Ludeon Studios recently released update 1.1 for RimWorld along with its first paid DLC, Royalty. The studio is working on hotfixes for other issues over the coming weeks but has plans for a content add-on to Royalty. Creator Tynan Sylvester noted some of the things he’s considering adding, and also reminded players that “none of this is decided 100% so please don’t take any of these are promises.”

Some concepts include a way to renounce a royal title that the player may not want; additional bulk production recipes; more combat psycasts; and additional content for quests since it would be “nice to have a few more variations.” A way for players to avoid fighting mech clusters and what could result from just having them on the map is also under consideration. Players can expect tests in the “unstable” branch of Steam in the future.

Sylvester also confirmed that RimWorld will have a version 1.2 “some day”. Unlike the current version, this one will cause quite a few things – like mods – to break. “We’re going to try hard to avoid unnecessary code breakages and keep documents about changes for all future updates, and without such a big Unity update, I hope mods in general will be easier or trivially easy to update than the 1.0 -> 1.1 shift. However, things will still inevitably need updating.”

Long story short, things are happening and the developer will update fans over the coming months. Stay tuned for more details in the meantime.

Ludeon Studios’ colony management/story-telling engine RimWorld has received its first major post-launch update. However, in an unexpected twist, it’s also received the first paid DLC pack with Royalty. The latter sees a faction, the Empire, joining the world and bringing their own brand of advanced technology to the Rim.

The entire purpose of the DLC is to complete some quests until eventually, you can hose the Imperial High Stellarch and his guards (before subsequently protecting them from any enemies). Eventually you can earn a royal title which also provides an Imperial psychic amplifier. It confers psychic abilities like mind control, paralysis and even inducing vomiting.

If you’re not interested in dropping $20 for the Royalty DLC, then the new 1.1 update should have enough to keep you busy. It offers a new quests tab, improved mod management, better UI scaling, new weapons, new animals and much more. Check out some of the patch notes below for more details.

New features

• UI now looks sharp at UI scales over 1.0. Great for 4K monitors.
• New Quests tab provides information about available, active, and historical quests.
• Added a new data-driven quests generation and management system.
• This should make it straightforward for modders and us to add or change quests without programming.
• UI now uses colored text to highlight important words like character names, places, and rewards.
• Improved the mod management interface and code.
• Mods now have a global package ID which lets them refer to each other.
• Mods can now define other mods they must be loaded after or before.
• Added a tool to automatically sort the mod list.
• Mods can now define other mods that they depend on. Shortcuts allow the player to easily download required mods.
• Mods can now define other mods that they are incompatible with. The interface will warn players about incompatibilities.
• Added loading screen tips. These are short bits of text helping the player understand an obscure aspect of the game. They’re displayed during loading.
• Loading screen now displays present and active expansions and mods.
• Added room stats gizmo, which displays the stats of the room containing a selected building, at a glance.
• Added recon armor, a lighter variant of marine armor.
• Added EMP launcher weapon. It fires EMP grenades a long distance.
• Added smoke launcher weapon. It fires smoke grenades a long distance.
• Added smoke grenadier enemy.
• Added a planet population slider to the planet generation parameters.
• Added animals: Bison, donkey, duck, goat, goose, guinea pig, horse, sheep, yak.
• Added ‘tortured artist’ trait. The character has a permanent mood debuff, but gets art inspirations from low mood.