Which Storyteller Should You Choose? - RimWorld Guide for Beginners [2024, 1.5+]

This guide is a little more info/number heavy, so doesn't have the typical gameplay stuff in it. I was a little nervous about that and had to go a slightly different route on the video itself. Don't worry, though, more gameplay oriented guides are on their way, I just need to get this stuff out of the way first! - As always, thanks for watching, and let me know in the comments if you have any RimWorld questions or if you have an idea for another RimWorld guide. <3

As spoken by our lord and savior Sseth: "Objectively, Randy is the best storyteller. He follows no set patterns and keeps you guessing and adapting your strategy, whereas Phoebe lulls you into a false sense of security and Cassandra... Cassandra can go f herself!"

What really sets Randy apart isn't so much that he's random but that he can wombo combo events together to create a kind of meta-event that forces you to adapt.
With Cassandra and Phobe events are treated as a kind of set peice. "Here's a raid or a disease, now do something about it and it specifically." Whereas Randy can do stuff like hit you with intermittent eclipses in spring, toxic fallout that same summer, and them brutal cold snaps during fall, essentially leaving you with no lifestock, not much wildlife to hunt, and no crops for a soldid sixty days over which nobody visits your colony to trade anything except pirates who deal in fists and human trafficking.
The only way to deal with this is to come prepared with hydroponics, nutirfungus, shelters for your animals etc. -- stuff that a beginner wouldn't know to employ, forcing them to learn, and an experienced player might not realize they need until they're twenty days into said year and running low on supplies.

Thank you for yet another Awesome vid Adam

One thing with Phoebe, or Randy on a less active streak, is that you can either become complacent, or increase your wealth and population and have your raid points increase more than you realized, without raids to work you up to expecting that level of difficulty.

Cassandra: periodic events
Phoebe: cyclic events
Randy: random events

Ugh. Yesterday Cassandra hit me with back to back raids from the same faction, right after I selected a quest to receive back to back raids from the same faction. 3 raids in 1 day, another raid the next.

She also sent a sun blocker right after I accepted a volcanic winter, and the day after I killed the sun blocker a cold snap occured.

She really does try to kill you, doesn't she? :P

Phoebe = die of boredom
Randy = die ob accident
Cassandra = die on purpose

Randy on day one, hour one, with mass animal insanity, "I don't really feel like playing today, come back tomorrow"

Dude... you videos showed me after 500h of gameplay what I don't know. How do you gather these information? Its awesome!

I remember on my first colony after I got somewhat used to moderate raids and was prepared for bigger ones (no kill boxes at the time tho) Cassandra got a hard on for mechanoids and sent wave after wave of clusters and regular mechanoid invasions on the events, had to download a mod to tone it down a notch because it became frustrating not fighting level headed enemies

Phoebe is a trap, she's so easy you can fall into a sort of complacency as a newer player, causing you to potentially lose to her one big event because you didn't prep or let your wealth skyrocket.

That's another guide you could do, colony wealth management since it determines raid strength right

I mainly play randy and never played pheobe tbh randy is best

Good old randy gave me like 3 trade caravans a day apart. Then couple days later a mech cluster, then cold weather fog for a couple days so my crops don't grow and drop pod raid.

thanks for the info

Shortly after starting from scratch today playing with Randy on "Strive to Survive" he gave me a pack of ducks to bring to a pen and the next day he gave that pack of ducks plague and flu on the same day lmao.

as a new player i can honestly say i enjoy randy the most just because the chaos

Another thing about Phoebe is that when she does hit, she hits harder than Cassandra, she basically lets you prepare longer and then hits you really hard

Randys favourite strategy is sending me several drop pods full of valuable but useless resources right before summoning 2 concurrent raids so that my "wealth" is higher and therefore my colony of 15 people deserves to be attacked by 150 pirates.

Cassandra and Phoebe start off easy, but they escalate until they break you. They play to win. Phoebe just does it slower. Randy is in it for the lulz. If you lose, his fun's over. Yeah, he can screw you over right out of the gate, and slap you with nasty event combos that synergize into a loss, but he doesn't ramp up his game. A sufficiently robust colony can basically shrug off anything he can dish out. He's probably the best choice for a long-haul game if you don't want to have to play tower defense to hold off 100+ enemy raids every few days.

Randy sends me cargo pods like he sent me corn hehe :)

Randy is both the hardest and easiest imo. Yeah he throws raids for days, but he also throws cargo pods full of supplies for days lol.

Randy once sent 3 huge raids at me back to back. Hadn’t finished with the first one and the second came in firing mortars at me. Only just finished with the mortar guys and everybody was badly wounded and then a third huge raid comes. Yeah didn’t have many survivors after that.

"You have to be pretty unlucky for having Randy sending you a raid every single day".
My first Randy playthrough in the game: raids for 5 days (fortunately they were manageable, but anyways).

Had my first successful colony going!





Then Randy decided to throw 2 raids back to back as well as light my entire base on fire (because I was dumb enough to make almost all of it out of wood).

So vanilla rimworld I always played cassandra, however modded rimworld I play pheobe especially with the events mods that I add. It allows for constant events, as well as events where the storytellers are bored and they go crazy for like a season or so. And as pheobe builds up raid points, she dishes out some harsh combinations.

Love playing cassandra cause when a colonist dies I know she takes pleasure in it while randy is a tad too random for me.

Randy be like
He he 'le gun goes boom boom

After months of manhunters, single man raids and dozens of free food. I’m afraid

i always want to go classic. but phoebe is good. but after my archnexus play and the game get easier. i am planning to do classic with archnexus

omg you make such good content im so jelly ive never been that good at public speaking

bro, you said in the last video i watched that you wouldn't go into population and to learn more by watching this video. Then you say the same thing in this video >_<

"Randy is the only storyteller capable of hitting your colonists with a disease event on day 1, hour 1" Seems to sum up my every third playthrough.

This was super informative, thanks for the guide! I've been going with Cassandra every time since I started playing RimWorld, but Randy sounds like a much more interesting experience now. Unpredictable storytelling is good storytelling.

Anything but Randy is objectively the wrong choice ;)

So, does that mean that playing with Pheobe on Peaceful is like baby's first Rimworld? 😅🤔

Never actually played the game, but I would like to get it and try it out.

This is actually pretty good to know. I normally play only with Randy because I always thought the girls had a specific set of events (with the first one always being a raid for example). I never bothered to check, I just assumed that was the case.

After hearing you talk about your guides on your vod, I came to check them out and you delivered. 10/10 you are doing great presentations

Choose Randy for the S K Y M I L K

PRAISE BE UNTO RANDY!
We must never loose faith in him, because no matter how bad things might seem it can in fact get worse

Had my hardest raid with Pheobe. No shit, this was soooo crazy. I wasted all my animals in it, 2 got kidnapped, 3 are dead inclusive all my animals (Alpha Animal Gallatross, Thrumbo and tons of Boomalopes)
Yes it took longer for Events like this but then, holy moly. 51 Enemies, 3 Factions, 1 Siege. All at once.
So having fun playing Phoebe.

Thank you for the guides, I've been playing Rimworld for maybe 2 weeks but I haven't been able to manage that well >.< (Although it gets better every time)

New storytellers idea: "Bad" storytellers.

Scatterbrained Suzy: She dropped her notes and mixed them all up in a confusing way. Her downtime and uptime randomly change all the time, and she has no real sense of structure. Be careful, because she might also accidentally send something she's really not supposed to at you.
(She has random cooldowns that change all the time and no initial grace period. Stuff such as events, enemies, parties, and even items are sometimes misnamed or misplaced.)

Thatch-Guy: This guy just seems to want you to suffer. You get no downtime, no recovery, and no rest, just nonstop action and problems, many of which are deliberately made to be incredibly detrimental. He regularly sends incredibly overpowered, unlikable raiders and traders at you, and they're obviously better than you in every way.
(Cooldown is non-existent. Only the hardest events are chosen, and many are scripted to follow up after others in a deliberately annoying way. Some enemies have dumb names and are extremely overpowered, and they keep showing up even if you kill them.)

Nergal Nosho: This guy just doesn't care. He never makes anything happen, it's like he's barely there at all. He might occasionally throw you a bone or something, but don't expect much. It certainly won't be exciting, but at the very least you can be confident that he won't really bother you.
(Essentially all events are completely removed and won't ever happen. He has an extremely rare chance to make something incredibly mundane happen.)

Personal experience, Cassandra has a way less chance of toxic fallout or volcanic winter. Unlike Randy.

"why is Randy being so nice to me this stream" mech raid during a plague and a heat wave in 5...4...

Very nice information with some new details for me as well! Cheers, keep it up! =)

I knew Randy is deadly but never knew he starts events after as soon as 1hr, he is ruthless at times.

Awesome guide...this helps me understand a bit more about what's going on since I jump in later into the playthrough!

Wow cool, this info is helpful. I'd feel way less like a baby now playing Phoebe until I learn more of the game! Do you know any streamers that play it regularly that don't mind questions hint hint that could help me out if I have something more specific? Can't wait for more of these guides!

First! Also, great guide!