Whilst playing Rimworld you may get an alert on screen warning that a colonist has sensed danger when walking close to an ancient wall. This means that in the tile next to the pawn is an ancient danger. An ancient danger is a room completely sealed by walls that will house some type of hostile enemy and quite often some ancient soldiers in cryosleep along with some decent loot.
What type of enemies spawn in Ancient Dangers?
An ancient danger can have 1 of 2 different hostile forces spawn inside. Either a group of insects with an insect hive, or a group or random mechanoids. An ancient danger will never have both, as these two groups are hostile to each other. The mechanoids that spawn within the ancient danger are random and can include any number of each type, though it generally doesn’t contain more than around 4. Insects are generally considered easier to deal with than mechanoids as they are easier to kill and don’t have any type of ranged attack. After destroying all of the insects however, you will need to destroy the insect nest (or hive) otherwise more insects will continue to spawn.
The Cryosleep caskets
More often then not cryosleep caskets will also be present in the ancient dangers. These will house pawns from a tribe called Ancients. This tribe is not affiliated in any way with the tribes on the map and cannot have towns or spawn on their own outside of events. You can open the cryosleep caskets by selecting a pawn and right-clicking on one of the caskets.
If you do choose to open a casket, however, all of the caskets in the same room will be opened immediately. You can circumvent this automatic process by building walls and a door around each cryosleep casket. There is a chance that the occupants inside will be immediately hostile towards your group but will not try to raid your base. They will simply attack you while they make their escape from the map, never to be seen again. There is also a chance they they will come out of unconscious or even dead. If they come out incapacitated you can choose to rescue them or even capture them for recruitment purposes.
Loot inside Ancient Dangers
As aforementioned ancient dangers do not come without their benefits. They will generally have pretty decent loot inside them so once you’ve cleared out the hostile force take a look around. There can be many different items, but generally only rare items tend to spawn here, such as devilstrand, and insanity lances.
Be careful when taking out the enemies within ancient dangers as some shots may destroy some of the precious loot within the room. Fires and explosives are not recommended and if the loot is very precious your best bet is to set up some kind of kill box before you even open the room. One of the best methods of doing this is to build a hallway off the room 1 tile wide and place multiple traps to lure the enemies onto.
In conclusion
Ancient Dangers are a great way of finding some pretty good loot in Rimworld but should not be treated lightly. They do contain some very strong enemies and should only be opened if you have a solid plan of dealing with them, or are fairly late in the game.
If you have any more information to add about ancient dangers or want to share your story about opening one add a comment down below.
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