(WIP) Downloading Mods

Unlike other games, RimWorld modding relies completely on the Steam Workshop for distribution. Even before this was established, mod-sites like Nexus were only a niche place to get mods from and most people were using the Ludeon Forums instead. The history and reasons for this development aside though, it simply is what the mod community decided upon.

There are other sites on the internet that are hosting mods for RimWorld, but typically they are either very restricted in their selection of mods, host files pulled from the Steam Workshop without consent or are in the worst cases known to distribute malware, have problematic ads on their pages, etc. Long story short; none of the few alternatives are reliable or trustworthy.

In addition, relying on those sources is just unnecessary. Ludeon allows people to download RimWorld mods from the Steam Workshop even if you don't own the game on Steam anyways. In fact, Steam even supports the download without using the Steam Client and doesn't need you to have a Steam account to begin with. What makes this possible is the use of SteamCMD - a commandline-tool into Steam's API that allows you interact with their servers directly and with an anonymous login. To use this method you don't even need to understand what all this means - people made easy to use tools that let you pick & use those mods just as if you were using Steam officially.

Because of all that, there is virtually NO REASON to not just get your mods from the best source available. In addition, most troubleshooter will not even offer support if you run into errors and issues if you don't use mods from Steam. It's hard to impossible to confirm the integrity of your mods if you got them from somewhere else. And having up-to-date versions - based on Steam - is usually the baseline that's expected for mods to be reliable.

The only exceptions to this rule are mods that are outright not available on the Workshop, which are few and far between. The regular player most likely won't ever come across the need to deal with those and if you do, you typically have to engage with slightly advanced topics already. The most common case here are mods only available on Github, which is often used for mods in internal testing or which are not meant for widespread use. Information on how to download and use mods from those sources is handled in this guide.

This will be the standard scenario for most people. As long as you own the game on Steam, all you have to - and; should! - do, is to use the methods offered by Steam to deal with your mods. If you want to download one, you click 'Subscribe' in the Steam Client and wait for the download to finish. If you want to remove a mod from your drive, click 'Unsubscribe' and Steam will automatically delete it. This is usually the most reliable method and comes with the least risks of something going wrong.

If you don't already own the game on another platform we would highly recommend buying on Steam just for the reasons of 'quality of life' - this is also indirectly recommended by the developer. As already hinted, it's not necessary and you can still use Steam mods for games bought on other platforms, but if you want the best ease of use, Steam is the way to go.

One of the reasons is the fact that Steam also keeps your mods automatically up-to-date, which is exactly what you want. There are unfortunately caveats to this as well, but for the average user, Steam managing all your mods is simply the best approach.

From a technical standpoint, Steam-version of the game is mostly the same as (the DRM-free)  version distributed everywhere else. The main difference is that on Steam your mods will be downloaded into their own folder within your SteamLibrary and the game uses a hook into Steam's API to access them as usual.

Steam Workshop mods are placed into their very own folder named by RimWorld's SteamID - 294100. The individual mods are placed in sub-folders named by their respective WorkshopID. This can be important information if you have to find a particular mod on your drive since the WorkshopID is used directly in the URL for mod-pages on the Workshop. As an example, Harmony has the URL:

• https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2009463077

The location of the mod on your system therefore will be:

• ..\SteamLibrary\steamapps\workshop\content\294100\2009463077

This might not be knowledge necessary for everyday use, but can help in a variety of cases. The mods downloaded via Steam can be used by non-Steam installations of RimWorld just as well - if you ever want to use one of them as a local mod, just moving their WorkshopID-folder into your game's local Mods folder will allow you to use them with a local copy of RimWorld and/or keeps them out of reach from Steam automatically updating them. More about this in the following topics though...

WIP!