RimWorld Zombie Apocalypse v. 1.1 Release news

After taking a break from modding RimWorld for Alpha 8 I figured I owed it to you guys to update Zombie Apocalypse for Alpha 9 as quickly as possible. So here it is.

As usual I'll start with a quick overview of the new features that have come with RimWorld Alpha 9.

My favorite new feature in Alpha 9 is definitely alcohol. After all, in the event of a real zombie apocalypse alcoholism is pretty much my plan A. In alpha 9 colonists can now grow hops, brew and drink beer, and get drunk until they throw up and pass out. Having beer around your colony will make your colonists happier; at least until the next morning. Drunk colonists are less efficient workers.

The aging system has now had an overhaul. You will now get notifications on your colonists' birthdays, and as they grow older age-related conditions will start showing up. Colonists will not age while they are in cryptosleep.

Items like weapons, armor and clothing now have a quality level which affects their usefulness. This applies to both items taken from fallen enemies and items crafted by your colonists. Really high-quality weapons will now have engravings, which use the new tales system.

The tales system describes events that happened to your colonists through artwork. Engravings and sculptures now tell tales about your colony. All tales depict specific events that happened, and they can be about anything from repelling an invading force to the death of a colonist, or even a time that your colonist embarrassed himself after having a bit too much to drink.

These are some of the major features, but there are a ton of smaller additions to the game with this release. To view the full list please check out Tynan's release blog and video about it over on his website.

There aren't any big changes to the mod this time around, but there are a few smaller ones which I hope will add up to make the mod feel a bit more balanced and forgiving.

- Corpses no longer reanimate if their brain has been damaged or destroyed.

This was requested on the forums after the Alpha 7 release. It doesn't need any explaining. If you shoot someone in the head they should stay dead.

- There is now a minimum of one in-game hour between when a pawn dies and when it is reanimated.

This is more of an aesthetic change than anything. It was a bit jarring to see bitten people reanimating immediately after dying. Now there is a minimum gestation period of an in-game hour before a bitten corpse reanimates.

- Zombies have been slowed to 60% of the speed of humans, from 80%.
- Zombies now deal more damage, but attack more slowly.

With the addition of armor in Alpha 7 and now the personal shields in Alpha 9, zombies are able to soak up a lot more damage than they used to. It made sense to slow them down both for balance and zombie lore reasons.

- Changed the way raid sizes are determined.
- Brought Zombie point cost in line with units from other factions. This should greatly reduce the size of end-game zombie raids.

There were some complaints after Alpha 7 that the zombie hordes got really, really big in the late-game for colonies that had acquired a ridiculous amount of wealth. This should help fix that.

- Removed the extra damage taken by infected humans. Non-colonists no longer succumb more quickly to the zombie infection than colonists do.

In previous versions the zombie virus would slowly deal damage to colonists, and non-colonists would take more damage and die sooner, to allow for the hordes to build up more quickly. I decided it was no longer necessary with the new disease system, so I removed the extra damage completely for both colonists and non-colonists. You now have a lot longer to save colonists and friendlies who have been bitten.

- Extended the damage bonus to zombies for cutting weapons to include stabbing weapons.

There is no practical difference here. The selection of melee weapons has been expanded upon, so I made sure to include all of the sharp and stabby weapons. Blunt weapons still don't get a bonus to zombie-killing.

- Changed the naming scheme for zombies. All reanimated zombie names will be "Zombie [Name]" whether they were enemies or colonists.

This is just another aesthetic change. I removed the '*' distinguishing between colonist zombies and other zombies. I didn't think it was necessary.

As always, thanks for your continued support! If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, feel free to post them in the mod's thread on the Ludeon forums. If you want to show your appreciation, follow, rate or review the mod on ModDB, and share it with your friends!

Happy zombie hunting!