In Rimworld, you will find yourself managing a (hopefully) thriving colony of misfits. You will have many random events and raids thrown at you. It seems like almost everything in Rimworld is setting you up to fail as you manage your colonists, prisoners and others.
The ability to lock doors isn’t very clear when you are playing the game however. You may want to lock the doors so that prisoners and colonists can’t get into certain rooms. This can also be important if you are in the middle of a raid and don’t want pawns leaving a room. This guide will show you how to lock doors so they can’t be used in Rimworld.
Building Doors
Before you can lock doors you will need to first get some around the colony. You can have your colonists craft doors by opening up the Architect menu and finding the door under Structure. You can select the door and then build using different materials from the pop-up menu.
Once you are happy with the location of the door, you can place it down. Your colonists will build the door whenever the right amount of materials is available. You can place the door down on any free tile or even on top of some existing walls. If the latter, your colonists will first break down the wall and then build the door in its place.
You can ‘lock’ any type of door from your colonists including wooden walls. Don’t be too worried about the materials.
How to Lock a Door For Your Colonists (Forbid)
There is a very simple way to make sure that none of your colonists will use any of the doors in your colony. You can use the Forbid setting to disable use of the door. If you forbid a door your colonists will no longer use it. Even if they are in a room with only one door, they will not use to to escape.
To lock a door from your colonists, first select the door by left-clicking on it. Now, use the forbid/allow button to forbid any of your colonists from using it. You can alternatively press the F button to lock the door. You can toggle this on or off whenever you wish. Doors that are forbidden and thus, locked, will have a large red cross shown on top of them. Colonists will not be able to use these locked doors, even when drafted.
Be sure that you are not locking your colonists in dangerous locations with this door lock method. If you have them in a room with only one exit, they won’t even leave if they are starving. You can’t even get them out by drafting them. (Although when they eventually have a mental breakdown they may try to break the door down)
Locking Prison Doors
If you’ve played Rimworld for a while you’ve probably already taken some raiders prisoner. As you’ll know you have to create a prison with a bed in it in order to take prisoners. But what about locking the door for the prisoner so they don’t escape?
Luckily you will not have to. Any prisoners in your colony will not be able to open any doors at all. This means you won’t even be able to have any common prison areas without some nifty planning. If you have a room with a prisoner in it enclosed by a door, they won’t be able to walk out of it. Keep in mind that they may attempt to break out from their prison cell, so don’t be too care-free about your choice of door for the prison…
Locking Doors for Animals to Stay Outside
Are you looking for a way to keep animals outside of your doors? Unfortunately there is no setting in the base game for the doors, which allows you to specify between animals and colonists opening doors. That being said there is a way that you can keep your furry friends outside the colony without locking doors.
Check out this guide on keeping animals outside of your colony to find out how you can set up zones to stop the place looking so dirty inside from the animal filth. (And to keep the muffalos out of your food stores!)
Specifying Door Entrance Conditions -The Best Door Lock Mod
As there isn’t any options in Rimworld to specify who is allowed to walk through which doors you may find your prison looking ugly, people going places they shouldn’t and other mishaps. Luckily, there is a great mod which deals with locking doors and setting permissions for doors. The mod Locks 2: Lock Them Out! allows you set up and lock doors however you wish. There is a large range of customization with door locks including allowing specific colonists through doors and even people with specific clothing only.
This is one of my essential mods as it means that you can have multiple prison rooms and also a communal prison area without having to have it all as one room without doors. It also makes it easy to keep animals in and out of certain areas as you can simply toggle the ability of animals to go through the door. You should really check out this mod if you are looking to lock doors. It really should have an option there for everyone in terms of forbidding and locking doors.