Vanilla Expanded is 90+ mods strong — and you're not meant to run them all. The whole series, mapped: what each mod does, and the handful to start with.
Vanilla Expanded is a series of high-quality, free mods for RimWorld, built by one small team of modders. It's the largest and most cohesive mod series for the game, adding everything the base game feels like it should already have — furniture, factions, weapons, animals, even brand-new xenotypes — without breaking RimWorld's tone. Because one team builds it on a single shared framework, the pieces fit together instead of fighting each other or the other mods in your list.
It's aimed at players who want to enhance gameplay without overwhelming the experience — if you love RimWorld but wish it had more to do, and you've bounced off a wall of ninety Workshop pages searching for it, this is the orientation you wanted.
The catch is the size. Vanilla Expanded has grown past ninety modules, and the team will be the first to tell you: don't enable all of them at once. Switch everything on and the game becomes a bloated, completely different thing that stops feeling like RimWorld. The series is a menu, not a checklist.
The whole point of Vanilla Expanded is restraint. Its new items, textures and factions are drawn and balanced to blend in beside the vanilla game's own content rather than look bolted on — a new faction, for example, uses the same art language and gameplay rules as the base ones. That's why you can run a dozen modules and still have something that reads as RimWorld, not a separate game.
Broadly, the mods fall into three categories: items and content, factions, and mechanics. This guide breaks those down further — furniture, gear, food, pawns, animals, races and the rest — but that three-way split is the quickest way to picture what the series does. The one thing you truly need before any of the others is the Vanilla Expanded Framework.
00
If you only add a handful
New to the series? Start small. The common mistake is to subscribe to everything in one go — ignore that urge. This is a calm opening set: broad quality-of-life and content, low friction, nothing that forces a fresh save. Add these, play a colony, then branch out.
good first picks
Vanilla Expanded Framework — required by most of the rest
Vanilla Furniture Expanded — the everyday quality-of-life base
Vanilla Cooking Expanded — ends the bland-meal problem
Vanilla Animals Expanded — a livelier world to explore
not on day one
Big faction mods all at once — raids stack up fast
Vanilla Psycasts Expanded — deep, best added deliberately
A dozen xenotypes together — pick one or two themes
Any mod that can modify core systems, mid-save
01
Core mods and the Vanilla Expanded Framework
The unglamorous, load-bearing layer. The Vanilla Expanded Framework is the shared code library that powers behaviours across the series — written once so the team isn't duplicating code in every mod, which keeps performance sane and means fewer fixes to chase. It's a required dependency: without it, the mods based on it are unable to load and throw errors on startup. Whenever a new mod adds a mechanic, it leans on these shared tools, and avoiding that mess is why the framework exists in the first place. Install it first, and remove any previous versions you might still have subscribed.
Framework · Core
Vanilla Expanded Framework
The shared code library most of the series depends on. Install it first.
The clothing side of the loadout: Vanilla Apparel Expanded adds 40+ everyday pieces for more varied wardrobes, and it's a strong candidate for a “best outfits” ranking down the line.
Content · Gear
Vanilla Apparel Expanded
40+ everyday clothing pieces for more varied wardrobes.
Vanilla Textures Expanded (with its Variations add-on) gives higher-detail retextures of vanilla items and terrain — the cleanest way to sharpen the game's look without changing how it plays.
Visual · Cosmetic
Vanilla Textures Expanded
Higher-detail retextures of vanilla items and terrain.
Yes. Every mod is free on the Steam Workshop — no paid account and no sign-up wall, just a Steam login. The team funds development through Patreon, which buys early dev diaries and Discord access, not the mods themselves.
Do I need to install all of them?
No, and the authors themselves advise against it. Enabling everything bloats the game until it stops feeling like RimWorld; even the team doesn't run all of its own mods at once. Pick the modules that fit the story you want to tell.
What load order should I use?
Vanilla Expanded Framework loads early, right after Harmony and the core game and DLC. Most modules can follow in any order, though a few faction mods ask to load after Furniture Expanded — Security, so you may need to edit the order by hand. When in doubt, the official Steam collection lists the team's recommended load order.
Is it compatible with Combat Extended?
Combat Extended compatibility for the weapon and armour modules is community-made; the Vanilla Expanded team does not maintain or support those patches. Check each mod's own listing before relying on it.
Does it work with RimWorld 1.6 and the Odyssey DLC?
The core modules are kept current with the latest RimWorld release, and the framework updates frequently. A handful of older or niche modules can lag right after a game update — each mod's Workshop page shows its supported versions, and the team decided to keep full changelogs on GitHub rather than Steam.
Is there a Vanilla Expanded modpack?
There's an official Steam collection that gathers the whole series in one place, but it's a list to pick from, not a one-click “enable all” pack. Treat it as a menu.
A living list
Vanilla Expanded keeps shipping new mods and reworking old ones, so treat this as a living roadmap — updated as modules launch or change. Per-mod deep dives and a few “best of” rankings are on the way and will link from here. Between the in-game descriptions, the Vanilla Expanded wiki and a steady stream of YouTube playthroughs, there's plenty of depth to explore once a module catches your eye.
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