Tutorials

How to Activate Dev Mode in Rimworld

RimWorld

Rimworld has a lot of different things to manage. And with that comes the need for many gamers to heavily customize their experience. Whether that be with third-party mods and tools, or functions within the game itself. One of the main advantages of playing games on PC is the ability to modify and tweak the game’s files. Consoles restrict access to game files, but PCs have no such restriction by default. And speaking of in-game functions, console commands and developer modes are huge tools for PC gamers. Dev Mode in Rimworld is the most useful item within the game when you want to do things like this.

Keep reading to learn more about what Dev Mode in Rimworld is, and how you can make use of it. There’s a lot here, so we’ll just cover the basics of how to turn the mode on, and what kinds of things it entails.

How to Activate Dev Mode in Rimworld

Given that dev mode is primarily in the game for the sake of modding and bug testing, it has a ton of features to allow you to see the math behind Rimworld. But for our purposes, most players are concerned with cheating in item, altering pawns  and other fun stuff.

Start by pressing the Escape key to bring up the game’s options tab. Click on the Options button and a new menu will open up. Toggle the Development mode option on this menu to turn it from a Red X to a Green Check. This will cause a variety of options to show up on the top of your screen.

You can then press the first arrow icon on the top of the screen (The tooltip says Open debug actions menu.) to open up the main debug menu. Pressing a button on this new menu will spawn the new command.

 

What can Dev Mode do?

There are actually too many things that Dev Mode in Rimworld can do to list here.  The best option for many testing and cheating purposes is God mode. This toggle (the skull icon at the top of the new debug UI) will turn on the god mode option for the player. This will allow you to instantly build any ordered construction, as well as doing things like adding or removing health conditions from pawns. There’s even options to spawn in or enslave pawns so you can quickly grow your colony. One of the most useful is the T: Max All Skills command. Use this and then click on a colonist, and all their skills will be maxed out to 20. Be careful using this on enslaved or enemy pawns, as they become much harder to kill if it comes to that.

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You can also set Ideoligion for pawns on your map, bypassing the need for Conversion and potentially stopping revolts from alien ideologies. The Set Ideo command found within the dev menu is one of many options you have. Players may also spawn raids, trigger explosions, add new quests, and of course spawn entire stacks of any item in the game. You can also max Development points via an option within the main debug menu.

One of the main benefits of using this mode is the ability to spawn whichever items you wish. These are all super useful for when you want to cheat in items, using the Spawn full thing stack… command. Click an option for the item, then click somewhere on the map. This will spawn the chosen item at the spot you click. And if it can be stacked, a full stack of that item will be spawned. Go in and try to test out some options until you find something you like. You may also use a command here to change your colony and faction name.

With the new DLCs like Ideology and Biotech, they enable tons of altering of your game. You can use Dev Mode and God Mode to alter all kinds of things, including the basis of your ideologion. Click the Edit mode toggle in the upper-right of the Ideoligion menu to alter memes and precepts of your religion.  That means clicking the Lightbulb icon in the bottom right of the main UI, by the way. There are many Precepts within the game, and some of them are quite useful. You can do things like adding in faster research or making cannibalism a core part of your colony, and so much more.

Changing Your Ideology With Dev Mode

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