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Base Building & Crafting

By ScotPublished Updated Sources checked

Tactical Quick Answer

Keep your dining room, recreation room, and food storage in the exact center of the base, and put small specialized stockpiles right next to the workbenches that draw from them. Upgrade from wood to stone as soon as you research stonecutting, because fire destroys wooden bases in minutes. Then set your workbench bills to the Do until you have X criteria so production runs itself instead of needing daily micromanagement.

A poorly designed base turns minor emergencies into colony wipes. How you lay out your rooms, manage temperatures, and set up your crafting chains determines how well your colony scales into the late game.

Base Layout Fundamentals​

Efficiency is everything. Pawns walk slowly, and every tile they travel between a stockpile and a workbench costs you production time.

The Central Hub​

Keep your dining room, recreation room, and food storage in the exact center of your base. Pawns wake up, go to the freezer for a meal, eat in the dining room, and grab some recreation before heading out to work. Keeping these rooms centralized cuts down daily travel time massively.

Stockpile Efficiency​

Do not build one massive stockpile for everything. Create specialized zones right next to the relevant workbenches.

  • Put a small stockpile holding only steel and components directly next to your machining table.
  • Put a stockpile holding only textiles and leather directly next to your tailoring bench.
  • Set these specialized stockpiles to a higher priority than your main dump so haulers keep them topped off.

Material Selection​

Wood is a trap. It is fast and abundant in many biomes, but fire destroys wooden bases in minutes. Upgrade to stone as soon as you research stonecutting.

Wall hit points below are for a standard wall, which has a 300 base.

MaterialUse CaseWhat to know
WoodEarly game shelter, beds, fueled generators.Fully flammable and the weakest common material, at 195 wall hit points.
GraniteOuter defensive walls and killboxes.Strongest of the five planetside stones at 510, though plasteel and uranium both beat it outright. Slow to build, tied with limestone and slate and not uniquely slowest.
MarbleSculptures and interior walls.Weakest stone at 360, but the only one carrying a flat beauty bonus, and that is what lifts room impressiveness.
SandstoneGeneral purpose building blocks.The quickest stone to build with by a clear margin, and still 420 hit points.
LimestoneGeneral purpose, and underrated.Second-highest stone at 465.
SteelMachinery, power conduits, mid-game weapons, and anything that must hold air pressure.Burns at 40% flammability against wood's 100% and stone's zero. A real risk, not a disqualifying one.
PlasteelLate game armor, bionics, ship parts.Very rare and expensive, and the strongest material in the game at 840.
VacstoneOdyssey only. Mined in orbit.The strongest stone at 540, which displaced granite from the top of that list.

Steel walls do burn, and since patch 1.5 fire damage scales with a building's flammability as well. That makes steel a genuine fire risk, but not a reason to rule it out: a steel wall has 300 hit points against wood's 195 and takes 135 work against granite's 950. On an ice sheet where steel is most of what you have, build with it. In orbit you have no choice at all, because only metallic walls hold air pressure, so a stone gravship will not stay pressurized.

Temperature Control​

You have to manage both heat and cold to keep pawns alive and food fresh.

The Freezer​

Build a dedicated room for food storage and install a cooler. Food stops spoiling entirely at 0°C, so anything below freezing preserves it. Setting a few degrees lower buys a thermal buffer against heat waves and power cuts, which is the actual reason to overshoot, and it does not cost you anything: a cooler draws a fixed 200W while running and 20W idle, so a colder target changes how often it runs and not how hard it pulls.

Build a one-tile airlock at the entrance, meaning two doors with a gap between them and not side by side, because adjacent doors both open as a pawn walks through and leak more heat. Double-wall the freezer to insulate it. RimWorld genuinely models this: a second wall layer halves the temperature equalization through the wall, though a third does nothing and the layers have to be adjacent. That is what keeps the cold in during power outages and solar flares. Make sure the hot side of the cooler exhausts outdoors or into an unroofed chimney tile.

Climate Control​

In extremely hot or cold biomes, use a central hallway to heat or cool your base.

  1. Build a wide central hallway connecting all bedrooms.
  2. Place heaters or coolers in the hallway.
  3. Install vents in the walls of each bedroom connecting to the hallway. This equalizes the temperature across the entire block of rooms without needing a heater in every single room.

Setting Up Crafting Chains​

Do not micromanage your crafting tables. Use the "Do until you have X" billing system.

Instead of telling a pawn to make 10 simple meals every day, set a bill on the stove to "Make Simple Meals", click Details, and change the criteria to "Do until you have X". Set X to three times your colonist count. This automates production. The cook will make meals until the stockpile hits the target, then stop and do other work until the meal count drops again.

Apply this logic to everything: clothes, medicine, and components. Set bills to keep a baseline stock of dusters, flak vests, and industrial medicine, and your colony will run itself.

Frequently Asked Questions​

What is the best material to build with in RimWorld?

Stone for most walls. Granite is the strongest of the planetside stones at 510 wall hit points, sandstone is the quickest to build with, and marble carries the beauty bonus for sculptures and interior walls. Wood burns fully and steel burns at 40 percent, so keep wood out of anything structural, but steel is still worth using where speed or air-tightness matters.

What temperature should a RimWorld freezer be set to?

Anything below 0C works, because that is where spoilage stops completely. Going a few degrees lower buys you a buffer against heat waves and power cuts, and it costs nothing, since a cooler draws a fixed 200W running and 20W idle no matter what you set the target to.

How do I stop my freezer from losing its cold?

Build a one-tile airlock at the entrance, meaning two doors with a gap between them and not side by side, since adjacent doors both open as a pawn passes and leak more. Then double-wall the room, which really does halve heat exchange through the wall, though a third layer adds nothing. Make sure the cooler's hot side exhausts outdoors or into an unroofed chimney tile.

How do I heat or cool a whole base at once?

Build a wide central hallway connecting all the bedrooms, place your heaters or coolers in that hallway, and install vents in each bedroom wall connecting back to it. That equalizes temperature across the whole block without a heater in every room.

How do I stop micromanaging my crafting bills?

Open the bill details and switch the criteria to Do until you have X. For meals, set X to three times your colonist count. The cook produces until the stockpile hits the target, then moves on to other work.