User:Hordes/Sea ice
The Sea ice is RimWorld's harshest biome, much worse than the extreme desert.
This guide details how to survive and get to a stable position, using the Lost Tribe start, without using any DLC. In particular, the Ideology DLC has features that make sea ice survival significantly easier - even Naked Brutality sea ice is possible if you know how to use it. Details on DLC will be included in the bottom of this guide.
Briefing
The Sea ice is the coldest biome, with almost no animal life, no rock, no soil, and freezing temperatures. Travel by caravan is slow. There are no geothermal vents to use as free heat. In most places, there will be 23 hour days in the summer, and 23 hour nights in the winter.
You can argue that sea ice isn't hard. Once you get your food, heat, and mood situations stable, a colony in sea ice becomes like any other. At that point, the only practical differences are that resource gain is slower, that mistakes are punished more, and that colonists need to wear a parka all the time. These are more tedious than anything. Thus, before starting a sea ice playthrough, be prepared for the long haul.
In any case, getting the food, heat, and mood stable can be difficult.
Food:
- Animal hunting. You might get 3 snowhares at the start, and shouldn't expect more than one snowhare per week. You might also get a polar bear, who you can kill using door exploits.
- Humans. Raiders will come every once in a while, even in the sea ice. Also, all storytellers have a population intent. If you're at 1 colonist, they'll constantly send new colonist opportunities (drop pods, wanderers...), which equate to free human meat.
- Hydroponics are the ultimate long-term goal.
Heat:
- Lost Tribes are stuck using campfires to heat a room. However, wood is finite, so you can't use a campfire forever.
- Warm clothing, like parkas and tuques, will let pawns survive without needing to burn wood.
- Once you get to Electricity, heaters are your main solution.
Mood:
- Use a pawn with great traits.
If you survive for 60 days, note that mechanoid raids will be prevalent. Once 60 days have passed, if the average temperature is below -40 °C (-40 °F), and if you have enough wealth for mech raids, then human raids won't spawn at all. Therefore, you can only get mech raids. This may be an advantage to living in a colder part of the sea ice, since as of 1.4, mechs cannot have drop pod raids.
Landing Site
Believe it or not, sea ice tiles are not identical.
- Tiles closer to the equator are warmer.
- If you're close enough to the equator, temperatures may rise above freezing during the summer. This can spoil your food.
- Tiles may be closer to faction bases. Without trade, survival is much more difficult. To make things better, you should settle close to two faction bases. You will expand much faster in the mid-late game.
- There are no rivers, mountains, or roads, but you can spawn near the coast, a minor benefit (raiders cannot enter through the ocean).
In a regular world, all sea ice tiles are located near the poles, which causes days to be extremely long in the summer and night to be extremely long in the winter. However, if you change your world generation to reduce the world temperature to the minimum, then sea ice tiles can appear closer to the equator, which makes the day/night cycle more normal.
Starting Colonists
It's impossible to feed 5 colonists at the start of the game, and there are no ancient cryptosleep caskets to preserve them. Thus, you should focus on having 1, maybe 2 at most, colonist that is good.
- Sea ice is so harsh that you will have to resort to cannibalism, slavery and organ harvesting, so you want to have a crew that can endure that.
- At least 3 of your colonists will be sold or harvested for organs. You may want one of the sold colonists to be good at Medical and Social, to make the slavery process a bit easier. You may want another colonist to be good at Construction.
To make generation easier, you may want to edit your scenario to force all starting colonists to have Cannibal (among other beneficial traits, like iron-willed, industrious, etc.). To do this, open the scenario editor, select Lost Tribe, then add the "Forced trait" modifier.
Day 1-2
- Make your starting base out of wood. Remember to cut corners!
- Hunt the snowhares before they leave the map.
- Arrest your three merchandise colonists.
- Sell your merchandise colonists and your starting animals.
- Buy your survival items with the silver you got from selling your people and animals.
- Make a bedroll.
- Make your research bench