How to Play Multiplayer With Friends in RimWorld
In this guide, we’re going to be going over everything you need to know about multiplayer in RimWorld for PC on Steam.
RimWorld really knows how to sink hours and hours of your time. But you have a life, of course. You need to balance your gaming with hanging out with friends. What better to do that than to play RimWorld with them, eh?
Well, even though the game is finally – after so much time – out, online multiplayer wasn’t in the cards. By the traditional means, you won’t be able to grab a bud and raise a colony together (or as enemies). This isn’t any Civilization VI.
Note that I said “traditional means” though. Thanks to the amazing intellect of the modding community, you can do so with the power of mods.
Using Phi Mod, you’re going to be able to have “multiplayer interactions” between player colonies.
This allows you or a friend or multiple to set up a server (or head into the global default one) and start wrecking havoc. Ahem… maybe peaceful havoc, too? Sure, let’s pretend you’ll be nice at all.
With the mod, you’re going to be able to chat with players in the server, send or receive pods containing items, and even send colonists. Now, that last one is still in beta, but it’s better than nothing, right?
First and foremost, you need to download the mod. Do so here, and click on the Beta download buttons. Note that as of right now, the mod isn’t up to date with RimWorld 1.0. This will likely be updated, but I just needed to tell you that’s the case at the time of me writing this post.
After downloading it, you’ll get a zipped file. If you don’t already have the means to unzip it, I recommend using IZArc since it’s free and use it to unzip it.
Next, you’re going to want to look for your RimWorld mods folder. Here’s a direct tip from Rim-World on how to easily find this:
- Windows: right-click on the RimWorld executable and go to Properties. Then click on Open File Location. Your Mods folder should be in there.
- Mac: click on your hard drive and go to applications. Then right-click on the RimWorld app and go to Show Package Contents. Here you will find all the folders for the RimWorld app, including the Mods folder.
- Steam mods folder location for direct download: \Steam\steamapps\common\RimWorld\Mods
Move over the folder you got after you unzipped it, into the Mods folder.
Finally, you have to enable the mod within the main menu of the game. Before setting up a colony or loading into one, do so under “Mods.”
Once you’re in the game, if you want to set up your own folder, I recommend you follow the instructions here under How to Set Up Your Own RimWorld Multiplayer Server. It requires downloading a setup file, launching the executable, and more general black magic.
All in all, it’s as complicated as it always is to play a PC game online with friends when there’s no official server support, unfortunately. But it definitely is doable, and all you need is patience to set it all up.
As soon as Ludeon Studios decides to add MP in themselves, we’ll be sure to update this post.
For now, though, if you’re looking for more mods, I recommend checking this post with the best RimWorld mods out.
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