Alongside announcing the game’s fourth expansion, Anomaly, we’ll also receive RimWorld update 1.5, which is completely free. It will coincide with the expansion’s release, which is still another month away. For now, we can explore the announced features and mechanics, which are coming to everyone!
What’s New in RimWorld Update 1.5?
As is typical with any massive RimWorld expansion, developer Ludeon Studios will release a free update to the entire community. This update is typically developed alongside the expansion’s content but stands alone. It’s a lot of quality of life features, that’s for sure!
- Decorations: You can now decorate more of your colony with bookcases, couches, and ornate doors. The couches have space for two; ornate doors are 2×1 (a first for vanilla RimWorld), and your pawns can now read books for XP and recreation.
- Lighting: Additional lighting mechanics, including wall lamps, flood lights, and hidden electrical conduits, will help illuminate your colony without needing mods!
- Crawling: When injured, your downed pawns will now crawl along the ground to find help. They’ll actively seek out hospital beds or sleeping spots.
- Performance: The studio spent significant time optimizing the game’s overall performance, specifically the pawn render system, to optimize the overall gameplay.
- Possessions: Your pawns may now spawn with random possessions dependent on their traits. The example given was of a psychopath carrying a human heart.
- Mechanoids: Mechanoids may now spawn from bodies of water, meaning that nowhere is safe from the automatons.
- Bionics: Additional bionics, including jaws, will make their way to RimWorld. That, and there’s a new organ decay disease to keep an eye on.
- Mine Ore Veins: Instead of tasking your pawns to mine a single mineral, you can have them mine the entire vein with a single command. Huge QOL improvement!
- Clean Rooms: Another QOL improvement will allow pawns to clean an entire room with a single command. Previously, you were forced to task a pawn to clean individual messes.
- Wanderers: If you fail and your colonists die, you can roll wanderers who will join the now-empty colony so that you may continue the game.
- UI Improvements: An option to enhance a colonist’s mood on the bar is now present. The game will highlight pawns when you zoom out too far, and many of the tabs were revamped for a better user experience overall.
That’s only a few major and minor content improvements and additions coming in update 1.5 of RimWorld. The studio revealed a massive changelog, with 18 pages of tweaks.
Related: When Does RimWorld Anomaly Release? – Answered
Will the RimWorld Expansion Break Mods?
Unfortunately, anytime there is a massive update to RimWorld, especially an expansion, it breaks mods. However, Developer Ludeon adores working with mod authors, and they typically provide an early build to the modding community to ensure that popular mods can push an update on the release day.
That said, every time this happens, we usually lose a handful of significant mods and creators who don’t wish to continue updating their content. It sucks, but that’s their choice!
The Guide Hall only recently installed seven pages’ worth of mods for RimWorld, so this is fantastic timing! We’ll have additional game guides coming soon!