Rimworld is an amazing colony management game that can consume hundreds of hours of your time playing without a single mod installed. That being said, some may feel that they would like some quality of life mods (QoL mods) to lighten up some of the gameplay and just make things a little more convenient overall without sacrificing any of the original gameplay.
I have gone through my list of 184 mods and picked out what I would consider to be the QoL mods that enhance gameplay from the original game. There are lots of mod-lists for Rimworld that already exist, but this list is meant to be a simple overview.
It is important that mods fit your game style, your taste, and your fun factor. It’s after all very personal what players may call QoL and what is not. I have seen huge lists with many mods that I wouldn’t personally consider or qualify as quality of life, but still, it’s a personal opinion. What is quality of life for one, is barely important or too game-changing for another.
If you already played the game, you know what bothers you the most and what you would like to see changed. I recommend starting with the list below, and only consider installing the mod if it fixes an issue you have with the base gameplay. Then run some tests on a test game to see if the issues are addressed.
Wall Light
If you are strict on what mods you want to install to truly keep the gameplay to the original experience, Wall Light is the single only mod needed. Wall Light makes planning and constructing rooms so much more convenient and realistic to the real world. This mod replaces the need for the floor standing lamp with a wall-mounted light providing the exact same lighting effects in the area, but not taking any floor space up. This mod does not replace the standing floor lamp, so in certain scenarios, if you prefer the standing lamp you can still use it with this mod installed. The Wall Light mod also incorporates the research for colored light effects as well as a sun lamp.
RimHUD
RimHUD is another great quality of life mod that does not alter the way the game plays at all, just how information is presented to you. It’s a UI mod that displayed detailed information about a selected pawn in one window without the need of clicking through multiple tabs to find the same information in the original gameplay.
As you can see above, the comparison between the default Rimworld UI and the RimHUD is pretty clear. RimHUD displays the pawn’s health, hunger, mood, rest, and recreation on quick and easy-to-see bars. Once you get used to reading the RimHUD UI it’s hard to go back to the default UI. This is a very good quality of life mod.
Relevant Stats in Description
Relevant Stats in Description is a mod that the popup tooltip window when selecting an item will show additional stats that are not normally displayed. These would be beauty, comfort, hitpoints, and such depending on the item selected.
This mod is another UI mod that does not touch gameplay at all, just the way information is shared with you. It’s pretty handy once you get used to playing with it and you will notice when it’s missing if you turn it off. It’s also a great mod for newer players as it basically puts exactly what you should be looking at right in front of you.
Interaction Bubbles
Interaction Bubbles is the Rimworld speech bubble mod that you may have seen if watching Youtube videos. Interaction Bubbles is a nice quality of life mod that does not affect any gameplay and only displays the pawn’s conversation as word bubbles as seen in a comic book. This can lead to better immersion between you and the colony – as well as some comical stories.
The interaction bubbles appear for a short duration before fading away but are also tied to game time so pausing will give more time to read if needed. If there is an item behind the chat bubble that you need, the interaction bubble will fade out to become more transparent when the mouse pointer intersects the chat bubble boundary and the item can be clicked.
Show Draftee Weapons
Are you sick of checking the gear tag when hit with a raid to check who’s assigned to what gear? Show Draftee Weapons mod eases that pain. When a pawn is drafted their equipped weapon will be displayed under their avatar icon. Simply draft everybody and remove those who do not do fighting and get to it. No more clicking between pawns to see who has what.
Replace Stuff
Do you hate when restarting a game to build a wood base starter just to rip the walls down and rebuild to stone later? Replace Stuff solves this pain. It makes the process of it still a task to do, but a lot more streamlined. You build a new wall on top of an existing wall and the pawn will automatically deconstruct and build the new wall without you manually doing it one at a time.
Pick Up and Haul (Optional)
Pick Up and Haul is an extremely powerful mod that does in fact alter gameplay quite a bit but in an efficiency kind of way. Therefore, I would classify this mod as optional in terms of quality of life mods. If you are trying to strictly keep the Rimworld gameplay in its original form then this mod should not be used.
The Pick Up and Haul mod absolutely affects the balance of the game by making colonists haul more efficiently. It’s a controversial one to include on a quality of life mod list, but this mod provides the biggest QoL improvement to me without feeling like I’m cheating. The reason being, why can a colonist carry 75 simple meals, but cannot carry one simple meal and one fine meal at the same time?
RimFridge (Optional)
Do you find yourself being a freezer room (0°C / 32°F) to keep raw food frozen and a second smaller refrigerator room (10°C / 50°F) to keep the meals in? RimFridge solves this issue. While, yes, RimFridge is gameplay changing it does add a lot of convenience to constructing your colony while still functioning the same as a refrigerator room. The convenience is that an entire room is no longer required for storing meals inside.
RimFridge makes storing food inside hospital rooms and prisoner rooms much easier and you will no longer require a pawn hauling meals from the kitchen area that may be far away.
Again, I am listing RimFridge as an optional QoL mod as the true minimalists will want to leave this mod off their install list for the most authentic Rimworld experience.