Vanilla Landmarks Expanded - 59 New Landmarks, Unique Biomes and World Exploration for RimWorld

Vanilla Landmarks Expanded is a RimWorld mod that expands world exploration with 59 new natural landmarks, unique environments, and special terrain modifiers. Building upon the ideas of Vanilla Exploration Expanded, it transforms the world map into a more diverse collection of locations, each offering distinctive environmental conditions and opportunities for colony development.

Combined with existing landmarks and locations introduced by the Odyssey DLC, the mod increases the total number of unique discoverable locations to 100.

Instead of treating the world map primarily as a way to travel between settlements, players can explore unusual landscapes, encounter environmental hazards, and choose new colony locations based on their geographical features.

59 New Landmarks and Natural Environments

Vanilla Landmarks Expanded introduces a wide variety of natural locations that make different regions of the planet more distinctive.

Some of the new landmarks include:

• Red Deserts: Harsh landscapes characterized by striking red terrain.
• Quicksand Dunes: Dangerous desert regions containing treacherous quicksand.
• Laurel Forests: Dense forests filled with ancient evergreen trees.
• Anima Groves: Unusual natural areas associated with powerful psychic energy.

The mod focuses on natural environments rather than artificial structures, giving players more opportunities to discover unusual terrain during expeditions or colony settlement.

Each landmark provides its own environmental character, making geographical exploration a more meaningful part of gameplay.

Unique Tile Mutators and Environmental Effects

One of the main features of Vanilla Landmarks Expanded is its integration with the tile mutator system introduced in RimWorld Odyssey.

Mutators work like environmental modifiers, changing the conditions and characteristics of individual world tiles.

Examples of environmental effects include:

• Improved soil fertility.
• Overgrown landscapes with extensive vegetation.
• Dangerous quicksand terrain.
• Tornadoes affecting the environment.

These modifiers create different opportunities and challenges depending on where players decide to travel or establish a settlement.

Landmark mutators are not restricted to landmark locations. They can also appear on ordinary world tiles, just like other environmental mutators.

Anima Groves and Special Natural Features

Anima Groves are among the unusual environments introduced by the mod.

These locations contain an Ancient anima tree, a special tree associated with meditation and psychic energy.

Unlike other anima trees in the grove, the Ancient anima tree emits a scream when cut down.

It is also the tree used for meditation within this landmark.

This distinction adds a particular environmental feature to Anima Groves without applying the same behavior to every anima tree.

World Generation and Existing Saves

Vanilla Landmarks Expanded integrates its new locations into RimWorld's world generation system.

New games: The added landmarks should appear automatically when generating a new world.

Existing saves: The mod can be added during an ongoing playthrough, but newly introduced landmarks must be generated separately.

A developer command is available to generate landmarks on an existing world map.

There is currently no option to disable individual landmarks through the mod settings.

Requirements and Compatibility

Vanilla Landmarks Expanded requires the RimWorld Odyssey DLC. The mod relies on its landmark and tile mutator systems and cannot function without the expansion.

Compatibility information:

• Odyssey DLC: Required.
• Existing saves: Supported, with manual landmark generation.
• Geological Landforms: Compatible.
• Smart Odyssey: Compatible.
• Other biome mods: Designed to work alongside biome modifications.
• Better Map Sizes: Known compatibility issues. A separate compatibility patch is available.

Players using Better Map Sizes can install the Better Map Sizes compatibility patch to address the conflict.

Authors

• Oskar Potocki - Mod design and artwork.
• Sarg Bjornson - Programming.
• Vitalii - Storyteller artwork.