RimWorld fans rejoice! The new Odyssey add-on brings space adventures and a free 1.6 update with improvements that every fan has been waiting for.
Reason to rejoice for all fans of one of the best building games! Developer Ludeon Studios has unveiled Odyssey, the fifth expansion for RimWorld But as exciting as the prospect of new content is, the real excitement in the community is sparked by another new feature that comes with the free 1.6 update and is technically a minor revolution for RimWorld.
Adventure in the stars: What’s in the new Odyssey add-on
With the Odyssey expansion (to the add-on on Steam), you’ll literally set sail for new shores. The focus is on building your own grav ship, which serves not only as a means of transport, but also as your mobile, flying base. Instead of being tied to a fixed location on the planet, you can travel the world with your ship, land anywhere, and explore new biomes.
Among other things, you can expect glowing mushroom forests in permanent darkness, war-torn ruins with dangerous mutants, and vast grasslands. The expansion promises over 40 new animal species, from cute prairie dogs to fearsome wildcats.
But the adventure doesn’t end on the planet’s surface:You can even steer your ship into orbitto search abandoned space stations, asteroids, and mechanoid wrecks for valuable technology. Meanwhile, an ancient machine intelligence awakens in space, posing a new threat.
The free update 1.6 has it all
As exciting as all this sounds, the real sensation for countless fans in the Steam comment columnsis the simultaneous release of update 1.6, which will be free for all owners of the main game. The reason for the euphoria is the solution to a problem that can drive any experienced RimWorld player to despair:the performance in the late game.
Ludeon Studios has made some deep technical changes to address this. Probably the most important change is that the pathfinding system has been completely reworked and now supports multithreading. The lighting system has also been optimized for multiple CPU cores.
Simply put, this means that the game can finally distribute the computing load generated by hundreds of colonists, animals, and enemies across multiple cores of your processor.
The results shared by the developers led by mastermind Tynan Sylvester in their blog sound impressive:
- Faster game starts:The loading time of the game with all expansions was reduced from 18.57 seconds to just 4.66 seconds on a test system – even though the new Odyssey add-on was already included in the calculation.
- Smoother late game:In late game saves with large colonies, an increase in game speed (ticks per second) of 20 to 30 percent was measured.
YouTuber Veequeue has already tested the performance improvements in a video, and evencolonies with 400 to 500 inhabitantsnow appear to run smoothly:
However, update 1.6 is much more than just a performance patch. It brings a whole host of quality-of-life improvements and new features, many of which feel like official integrations of popular mods – such as better planning tools for your base or flying creatures.
Both the Odyssey expansion and the final update 1.6 are scheduled to be released in about a month. If you don’t want to wait, you can try out version 1.6 now via the Unstable branch on Steam and see the technical improvements for yourself – but keep in mind that your mods will no longer work.
