RimWorld Guide to Combat | Combat Basics for Beginners & Veterans [2024, 1.5+]

[@AdamVsEverything]

EDIT: Everything in this guide is still working and applicable for 1.5/Anomaly! Thanks for commenting, liking, and subscribing! More guides: kzbin.info/aero/PLQWnHloPSfq4ajFkTBA8vZk2R43NaQeKO Written versions: adamvseverything.com/guides Active Discord (for questions and more): discord.gg/gKZh2XZzdK No killbox run (full videos): kzbin.info/aero/PLQWnHloPSfq7yJLmTBqZqoMXaKwpYRvza No walls/doors/rooms run (edited version): kzbin.info/aero/PLQWnHloPSfq6DOxezzmyJKwsm-ynXv-ao

[@ahmadubaidillah3650]

there any new kill box specially i running CE

[@InvestWithSensei]

That was the questions on my mind :) Thanks my good man for confirming all information are still valid in today's version.

[@r00kie36]

Perfect guide. Straight to the point, easy to understand, well structured and even with timestamps for people only looking for certain topics. 10/10

[@Emroep]

exactly what i thought straight to the point lol

[@Lowzerix]

couldnt have said it better.

[@andkaboodle]

900 hours in this game and just learned right now about the quirks of handling drafted colonists. Thank you!

[@Nat-ri3ip]

Well, that's perfect. Clear, concise, well timestamped, with a written version and all. The date and version is the icing on the cake.

[@luandourado7249]

The tittle of all Adam videos should be "It depends: 'Put you tittle here' ". Rimworld is such a complex game that I would not be able to explain almost anything without the help of one of Adam's videos.

[@matthewghilarducci5033]

Thanks!

[@AdamVsEverything]

Thanks a ton, Matthew! Glad you like the guide.

[@malkavian6]

I always appreciate your guides and insight. I learn so much every time I catch a stream. I have to say when I first got Rimworld, I nearly wrote it off until I found your channel. I learned so much from watching your playthrus and the fact that when I did catch you live, no question was "dumb" or too beginner to be asked and if you caught the question you would answer it and many others. I found it so helpful. I still learn a lot from watching you to this day. I swear I never would have made it to space without finding your channel! Keep up the great content! I am a bit behind on watching your longer streams from the archives channel, but I really enjoy the edited version that you have been doing this year. I think it makes your content more approachable for me sometimes when I only have 30 minutes, a lot gets crammed into it and I can go back and watch the longer format when I have the time or move on. Thanks for all your knowledge and being willing to teach that knowledge to us. It is now my favourite game, because you took the time to help break down some of the mechanics that always wiped my playthrus. Cheers!

[@profitmargins9335]

As always Adam fantastic guide. Player with over 1k hours here and while I might not always learn something new at this point, I often am reminded of something that took me near the 1k to learn about the hard way so I always love to watch your guides. Looking forward to the advanced guide.

[@TaikaJamppa]

Player with 1,6k hours here too, I did actually learn something… I think. 🤔 But agreed, great guide!

[@mikeb5063]

i never had much use for melee fighters until they came out with the jump armor, being able to land a guy with a uranium warhammer or a mono sword and a shield belt right next to a cent or other nasty ranged enemy to kill it then move to killing the next foe or jumping away if your shield breaks makes hard fights much easier to handle, a uranium warhammer tends to take limbs off of human pawns to so your first strike often cripples them or straight out kills. Before they only saw use as blockers for my ranged fighters but now i focus much of my tactics around jump pack ambushes.

[@someaussiebloke4487]

Yes my brother, perfect to send to people having issues with combat. As I was watching I was like hmm forgot about abilities like psycast, and calling in alies. But then at the end you're all like "advanced guide coming soon" 😂 Perhaps something that'd help others is also "base defence video" which differs slightly from combat. Love your stuff AvsE and team 👌

[@C-Hirsuta]

One of the best Rimworld guides I've ever seen. Been playing since 2014 and I learned things. One thing I'd like to see touched on - a "recent" patch seems to have changed something about collision for enemies. I've had stacks of enemies blowing through my melee blockers instead of fighting one at a time like I expected. It even happens sometimes when I had a turret or pawn in their path that I thought would have activated their collision. If you can clear this up I'd be grateful.

[@SmithMason5494]

I believe an enemy getting set on fire (like from a plasma sword) removes their collision and it lets other enemies through their collision, but I'm not entirely sure. Had this issue when I had one of my melee pawns wielding a plasma sword and accidentally let an entire manhunter pack through my melee block, destroying my run lol

[@AdamVsEverything]

The most common problem is having a pathable turret. If you have any pathable turrets at all many enemies can still ignore collision. In addition, sappers, breachers and summoned boss mech raids ignore collision regardless.

[@AetherXIV]

excellent no filler, pure content. thanks for all the examples. must have taken a week to make

[@zandman3737]

excellent guide, combat is definitely one of the areas i struggle most in, especially since i've been trying to use more no-killbox setups and losing a lot of runs in the process :(

[@Lowzerix]

damn bro fuck those go juice crackheads that killed my doggo ;(

[@macobuzi]

I hate using kill box, it feel unrealistic and unfun to play. I like the WW1 style where you create the defensive lines to hold off the enemy charge.

[@Lady_Serperior]

I needed this but didn't know how much I needed it!! Very helpful and informative

[@Divinegon1706]

Great vid as usual Adam keep up the great content!

[@chiefbeef1003]

Awesome! Very excited for future guides like this

[@kombuchaman01]

thank you, adam! Its lovely to always learn new stuff after more than 1000 hours on rimworld.

[@alyissius9725]

Thanks for the basic intro. So many mechanics that are hard to parse apart

[@cleebe6905]

Fantastic job. Taught me a lot about Rimworld combat strategies. Thank you very much. Will check out the rest of your guides.

[@Jiraki_the_Wingless]

Basically the best, easiest guide for this that I've seen. Well done!

[@tapejara1507]

thanks helped alot. I didnt know a few things you mentioned.

[@senornightham4931]

Absolutely love these guides. Even with over 1000 hours I'm still learning new little details

[@KingLoser4445]

This was great. I learned something after watching so many hours already.

[@qd5683]

Other Rim guides are bland sparkling wine - Adam’s are champagne.

[@quinntheking]

"The game doesn't do well to teacher you" it's a couple minute tutorial it doesn't teach you anything except build and move the rest you gotta learn. This helps a ton thank you!

[@LordBadkid]

Love these guides!

[@Flounder125]

Great guide as always. Super informative.

[@evilspyke5760]

my favorite thing is to get a thrumbo. i got one early game in my current playthrough thanks to an inspired taming while one was nearby, and it becomes the best bullet sponge and melee. one of my first playthroughs i had over 50 thrumbos and any raid i had, none of my colonist were ever hurt. combine that with a heated killbox and just one colonist was ever needed for any raid, except the drop pods. but having over 50 thrumbos swarm in was undefeatable.

[@mangoxmochi3205]

Awesome! Super concise, and there's a lot of new details that I didn't know about despite having played a lot.

[@Nex47128]

Excellent guide, looking forward to the mini-guides that are upcoming. Take care man.

[@koendekker7]

Great guide Alan! As a beginner these kinds of video's really help me.

[@zanzibarzy2877]

your mastery of the game is incredible

[@decoin9098]

you're the goat of rimworld man, kudos to you!

[@meftor]

Great guide! Definitely learned a few things.

[@Lilrael]

Excellent guide as usual, I learn something new every time I watch one.

[@realtorchancegassman8662]

Thank you for making this! I wish they would add more combat information into the game tutorial.

[@Jstall311]

Thanks for the guide! I had no idea walls provided so much more cover than sandbags, this should help my defense against raids a fair bit since I can position better

[@maikv750]

Amazing guide! Even tho I have about 1300 hours in the game (I don't know what grass is) I could still learn a bit. Ambush tactics are quite interesting and these hallway defenses are nice!

[@Zeffary20]

Great stuff Adam, love it!

[@Kodiac]

Love your videos. Don't need these guides but I will leave a comment to support this content regardless

[@QUIRISS]

Great video! Some tips are super useful.

[@NotHappening-b8t]

i really needed this. im late game and have best armors etc and got rolled on by the tribals lol..... admit was 50 vs my 8 but still. i was decked to the 9s i thought. this video really helped show where i went wrong. wrong weapons, for half my crew.... and i can stack my crew up tighter i didmnt know they wouldnt hit one another if they were stacked close enough.

[@mynoc1113]

Thank you for yet another Awesome vid Adam

[@AdamVsEverything]

Thanks for watching!

[@jackputnam4273]

Another amazing guide, as always! It was really cool to see so many combat strategies that i’ve seen adam use in various runs all in one video :)

[@kickatorch9151]

Very in-depth man thank you

[@victordavila9812]

Wohhh this is awesome thanks man this game was kicking my behind

[@roxaroo]

Love your videos, especially the guides, they are well crafted and easy to understand. Thank you, Adam.

[@The1Widdy]

Been waiting for this one!

[@otter7798]

super comprehensive and absolutely love the accessibility touches such as the use of timestamps and including a written version of the guide as well! Love your work ❤

[@AtraCulpa]

Great guide as always! Thanks Adam

[@team-tastic-germany37]

Really good guide! Thanks Adam! :)

[@hideshisface1886]

Couple of notes regarding combat. Specifically on skills. Desirable traits for combat pawns (as in pawns you intend to be your main fighters, preferably with passions in ranged or melee): Tough - it is a straight damage reduction All sorts of mood buff and break threshold reduction traits, such as sanguine and steadfast Psychopath for that sweet lack of reaction to all the death around Masochist - for pain resistance and mood boost from pain Nimble - good when in melee and good when kiting around traps Careful shooter vs trigger happy: There the thing, it is not as clear cut as it seems. The general consensus appears to be that the Trigger-Happy is a general improvement over Careful Shooter, unless you have very low level pawns. Basically - unless you are using shotguns, careful shooter will outperform trigger happy on all weapons until something around level 15 of shooting. After that, trigger-happy becomes better on your standard weapons with ranges of 25-31 or lower. From this point on, Careful Shooter becomes a hindrance on at lower ranges. There is another problem with careful shooter - longer aim time means enemy you aim at my die by the time the pawn finishes aiming, lowering the effective dps further. Another thing is Shooting Specialist bonus and artificial eyes. These two combined further lower the negative accuracy of trigger-happy, while Shooting Specialist further improves the bonus. I don't think anyone did a proper testing for it, or at least didn't post it. But I wonder how does these two skills fare against enemies at various maximum ranges - I'm especially interested in weapons such as assault rifles, charge rifles, charge lances, bolt action and sniper rifles - especially against enemies in cover. Another thing is melee. Brawler is generally not worth it as a trait - you get a fairly substantial debuff to mood if you use anything other than melee weapon, while having a fairly insubstantial, nimble is amazing. Melee Specialists are underwhelming, because at 20 melee you get pretty massively dimishing returns from dodging bonus and berserk stance is kind of trash. Bottom line - you can still have fairly amazing melee fighters without locking their jobs.

[@darthbader6506]

Great job, thanks for sharing

[@DrZygote214]

Thank you for actually putting the year and version number in the title of your vid. Searching for help on this game constantly, i can't tell you how many threads are from something like 2017 ~ 2019 and you have no idea if this is trustworthy. That and the modding anarchy are serious drawbacks impeding us knowledgephiles.

[@ArmoMan87]

I love the mod "run and gun" makes it more dynamic

[@MeAMuse]

Can't wait for that advanced combat tactics video :)

[@kempwinkler2393]

Great stuff!

[@iand6541]

Thanks for the guide!

[@eunito]

great guide! congrats!

[@tiromaior2674]

Great, I learned something new about mechanics of pathing.

[@Catharlyn]

Great guide, thank you!

[@Hinguckah]

Nice guide! I knew most of the stuff already but for some reason I always thought that the little zone that they have where they can't hit eachother wouldn't work anymore when there is stuff in between like walls but you made the thing at 6:50 so I'll try something like that next time I'm in the mood to play rimworld.

[@rogergavind6279]

Top notch guide as usual!

[@rwbgill]

Thanks for another useful guide, Adam.

[@sevensins3584]

Got this game recently. It is so much fun and i have no idea whats going on half the time. My favorite pawn just died because my giant turret tried to kill a crazy monkey way behind her somewhere and blew her to hell.. i am so hooked

[@AdamVsEverything]

Lol. Welcome aboard. Also, sounds like my short Friendly Fire guide might be of some help! - kzbin.info/www/bejne/laqlc4Jpp5pofZI

[@laureven]

Excellent video . Thank You

[@Logan0503]

Thanks for the guide! Combat has always seemed a little arcane to me besides the basics of staying behind cover and having better weapons than the other guys. Having a better understanding of how combat actually works will definitely be helpful in stopping my pawns from dying…

[@alex2143]

A note about the flak vest. It actually also completely covers artificial arms for some weird reason, meaning that bionic arms would be covered completely by the flak vest, on top of just being much better than biological arms. This means that the flak vest synergizes very well with bionic arms, in part also because bionic arms would make your pawns better at combat and crafting, and in part because bionic arms pull from the same pool of resources that you would use to create marine armor. Bionic legs don't get the same benefit, but I would still strongly recommend upgrading them. Move speed improves repositioning, kiting and melee dodge chance, and a couple of hits to organic legs cause pain and bleeding, both of which reduce combat effectiveness and can lead to incapacitation or death. Getting a bionic leg damaged doesn't matter that much since it'll heal, and even if it gets blown off that won't cause pain or bleeding. Finally, upgrading one eye to bionic has a lot of benefits too. Upgrading the second one isn't so important since the best eye will get a weight of 75%, but it improves a lot of abilities, like melee and ranged hit chance. So a full set of bionic limbs would synergize with a flak vest in a very impressive way. Since flak vests are so cheap, you can keep creating them over and over until everyone is rocking good or excellent flak vests. Doing the same with marine armor would be prohibitively expensive. Flak vests also synergize very nicely with thrumbofur and hyperweave. If you get your hands on some of the stuff and use it to create dusters, that would further increase the pawn's defensive capabilities to where even the legs would get pretty solid projection. Devilstrand is decent and it's very nice that it's entirely renewable with fairly little effort. Long story short, I really love flak vests. I might not even be willing to switch my pawns to cataphract armor once that becomes an option due to the heavy movement hit and the high cost.

[@Belvedli]

Great guide!

[@hextaped]

I almost have 1000 hours in this game and this still taught me stuff. :|

[@miguelrodriguezcimino1674]

One thing that's worth mention is that, while it doesn't affects shooting accuracy, light does affect movement speed and that is a factor in combat. A meleer will be able to cut the distance to the target and engage faster, and speed to move away from the enemy is also important when kiting. A dark vision gene can be useful to ensure max move speed in night combat.

[@justagirlontheinternet7502]

A Quick and Easy Murder Guide? You have my attention....

[@PrincessZeldaGirl]

There was a lot of little things I didn't know in this video and I have 350 hours in RimWorld. It's wild how dense the game is

[@earthlingi72]

Adam ... creates a guide (legendary)

[@skullsarecute]

Fantastic. Thanks highly.

[@AdamVsEverything]

My pleasure! More on the way, as always.

[@franciscosariles]

Practical, informative, and succinct,

[@morepork9385]

Wow, this is a really great guide.

[@Nach2022SindAlleRussischeBots]

Really helpful!

[@lari7281]

Really like your guides ❤

[@ghysling]

Sweet awesome guide!

[@cassiosieburger4843]

Really good!

[@gaussmonolith5177]

Nice guide for everyone 👍

[@PeterohPeter]

Thanks for making a guide that doesn't have cheesey forced jokes and being 100% useful

[@TIIKKETMASTER]

yes! thank you!

[@joo0078]

superb video

[@lenhartica2371]

Im not sure if youve tested this yet Adam but the Toxic mines are obnoxiously strong. In my more recent playthrough I hit max raid points and had roughly 600 enemy pawns on the map at once on losing is fun and I had a small hallway filled with tox mines leading to my killbox. Like 10 toxic mines took out one group of 300 or so pawns. IT DIDNT KILL THEM IT DOWNS THEM ALL. Maybe toy with them a bit. At the end of the run I had about 100 colonists cause id just keep all the really good pawns. PS> the toxic mine, grenade and packs all stack with eachother For those wondering yes I was selling all of there organs.

[@AdamVsEverything]

I generally try to keep the guides as vanilla friendly as possible unless it is a specific guide for an expansion topic. In the case you are mentioning I'd cover it specifically regarding Biotech. The only 'downside' is that wasters are obviously immune. Of course there are plenty of other ways to kill them of course :P

[@lenhartica2371]

@@AdamVsEverything I just posted this here cause its your most recent video. This is a good guide. Id argue that the toxic mines are some of the strongest things in the game though. It wont outright kill the pawns. It downs them. Even if there are hundreds of pawns it will down every single one of them (Except wasters). There have been times when ive had 30-40 enemy pawns in prison becoming the very wealth they were born from.. Id highly recommend giving them a shot

[@AdamVsEverything]

@@lenhartica2371 Oh, I definitely know they are good. They basically do the same thing a burn tunnel does only you don't have to destroy a wall to vent heat - and burn tunnels are overpowered. :P I just thought you commented it on here meaning I should have covered it in the guide or such. I'll for sure highlight some other defenses soon. In fact, I should have another one coming out early next week.

[@12michix]

Perfect, simple and easy to understand ! Thanks Adam & Smurph :)

[@NovaGirl8]

Just finished a 3x mech raid. I thought they would raid one at a time or at least give me enough breathing room. NOPE. Everyone had to attack with a few seconds of reprieve. Although one section was thankfully killed off by a trade caravan that happened to arrive in the same area. I was left with 3 pawns standing and my lone melee had to wade in to finish off the lone pikeman that refused to die. My killbox is now in dire need of repairs.

[@MOISECRIMI]

love this guide

[@kingcos19]

Thank you I appreciate this

[@Inkboy1]

Good tips!

[@MyNameIsXYlp]

Have you ever considered making guides on other topics you're competent in and passionate about? You're concise guides always impressed me, but I don't know if you mainly got those skills from answering questions on stream over and over again and/or if they would transfer to say a tech know-how guide

[@AdamVsEverything]

I've made a few how-to guides in the past that are not game related. I think I've just about always enjoyed teaching people things. Part of that is because, selfishly, teaching others is one of the easiest ways to memorize and get better at something myself :P

[@magicfreak3337]

Good guide!

[@plumbum9688]

Collision, such a beautiful name for a dog

[@aleksandaraleksandrov7111]

The interesting thing is that clothing does not protect vs cutting's bleed effect. For example the arm or leg is protected by the devilstrand pants, but when cut with a sword it results in bleed effect. The awesome thing about armor like the recon is it protects vs bleed and turns the dmg limb in to a bruze and not a cut. That is valuable in playing against manny raids that randy can throw at you.

[@Bloodlyshiva]

Makes sense. It's perfectly possible to take a deep wound through clothing and not realize. I know: It's happened to me. Still have the scar on my leg. Was carrying some trash out. Must have slashed it on something. Didn't really feel it. Had to get stitches.

[@lem2004]

One thing to note down that healthy colonist perform better than colonist that got some disease. Consciousness is the main factor between they hitting a good shot or missed a shot or even accidently hit your melee fighter. I had two best sniper with careful shooter trait that used to kill most of the animal, raider or manhunter pack, but suddenly missed all the shot during toxic fallout due to toxic buildup. In the end I lose 2 sniper, 4 SMG gunner, 1 emp thrower, and 1 melee guy to 4 Scyther mechanoid

[@RedEyedShabby]

Nice!

[@andrewsimonson9748]

Thank you

[@scooterking136]

super helpful, thank you!!

[@TheRogueBro]

At the Weapon Selection part all i could hear is Adam saying "it depends" lol

[@MortalSmurph]

Hopefully we get around to doing a guide on precisely what it depends on :)