User:Gottoni/User guide/Sea Ice
Template:Tocright This guide details how to survive in the most hostile environment in Rimworld - the sea ice. We focus on the Lost Tribe start because it is the hardest one to thrive in hostile environments since you got more people to feed and less technology to help you.
The tribal start in sea ice is the ultimate survival challenge in Rimworld and very close to being impossible, therefore there is not much room for different strategies here, you gotta have to stick closely to the guide.
Introduction
Sea ice is one of the coldest option of cold maps. They have very little animal life and no plants. In fact, you should not expect to find anything more than three snowhares in your start. You should also not expect to see more than one new snowhare every week and one new polar bear per month.
In addition to that, they do not have any kind of soil available and moisture pumps will only generate more ice. It is literally impossible to grow anything on the ground. You will struggle a lot until you get a heater, a sun lamp and a hydroponics basin, then you can plant something indoors.
Maybe the worse part however, is that they do not have ruins, geothermal vents and minerals to mine. Also, deep drills do not work. There is literally nothing anywhere to even build a base with. You will have to rely on trading and random events to get any material to build a base.
Even the warmest ice sheet it really cold. Their average varies from -20 °C (-4 °F) to -30 °C (-22 °F) and they never have growing periods due to the temperature. You still need to eventually make a freezer though, because the summer temperature is hot enough to spoil your food. You should expect to have problems with hypothermia during fall, winter, spring and during cold snaps in summers.
They are particularly bad to travel in caravans. Because they are always placed in the poles of the world, they have a big penalty to caravan speed due to winter, which is most of the year, if not the whole year. But caravans are more important here than any other biome, so you will have to do it anyways whenever you can, because you do not have other options to get the resources your colony needs.
Landing site
In all maps you should to choose carefully your landing site to increases your resources available. Landing in the wrong spot does not just make your start harder, but also makes your mid-late game frustrating as it severely limits you from using the whole caravan and quest system. You want to build a colony in an area with some of the following characteristics:
- Near to ice sheet (faster moving around)
- Somewhat near to tundra (faster moving around)
- Near to a friendly faction base (faster trading)
- Without many mountains around (faster moving around)
Sea ices do not have roads or rivers, unfortunately neither does ice sheet. Try to settle close to tundra, it is not gonna be next to your base, but still might help later in quests. Being near to a friendly faction base is mandatory here or it will already be impossible to survive.
Starting colonists
There two things to consider while selecting your colonist for sea ice:
- Sea ice is so harsh that you will have to resort to cannibalism, so you wanna have a crew that can tolerate that. That means having one butcher that does not mind butchering people and everyone resistant to mental breaks.
- You can not feed five people, neither can you place them to sleep in crytosleep and people are the only thing you got that is worth something. So, since you can only feed about two people you gonna have to sell the other three. For those, you do not need to worry much about them because they are just merchandise.
Here we add recommendations of traits for colonists, but not having any of them does not change how you follow the guide, it just makes your game harder.
Your butcher should ideally be either Cannibal, Bloodlust or Psychopath.
And your crew should ideally be either Cannibal, Sanguine, Optimist, Iron-Willed, Steadfast or Masochist with scars. Couples also enjoy extra happiness so try to bring a man and a woman.
Your merchandise colonists should ideally be Wimps. That way they will take less damage if they resist getting arrested.
Since you will only keep two of them, it is likely that you will be lacking people with the skills you need. There is not much you can do about it, except making sure those two colonist are not incapable of anything important.
Base area
It does not really matters where you place your base since the whole sea ice map looks the same.
First agenda
- Make your starter base with wood. Give people a place to sleep, eat and play.
- Arrest your three merchandise colonists.
- Send one colonist to sell the merchandise together with your starting animals.
- Use the other colonist to hunt those snowhares before they leave the map.
- Whenever you use wood to make campfires, either for cooking or heating up, make sure that after your wood is forbidden so they do not refuel it unnecessarily.
- Buy your basic survival items with the silver you got from selling your people and animals.
Notes
Just make a room to arrest people and go sell them. Enjoy while it is warm and go visit your nearby friendly base to trade your merchandise colonists, your animals and some useless weapons. You should get something between 2000 and 1500 silver for three colonists and three animals in addition to your starting 200 silver.
Now you gotta buy some food, clothes and material. Since you do not know for sure what you need, you should buy things little by little and return here many times.
Food should be the cheapest option available. Nutrient paste meal, simple meal and vegetables are the best options. Meat is more expensive but still better to cook it than buying fancy meals.
Clothes is just a little basic insulation to save you in the first season. After that you gonna be using clothes from raiders anyways. You buy the cheapest tuques, later if that is not enough you buy the cheapest parkas, if they do not have parkas you buy the cheapest jackets/dusters.
Materials you need at least 25 steel to make your research bench and some wood to use for cooking. The cheapest option to build your base is buying stone blocks, then wood, then steel. You should be able to carry 25 steel with one person, but those things overall are heavy and gonna require many trips. You might wanna bring both colonists here next time to carry as much as possible.
- Progression
- Quickstart Guides • Basics • Intermediate Midgame Guide • Advanced Endgame Guide • Ending the game
- Scenarios
- Lost Tribe Guide • Rich Explorer Guide • Naked Brutality Guide • The Mechanitor Guide
- Survival
- Extreme Heat Guide • Extreme Cold Guide • Extreme Desert Guide • Ice Sheet Guide • Sea Ice Guide • Events Guide
- Combat
- Defense tactics • Offense tactics • Weapon Guide
- Construction
- Colony Building Guide • Defense structures
- Production
- Food production • Money making guide
- Other
- Skill Training • Permadeath save conversion guide •
Ideology Min-Maxing