It’s been far too long since I’ve made human leather cowboy hats well into the morning with my friends, as Rimworld’s recent 1.1 update, along with the surprise DLC, have both thrown Zetrith’s Multiplayer Mod to the wayside while the community that took over the mod desperately sought out community-minded developers to help bring the mod up to the current patch. That moment finally came out on April 17, when the community announced that the mod is once again working with the latest patch.
The mod, now called simply ‘Multiplayer’, was unceremoniously passed over to the community after Zetrith went on vacation, and never returned. The common belief is that Zetrith met an untimely demise during his vacation.
The community was able to gain control of the beloved mod, working together as a team to keep it updated throughout the official release of Rimworld, and now up to the 1.1 patch and the Rimworld Royalty DLC.
It’s worth bearing in mind that the developers of Multiplayer are currently unsure in regards to what mods are currently working with Multiplayer, as the patching has apparently resulted in a few back-end shifts. They are asking the community to begin testing renewed, bolstered by Tynan Sylvester’s statement that Ludeon Studios is doing all that they can to ensure that all updates, moving forwards, will attempt to maximize compatibility with existing mods.
That claim is an important one to the modding community, as it ensures that their efforts will not be in vain, cast wayside by a constant influx of incremental patches coming from the developers.
It should similarly be noted that, as far as community-developed mods go, Multiplayer is a fantastic experience as long as you can avoid the desyncs that inevitably crop up in 40+ hour saves. A direct comparison to Prison Architect’s multiplayer game mode shows just how much effort went into Zetrith’s Multiplayer; you can see what your friends are building and planning, you can watch their cursor, and you can both manage your own colony while passing supplies to each other.
It’s a fantastic experience that elevates standard Rimworld gameplay and something that should be tried, presuming that you can find someone you trust enough to not hamstring your entire colony as a bit of a laugh. With the scope of Rimworld, whoever you’re playing with will have all of the same abilities as you do, regardless of who is the host. It’s worth bearing in mind before you dive into the brutal colony simulator before you start making those human leather hats.
