This was technically posted on Steam as a guide first but since I already lost the table it linked to once, I’ll post it here for safeguarding too.

Introduction and background

The Vanilla Expanded mod line started as just that: expanding areas of vanilla Rimworld that were lacking. It has since then grown way past this idea but has kept the name “Vanilla Expanded” for brand/marketing recognition and the innate appeal of “Vanilla Plus” modded playthrough.

However, as the creators themselves will tell you, subscribing to every Vanilla Expanded mod is just not a good idea anymore for a lore friendly vanilla plus playthrough. For newer players who just want to dip their toes into modding, the sheer number of Vanilla Expanded mods can also be daunting and the mechanics they add overwhelming especially when they have no remote link to vanilla mechanics anymore.

This is not to throw shade at the Vanilla Expanded team, they’ve done some amazing work but that doesn’t change that “Vanilla Expanded” is a really bad name to describe a lot of the mods they brought out.

I have gone through every Vanilla Expanded mod on the Workshop and asked the following questions for each of them:
– Does it expand on something Vanilla Rimworld establishes?
– Does it fit Rimworld’s lore/world? (more on that below)
– How bloated are the features the mod adds?

I make no pretence at being fully objective here but I will try to be as consistent as I can. For transparency, I treat Rimworld as a mostly grounded science fiction sort of Sims-like survival game. In that context I like mods that add to the personality of my pawns to give me more incentive to take care of them and mods that add to the underserved survival parts of the game. If you’re looking to have a medieval focused playthrough or if you’re looking to make a Stardew Valley colony that just farms and cooks nice food, some of my ratings won’t apply to you and that’s fine. These ratings aren’t meant to tell you whether a mod is good or bad, they’re simply meant to inform you on how well they would fit a vanilla+ playthrough.

Everything is consolidated in one big Excel sheet down below so you can easily search and filter for specific mods or bloat/vanilla/lore friendly levels.

Defining Vanilla (+)

Whilst the artstyle of Vanilla Expanded mods might match the vanilla artstyle, their content can often be seen as either breaking vanilla rules or being brand new systems that have nothing to do with anything Vanilla Rimworld offers.

At its origins Rimworld was about escaping the planet you are on, the titular rimworld, the win condition of vanilla and Royalty being a way of flying away from the planet. Ideology, Biotech and Anomaly all added content and win conditions that do not make sense in that context, why found and develop a religion or a cult with your 3-5 compatriots if you’re just trying to get off the planet? And why in hell would you want to have kids here? This changes the goal of vanilla Rimworld from escaping the planet to simply surviving it and maybe even thrive on it.

To me a vanilla friendly mod is one that doesn’t forget that aspect. Vanilla expanding mods need to improve a pre-existing aspect of the game that has some impact on the survival experience of the colony. They should not add brand new mechanics that are dissociated from vanilla mechanics nor should they run away with a lore friendly theme to make the game into something it isn’t. The idea is always to aim for that Vanilla+ experience where the mods don’t even stand out from vanilla content that you wouldn’t even know what is vanilla and what is modded.

Defining Lore Friendliness

I’m not a Rimworld lore expert nor is Rimworld a lore heavy game anyway. It goes to show that the most in-depth source of lore is a fan project book made by the VE team themselves, whilst the vague (now obsolete) lore primer let them get away with almost anything. Ludeon studios also enjoyed that freedom they made for themselves by adding weird stuff like vampires or the entirety of the Insanity DLC. Yes I am saying that if I were to review some of the expansions’ content, it wouldn’t be particularly well rated in terms of vanilla+ or lore friendly feeling.

In my view of a mostly grounded science fiction game, I don’t think magic should be a thing in vanilla Rimworld nor do I really buy into the whole “every planet can have tribals, medieval castles and advanced space faring civilisations all at once” thing so I have some very clear cut opinions about some of the VE Factions mods. You can disagree with me, you can tell me I’m objectively wrong about the lore and you might be right but since the official lore is so low effort, I draw my arbitrary lines where I see fit, and at least we can all agree that integrating races from Baldur’s Gate 3 or anime catgirls is BS.

Defining Bloat

Several VE mods add elements of little value which only increase the amount of stuff that can be made without filling a specific niche or gap the vanilla game had. As the number of mods increased, there’s also a level of redundancy between mods. I’ll take one example here: do we really need 8 different bed variants? It might make sense for decoration purposes but if you’re actually trying to play the vanilla game to win then you’re not gonna waste time building simple beds for their cottage vibe if they have strictly worse sleep stats.

There is a fair bit of arbitrary decision making on my part here such as when it comes to differentiating additional weapons adding interesting gameplay choices and additional weapons adding bloat for example, but as a general rule of thumb, I determine bloat by asking the questions “Would I significantly miss the things this mod adds if I removed it?” and “Would my gameplay change if I removed this mod?”

The Big Review Table

To make it easier to browse and visually less daunting, I’ve compiled the review of each of the almost 100 mods of the Vanilla Expanded brand in the following Excel sheet:

Each parameter (Vanilla expansion, Lore Friendliness and Bloat Level) can take one of three values.

Vanilla Expansion and Lore Friendliness can be:

• 3 –> The mod is expanding on vanilla or is lore friendly
• 2 –> The mod mostly expands on vanilla mechanics or mostly fits in with the establishes lore but takes a few too many liberties
• 1 –> The mod adds features that have no basis in vanilla or go against the lore/world logic

Bloat Level can be 1, 2 or 3 with 3 being the worst.

Each cell is also colour coded with purple being bad, yellow being medium and teal being good.

Additionally, I included a comments column explaining my thought process when assessing the mod.

Please note once more that this review table is in no way an assessment of the mods’ quality. I like quite a few of the lore breaking and non-vanilla friendly mods but I simply do not think they befit the concept the name “Vanilla Expanded” should be thriving for.