How to Start a Gladiator-Style Prisoner Duel in Rimworld

Rimworld’s Ideology expansion has finally dropped and with it a bunch of new features. One of these new features is the inclusion of rituals as part of an Ideology. These rituals are a celebration of your colony’s beliefs. These can range from sacrificial ceremonies to dance parties. One of these rituals is a Gladiator Style duel in which you can pit two prisoners against each other. This guide will show you how to set that up.

Two prisoner pawns fighting at a ritual spot in a gladiator duel in Rimworld IDeology
Two prisoners fighting in a Gladiator Duel in Rimworld

Creating an Ideology That Allows Gladiator Duels

When you start a new game of Rimworld with Ideology installed you have the option to choose a religion or Ideology for your colony or create your own custom system. Some of these pre-made random belief systems may already have the ability to start Gladiator Duels but if you want to be sure you should create your own by selecting Custom Ideology.

When creating an Ideology make sure you select the correct Memes. These are the founding beliefs of your Ideology. There are some ideologies or beliefs that don’t allow Gladiator Duels so you may have to do some trial and error to make sure you can still perform them. Once you have chosen your memes you are brought to a customization screen where you can see the Precepts of your colony. This will show you what they like, dislike, allow and disallow. You can change a bunch of different settings here such as specific clothing and social roles. The section we are looking for is called Rituals.


Choosing Gladiator Duels as a Ritual

Once you’ve scrolled down about halfway through this menu you can see a section called Rituals. Here, you can decide on the types of events that your colonists can perform as part of their beliefs. You can add, edit or remove them as you with. If it isn’t already there, select the Add ritual… button and add the Gladiator Duels ritual.

Customizing a ritual to add gladiator duel in RImworld
Your custom Ideology will allow you to add or remove rituals

As you can see in the image above, this will be added to your screen. You can select this ritual after adding it to the list to edit the name and other parts about it. One thing to take note, if the ritual is successful your colony will get a rewards. This can range from a new colonist joining, to finding new rare items across the world. You can change the reward through the Edit menu.

Now that you have created an Ideology that allows Gladiator Duels, you can start them from in-game.


How to Start a Gladiator Duel in Rimworld

Once you’ve set up your religion you can start playing the game. Once you have gotten your colony settled in you will have to prepare an are for which the Gladiator-Style Duels can take place. This can be inside or outside but if you want to have one inside keep in mind that you will need an area of at least 6 tiles around the Ritual Spot free from structures. You can have furniture in this area.

Once you’ve found a nice place, bring up the Architect menu on the bottom left of the screen. Now select the Misc tab. From here you should be able to see a purple diamond-shaped spot called the Ritual Spot. This will be the are where your colonists start their rituals from.

Creating a ritual spot in RImworld
You can start Gladiator Duels from the Ritual Spot

Once you have placed down the ritual spot in an appropriate place you will need to find some prisoners. There are only two types of pawns that can perform in these Gladiator Duels, Prisoners and Slaves. If you want to find out how you can get slaves in Rimworld Ideology you can check out this guide.

You will need at least 2 slaves/prisoners to start a fight. Once you have a ritual spot and two of these, you can start the ritual. Start this Gladiator Duel by selecting the Ritual Spot. Now, you should see the option to Start *Whatever you called the Ritual*. Select this and you will be brought to menu where you decide who will fight, and who will be present at the event.

Setting Up Your Duel For Success

Setting up a gladiator duel in Rimworld IDeology
You can choose who will join the ritual and who will fight in this menu

When setting up the gladiator Duel there is a few things you can do to make sure it will be a success. These are shown on this screen. As you can see, the more participants involved, the better the duel. One of the most important things you can do is to have the colony leader present at the duel. This is done through selecting social roles. If you don’t know how to do that, check out this guide.

Making the leader the Speaker at the event, bringing more spectators and using weapons are some of the ways you can raise the quality of the event. If the event is successful you will get the reward you selected for the ritual. I have selected the random recruit joining reward. Another great thing about these duels is that everyone involved will gain melee experience as well.

How to Add Weapons To Gladiator Duels in Rimworld

As you can see in the image above, you will get a quality bonus is weapons are used in the fight. This will also increase the chances that a pawn will die and raise the possibility of a good duel. To have the duelists fight with weapons, simply leave some weapons on the ground in the area. You can have a Drafted pawn drop a weapon there through the inventory screen, or set up a storage area or shelf and only allow specific weapons here.


Related