I’ve played the original with a couple mods a few years back and had much fun. Thought about starting again and wondered if I need the DLC nowadays.
DLC are only really mandatory if you are playing with mods that require them.
The base game of Rimworld is still chock full of stuff to do and stories to experience, and i always reccomend people play just the base game by itself before thinking about DLC or mods, because DLC adds so many mechanics and new items as to be completely overwhelming even if you have a familiarity with the base game, and if you have no familiarity? Good lord!
I would say absolutely not. Modlists and the DLC are just the frosting on the cake. I’ve been playing since 1.17 and was straight vanilla until very recently when I snagged up Biotech because I wanted generational arcs to the stories I was playing. Not to knock mods at all. I go absolutely buckwild with mods on other games. Base Rimworld simply scratches that itch all by itself.
I recently did some Vanilla with my brother since he hadn’t splurged for all the DLC yet. It was still a ton of fun but missed having Idealigion. Just love all the depth it adds!
Its not mandatory, but a lot of mods nowadays require them. But if you want to play mostly Vanilla gameplay, you will be fine without them But I really recommend the DLCs, they add some really great game mechanics (and if you dont like them, they can be mostly ignored)
Thank you so much for the answers everyone! I’ll just play without while re-aquainting myself and then check it out :)
