You’ll start with some components in most scenarios, but how you get components after that initial supply is confusing for new players just getting into the game. If you’re lucky, getting more components to keep growing your colony shouldn’t be hard.
When you first load onto a map, take a look around at the ores in the area you can mine. You should always check for two things: iron and compacted machinery.
We’re talking about components (which are mined from compacted machinery) in this guide, but looking for both materials is something you should always try to do when first loading into a map. If you can’t find much of either, you may be in for a harder time down the line than otherwise.
How to Spot Compacted Machinery
Compacted machinery tiles are a sort of yellowy, rusty brown as seen here.
It’s uncommon to spot large amounts of compacted machinery together, most often you’ll come across one to five tiles in one spot.
How to Spot Iron
Just for clarity’s sake, here’s what iron tiles generally look like; they’re dark grey with light grey edges. These often can be found in large quantities together, but it’s very possible for flat maps to spawn far less than you’re going to need to get by.
How to Get Components Aside from Mining
So let’s say you have run out of compacted machinery to dig up on the map. What do you do?
There aren’t a ton of ways to get components, but you do have options other than mining.
Deconstructing ship chunks: A fresh map usually generates at least one of these at the start, and as you play, ship chunks will fall from the sky every so often. Deconstructing ship chunks grants both iron and components, and should be done when you can if your map isn’t being generous with one or the other.
Trading: Other colonies’ traders will roll into your colony every so often, and many of them have components to trade. This is a viable method to stay stocked up on them, but try not to get too many at a time unless you are an experienced player. The higher value your colony, the bigger raids the game will throw at you. Disassembling mechanoids: This is something that won’t come into play early in a colony’s life, but once/if you start having to deal with scythers and centipedes, this is a viable source of components. Mechanoids can be broken down using the fabrication bench, which is a fair bit into the tech tree.
The first two options outlined above will be your primary source of components throughout most of a single playthrough.
Many colonies never make it to full industrial-level technology. Making disassembling mechanoids more of a true mid-to-lategame affair and is something some players, particularly tribal colony fans, never do at all.
Check out our other Rimworld guides here on GameSkinny, and good luck out there on the Rim.
