine up through herbal, industrial, and glitterworld. The setting reads its current value and the available levels.
• Self tend: whether the pawn is allowed to treat their own wounds. If you enable this for a pawn who cannot perform Doctor work, the game reverts it and tells you why.

Arrow Up/Down through the three settings, press Enter to change one, pick a value, and Enter again to confirm. Medical care is a radio button: press Enter to select the care level you want. Interaction mode, where it applies, is a separate radio button.

Medical care across the colony

Health Settings changes one pawn at a time. To set medical care for the whole colony at once, use the Medical care column in the Assign tab (F3). It is the same setting, in a table where you can sort by column and paint a value down the column, so setting "industrial medicine for everyone, glitterworld for the prisoner you're trying to keep alive" takes a few keystrokes instead of a tour of every pawn.

Choosing the right medicine level matters: glitterworld medicine works wonders but runs out fast, and spending it on minor injuries is a waste. The Medicine wiki page lays out the trade-offs.

Learn more

• Health: overview of injuries, conditions, and capacities.
• Doctoring: tending, tend quality, and surgery.
• Medicine: medicine types and when to use each.
• Injury and Disease: what specific conditions do.
• Prosthesis: prosthetics and bionics.

Combat

When a raid shows up, a manhunter pack wanders in, or you want a colonist to put down a wounded animal, you take direct control of your pawns and tell them where to go and what to shoot. That direct control is called drafting, and this page covers how to do it from the keyboard: draft a pawn, move them, and order an attack.

RimWorld's combat runs in real time, so pausing with Space is essential. Pause, line up your orders, let time run, and watch what happens.

For the combat mechanics themselves (how shooting accuracy works, why cover matters, when a pawn goes down instead of dying), see the Combat page on the RimWorld wiki.

Drafting a pawn

Drafting takes a colonist off their normal work schedule and puts them under your direct command. While drafted, they stand where you tell them and attack what you point at instead of wandering off to haul rocks.

First select the pawn you want to control (comma and period cycle colonists; Alt plus a number jumps to a specific one). Then press R to draft. You will hear the pawn's name and the draft sound. Press R again to undraft, and the pawn returns to their schedule.

You can draft several pawns at once. Select a group (see checking on pawns for multi-select), then press R. The mod follows the game's own rule: it toggles every selected pawn that shares the first pawn's draft state, so one press drafts the stragglers. You will hear a summary like "Everyone drafted" or "Everyone except Dan drafted."

A few things to know:

• Only colonists who can be drafted respond to R. A pawn who is downed, in a mental break, or otherwise unable to fight will not draft.
• R only drafts when you are on the map with a pawn selected and no menu open. If a dialog is open, R does whatever that dialog uses it for.
• Drafting does not equip a weapon. A pawn fights with whatever they are already holding. To hand someone a weapon first, stand on the weapon's tile, select the pawn, and use the context menu to equip it.

See the Drafting page on the RimWorld wiki for more on the game's drafting rules.

Moving a drafted pawn

With a pawn drafted, move them by pointing the map cursor at a destination tile and giving a "go here" order.

The thorough way is the context menu. Move the cursor to the destination tile and press ]. A menu opens listing what the pawn can do at that spot, with "Go here" usually at the top. Arrow to it and press Enter.

The fast way is [ (left bracket). It fires the top option in that same menu immediately. Over an empty tile "Go here" is normally first, so [ is a quick "walk there." You will hear the pawn's name and the order, for example "Dan: Go here." Be careful with [ when an enemy is on the tile: the first option is then likely an attack order (fire at or melee), not "Go here," so the fast key may issue an attack you did not intend. With an enemy present, prefer the ] menu so you can see which order is at the top.

Hold Shift when confirming an order to queue it instead of replacing the current one. You can tell a pawn to move to one spot, then Shift+confirm a move to a second spot, and they will do them in sequence. The mod adds "Queued" to the announcement. Queuing works from both the ] menu (Shift+Enter on the option) and the [ shortcut (Shift+[).

Cover

Standing in the open during a firefight is how colonists die. Cover cuts the chance an incoming bullet connects, so where you park a drafted pawn is most of the fight.

Move the cursor onto a pawn and the mod reports how much cover whatever they are standing behind provides: either "no cover" or something like "behind sandbags (blocks 65%)." Scout a tile before confirming a move to see what cover it offers.

Cover comes from how solid the nearby object is (its fill percentage), not from one specific kind of thing:

• Sandbags and rock chunks are reliable cover.
• Walls fill the tile completely, so they give the most cover. Funneling enemies past a wall at a chokepoint is effective for this reason.
• Plants and other partial obstacles give partial cover: a saguaro cactus around 35%, trees around 25%, bushes around 20%.

The percentage the mod reads is a best case. Actual cover in a fight depends on where the enemy is standing relative to the object, so the same wall or sandbag protects against fire from one direction and not another.

The full cover rules (which objects count, how shooting angles interact with cover) live on the Cover page on the RimWorld wiki.

Ordering an attack

There are two ways to order an attack, depending on how much control you want.

Quick attack from the context menu

Put the cursor on the enemy and press ]. With a drafted pawn selected, the menu includes attack options such as "Attack [target]" for a ranged shot or a melee swing, depending on what the pawn is holding and how close they are. Arrow to the option you want and press Enter. Hold Shift to queue it after another order.

This is the order-and-forget approach: the pawn attacks that target and keeps attacking until it is down or out of reach.

Fire at and melee behave differently, and the difference decides where you have to stand your pawns:

• Melee makes the pawn run to the target and fight it in close. The pawn moves on its own to reach the enemy.
• Fire at makes the pawn stand still and shoot from where they are. The pawn will not move to get the enemy into range or into line of sight. If they cannot see the target or it is out of range, they do nothing. You position the pawn for cover and a clear line of fire yourself, then order the shot.

Aimed targeting with gizmos

For more control, especially with a specific weapon or a psycast, use the gizmo menu. Select a drafted pawn, press G, and arrow to the weapon's attack command. Press Enter to start targeting mode.

The mod hands the cursor back to you with a prompt such as "Bolt-action rifle attack. Use map navigation to select target, then press Enter." Move the map cursor with the arrow keys to the tile you want, then press Enter to issue the order. Press Escape to cancel targeting without attacking.

While in targeting mode, press R to announce the distance from the pawn to the cursor and whether the target is in range, for example "Distance: 12 tiles, IN RANGE" or "Distance: 35 tiles, OUT OF RANGE (max 28)."

Targeting mode can aim at things the ] order menu will not, including friendlies, walls, doors, and any other object. If you need to shoot a door open or fire on a friendly, this is the way to do it. Be deliberate about where you point it.

This targeting flow applies to ranged weapons, melee, mortars, and psycasts (Royalty). Whatever the source, you move the cursor and press Enter.

Some gizmos also carry their own shortcut key. When one does, the mod announces it right after the gizmo's name as you arrow through the G menu. You fire it with Shift plus that letter (for example, Shift plus the attack command's key starts targeting without opening the menu), because RimWorld Access keeps the plain letters for its own navigation. See gizmos for how this delegation works.

Targeting stays open when a shot fails

In vanilla RimWorld, clicking an invalid target exits targeting mode immediately, and in vanilla you would simply click again. Getting dropped out of targeting on every failed attempt would be tedious.

When you press Enter on a target that does not work, the mod explains why and keeps targeting open. You will hear something like "Out of range. Distance: 35, max range: 28" or "No line of sight to target," and the cursor stays put so you can adjust and try again. When you land a valid target, the pawn takes the order and targeting closes.

Reading the fight

A firefight is fast, and you cannot see the bullets. A few tools help:

• Cover: move the cursor onto a pawn and the mod reports how much cover whatever they are behind provides (described above).
• Alt+H reads a pawn's health: injuries, blood loss, whether they are down. Works on colonists, enemies, and animals, prioritizing whoever is under the cursor. Use it to tell whether a raider you have been shooting is actually taking damage.
• Alt+B reads the selected pawn's combat log: recent shots, hits, and misses involving them, grouped by battle.
• The scanner finds hostiles on the map so you can locate the threat before it reaches you.

Tips

• Ranged pawns do not automatically move into range or line of sight. If a pawn is not shooting, check that they can actually see the target from where they are standing.
• Guns can be used as melee weapons when the enemy is adjacent. The pawn will automatically switch to a melee attack at point-blank range.
• Melee pawns absorb fire and protect ranged colonists behind them. Placing melee fighters in front of shooters at a chokepoint concentrates fire while keeping your shooters out of reach.
• Letting enemies come to you through a narrow entrance is generally more effective than charging into an open field. Spread out pawns give enemies multiple targets to choose from; concentrated fire on a single enemy brings it down faster.
• Kiting (moving a colonist away while the enemy follows, buying time for other pawns to shoot) can turn a dangerous fight. A fast pawn can lead melee enemies around a corner while others fire. Movement speed decides who can kite whom: check a pawn's moving capacity with Alt+H, or open its info card with Alt+I for the full move-speed stat.
• The difficulty setting affects how raids scale. Starting on a lower difficulty while learning combat is reasonable.

For the mechanics, the wiki is thorough:

• Combat for the overall system.
• Cover for positioning.
• Weapons for what each gun and blade does.
• Shooting and Melee skills determine how well a given pawn fights.

Related pages

• Checking on pawns for selecting pawns and reading their health, mood, and skills.
• The context menu for the ] order menu used to move and attack.
• Gizmos for the G menu where weapon and ability targeting lives.
• The map for cursor movement, which is how every order is aimed.
• Learning RimWorld for tactics and the wider game.

Prisoners and wardens

Prisoners are people you have captured: raiders you knocked out, downed visitors, anyone you would rather hold than kill. You keep them to recruit into the colony, to ransom or release, or for other purposes. This page covers how to take a prisoner, where to put one, and how to manage them.

If you are new to the game's prisoner rules, the wiki's Prisoner page is the full reference.

You need a prison first

Build a cell before the fight. A prison is a normal room with a bed set for prisoners. There is no special "prison" building.

Build it the same way you build any room: walls, a door, a roof, and a bed inside. See walls, doors, and rooms for the room basics and the Architect menu for placing the bed.

To mark a bed as a prison bed:

1. Move the cursor onto the bed.
2. Press G to open the bed's gizmos.
3. Find the bed ownership gizmo and open it with Enter.

The bed has a dropdown that lets you choose whether beds in this room are used by colonists, prisoners, or slaves. Set it to Prisoners to make it a prison bed. With the Ideology DLC active, the Slaves option also appears in the dropdown; without Ideology, the choice is a simpler colonists/prisoners toggle. Once a bed is set for prisoners, the room it sits in becomes a prison.

A prisoner will not share a cell with a non-prisoner, and the game refuses the setting if the bed has no roof above it. The wiki explains what makes a good cell on its Prison section.

Capturing a downed pawn

Capturing goes through the context menu.

1. Select a colonist who can do the carrying (comma/period to cycle colonists, or pick one another way).
2. Move the cursor onto the downed pawn you want to capture.
3. Press ].
4. Arrow to the Capture option and press Enter.

Your colonist picks the pawn up and hauls them to an open prison bed. If there is no free prison bed, the capture is refused and the game says so. Build a cell first.

The option itself tells you useful things as you arrow onto it: if the target can never be recruited, it is flagged "unrecruitable," and capturing a member of a non-hostile faction warns you it will damage relations with them. The wiki covers capturing in more detail.

Opening the prisoner tab

Once someone is in a cell, open their inspection tree: move the cursor onto them and press Enter, or select them and press Ctrl+Alt+Enter. In the inspection tree, start typing "Prisoner" (or "Slave" for an enslaved pawn) to jump to that node, then press Enter to open the prisoner tab.

The tab opens with the pawn's identity, their current interaction mode, and their medical care setting. Press Escape to close it.

Moving around the prisoner tab

The tab is split into sections. Move between sections with Left and Right arrows, and move within a section with Up and Down.

• Information: read-only stats. Arrow down to hear recruitment resistance, prison-break chance, market value, what releasing them would do to faction relations, and more. With Ideology active you also hear their will level.
• Medical care: a radio button for the care level, from no care up through the best available medicine. Arrow to the level you want and press Enter to select it. This controls how much medicine your doctors spend treating this prisoner.
• Interaction modes: the main choices, a separate set of radio buttons. Arrow to the one you want and press Enter to select it. Only one is active at a time.
• Non-exclusive modes: extra options that layer on top of the interaction mode, handled as checkboxes. Press Space to toggle the current one.

As you arrow through interaction modes, each one reads its name, whether it is currently selected, and a description pulled from the game in your language.

The interaction modes

These are the orders you give your wardens. The exact list adjusts to your situation and DLCs, but the common ones are:

• Reduce resistance: wardens talk the prisoner down until their resistance reaches zero, with no recruitment attempt.
• Recruit: wardens chip away at resistance and, once it is low enough, try to recruit the prisoner into the colony.
• Release: let them go. The Information section tells you ahead of time whether releasing improves relations with their faction.
• Reduce will and Enslave (Ideology): break a prisoner's will and turn them into a slave.
• Execute: have a warden kill the prisoner. The option description warns you if no warden on the map is both assigned to wardening and able to do violence, which is the usual reason an execution order sits there doing nothing.
• Convert (Ideology): wardens work to convert the prisoner to one of your ideoligions. If you run more than one ideoligion, choosing Convert opens a short list to pick which one; arrow to it and press Enter, or press Escape to back out. The tab warns you if no warden follows that ideoligion, since then nobody can do the converting. See factions and ideology for more on ideoligions.

To learn more, see Recruitment and Resistance on the wiki.

Who does the work: the Warden

Nothing in the prisoner tab happens on its own. A colonist with the Warden work type does it: feeding prisoners, chatting to reduce resistance, recruiting, converting, enslaving, and executing. No warden, no progress.

Warden is a Social-skill job, so a colonist with high Social makes a far better recruiter. Enable it for at least one colonist in the Work tab, and raise its priority if you are trying to recruit someone quickly. Some jobs, like executions, also require a warden who is willing to do violence.

See the Warden section of the Work page on the wiki.

DLC notes

The prisoner tab adjusts to whatever DLCs you have:

• Ideology: adds will, the Reduce will and Enslave modes, and the Convert mode with its ideoligion picker. Slaves get their own version of the tab (suppression, terror, rebellion chance, and slave-specific modes).
• Biotech: bloodfeeder-related options appear when relevant, including a hemogen-farm mode.
• Anomaly: studiable captives show study interval and knowledge-gain information in the Information section.

If a mode exists for your prisoner, it will be in the list when you arrow through.

Learn more

• Prisoner: the full reference for prisoner rules, prison layout, resistance math, and prison breaks.
• Recruitment and Resistance: the mechanics of turning a prisoner into a colonist.
• Walls, doors, and rooms: room-building basics.

History and messages

Press F9 to open the History screen. From there, Tab switches to the Messages tab, which holds the running archive of every letter and notification the game has sent you.

The History screen

History is a flat list of colony statistics and records. Arrow up and down to move through it. Type ahead to jump to an entry by name. Home and End jump to the ends of the list. For general list navigation, see navigating menus.

The letters screen: L key

For the live list of current letters and alerts, press L on the map. This opens the notification menu directly without going through History first.

The L key collects all current messages, letters, and alerts and presents them as a list:

• Up/Down move between items in the list.
• Home/End jump to the first or last item.
• Type ahead to search: start typing to jump to a matching item.
• Enter opens the full detail view for the current item. In detail view, arrow up and down through the content line by line. After the last line you reach the buttons at the bottom. Not every letter has buttons.
• Left/Right move between buttons when you are in the buttons section of the detail view. Press Enter on a button to activate it.
• Escape goes back from detail view to the list, or closes the notification menu from the list.
• ] (right bracket) deletes the currently selected item. Only letters can be deleted; alerts cannot be removed this way.

Deleted letters still live in the F9 History archive, so deleting one here only clears it from the current notification list.

The Messages archive: F9 then Tab

The Messages tab in the History screen (F9, then Tab) is a persistent archive. It includes letters and messages you have already dismissed.

When the Messages tab is open:

• Up/Down navigate the list; Enter opens the detail view for the selected item.
• Alt+L toggles whether letters appear in the list. Letters are shown by default.
• Alt+M toggles whether messages appear in the list. Messages are hidden by default.
• Alt+J jumps to the location associated with the current item, if it has one, and closes the History window.
• Alt+P pins or unpins the current item.
• In detail view, arrow up and down through the content, then through the buttons. Left/Right move between buttons; Enter activates the focused button.

What gets deleted and what stays

Pressing ] on a letter in the notification menu (L key) removes it from the current notification stack. Alerts cannot be removed this way. The History archive (F9) keeps a record of past events regardless of dismissal; items there are not affected by deletion in the notification menu.

Learn more

For what specific event letters mean and how to respond to them, the Events page on the RimWorld wiki covers individual events in depth.

Factions and ideology

The Factions screen shows every group in the world: who likes you, who wants you dead, and everything in between. The Ideology screen covers belief systems, both your colony's and other factions'. Neither screen has a hotkey in the base game, so the mod gives them one.

Press F12 to open the Extra Menus picker. This small menu lists Factions (always available) and Ideology (only if you have the Ideology DLC). Choose one to open it. If only Factions is available, F12 opens it directly with no picker.

Factions

The Factions screen is a tree view. Each item in the tree is a faction. Expand a faction with Right to reveal its details, then arrow through them: relationship, goodwill, who their leader is, and the rest of what the game tracks.

If you are new to tree views, see navigating menus for how expanding and collapsing work, including the simplified navigation mode.

Ideology

(Ideology DLC) The Ideology screen is a two-tab tree view.

The first tab is a flat list of every ideology in the game. Arrow through it to select one. This includes your colony's ideology and the ones other factions follow.

Press Tab to move to the second tab, which holds a large tree view of the selected ideology: its memes, precepts, rituals, and so on. Expand items and arrow through them the same way as any other tree view.

Ideology mechanics run deep (memes, precepts, roles, rituals). See the Ideology page on the RimWorld wiki to learn more.

Building and Production

The Architect menu

The Architect menu is where you issue every build, mine, chop, haul, and zone order on the map. RimWorld calls each orderable action a "designator." Walls, doors, stockpile zones, "chop this tree," and "expand the home area" are all designators, and they all live here.

Opening the Architect menu

Press Tab to open the Architect menu.

It is a tree view organized by category: Structure, Zone, Production, Temperature, and so on. Right arrow expands a category, Left arrow collapses it, and Up and Down move between items.

You almost never need to crawl the whole tree. Type-ahead works here, so start typing what you want and the menu jumps to it. Type "wall" for walls, "stock" for stockpile zones, "chop" for the chop-wood order, "expand" for expand-home-area. Find the designator you want, then press Enter to start placing it.

Designators are shape-based

Once you pick a designator, you place it using a shape. Most designators support more than one shape and start on a sensible default. For something physical like a wall or door, you choose the material first (see "Choosing a material" below), and then you pick the shape. Press Tab to move to the shape menu, then Up and Down to change shape, or type the shape name (for example "empty" for an empty rectangle) and press Enter.

Three shapes cover most work:

• Filled rectangle. You set two corners and it fills the whole interior. Use this for zones, like a stockpile covering a 12-by-12 area.
• Empty rectangle. Same two corners, but only the perimeter is placed. Use this for walls, since you want the outline of a room, not a solid block.
• Manual. Place one object at a time. Use this for single items like a door.

Placing a shape

The placement flow is the same every time: pick a starting point, pick an ending point, confirm.

1. Move your cursor to where the shape should begin and press Space to set the first point.
2. Move the cursor to the opposite corner. Use the arrow keys for one tile at a time, or jump modes (below) for precise distances.
3. Press Space again to set the second point.
4. Press Enter to confirm and place. The mod announces what was created, for example "12 by 12 stockpile zone created."

For a manual designator like a door, the flow is shorter: position the cursor, Space to place, Enter to confirm.

Shift+Space removes the last point you placed, or removes a blueprint when the cursor is over one.

Jump modes for precise distances

Two jump modes are available during building:

Preset distance (the default) moves the cursor by a fixed number of tiles per Ctrl+arrow press.

• Shift+Left and Shift+Right decrease or increase the preset distance by 1.
• Shift+Ctrl+Left and Shift+Ctrl+Right decrease or increase it by 10.

So to lay out a 12-tile wall: set the preset distance to 12 with Shift+Right (pressing it until the mod announces 12), press Space to set the first point, then Ctrl+Right to jump 12 tiles east, Space again, and Enter to place.

The jump distance counts the starting tile, so a distance of 13 moves the cursor 14 tiles including the start. To enclose a 12-by-12 interior, set the jump distance to 13: the walls form a 14-by-14 exterior, and the two wall tiles on each side leave 12 by 12 of open floor inside.

Adjacent to wall jumps the cursor to the next wall-adjacent tile in that direction, which is handy when you want to pick up exactly where an existing structure ends.

Shift+Up and Shift+Down cycle through all available jump modes. These keys change the mode; they do not move the cursor.

For jump modes in other contexts (navigating the map outside of building), see the map.

Building more than one shape at once

• Press = (equals) to add another shape to the current order. Already-placed shapes stay put, and you start positioning a new one. Repeat as needed, then Enter to confirm them all.
• Press - (minus) to remove the last shape you placed. If a rock or other obstacle blocks part of your placement, minus removes a shape, but you then press = (equals) to add one back. With zero shapes there is nothing left to confirm.

Select all

Some designators, like Chop Wood or Mine, can apply to many targets at once. Press Ctrl+A to select all: the first press grabs everything in the current enclosure, a second press extends to the whole map. Ctrl+Shift+A steps back out one level if you went too far. Press Enter to confirm.

Inside a room, Ctrl+A selects its interior, which is useful when you want to zone or order everything inside a building without painting tiles one by one.

Choosing a material

When you build something physical like a wall or door, the game presents a material list. You choose the material first, then the shape. Type to filter the list or arrow through it, then Enter to choose. Stone blocks and wood are good choices for walls and doors. Avoid steel for walls and doors: it is wasteful, and steel is better saved for machines and other components.

If the list says None available, you have no stored stock of that material. Selecting it is still valid: place the blueprint, and pawns will deliver the material once they gather or haul it. This lets you stage large projects: lay out the whole structure now, and construction proceeds as materials arrive. You can also pick a material you have on hand to start immediately.

Related pages

• Gizmos: the contextual commands on something you have already built.
• The context menu: bulk actions on a designation type, like canceling every chop order at once.
• Walls, doors, and rooms: how buildings become enclosed spaces.
• Zones and stockpiles: laying out and configuring storage.

Walls, doors, and rooms

In RimWorld you do not pick a "bedroom" or a "kitchen" from a menu. You build walls and doors yourself, and the game figures out what the room is from what you put inside it. Drop a bed in a walled space and it becomes a bedroom. Put a stove in another and it becomes a kitchen. (A butcher table also belongs to food prep, but avoid putting stoves and butcher tables in the same room: the mess from butchering hurts the cleanliness that cooking depends on. Keep them separate.)

All of this is placed from the Architect menu.

Building an enclosure

To make a room, build a connected enclosure of walls with at least one door. The game continuously checks enclosed spaces and labels them based on their contents.

The placement flow for walls:

1. Open the Architect menu with Tab and type "wall" to jump to the wall designator. Press Enter to select it.
2. Choose your material from the list that appears. Material is chosen first, before you draw the shape.
3. If the list says None available for a material, you can still select it. Pawns will deliver the material when they have it. Choose a material you already have if you want construction to start immediately.
4. The shape selector defaults to empty rectangle, which is what you want for a room outline. Press Tab to change shape if needed.
5. Move your cursor to one corner of the intended room and press Space.
6. Move to the opposite corner. Use Ctrl+arrow to jump by the preset distance (set the distance with Shift+Left / Shift+Right) for precise placement.
7. Press Space to set the second corner, then Enter to confirm.

The mod announces the result, for example "14 by 14 wall blueprint placed."

Shift+Space removes the last placed point. If you have already confirmed a blueprint and your cursor is on it, Shift+Space removes that blueprint.

Do not choose steel or a single material by default if you have stone blocks available. Stone walls are stronger and do not burn; they are worth the extra cost for permanent structures. The choice depends on what materials are at hand.

Filled vs. empty rectangles

The shape matters:

• Empty rectangle places only the perimeter. Use this for walls.
• Filled rectangle places the entire interior. Use this for zones and floors, not for walls (a filled rectangle of walls would solid-block the interior).

Press Tab while a designator is active to cycle through available shapes.

Doors

A door replaces one wall cell. Build your walls first, then add doors where pawns need to pass. To place a door:

1. In the Architect menu, type "door" and press Enter.
2. Choose a material first, the same as with walls. Stone blocks or wood work well; avoid steel here too.
3. The shape defaults to Manual (one tile at a time), which is correct for a door. In manual mode, Space places one door per press, and placing over an existing wall replaces it.
4. Move the cursor to the wall cell where the door goes, press Space, then Enter.

There is a faster way. Move the cursor onto an existing wall, press G for its gizmos, and turn that wall straight into a door. This skips the Architect menu entirely.

Colonists can open and close doors automatically as they pass. You need at least one door in any enclosed space, or colonists cannot enter or exit.

Building over existing walls

You can run a build order straight over walls that are already placed. The game skips cells that already have the structure you asked for. If you specify a different material than what is already there, the game treats it as a replacement order and rebuilds in the new material.

Roofs

Once you enclose a space with walls, the game roofs it automatically. A wall supports roof for up to 6 tiles out from itself. The practical limit for an unsupported room is roughly 12 tiles on the short side. A 14-by-14 outer footprint gives a 12-by-12 interior, which is close to the maximum for a single open room.

Only the short side is limited. A 12-by-50 hall roofs without issue, because no interior point is more than 6 tiles from a wall. For larger open spaces, add interior columns or short walls to give the roof additional support.

Electricity and conduits

A generator powers machines near it. Power-consuming buildings do not need to be placed directly on a conduit: the game auto-connects any building to the nearest power transmitter within 6 tiles. To carry power further, run conduits from your generator outward. In practice, lay conduits as an unbroken run of adjacent tiles leading away from the generator, so the grid reaches wherever you need it.

Hidden conduits (in the Architect menu under Power) are built underground so they do not show as objects on the map. They cost 2 steel each, compared to 1 steel for a regular conduit. For permanent installations inside buildings, hidden conduits are the cleaner choice. For water crossings, waterproof conduits are available at a higher material cost.

Selecting a room's interior

Press Ctrl+A while your cursor is inside a room to select the entire interior. This is useful for placing a zone or issuing an order across the whole inside of a building without painting each tile.

Learn more

Room mechanics go deeper: roof support math, room roles, beauty, wealth, temperature, and cleanliness. See the Walls and Room articles on the RimWorld wiki for the full picture.

Zones and stockpiles

A stockpile zone is a patch of ground you mark for storage. Colonists haul loose items into it. A stockpile is just a designated area, not a building, so you can place one anywhere, including inside a temperature-controlled room (a freezer, for instance, is a stockpile in a cooled room).

Creating a stockpile

Open the Architect menu with Tab and type "stock" to jump to the stockpile zone. Press Enter to start placing it.

A stockpile uses the filled rectangle shape, since you want the whole area covered. Set the first corner with Space, move to the opposite corner, Space again, then Enter to create it. The mod announces the size, for example "12 by 12 stockpile zone created." To make a non-rectangular stockpile, press = to add another rectangle to the same zone before confirming.

Inspecting and configuring a stockpile

To see a stockpile's settings, move your cursor onto it and press Enter. This opens the stockpile's inspect view, the same inspect screen used for any selected object. Inside the inspect view you will find "Storage settings" as one of the options. Press Enter on it to open the storage settings.

Storage settings contain three main controls.

Priority

Stockpiles have a priority level. When an item could go into more than one stockpile, colonists fill the higher-priority one first. This steers items toward the storage you intend for them.

Be careful with food and freezers. It is tempting to set a freezer higher than a general dump so food always ends up cold, but once the freezer fills, the overflow spills into the warm pile and spoils. Size your freezer for the food you keep rather than relying on priority to protect it.

Allowed items

A list of every item type, grouped by category, with each item toggled allowed or forbidden. It is a tree view, so Right arrow expands a category, arrow through its contents, and toggle individual items. There are shortcuts to clear everything (allow nothing) or allow everything, which you can use as a starting point before fine-tuning. A common setup: clear all, then allow only the one category you want this stockpile dedicated to.

Durability and quality filters

A durability (hit points) filter lets the stockpile refuse items below a percentage of their max condition. Quality filters work similarly when they appear.

Checking what is stored

Storage settings control what a stockpile is allowed to hold, not what is in it. To see what your colony actually has in storage, press I to open the inventory screen, which lists every stored item across the whole colony regardless of which stockpile holds it. To find where a particular thing is sitting, use the scanner.

Learn more

See Stockpiles on the RimWorld wiki for strategy on how to organize stockpiles effectively.

Allowed areas

An allowed area is a part of the map you can tie a pawn or animal to, restricting where they will go. An allowed area is one kind of zone (the game groups areas, stockpiles, and growing zones together as zones), which is why you manage it from the Zone category of the Architect menu. You assign areas to pawns and pets from the Animals menu (F4). To learn more, see Allowed areas on the RimWorld wiki.

The classic use: keep a pet out of the freezer while letting it roam everywhere else.

Creating and expanding an area

Open the Architect menu with Tab, then navigate to the Zone category. There you will find "Expand allowed area." Press Enter and choose which area you want to expand. From there, paint tiles onto the area the same way you place any designator: Space to set points, Enter to confirm. See the Architect menu for the full placement flow.

If you have not made any areas yet, you will need to create one first (see Managing areas below).

Managing areas

In the Zone menu, navigate to Manage areas. This is a flat menu of your areas. Press ] (right bracket) to open the actions for one:

• New: create a new area and type a name for it.
• Rename: give an area a new name.
• Expand: add tiles to an area.
• Shrink: remove tiles from an area.
• Invert: flip the selection so every tile that was not in the area now is, and vice versa.
• Copy: duplicate an area.
• Delete: remove an area entirely.

The ] menu announces each option as you arrow through it, the same as any context menu.

The invert-then-shrink pattern

To restrict a pet to the whole colony except one room, building the area tile by tile across the entire base would take a long time. The faster approach works backwards:

1. Make a new area (Manage areas, ], New, type a name).
2. Invert it. An empty area becomes the entire map in one step.
3. Shrink it, painting over the room you want to exclude.
4. Open the Animals menu with F4 and assign the area to the animal.

The invert step is easy to forget on first use. If the concept is not clicking, see Allowed areas on the RimWorld wiki for a fuller explanation.

Bills and workbenches

A bill is a standing order to produce a specific item at a workbench: cook meals, butcher corpses, tailor a parka, smith plate armor. Bills differ from designators, which are one-off map orders. A designator says "build a wall here." A bill says "keep making this until I say otherwise."

Every crafting workbench uses bills: the stove, butcher table, tailoring bench, smithy, fabrication bench, and so on.

Adding a bill

1. Move your cursor onto a workbench and press Enter to open its inspect screen.
2. Navigate to Bills.
3. Choose Add bill.
4. A flat menu lists every product that bench can make. For a stove, that includes simple meals, fine meals, lavish meals, vegetarian and carnivore variants, and batch versions.
5. Press Enter on the item you want. It joins the bench's bill list.

For how flat menus work in general (arrow keys, type-ahead, Home/End), see navigating menus.

Bill order matters

Bills run top to bottom, most important first. A pawn does the first bill that still has work to do. You can reorder bills in the bill list.

Editing a bill

Press Enter on a bill to open its options. The fields are presented in the order below. Most adjust with Left / Right; many also accept Enter to type a value directly.

Recipe info

A read-only summary of the recipe: name, description, work amount, and skill requirements.

Suspend / Resume

Press Enter to toggle the bill between active and suspended. A suspended bill is skipped by all workers until you resume it.

If the bill is currently auto-paused (it reached its target and paused itself), an Unpause item appears just below this. Press Enter on it to resume manually.

Repeat mode

Controls how long the bill keeps running:

• Do X times: make the product a set number of times, then stop. When this mode is active, a Repeat count field appears below where you set the number.
• Do until you have X: keep production topped up to a target count. This opens a block of additional fields (see Target count through Pause when satisfied below).
• Do forever: never stop. Useful for chores with no real target, like butchering corpses.

Target count

Applies in "do until you have X" mode. This is the X. Adjust with Left / Right, or press Enter to type a number.

Currently have

A read-only readout showing how many you currently have versus the target, for example "currently have 0 of 51."

Within this block you may also see:

• Include equipped: count weapons or apparel that are currently equipped by pawns (appears for weapon and apparel bills).
• Include tainted: count tainted apparel (appears for applicable apparel bills).
• Include source: choose whether to count from all storage or a specific stockpile.
• Hit points filter: only count items above a percentage of their max condition.
• Quality range: restrict which quality levels count toward the target.
• Limit to allowed stuff: only count items made from your allowed materials.

Pause when satisfied

A toggle. When the target count is reached, the bill pauses rather than sitting idle. It resumes once the count drops to the Unpause at threshold, which appears just below when this toggle is on. This prevents pawns from repeatedly starting and stopping at the boundary.

Destination

This is the store-mode field. It controls where the finished product goes after it is made. Press Enter to choose:

• Drop on floor: the item lands at the bench. No hauling trip needed if your bench is near storage.
• Take to best stockpile: a pawn hauls the item to the appropriate stockpile.
• Your defined storage groups and stockpiles may also appear here as options.

This field is labeled based on the current store mode, not "product destination."

Worker

Choose which pawn or pawn type is allowed to work this bill. Options include any worker, any slave, any mech, any non-mech, any human, or a specific pawn by name. This is the field literally labeled "Worker" in the game.

Skill min / max

Two separate items that set a skill level range. Only pawns whose skill level falls within the range may work the bill. These appear when no specific pawn is set (the Worker field is on "any" rather than a named pawn) and the recipe has a relevant skill.

This is a distinct filter from Worker. Worker controls who by type; skill range controls who by level.

Ingredient search radius

How far pawns will travel to gather ingredients for this bill. Reduce it to prevent pawns from hiking across the map for a single ingredient. "Unlimited" is the maximum.

Ingredient filter

Choose which ingredients the bill may use. The standard example is excluding human meat from a cooking bill, so colonists do not accidentally prepare long pig.

Rename

Give the bill a custom name so it is easier to identify in the list.

Learn more

Bills are simple individually but combine in complex ways. For strategy on setting up reliable production chains and managing target counts, see the Bills article on the RimWorld wiki.

Moving, reinstalling, and deconstructing

Most furniture and buildings can be picked up and moved. Anything you no longer want can be torn down. Both actions are gizmos: contextual commands you reach by pressing G on the selected object. Deconstruct also lives in the Architect menu (under the Orders category) as a paint-over-an-area order, but the G gizmo on the object itself is usually faster for both reinstalling and deconstructing.

• Reinstall picks the object up and puts it into placement mode so you can set it down somewhere else. Use it when reorganizing, for example moving beds into a freshly built bedroom.
• Deconstruct removes the object entirely, usually returning some of the materials. Use it when scrapping something permanently, for example clearing out a low-quality bed to build a better one.

How to do it

1. Move your cursor onto the object.
2. Press G to open its gizmos.
3. Choose Reinstall or Deconstruct and press Enter.

For deconstruct, that is all. The object is marked for removal and a pawn will tear it down.

For reinstall, the object enters placement mode. Move the cursor to the new location and confirm, just like placing a manual designator. The jump modes available in building mode (preset distance, adjacent to wall) work here the same way. See the Architect menu for the full placement flow.

Gizmo shortcuts

Gizmos can carry their own keyboard shortcuts, so you can trigger Reinstall or Deconstruct without opening the menu. For how those shortcuts work, including what happens when two gizmos share one, see gizmos.

Forbidding and the home area

Two housekeeping systems control what colonists are allowed to touch and which part of the map they treat as home.

Forbidding

A forbidden item is one colonists will leave strictly alone. They will not haul it, eat it, equip it, or use it for building until you un-forbid it.

Everything that lands with you at the start of a game is forbidden by default. Colonists will wander around looking idle while standing next to a pile of their own supplies, because that pile is off-limits from their point of view.

Press Alt+F on the map to un-forbid everything at once. The mod announces a count, for example "57 items un-forbidden," and colonists can get to work.

To forbid or un-forbid a single item, move the cursor onto it and either press G for its gizmos and toggle the Forbid command, or just press F to toggle it directly. This is useful when you want colonists to ignore one specific thing without changing everything else.

Play Settings

Play Settings is a small set of toggles that change how the colony runs automatically. Open the pause menu with Escape and choose Play Settings to reach them. Two are worth knowing:

• Auto-rebuild. When on, colonists automatically queue a rebuild for any structure that gets destroyed, so a raider that knocks down a wall does not leave a permanent hole.
• Auto-expand home area. On by default. The next section explains the tradeoff.

The home area

The home area is the part of the map colonists treat as theirs. Inside it, they repair damage, fight fires, and clean up filth. Outside it, they do none of those things.

By default the game expands the home area as you build, which is usually helpful. The problem appears when you build something far from the main base. That distant structure becomes part of the home area, and colonists will trek all the way across the map to sweep its floor instead of doing useful work nearby.

Many players turn auto-expand home area off in Play Settings and add to it manually only where they want coverage.

To extend the home area yourself: open the Architect menu with Tab, go to the Zone section, and choose "Expand home area" (type "expand" to jump straight to it). Mark the area the same way you place a stockpile zone: set two corners with Space, then Enter. Press = to add a second rectangle if one shape is not enough.

When your cursor is inside a finished building, Ctrl+A selects that room's interior, which is a quick way to mark the inside as home area without painting each tile. It selects the interior floor, not the walls, so add the walls separately with their own lines or a larger selection if you want them covered too.

Related pages

• The Architect menu for placing zones and using the shape tools.
• Gizmos for the per-item Forbid toggle.
• Zones and stockpiles for managing storage areas.

The World and Travel

The world map

The world map shows the planet your colony sits on. Press F8 to open it; press F8 again to return to your colony.

Moving around

Arrow keys move between tiles. The camera follows. When you enter a new biome, the mod announces the biome name and reads a short description.

Reading tile information

As you arrow around, the mod announces a summary for each tile, including terrain and biome. The number keys let you dig into specific details on demand:

• 1 = growing conditions: growing period, rainfall, forageability, whether animals can graze, stone types
• 2 = movement and travel cost: movement difficulty, terrain, hilliness, elevation, roads, rivers, coastal status (and route info if you're mid-route-plan)
• 3 = disease frequency per year
• 4 = time zone and global coordinates
• 5 = regions and landmarks

Press a number key when you want that detail; you do not need to press them after every move.

Entering a settlement or inspecting a caravan

Press Enter on a tile to open a selection menu for whatever is there. If the tile holds your own settlement, Enter lets you enter it. If a caravan is on the tile, Enter inspects it. Enter does not settle an empty tile; settling is done through a gizmo.

Searching the map

Press Z to search the world by name. Type a query and press Enter; the game finds matching tiles or sites.

The scanner also works on the world map, with world-specific categories including biomes, roads, and settlements. Switching the scanner to the settlements category is the practical way to find nearby factions and check whether they are neutral or hostile.

Faction proximity

When settling a new colony, place it at least 5 tiles from any other faction's settlement to avoid the crowding goodwill penalty. Beyond that distance the penalty does not apply, and being farther away does not improve relations further.

The route planner

Press R to open the route planner. Place waypoints with Space; the mod announces each one with the path and an estimated travel time. Press Shift+Space to remove the waypoint at the cursor. Press E to hear the estimated time of arrival, and Escape to exit.

The same route planner is used inside the form-caravan flow, so a route you plan here works the same way when you send a caravan. See caravans for that flow.

The context menu on the world map

] opens orders for the selected caravan at the current tile: travel here, trade with, attack, and so on. [ fires the top order immediately. See the context menu for the full model.

Related pages

• The scanner for finding tiles and sites quickly
• Caravans for forming a caravan and sending colonists out
• The context menu for tile orders

Caravans

Caravans are groups of your colonists (and any pack animals and goods they carry) traveling across the world map. Forming a caravan is one way to leave your colony: you also have transport pods and other options. Caravans let you explore, trade with other settlements, raid, and found new colonies.

Forming a caravan

There are two ways to begin. From the world map, navigate to your settlement's tile, press ] to open its orders, and choose to form a caravan. You can also use the caravan hitching spot from the Architect menu and form a caravan from there. Either way you land in the route-planning step.

Move with the arrow keys if you like, but most people switch to the scanner, jump to the destination, and press Space to set a waypoint there. Waypoint 1 is placed automatically at your settlement.

• Press Space to add a waypoint. The mod announces each one with the path and an estimated travel time, for example "waypoint 2 added, estimated travel time 0.2 days at average caravan speed."
• Press Shift+Space to remove the waypoint at the cursor.
• Press E to hear the estimated time of arrival.
• Press Enter to confirm the route and open the formation screen.
• Press Escape to cancel.

If you are not using auto-provision, set the single destination waypoint and press Enter. If you are using auto-provision, after the destination waypoint, return to your settlement and press Space to add another waypoint there. This does not make the caravan travel home; it tells the auto-provision system how long the round trip is so it can pack the right amount of supplies.

The formation screen

The formation screen is where you choose who and what travels. Left and Right move between the tabs (pawns, items, supplies). Press Tab to reach the summary and info view, and Tab again to return.

Choosing pawns and goods

On the pawns tab, Space or Enter selects a colonist or animal to bring. Animals with identical name, age, gender, and medical status are grouped into one entry; press Enter on a group to pick how many to take. Other animals each get their own slot.

On the items and supplies tabs, Space or Enter on an entry opens a quantity chooser. In the chooser, Up and Down change the amount by one, Home sets the minimum and End the maximum, or type a number directly; Enter confirms. Back on the list, Shift+Enter takes as many as you can carry within the remaining capacity. Pack animals such as alpacas and buffalo raise that capacity.

Load real food, medicine, and meals on the supplies tab. Colonists can forage in forests and shrublands, but rarely enough to feed the whole group, so pack food rather than relying on it.

The summary view

Press Tab to reach the summary view. It shows the numbers that decide whether the trip succeeds: total mass, carry capacity, speed, food on hand, foraging rate, visibility, and more. Press Alt+I on most values to open the info card for a breakdown.

Auto-provision

Press Alt+A to toggle auto-provision. When it is on, the game fills the Supplies tab based on the planned route and travel time; the tab is locked while auto-provision is active. Press Alt+A again to unlock and adjust supplies yourself.

Sending the caravan

Press Alt+S to send. A food-warning dialog may appear; confirm if the food you packed is sufficient for the trip. Your pawns then gather their gear and walk off the map.

Caravans on the world map

Selecting and inspecting

• Comma / Period: cycle between your caravans.
• Enter: on the tile where a caravan sits, inspects that caravan. From there you can inspect inventory, swap gear between pawns, or enter one of your own settlements on that tile.
• Delete on an item or pawn in the inspect view removes it. Removed items are destroyed. Removing a pawn from the colony is permanent, but it is not deletion: that pawn is not destroyed and may appear later in events, including raids.

Following a traveling caravan

A caravan in transit has its path drawn on the world map, and the mod describes it for the selected caravan. On the caravan's own tile, you hear the direction it is heading. Move the cursor that way and the mod keeps describing the path ahead toward the destination, so you can trace the whole route step by step.

Ordering a caravan

Select a caravan first with Comma or Period. Then press ] on a destination tile to open the orders that caravan can carry out there: Travel to, Trade with, Attack, Settle, and so on. [ fires the top option immediately. This is the same idea as ] on your home map: the selected caravan is the actor, and the cursor tile is the target. See the context menu for the full model.

The caravan's own orders come from its gizmos. Press G on a selected caravan for Settle, Split, Rest, Merge, and others.

• Settle: founds a new colony or camp on the current tile.
• Split: opens a formation-style dialog to divide people and items into a second caravan.
• Rest: pauses travel to let the caravan recover. Caravans rest automatically at night, so this is mainly for emergency stops mid-day.

Merging two caravans

1. Move both caravans to the same tile.
2. Select both: press Ctrl+Space on the first, press Period to move to the second, then press Ctrl+Space again.
3. Press G and choose Merge.

Camping

When a caravan enters a tile without an existing map, you can stop and settle temporarily. The tile becomes a small colony map where your pawns can hunt, mine, and gather before moving on. This is mainly a way to acquire resources from a tile and carry them back, so it works best with a caravan that has high carrying capacity. It is also there for rest or shelter when a trip runs long.

Getting home

Navigate to your colony's tile and press Enter to re-enter it, or press F8 to leave the world map and return where you were.

Moving between open maps

When you have more than one map open (your colony plus a camp or a second settlement), Shift+Comma and Shift+Period move between them. One exception: from a pocket map, such as one opened by a quest or event, you do not leave with Shift+Comma. The entry portal that brought you in has a gizmo to view the outer map instead. Press G on it.

Related pages

• World map for world navigation and tile reading
• The context menu for tile orders: Travel, Trade, Attack, Settle
• The info card for caravan stat breakdowns with Alt+I
• Transport pods for faster travel than walking
• Trading for what happens when you reach a settlement

Transport pods, shuttles, and gravships

Transport pods launch colonists and cargo across the planet much faster than a caravan can walk. You build pods, load them, and fire them at a destination tile.

Transport pods

To launch a group of pods, select a loaded transport pod and press G for its gizmos. RimWorld Access adds a gizmo called "Group all available pods" that selects every pod the current one can group with and opens the loading dialog, so you do not need to gather them one at a time.

Loading

Pod loading uses the same interface as caravan formation: the pawns, items, and supplies tabs, navigated the same way. Left and Right switch between tabs, Tab reaches the summary view, and Space or Enter selects a pawn or opens the quantity chooser for an item. Shift+Enter takes as many as you can carry. See caravans for the full rundown.

When packed, press Alt+S to launch.

Choosing where to land

After pressing Alt+S you pick a destination tile on the world map. What happens next depends on the tile:

• A tile your pawns already occupy: you can specify the exact landing position (for example, coordinates 50,50) to control precisely where the pods come down.
• A settlement: press Enter to choose whether you are arriving to trade or to attack, and where to land (center or edge).

What pods become on arrival

• Landing on a tile that holds one of your caravans merges the pod contents into that caravan.
• Otherwise, if at least one pawn is aboard, a new caravan forms where the pods land.

Shuttles

Shuttles work the same way: find the gizmo to start travel, load up, and send. The loading and destination flow follows the same pattern as pods.

Gravships

A gravship is a built structure that flies. You construct gravship panels around an engine, then launch using the engine or pilot-console gizmos, which run through the game's ritual system. If you have reached this point, the travel flow will be familiar from caravans and pods. See the RimWorld wiki's Gravship article for construction details.

Related pages

• Caravans for the loading interface and world-map navigation
• Gizmos for finding and firing the launch commands

Trading

Trading turns surplus goods into silver, and silver into things you need. In the trade window you browse goods, set quantities, check the running balance, and accept the deal.

For the game-mechanics side (which trader buys what, how prices and markup work, what is worth selling), see the RimWorld wiki's Trading article and Trade price improvement.

How trading starts

You never open the trade window directly. A colonist has to physically reach the other party first.

A trader visits your colony

Caravans from other factions sometimes wander onto your map. Select one of your colonists, then press ] on the lead trader to open the context menu and choose Trade. Your colonist walks over and the window opens when they arrive.

A higher Social skill on the colonist you send means better prices.

You visit a settlement

Send a caravan to a settlement. With the caravan selected on the world map, press ] on the settlement's tile. The orders there include traveling to the tile to visit and trade, and (for a hostile target) attacking. Choose the trade option, and the trade window opens when the caravan arrives.

Before making the trip, you can preview what a settlement is willing to buy. Navigate to the settlement on the world map, press G to open its gizmos, and choose Show Sellable Items. See Previewing what a settlement will buy below.

An orbital trade ship calls in

Build a comms console and an orbital trade beacon (both require the Microelectronics research), and trade ships passing overhead become reachable. When a ship is in range, send a colonist to the comms console: press ] on the console and pick the ship. Only items within range of a beacon can be sold this way; anything you buy drops in by pod onto the beacon's open tiles. See the wiki's Comms console article for details.

Inside the trade window

When the window opens, the mod announces who you are dealing with and the two keys you will reach for most, for example "Trading with Bob's Caravan (bulk goods trader). Alt+B for balance, Alt+A to accept." The game pauses while you trade.

The window is organized into tabs. Move between them with Left and Right:

• The trader's items (leftmost tab, named after the trader): what they have for sale.
• Trade Summary: a running list of everything queued so far, plus a balance line. This tab only appears once you have queued at least one item.
• Your items: what your colony or caravan can sell.

Each tab remembers your cursor position when you switch away and back.

Browsing the goods

Up and Down move through the list. Home jumps to the first item; End jumps to the last. Start typing to jump to an item by name (typeahead works here as elsewhere); Backspace edits the search and Escape clears it.

Each item is announced with its name, quantity available, and price. Items both sides carry show both prices at once so you can compare directions.

The mod does not yet tell you whether a given price is a good deal or a bad one. In the visual window, RimWorld colors favorable prices and unfavorable ones differently, and that signal is not announced today. To judge a price for now, open the price breakdown described below, or check the wiki for typical market values.

Reading prices and your silver

Silver is the currency for almost all trades. (Royal tribute collectors trade for honor instead; the mod says "favor" in place of silver in that case.)

To hear how much silver each side has, press Alt+B: "You have X silver. Trader has Y silver." Worth checking before a large buy, since a trader can only pay you with the silver they are carrying.

For the full reason behind a single item's price, put the cursor on the item and press Tab. That opens a navigable price breakdown showing the market value, trader markup, your colonist's Social bonus, and so on. Alt+P also opens the same breakdown. To open the full info card for an item, press Alt+I.

Buying and selling

Each item starts at a quantity of zero. Negative quantities mean you are selling; positive quantities mean you are buying. The announcements say "Buying 10" or "Selling 5" plainly.

Press Enter to drop into quantity mode for the current item. In quantity mode:

• Up and Down change the amount by one.
• Shift+Up / Shift+Down change it by ten.
• Ctrl+Up / Ctrl+Down change it by a hundred.
• Type a number directly to buy that many. To sell, press - first, then type the quantity. Backspace fixes a typo.
• Home sets the maximum sell amount; End sets the maximum buy amount.
• Enter or Escape exits quantity mode and returns to the list.

Without entering quantity mode, - decreases and + (or =) increases the current item's amount by one. The mod reads back the running total as you adjust, for example "Buying 10 Steel, value 43 silver."

To zero out an item, press Delete or Alt+R. To wipe every pending trade and start clean, press Shift+Alt+R.

Checking the running deal

Once you have queued at least one item, switch to the Trade Summary tab to see the whole deal: what you are buying, what you are selling, and a balance line at the bottom. The balance reads "Net balance: Spending 50 silver," "Net balance: Receiving 100 silver," or "Net balance: Balanced trade." If you remove the last queued item, this tab empties and the mod returns you to the previous tab.

Completing the trade

Press Alt+A to accept. The mod confirms with "Trade completed successfully," your colonist hands over the goods, and anything you bought is delivered. You can also close the window and return to the same trader later while they are still around.

If the trader does not have enough silver to cover what you are selling, the mod warns you and asks for confirmation before proceeding. A trader can only pay with the silver they are carrying. They pay what they can, and you do not receive goods to make up the difference, so check their silver with Alt+B before a large sale.

To leave without trading, press Escape. (If you are in quantity mode, the first Escape exits quantity mode; the second closes the window.) The mod announces "Trade cancelled."

Giving gifts

Press Alt+G to toggle gift mode. In gift mode you hand items over for goodwill rather than silver. The balance line shows the goodwill you will gain, for example "Goodwill +15." You cannot gift to a hostile faction or while trading for royal favor, and the mod will tell you if you try.

Previewing what a settlement will buy

Before sending a caravan on a long trip, you can check what a settlement wants. On the world map, navigate to the settlement, press G for its gizmos, and choose Show Sellable Items. This opens a read-only list:

• Left / Right: switch between category tabs.
• Up / Down: move through items; Home and End jump to the ends.
• Type to search by name; Backspace edits the search; Escape clears it, then closes the window.

The window also shows when the settlement last restocked (or that it has not been visited yet), so you can judge whether the trip is worth making.

Learn more

We handle the buttons; the wiki handles the strategy. For trader types, markup rates, what sells well, calling orbital traders, and the comms console, read the RimWorld wiki's Trading article. For price bonuses from Social skill, see Trade price improvement.

Related pages:

• Caravans: how you reach other settlements to trade with them
• The context menu: the ] key used to start a trade
• The info card: Alt+I for an item's full stats during a trade

Reference

Keyboard reference

Every key the mod uses, grouped by where you use it. The same key can do different things depending on the screen you're on, so this page is organized by context. One short note on context-sensitivity appears at the end.

Global

These work most of the time while a game is running.

Key	What it does
Tab	Open the Architect menu (build)
F1	Work tab
F2	Schedule tab
F3	Assign tab
F4	Animals tab, or Mechs, or a chooser if you have both
F5	Wildlife tab
F6	Research tab
F7	Quests tab
F8	Toggle the world map on or back off
F9	History tab
F12	Extra menus picker: Factions, plus Ideology if that DLC is active
Space	Pause and unpause
Shift+1	Normal game speed
Shift+2	Fast game speed
Shift+3	Superfast game speed
T	Announce the current time, date, weather, and season
Alt+T	Announce current game speed, whether the game is paused, and performance (ticks per second)
?	Open the Learning Helper (RimWorld's built-in tutorial tips)
Z	Search by name (on the map, feeds the scanner)
Escape	Cancel, close, or back out

On the map

These act on the tile under the cursor, or on the selected pawn.

Moving around

Key	What it does
Arrow keys	Move the cursor one tile; the camera follows
Ctrl+Arrow	Jump using the current jump mode
Shift+Up / Shift+Down	Cycle the jump mode forward or backward (the cursor does not move)
Shift+Left / Shift+Right	Adjust the preset jump distance by 1 (Preset Distance mode only)
Shift+Ctrl+Left / Shift+Ctrl+Right	Adjust the preset jump distance by 10
Ctrl+G	Open the coordinate jump dialog. Type X, then press comma or Space, then type Z. Blank field keeps the current coordinate. Prefix with + or - for a relative offset

Two jump modes are documented here: Preset Distance (the default) and Adjacent to Wall. Cycle between them with Shift+Up / Shift+Down.

Tile info (number keys)

The mod announces much of this automatically as you arrow around. These keys are on-demand spot checks for the detail you want.

Key	What it reads
1	Items and pawns at the cursor
2	Terrain (label, fertility, smoothness, beauty, cleanliness, path cost)
3	Harvestable things: plants (species, growth, harvestable or dying); with the right DLC and equipment, also fish and deep-scanner mineral targets
4	Light, brightness, and temperature
5	Room stats
6	Power
7	Areas this tile belongs to

On the world map the number keys mean different things. See World and caravans.

Selecting pawns

For the full walkthrough, see Selecting pawns.

Key	What it does
Comma / Period	Cycle to the previous or next colonist
Alt+1 ... Alt+0	Select colonist 1 through 10
Alt+Down	Page to colonists 11-20 (then Alt+1-0 to select within that page)
Alt+Left / Alt+Right	Move through pawns on the colonist bar
Ctrl+Alt+Left / Ctrl+Alt+Right	Reorder the selected pawn along the colonist bar
Alt+Space	Multi-select (mainly for combat; multi-select breaks many gizmos that expect a single pawn)
Ctrl+Shift+F1-F4	Save the current selection as a combat group
Ctrl+F1-F4	Recall a saved combat group
/	Focus the cursor pawn on the colonist or mech bar
Alt+C	Jump the camera to the selected pawn (or open a chooser if several are selected)

Pawns at a glance

These prioritize whatever is under the cursor, then fall back to the pawn selected with comma/period or Alt+number.

Key	What it reads
Alt+H	Health
Alt+M	Mood
Alt+N	Needs
Alt+G	Gear
Alt+K	Top 3 skills
Alt+P	Skills table for all colonists
Alt+B	Read the selected pawn's combat log (10 most recent battle entries)

Alt+H, Alt+M, Alt+N, and Alt+G work on your pawns, enemy pawns, and animals. Alt+P opens a sortable table covering every colonist.

For checking on pawns in depth, see Checking on pawns.

Acting on the map

Key	What it does
Alt+F	Un-forbid every item on the map at once
Alt+A	Assign an allowed area to the selected pawn (prioritizes the cursor)
Alt+I	Open the info card for whatever the cursor is on, or for the item referenced in a menu
G	Open the gizmo menu for the object under the cursor
]	Open the context menu for the tile under the cursor
[	Carry out the top context-menu option immediately
Shift+[	Queue the top option instead of replacing the current one

Drafting and giving orders

How you control pawns in a fight. The combat page covers these in depth.

Key	What it does
R	Draft or undraft the selected pawn

Targeting a weapon or ability

After starting an attack from the gizmo menu (G, choose the attack, then Enter):

Key	What it does
Arrow keys, then Enter	Move the cursor to the target, Enter to fire
Escape	Cancel targeting
R	Announce distance, whether the target is in range, and line of sight
T	Announce who is caught in an area-of-effect ability at the cursor

Targeting stays open if the target is invalid or out of range, and tells you why, so you can adjust and retry.

Opening detail screens

Key	What it does
Enter	Inspect the thing under the cursor
Ctrl+Alt+Enter	Open the inspect view for the selected pawn (the one chosen on the colonist bar)

The scanner

The scanner steps through categories, subcategories, item types, and individual instances, then lets you jump straight to a target.

Key	What it does
Ctrl+Page Up / Ctrl+Page Down	Move between categories
Shift+Page Up / Shift+Page Down	Move between subcategories
Page Up / Page Down	Move between item types (ordered by distance)
Alt+Page Up / Alt+Page Down	Move between individual instances within a group
Home	Jump the cursor to the nearest tile in the current target. Press again while standing on the target to jump to its center
End	Announce distance and direction to the scanner target
Alt+Home	Toggle scanner auto-jump mode (the scanner jumps the cursor automatically when you change categories)

Home also pairs with the search: run a Z search, press Enter to focus the scanner on the result, then Home to jump to it.

Building placement

Once you have picked a designator in the Architect menu, place it on the map with these.

Key	What it does
Space	Set a point (first corner, then second)
Shift+Space	Remove the last placed point or blueprint at the cursor
Enter	Confirm and place the designation
= (or +)	Add another shape, keeping the blueprints already placed
-	Remove the last placed segment
Ctrl+A	Select all: steps from the enclosing area, to the whole map, to nothing
Ctrl+Shift+A	Step back one level of select-all scope
Tab	Switch the designator's shape (filled rectangle, empty rectangle, manual)

The jump-mode keys from Moving around (Ctrl+Arrow to jump, Shift+Left/Right to adjust the distance) are how you extend a shape to an exact size before setting the second point.

Menus and tables

These apply across the mod's menus, tree views, and tables.

Key	What it does
Tab / Shift+Tab	Move between the panels of a screen
Up / Down	Move between items or rows
Left / Right	Move between columns or categories; in a tree, collapse or expand
Home / End	Jump to the first or last item
Type any text	Type-ahead: jump to the matching entry. Works in every menu and list
Enter / Space	Select, deselect, or toggle a checkbox
Alt+S	In a table: sort by the selected column. In a dialog or filter: save, confirm, or advance
Shift+8 (asterisk)	Expand all sibling nodes at the current tree level

The Enter versus Alt+S rule

In a screen where Enter selects and deselects items, Alt+S is what confirms the screen and moves forward. If Enter does nothing special on that screen, Enter finishes it. See Navigating menus for the full story.

In tables specifically

Tables typically show pawns as rows and attributes as columns. On top of the keys above:

Key	What it does
Alt+S	Sort by the selected column; press again to toggle descending, ascending, then clear
Shift+Up / Shift+Down	Paint the current cell's value onto the rows above or below
Shift+Home / Shift+End	Paint from the current row to the top or bottom
Ctrl+Shift+Home / Ctrl+Shift+End	Paint the column across every row
= / -	Adjust a numeric cell by one (Enter to type a number)
]	Open a context menu for that column, category, or cell

World and caravans

On the world map (F8), several keys take on travel-specific meanings.

Tile info (number keys, world map)

Key	What it reads
1	Growing conditions: growing period, rainfall, forageability, grazing, stone types
2	Movement and travel cost: difficulty, terrain, hilliness, elevation, roads, rivers
3	Disease frequency (and pollution or haze fields with the right DLC)
4	Time zone and global coordinates
5	Regions and landmarks

Biome is announced when you arrow onto a tile, not via a number key.

Travel and caravans

Key	What it does
C	Start choosing a caravan route (add one or more waypoints)
R	Open the route planner to preview paths and travel times
Space	Set a waypoint (or re-announce the current tile during site selection)
Enter	Inspect a caravan or enter your own settlement at the cursor. During site selection, confirm settling there
Comma / Period	Cycle between your caravans
Ctrl+Space	Add or remove a caravan from a multi-selection (then merge them with the caravan's G gizmo)
Alt+A	Toggle auto-provision (lets the game pick supplies)
Alt+S	Send the caravan
]	Act on the tile: travel to, trade with, attack, settle, and so on
G	Open the selected caravan's gizmos: settle, split, rest, merge
Delete	Remove a pawn or item from the caravan
F8	Toggle the world view off and return to the colony
Alt+Home	Jump to your colony
Alt+J	Toggle world-map scanner auto-jump mode
End	Announce distance and direction to the world scanner target
Alt+End	Jump to the nearest caravan

Enter does not settle a tile from the in-game world map. Settling is done via a gizmo on the caravan. See Caravans and The world map.

Trade window

When trading with a visiting trader, a settlement, or an orbital trader, the trade screen uses these. Negative quantities sell; positive quantities buy.

Key	What it does
Up / Down	Move through the goods, or adjust the quantity by 1 in quantity mode
Shift+Up / Shift+Down	Adjust the quantity by 10
Ctrl+Up / Ctrl+Down	Adjust the quantity by 100
Left / Right	Switch tabs
Enter	Enter or leave quantity mode for the current item
Home / End	Max sell or max buy in quantity mode, or jump to the first or last item
Type a number	Set a quantity (lead with - to sell); + and - nudge by one
Alt+A	Accept the trade
Alt+B	Announce the silver (or favor) on each side
Tab	Price breakdown for the current item
Alt+I	Info card for the current item
Alt+G	Toggle gift mode (give goods for goodwill)
Delete or Alt+R	Reset the current item; Shift+Alt+R resets everything
Escape	Close the trade

Context-dependent keys

A handful of keys do different jobs depending on where you are. This is normal behavior shared by most applications; the list below is for reference when a key does something unexpected.

• R: on the colony map, draft or undraft; on the world map, jump to a random tile (site selection) or open the route planner; during targeting, announce distance and range.
• Alt+F: on the colony map, un-forbid every item; during pawn creation, open the reroll filters.
• Alt+A: on the colony map, assign an allowed area; in caravan formation, toggle auto-provision; in the Quests tab, accept the quest; in a trade, accept the trade.
• Alt+M: on the colony map, read a pawn's mood; in the Work tab, toggle between manual and basic priority mode.
• Alt+B: on the colony map, read a pawn's combat log; in a trade, announce the silver/favor balance.
• Alt+G: on the colony map, read a pawn's gear; in a trade, toggle gift mode.
• Alt+P: on the colony map, open the skills table; in a trade, show the price breakdown.
• Alt+R: during pawn creation, reroll the current pawn; in a trade, reset the current item.
• Alt+S: in a table, sort by the selected column; in a dialog or filter, save or advance; in caravan formation, send the caravan.

Mac users: see Playing on Mac for how modifier keys map on macOS.

Settings

RimWorld Access has its own options panel, separate from RimWorld's standard mod settings. Reach it from the main menu under Options, then RimWorld Access. The panel is available both at the main menu and in-game, so changes take effect immediately.

Wrap navigation

Default: off.

When on, menus loop from the last item back to the first, and from the first back to the last. When off, navigation stops at the boundaries.

Announce position

Default: on.

When on, announcements include a position indicator such as "3 of 7." Turn this off if the count feels like noise.

Show pawn activity on map cursor movement

Default: on.

When on, arrowing over a non-colonist pawn (an animal, visitor, raider, or other non-colonist) announces what activity that pawn is performing. This information is inferred from the pawn's current state. If it feels like an unfair advantage, keep it off.

Show cover info for drafted and hostile pawns

Default: on.

When on, cover information is included in the cursor announcement for drafted pawns and hostile pawns. For example: "Bob, behind sandbag (good cover), melee attacking." Applies during combat.

Announce terrain on cursor movement

Default: on.

When on, the terrain name is spoken each time the cursor moves to a new tile. The terrain sound effect plays independently of this setting.

Announce depth levels in treeviews

Default: on.

When on, moving deeper into a tree view announces the level number, for example "level 2." Turn this off if you navigate tree views fluently and find the level announcements redundant.

Rashad Hates Treeviews (submenu-style navigation)

Default: off.

This is a toggle that changes how tree views behave across the mod. Named after another accessibility-mod developer, Rashad, who is not a fan of the traditional tree-view interaction pattern. (His own mods use tree views all over the place, just under other names, but the name stuck.)

Off (standard tree view):

• Right arrow on a collapsed item expands it, revealing its children alongside the parent.
• Right arrow on an already-expanded item moves into its first child.
• The parent stays visible in the list alongside its children.

On (submenu mode):

• Right arrow on an item expands it, hides the parent, and places you directly on the first child. It feels like stepping into a submenu.
• Left arrow collapses back to the parent.
• Your last position inside each parent is remembered when you return.

There is no wrong choice here, just preferences. Submenu mode keeps lists short and moves you forward quickly. Standard mode keeps parents and children visible together, which can help with orientation in a large tree. Try both.

For how tree views work in general, see Navigating menus.

Default Work Menu View (F1)

Default: Focused.

Determines which view opens when you press F1.

• Focused: a priority-grouped per-pawn view. Lower verbosity; well suited for checking on individual colonists.
• Table: pawn rows by work-type columns, mirroring vanilla. Supports sorting and painting.

You can switch between views at any time from within the Work menu using Ctrl+Tab (or Option+Tab on macOS). The setting updates automatically to remember your last choice.

Announce forced slowdowns from threats

Default: off.

When on, the mod announces when the game forces Normal speed because of a nearby threat ("Game slowed down by presence of threat") and again when the slowdown lifts. This only fires if your chosen speed is faster than Normal.

To check the current game speed at any time, press Alt+T.

---

Setting tooltips are expanding as localization work continues. If a setting's in-game tooltip is not yet in your language, the English tooltip is still shown.

Playing on Mac

This page covers the keyboard differences between Windows and macOS. All other documentation uses Windows key names. Substitute as described here when reading any other page.

General modifier substitutions

Windows	macOS
Ctrl	Cmd
Alt	Option

These substitutions apply throughout the mod. For example, where the docs say Ctrl+Alt+Enter, on Mac you press Cmd+Option+Enter.

The Ctrl+Tab exception

One shortcut does not follow the Ctrl-to-Cmd pattern: Ctrl+Tab (used to switch views in the Work menu and similar panels) maps to Option+Tab on macOS, not Cmd+Tab.

This is because Cmd+Tab is reserved by the operating system as the app switcher and cannot reach the game, and physical Ctrl+Tab is also not reliably deliverable on Mac through Unity. The mod handles this automatically: when the current key is Tab, pressing Option acts as the Ctrl substitute. No configuration is needed.

So on Mac:

Windows	macOS
Ctrl+Tab	Option+Tab
Ctrl+Shift+Tab	Option+Shift+Tab

All other Ctrl shortcuts use Cmd as normal.

Frequently asked questions

Common questions about what the mod does and doesn't do, and why.

Can you add support for [some mod]?

Probably not, and almost certainly not any time soon. Here's the reasoning.

A lot of content mods, meaning mods that add new items, animals, events, or factions without building their own custom screens, are already largely accessible.

The trouble is mods that build their own UI. When a mod adds a custom screen that doesn't follow how vanilla RimWorld does things, the mod's screen gets no accessibility treatment from RimWorld Access. Making it accessible isn't a matter of flipping a switch. It means installing the mod, building a save that actually exercises that UI, writing and testing new Harmony patches for it, and then maintaining those patches whenever the mod updates. And that's for one mod.

Every time a new mod gets support, it opens the door to requests for the next one. The queue is effectively infinite. People in the Discord are finding new mods every week. I can't keep up with that, and trying to is how burnout happens.

There's also a localization problem most people don't think about. Many mods haven't been translated into the languages RimWorld Access supports. When a mod's text isn't localized, players hear the raw English strings, and the question comes back to me rather than to the mod author. That's not something I'm willing to volunteer for.

The codebase also isn't in a state right now where I can safely take outside pull requests for mod accessibility. That may change. Even if it does, though, I have no interest in becoming a code reviewer for mods I may not even have installed. Reviewing a contribution properly would mean installing whoever's mods to test the change, and I'm not going to approve work I can't check. So even down the road, this may simply not be something I take on. We'll see.

None of this is permanent. Once the core RimWorld experience is solid, I'll probably give some mods attention. The Vanilla Expanded series is a likely candidate, because those authors do careful work and their content fits naturally with what the mod does. I may also cover mods I personally find interesting. Eventually, once I'm more comfortable taking this on, I might set up community polls so players can weigh in on which mods matter most to them to see made accessible. I'd like people to have a say in what I work on, if I ever get there.

But the baseline answer is: if a mod adds its own custom screens, don't expect support for it.

Why doesn't Alt+H read out every health condition?

Alt+H is a quick readout for what matters in a hurry: consciousness, movement, manipulation, and bleeding status. Those four things tell you most of what you need to know when something urgent is happening.

The request that comes up most often is adding infection status to that readout. The trouble is length. If a pawn has several infections or conditions, hearing them all in one announcement is slower than just searching for the one you care about. And searching is something the mod is already good at.

Type-ahead is, more or less, a search filter, and it's basically a mouse for blind people. Once it clicks, you'll use it everywhere. Here's how it works for health. Press Enter on the pawn under your cursor, or Ctrl+Alt+Enter on a pawn you've selected from the colonist bar, to open that pawn's inspect screen. Then just start typing. Type "inf" and you land on infections. Type "leg", "arm", or "head", or even just "hea", and you land on everything wrong with that part. The arrow keys step through the other matches. It's faster than any fixed readout could be, because you go straight to what you asked for.

That said, I'm still thinking about how best to surface every status condition through another shortcut, probably Alt+Shift+H. I'm not against the idea. It just feels redundant when type-ahead already gets you there so quickly. If you've leaned on type-ahead and still feel something is missing, that's worth telling me.

Is there a guide to laying out a base?

Not in this documentation, and that's deliberate. Base layout is genuinely hard to describe in text. A kill box or a storage warehouse has a visual logic that's difficult to convey through written coordinates and dimensions, and advice that sounds simple on paper ("make your bedrooms seven by seven on the exterior, five by five inside") can be tricky to apply in practice.

What this documentation covers is the mechanics: how to place buildings, how rooms work, what the Architect menu offers, how to use the scanner to survey your map. The strategy of what to build and where is a harder problem.

The colony building guide on the RimWorld wiki is a good place to start. It's written for players generally, and the advice translates.

For the "how does this actually look in practice" question, the goal is eventually to collect save files from community members that demonstrate well-built bases, so you can load them up and explore. That's not ready yet. The best current resource is the RimWorld Access Discord, where players share their approaches and can answer specific layout questions.

Can I play with other mods?

You can, but it's unsupported. When something breaks in a modded game, it's very hard to tell whether the issue is with RimWorld Access, with one of the other mods, or with a combination. Isolating a bug officially means testing with only Harmony and RimWorld Access active, and if you're playing a modded save, that's not easy to do without starting over.

This doesn't mean you should avoid mods. Plenty of players run large mod lists without problems. But if you run into a bug and want to report it, you'll likely need to be able to reproduce it in a clean environment before it can be investigated. See reporting bugs for what that looks like.

The mod doesn't police what you install. It just can't take responsibility for what other mods do.

Should I use permadeath (commitment mode)?

You can, but go in knowing the risks. In commitment mode, if your colony ends, the save is gone. Software crashes, screen reader hiccups, and bugs in any of your mods can all end a run without warning. The mod is stable enough that many players use commitment mode without incident, but "stable enough" and "completely safe" aren't the same thing.

If you're new to RimWorld, the bigger risk is just the game's difficulty. Losing a long permadeath run to a game mechanic you didn't know about yet is frustrating in a way that reloading from a normal save isn't. Most experienced players recommend playing without commitment mode until you understand how to handle raids, disease, and starvation.

If you want to use it, go for it. Just keep in mind that no software is crash-proof, and that mod updates, game updates, and screen reader updates can all introduce unexpected behavior.

Some text isn't in my language. Why?

RimWorld Access supports several languages, and text that comes from the mod itself (menu labels, navigation announcements, and the descriptions I write) should appear in your language where it has been translated. Localization is still fairly new, though, so some of the mod's own text may not be translated yet, and there are still genuine localization bugs to work out. If you hear English where you expect your own language in a base-game or RimWorld Access screen, please report it. See reporting bugs. That kind of report genuinely helps.

Some text can also come from another mod you have installed. Mods are responsible for their own translations, and when a mod author hasn't provided one for your language, that text falls back to English. That part isn't mine to fix, since the translation isn't mine to provide for content I didn't write. It isn't always obvious which mod a piece of text comes from, which is why these questions often land here, but the place to ask for a mod's translation is with that mod's author.

Where to learn RimWorld

These docs teach you the mod: which keys do what, how the screens work, how to drive RimWorld from the keyboard. They are not a strategy guide. RimWorld is a deep game, and the learning resources that exist for it are extensive. This page points to the ones I recommend.

My tutorial video

I recorded a walkthrough of my first accessible game. It covers the early colony arc from landing through first threats, narrated as I go.

Watch the RimWorld Access tutorial

The RimWorld wiki

rimworldwiki.com is the authoritative reference for game mechanics. It covers everything: temperature and food spoilage, what each trait does, the mood system, the health system, how raids scale. It is large and actively maintained. RimWorld Access mirrors vanilla RimWorld closely, so the learning resources written for the wider community work for you too.

The wiki's own Basics overview is a good first read if you want an overview of the game's flow before diving in. A few articles I find myself returning to:

• Work: how work priorities and job types interact
• Recruitment and Resistance: getting prisoners and downed enemies to join
• Trade price improvement: what actually moves prices
• Comms console: calling traders and contacting other factions
• Allowed areas: restricting where colonists can go
• Ideology: the belief-system and ritual mechanics (DLC)
• Health and Medicine: how treatment, injuries, and diseases work

RimWorld YouTubers

For strategy and a feel for how experienced players think, RimWorld has a large community of creators on YouTube. Narrated playthroughs work well by ear: the player talks through priorities, explains decisions, and signals when to worry and when to relax. Putting a beginner playthrough on in the background is one of the faster ways to absorb the game's rhythms.

I learned the game from sighted players and YouTubers before this mod existed, and that approach still holds up.

Prior art in blind gaming

Before RimWorld Access, blind players had very few games of this depth to play. If you are coming from the blind gaming community, the closest familiar reference is Castaways by Aprone, a survival and colony game that has long been a well-regarded option for blind players. Castaways is available here.

Other complex management games, like Oxygen Not Included, became accessible after RimWorld Access. If you have played one of them, the genre's logic will carry over.

Start gentle

The single best piece of advice for a new player: start on a low difficulty or peaceful.

RimWorld's difficulty range is enormous. On peaceful, raids are infrequent and mild, and there is breathing room to learn the controls and the rhythms of colony life without a crisis every few minutes. Once the keyboard feels natural and you have run a colony for a while, a harder start will make a lot more sense. There is no reason to learn the controls and survive a death spiral at the same time. You do not need to start a new game to raise the difficulty later: you can adjust it in settings on a running save.

Your first colony is supposed to be a bit of a mess. That is how it goes for everyone.

Reporting bugs

Found something broken? A clear report gets it fixed faster, and it does not take much.

First, isolate it

Test with only Harmony and RimWorld Access enabled, and no other mods. Other mods can change how the game behaves in ways that look like a RimWorld Access bug but aren't. If the problem still happens with just those two mods, it's a real report.

This is genuinely hard once you have other mods installed: stripping them out can break the save you were playing, so reproducing a problem in a clean setup takes real effort. RimWorld Access officially supports only Harmony plus itself, so a report from a clean save is the most useful kind, but do what you can.

What to include

A good report answers three questions:

• What you did. The screen you were on and the keys you pressed, step by step. "On the Work tab, I pressed Alt+M, then..." is the right level of detail.
• What was announced. What your screen reader actually said.
• What you expected instead.

If you can, include your screen reader, your operating system, and which DLC was active. The more reliably you can reproduce it, the easier it is to fix.

Attach your log file

RimWorld writes a log every time it runs, called Player.log. It records errors that never appear on screen, so attaching it often points straight at the cause. The file is replaced each time the game launches, so grab it after the problem happens and before starting the game again.

It is located here:

• Windows: %localappdata%low\Ludeon Studios\RimWorld by Ludeon Studios\Player.log
• macOS: ~/Library/Logs/Ludeon Studios/RimWorld by Ludeon Studios/Player.log

You can paste either path as-is to reach the file. On Windows, paste it into the Run dialog (Win+R) or the File Explorer address bar. On macOS, paste it into Finder's Go to Folder box (Cmd+Shift+G).

Where to file it

The easiest place is the #bug-reports channel on the Discord.

If you know your way around GitHub, you can also open a GitHub issue instead.