RimWorld Guide: Wealth and Wealth Management

RimWorld Guide: Wealth and Wealth Management

Want to ‘kill’ raiders before they even enter your map? This RimWorld Wealth Management Guide and Tutorial will help you do just that. It also answers all the following: What is wealth? How do you manage wealth? What counts as wealth? What doesn’t count as wealth? Why should you manage wealth? And many more.

[Video Transcript]
Wealth management
Hey everyone, Adam here with another Rimworld guide. I’ve seen and heard a ton of people asking all over the place ‘what is wealth’, ‘how do you manage wealth’, ‘what are raid points’, and so on. There is a ton of information and nuances about these subjects and exactly how they work, so in this RimWorld guide I’m going to focus on two main topics.

Firstly, What is wealth management, why you should do it, and how to actually do so.
And second, What counts as wealth, what doesn’t count as wealth, and how much various things do count.

As I mentioned, there is a ton of things to dig into, but I’m going to try to focus on what is most important as well as what is most commonly asked. I’ll have a follow-up guide that is more specific to Raid Points, which I’ll mention a lot here.

Example
This example base gets raids of about 22 tribal enemies. We can throw out some of the useless items and reduce the size of raids by about 25%. By doing this, 5 enemies simply would not show up. Let’s go back in time and make this happen.

Here’s the same base with some things we didn’t need thrown away. We’ve still got huge piles of food, medicine, spare weapons, drugs, components, 24 Luciferium and 5 mortar barrels. All that’s gone is junk that would most likely never be used or that could easily be acquired again.
This is basic “Wealth Management” a tactic that can drastically reduce raid size. In this example, after the great purge, the base now only gets attacked by 17 tribals. That’s 5 enemies who are essentially dead without a shot being fired. This example’s 25% reduction in raid size would apply on any difficulty.

WEALTH MANAGEMENT
Simply put: Wealth Management means that if you remove some wealth then you remove some raiders. In RimWorld, a significant factor in the size of raids is Wealth that exists on the map.

What exactly is kept and what exactly is tossed is up to you. The more wealth that is reduced the greater effect on the size of raids.

In this example base I kept items I thought would be useful in the near future or items that were especially rare. I tossed items that would not be used in the near future. Anything I’d consider selling for silver I’d consider throwing away. Silver can always be earned again which means that even silver can be thrown away in the most dire of times.

Here’s a list of all the things I got rid of in this example:

The methods of “Wealth Management” I recommend most are Trading and Bribery:
By trading, you can turn your useless wealth into useful items. I like to call this ‘wealth that can defend itself’, or effective wealth.

Things like better weapons, better armor, more material for turrets and mortars, better walls in key defensive locations … you get the idea.

You can also gift wealth to other factions so that they become allies, allowing you to call them in using the Comms Console, from the Microelectronics Research, for future trade or military assistance.

I even recommend intentionally settling near Outlander factions so you can easily trade or bribe them. The Empire, from the Royalty DLC, also counts as an Outlander faction, however you will need someone of at least the Knight rank to directly trade with them. You can still call them in for military aid if allied, even without your own royal, though.

Early game, bribes and trades can only be accomplished when a Trade Caravan arrives on your map or if you caravan to another faction. You may not be familiar with forming your own early game caravans and that’s ok. Wealth Management is the perfect time to learn.

Acquire a colonist who you wouldn’t mind losing if something terrible were to happen, perhaps some random autojoin that you would have banished anyway. Tame a pack animal or three like Alpacas, or Muffalos, or more ideally Donkeys or Horses. Then, form a caravan and head out. Worst case scenario is that you lose the entire caravan. Wealth successfully managed! Best case scenario you trade for useful items or bribe another faction successfully. Raids only consider colonists and wealth on your map. The moment the caravan leaves the map is the moment the caravan stops counting for raids on your map.

Generally, the items I recommend to purchase via trading are specialty weapons, consumables, and components. Specialty weapons like a Smoke Launcher, an EMP Grenade, a Sniper Rifle, or Reinforced Mortar barrels create additional combat options which would otherwise be impossible. Consumables, like Psychic Shock and Insanity Lances, Low Shields, and even Go Juice can solve problems that may otherwise be incredibly difficult. And, as I always say, ABC, Always Buy Components. But Adam, I already have 400 componenets .. A.B.C. If you are curious if a town has restocked you can check by clicking on it and hitting “Show What will buy”.

Other Wealth Management options involve destroying items.

The quickest, but most tedious, way to destroy wealth is to abandon items in a caravan. You can do this by setting up a caravan as previously mentioned and either abandoning the entire caravan off your map somewhere, or by clicking through the caravan’s inventory on the world map and having the drop item by item.

Grenades can also remove items quickly. Zone all the items into a pile and throw Molotovs or Frag Grenades at the pile. This method is especially useful for fresh corpses. One additional trick to the incendiary method is to roof the area so that the auto-rain event doesn’t spawn and put out the fire before everything is gone. You’ll also want to make sure colonists are not zoned to add additional items to the pile or extinguish the fires.

Zoning items outdoors also causes many items to deteriorate away. As the items lose hitpoints they quickly lose their value. Zoning these in water will increase the speed at which they deteriorate. You can see more details about this in my guide on Tainted Clothing.
I also wanted to take some time to talk about wealth bloat. Instead of having to cull your wealth every so often you can implement methods in which you simply gain less wealth in the first place.

A common example is storing thousands of food. Having food storage for a bad event is a good thing, but having 6,000 rice stored for 3 colonists is doing way more harm than it is helping. Even worse, would be processing that 6,000 rice into meals and storing the meals. This is one of the most common things I see when tuning in to other’s RimWorld content. I plan on putting out a food production guide that will cover this in much more detail, so, if curious about the specifics please check out that video as well!

Remember that virtually everything in Rimworld increases in value as it is processed. The meals are worth more than the ingredients. Store enough food so you can survive Toxic Fallouts, which can now only last around 11 days maximum, unlike the early days of RimWorld. Don’t store multiple years’ worth of food.

The concept of only store what you need applies to all items. Common mistakes are mining all the resources available immediately. Instead, store a bit and mine the rest when needed. Likewise, set jobs such as cutting stone blocks to ‘do until x’ rather than having thousands of cut stone lying around, causing raids to be larger and deadlier.

If you have a butchering empire, you may be radically increasing wealth through meat and leather. Then processing these two into meals and clothes can create even more wealth that is only stored and not used. A drug empire is the same concept: be careful of storing excessive plants or even worse, completed drugs.

Those are all fine ways to play, but try to regularly remove those goods. Ideally trading them for ‘wealth that can defend itself’ or allies.

Overbuilding can also be an issue and that is more than simply “Don’t make everything out of gold.” The most common example is in a mountain base and smoothing everything everywhere. Perhaps, consider not smoothing the floors in the stockpile rooms and hallways that are not frequently used. A small addition to this I will mention ties in with over production in general. If you are keeping 20 times more food than you need, that also equates into a larger storage area than you need, more coolers than you need, etc. All of this adds to wealth.
I also wanted to mention that keeping Item Quality in mind can be very important. Many items drastically go up in market value with quality but may not go up in usefulness. For example, an item of Masterwork quality is generally about twice the value of an item of Normal quality. Depending on the item and its use, you may or may not find it twice as effective. A good example of this is shelving. If you have a shelf you keep Molotovs on out by the burn pile, it doesn’t really matter if it is poor quality of legendary. When building these things it may be a good idea to have one of your less skilled builders do the work.

Having said all of this, I want to be clear that absolutely maximizing wealth management is not mandatory. You should play in the way you find most fun and adjust the settings appropriately. I tend to be somewhat overzealous, especially early game, about my wealth management due to the extreme difficulties I choose to play on. If you are playing on peaceful, for instance, feel free to smooth that mountain until you can see your reflection in every rock.

WEALTH
Alright, so what counts as wealth? Generally, what counts as wealth is anything visible on the map that is not controlled by another faction, though there are a few exceptions. The number I recommend using for “Wealth Management” is “Colony Wealth” located by clicking the History Button (book button) and the Statistics Tab. This number is easy to check while playing.
There are no specific points of wealth to keep in mind when considering threats and raids. Colony Wealth does affect mood through Expectations. Just remember simply, more wealth means bigger threats.

Colony Wealth is the number I recommend watching but it is not perfectly accurate as not all wealth is created equal in terms of raid size, but I’ll get more into that during the Raid Point guide.

The two main exceptions to “Colony Wealth” are that firstly, all buildings are counted at half their market value and second, all buildings are counted as if they had full hitpoints.
I call this other number “Storyteller Wealth”. “Storyteller Wealth” is only visible via Development Mode.

We tested a lot of crazy scenarios using this “Storyteller Wealth” number to see what truly counts. Rimworld does not calculate wealth continuously. After changing something, I gave it a moment for Rimworld to update. Please, test these scenarios and tons of other scenarios. If you find anything interesting please share in the comments as I’d love to see them.

Here’s some rapid fire of what we’ve discovered,

Visible starting walls, doors, columns, floors, tables etc. all count.

If they are not visible, they don’t count.

Destructible ancient things don’t count.

Stone Tile and Flagstone roads count.

Bridges count.

Asphalt and Dirt roads don’t count.

The walls of an Ancient Danger don’t count until claimed. The hidden items and buildings inside don’t count.

Open the Ancient Danger and the items immediately count.

The floor immediately counts.

Walls, Tables, Columns, Sarcophogi, Cryptosleep Caskets and other furniture don’t count until claimed.

Stone Chunks don’t count.

Unmined materials don’t count.

Mined items however, immediately count.

Meteors don’t count.

Mine them, though, and the resources count.

Ship parts don’t count, until deconstructed, which makes the dropped resources count.

Enemy Raider’s don’t count. Anything in their inventory doesn’t count. Once dead, the corpse counts. The tainted clothes count. Anything that drops counts.

A Mech Cluster drops. Nothing counts.

Defeat the Mech Cluster and the buildings still do not count. Any items do, however.

The walls, unstable power cells and other buildings don’t count until claimed.

For sieges, all the dropped items immediately count.

Barricades and Mortars don’t count until claimed.

A trade caravan doesn’t count. Anything in their inventory doesn’t count. If they die, the corpse counts. The tainted clothes count. Anything that drops counts.

Living wild animals don’t count.

Tamed animals do count.

Every fresh corpse on the ground counts.

Buried corpses still count while Fresh.

Corpses in a Transport Pod count and stays fresh forever.

Rotten and desiccated corpses don’t Count.

Rotten human corpses don’t count, but tainted clothes on the corpse do count.
Mech Corpses count.

Items, like Yayo, count. Forbidden. Unforbidden. Stockpile. No stockpile. It doesn’t matter, it all counts.

Home Zone. No Home zone. Both count.

In a pawn’s inventory. Counts.

In a prisoner’s inventory. Counts.

In a slave’s inventory. Counts.

In a guest’s inventory. Does NOT count. Guest weapons, clothing and inventory don’t count.

In a tamed animal’s inventory. Counts.

In any of those inventories and in a Cryptosleep casket: still count.

In any of those inventories and in a Transport Pod: still count.

Huge pile of gold. Counts.

Take the gold on a Caravan. That Gold does NOT count here on this map tile.

The gold does count on the caravan. Ambushes may be scary. Though you could park the caravan over your settlement to prevent ambushes, sort of like having an offshore banking account.

A full hitpoint item is worth its Market Value.

A damaged item’s Market Value is significantly reduced.

The effectiveness of weapons isn’t affected by Hit Points.

Tainted clothing’s Market Value is reduced by 90%.

Damaged clothing’s Market value is significantly reduced.

Both may cause mood issues, but are just as effective as the full hitpoint untainted version.

Any building only counts for half its Market value, though many buildings don’t list the market value.

Significantly damaged buildings still count as if they had full hitpoints.

An uninstalled piece of furniture counts as an item and counts at full market value.

An installed piece of furniture counts as a building and counts at half market value.

A damaged installed piece of furniture counts as a full hit point building.

A damaged uninstalled piece of furniture counts as an item and at the displayed market value.

A colonist is worth the displayed market value.

A pawn’s clothing, weapon and inventory all count, but aren’t included in this Market Value number.

Skill levels affect market value.

Health conditions affect market value, including missing limbs.

Minor injuries affect market value.

Brain damage affects market value the most.

Implants always count at full value whether installed or not.

A prisoner counts for the full market value.

Slaves count for only 75% of the listed Market Value.

Floors of any type count as buildings, meaning they only give half wealth as well.

Floors hidden by walls still count.

The wall counts too.

Smooth Stone Floors count.

Smooth Stone floors covered by another floor do NOT count. Only the floor on top counts.

Research levels do not add to wealth.

Psycasting levels do not either.

Commonly made structures like walls, doors, and floors all count as buildings but don’t display a market value. All the numbers displayed are listed in Market Value. Halve all numbers for Storyteller wealth.

Remember, Don’t feel obligated to Manage your wealth. You should play Rimworld however you most enjoy it. Wealth management is an effective way to manage the size of raids and have more success on higher difficulties though. It is definitely NOT a requirement to enjoy or even beat the game. Anyway you want to play Rimworld is great.

Alternatives to the Wealth system in Rimworld include turning down the threat scale in the custom difficulty options, using Wealth Independent Mode, and using mods.
Wealth is only the first factor in how Rimworld determines the size of Raids. In short, Rimworld also looks at your Colonist Count, your combat animals, the difficulty setting and what can be called an “Adaption Factor”. I’ll be doing a follow up video that discusses Raid Points and how all the parts work.

Conclusion
And that does it! Hopefully this rimworld guide has helped you to understand wealth in RimWorld, both what it is, where it comes from, and how to manage it effectively.
The main takeaways are to be careful what you keep in storage, turn that wealth bloat into effective wealth by trading or gifting, and to ensure you aren’t over producing. By doing this, you can effectively kill many raiders before they even get to your base.

If you enjoyed this Rimworld guide or it helped you out at all please consider subscribing to the channel, liking the video, leaving a comment down below, and sharing it with others. If you’d like to reference a written version of this guide be sure to head over to my website at adamvseverything.com/guides.

And, as always, thanks for watching!