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RimWorld recently released its fifth expansion, Odyssey, which (unsurprisingly) has a heavy focus on travel. One particularly substantial change is the introduction of gravtech, technology that allows players to create a mobile gravship that can be developed into a moving base. While it remains to be seen how it’s received compared to the game’sother expansions, Odyssey’s focus on travel adds an interesting facet to a typically stationary base-building game.
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This guide helps discuss how to jump into the DLC’s additions, with a focus on the early game and beginner-friendly tips.
Choosing How to Begin
Once you have Odyssey installed, you’ll probably want to start a new save. The DLC changes a lot about world generation and part of the fun and utility of using a gravship is exploring the various new locales that now get created when you make an Odyssey world.
The start you choose is up to you, but the new “The Gravship” start allows you to immediately begin using gravtech with the help of a starter crew of three colonists, a small gravship, and the opportunity to immediately expand your ship a little by collecting some nearby materials that your crew parked their ship to collect. Just make sure you collect what’s around quickly; this start also has you hunted by mechanoids, and you’ll need to flee in your ship before they find you.
Alternatively, you can begin a game as normal with one of the more standard starts. After a short wait (six days), you should get the Mechanoid Signal quest. Once you accept this quest, a Grav Engine, along with important Gravlite Panels, will crash nearby. Once you get a colonist to investigate the engine, you can then research “Basic Gravtech” (which The Gravship start gets by default). Once you have that researched, you can theoretically build your own gravship, assuming you have all the necessary materials.
The Gravship start has a mini-plot in which you’re consistently chased by mechanoids and must move around, with the idea being you typically won’t be able to have a static base and that you’ll instead heavily rely on using your gravship to support your colonists. In testing, this wasn’toppressive, with seemingly long stretches before any mechanoids seek you out, but it’s worth noting.
Gravship Basics
Gravtech introduces a few mechanics that are important to understand if you want to make the most of Odyssey and avoid any awkward mistakes. The next few subsections cover the basics:
Creating a Gravship Skeleton
With Basic Gravtech researched, you’ll be able to start building a functional ship around a Grav Engine. First, click on your engine and note its gravity field (the big radius highlighted in blue). This is your ship’s build area; you’ll need to build within that field for anything to fly and travel correctly.
Next, you’ll need to use Gravship Substructure, built by clicking the engine and at the cost of one Gravlite Panel and four Steel per tile, to expand your engine and create useable buildspace within your engine’s gravity radius.You’ll know things are building correctly because when you click on your engine, both the engine and its attached substructures will be blue (red means something is technically attached but outside the gravity well, meaning you will want to make adjustments).
Think of this as your ship’s body or skeleton; if you want something to fly with the ship, it must be built on this blue area, almost always first requiring that you lay down substructure. Plan before committing resources; Gravlite Panels will initially be a somewhat rare resource. Additionally, an engine can initially only support up to 500 connected substructures. Having a general idea of the shape you want your ship to be and the ways you want to expand it can save time and headache, even if you alter your plan later.
Ship Essentials
To fly, a gravship will need a Pilot Console, Small Thrusters (you’ll want four, but should at least have two), and a Small Chemfuel Tank. All of these structures must be properly attached to the ship (and thus blue when you click on your engine) and your tanks must be filled with enough chemfuel for your flight. While you can fly with less (the minimum to fly appears to be 50), 200 chemfuel will help ensure your ship can move a decent amount of distance. Too little fuel, and your range will be limited, even if your thrusters could take you farther.
Based on testing, multiple thrusters don’t increase the fuel consumption of your ship.
While not critically important until going into space, you’ll also probably want to eventually enclose key parts of your ship that you want colonists to move around with Gravship Hull walls. These metal walls are airtight; if you don’t enclose a room in airtight walls and then enter space, they will depressurize. This can be lethally dangerous to colonists that aren’t equipped for the void of space. Note, however, that traveling with your ship from one part of the planet to anotherdoesn’ttake you into space.
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Over time, you’ll likely want to make a gravship that can support your colonists all on its own. Research will be necessary to unlock many important improvements, so you’ll want a Simple Research Bench soon after getting a functional ship.Early goals should be Batteries, a Biofuel Refinery, and some form of power generation, with Solar Generators a good way to generate energy fairly consistently (wind doesn’t blow in space).
You’ll also need a steady supply of food and something to turn into fuel. A decent grid of Hydroponics Basins can be great for both. Just ensure you also have a good way to store the food you’re making.
While Odyssey isn’t simulating realistic ship physics, thrusters do need space behind them for their fiery thrust. You can see how far back they’ll blast when placing them. Blocked thrusters won’t help you fly.
With all the above and some colonists to pilot, your ship should be able to fly. Gravships are flown via the Gravship Launch command, which you can choose from your ship’s Pilot Console.
Flying a gravship isn’t without risk. Whenever you fly, you’ll notice your launch has a score denoting its expected quality. This is based on your crew count, thruster count, and the Piloting Ability of your pilot and their co-pilot.A colonist’s Piloting Ability will mostly be determined by their Intelligence and their overall health.
A better quality launch reduces your ship’s cooldown to launch again and also reduces the risk of a Minor Incident. These are events that occur when landing and include things like minor damage being dealt to various parts throughout your ship or your thrusters suddenly shorting and needing new Components to operate again.
Based on testing, a low rating is pretty typical at first (the small thrusters seem to have only a small impact on your rating, so getting a reasonably high rating seemed very difficult without researching stronger thrusters).Luckily, it’s usually not catastrophic to fly with a low quality rating.Assuming something else doesn’t go wrong shortly after, a colony can usually handle a Minor Incident with some time and possibly Components (and landing in a new area typically means there will be at least a few Components available to mine if you’re low).
Expansion and Discovery
RimWorld is a vast game and Odyssey holds far more than could be discussed in this article, but the above should at least get you a functioning ship that you can then develop and expand into what might eventually become a fully self-sustaining and highly defensible base capable of traveling long distances. It’s interesting that a DLC introducing mechanics and structures that can dramatically empower a colony has followed the previous expansion,Anomaly, which had a focus on horror and fighting back an unknowable terror.
One useful piece of tech to aim for is a Gravcore, which you’ll sometimes be told the location of and will likely need to travel to and fight mechanoids or other threats to acquire.This will let you build a Grav Field Extender, which increases the radius of your ship’s gravity field and also allows the ship to sustain more substructures.
Beyond that, a gravship supports a new playstyle in RimWorld in which a colony can repeatedly move to new hexes, exploit them for resources, and leave if a hex becomes too depleted, dangerous, or simply starts to bore you. Previously, moving a base to a new location was a major undertaking. In Odyssey, it’s basically encouraged. Gravship bases have their limitations (namely size), but the ability to constantly move a whole base to a new map is a huge advantage. RimWorld is stillbrutally difficult, but Odyssey is yet another DLC for the game which opens up a huge swathe of new options.
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