News on RimWorld Tools — Calculators & Guides

RimWorld Update 1.6.4543 — Odyssey Hotfix: Ending Song, Shuttle Fix & Performance Gains

Wed, 21 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

RimWorld update 1.6.4543 is a small hotfix for the 1.6 / Odyssey era released October 20, 2026. It adds a new ending song for Odyssey, stops quest shuttles from landing on water, and delivers a notable performance fix for blueprint-heavy maps. Compatible with all savegames and mods.

What's New in RimWorld 1.6.4543

New Odyssey ending song: the end credits now play the correct, epic track — a nice reward for players who reached the expansion's ending.
Quest shuttles no longer land on water: previously, shuttles could attempt a water landing and warp into your base, destroying buildings in the process.
"Impermanent Waves" reclassified: this music track now plays as a non-combat song on the planet and in orbit.
Swimming pathing: pawns now move more rapidly when pathing to water to go swimming.

Key Fixes for Odyssey Players

Royalty shuttles can no longer land on unsuitable terrain and lose their contents.
Psychic drones/soothes now affect space maps correctly.
Gravship wreckage quests can now generate after archonexus when using a gravship scenario.
Dryads are no longer deleted if taken on a gravship without their gauranlen tree.
Vacuum overlay updates correctly after gravship takeoff.
Torrential rain no longer floods through bridges.

Performance & Mod Compatibility

The most impactful fix is the vacuum resistance stat caching: it was not being cached, which caused significant performance issues on maps with lots of blueprints. Ludeon also fixed modded sound loading on Linux (paths containing spaces), corpse item search, and the RangedWeapon_WarmupMultiplier stat that was not actually being applied. As with all recent 1.6 patches, this update is compatible with existing savegames and mods.

RimWorld Update 1.7 (Waylith Engine) — Performance, Saves & Mod Compatibility

Sun, 18 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

RimWorld Update 1.7: The Waylith Engine Arrives

RimWorld update 1.7 is the biggest technical change in the game’s history: Ludeon Studios announced on October 12, 2026 that the game is moving from Unity to the Waylith Engine — a custom in-house engine — with performance improvements of 2-4x in their tests. The main Steam branch stays on 1.6 for now; 1.7 is playable today on the unstable beta branch.

What Changes in 1.7

Same game, faster engine. The game “looks and plays exactly the same,” but startup, load times with big mod lists, map generation, world generation and ticks-per-second all improve.
Stress-test results. Ludeon saw a late-game colony run at 2.2x better performance than on 1.6, and a 1,500-mod pack load in 6 minutes instead of 14. Individual results vary by PC and mods.
Save compatibility. Your 1.6 savegames load on 1.7, and 1.7 saves work if you switch back to 1.6. No action needed from players.
Mod compatibility. The vast majority of mods work on 1.7 without author changes. Some show a yellow “potentially unsupported” warning only because the version number changed.

What This Means for Modders

Most mods need no changes; Ludeon asks authors to publish a version marked 1.7-compatible so the yellow warning clears for players.
Waylith gives modders more power: latest C# language features, easier high-performance complex mods, and more accessible big visual effects.
Over two dozen modders helped test Waylith before launch.

How to Try Update 1.7

Open Steam → right-click RimWorld → Properties.
Select the Betas tab and choose branch “unstable”.
Restart Steam if needed, then choose “Play 1.7 Unstable”.

Note: 10+ year-old PCs may not run 1.7 — report issues on the official RimWorld development Discord.