Does anyone have any suggestions for must have mods?
HugsLib (mod library) - just because many mods still use it, so rather than checking if they need it or not, I just load it up
Trading Spot - lets you choose where the ground traders center their wandering - I don't take advantage or cheese that by holing them up in a room or anything like that, although I think they can dig themselves out now anyway
Moody -a window that shows a bunch of valuable information- moods, temps of pawns, immediate health issues
AllowDeadMan's Apparel -adds a filter for stockpiles to make it easier to setup stockpiles how I want- there are ways to get this done without this mod, but this is just a nice QoL (this mod does NOT remove the deadman's setting for the items, there are other mods that do that if you want though)
Cleaning Area - ability to set where the pawns to clean, rather than cleaning the entire "Home" zone
Quality Builder - automatically limits the building of items that have quality levels to your best builder, also lets you set a minimum quality level, if it doesn't meet that quality level, item will automatically be marked for "deconstruct" and then set for building again
Camera+ - allows more zooming breadth
Allow Tool - a bunch of QoL tools for the UI
Notification Archiver - lets you go back and look at in game messages
Storage Search A17 - think this one is getting renamed to something else currently
Rimworld Search Agency -New name - allows a filter for ease of setting up stockpiles- you can search in the stockpile settings screen for what you want to select/un-select, note this doesn't not allow you to search through all of your stockpiles for specific items - looks like this new version also allows you to search in bills and outfits lists as well, haven't used yet
Fresh Stockpile Filter - adds the "allow fresh" filter to stockpiles (similar to "allow deadman's clothes" in that it just makes a pain in the butt setup a little bit easier, no in game advantage)
New Zone Tools - I Use this one just for the included "uniform grow tool" which makes it easy to select all soil type of the same type... for instance: gravel, soil, rich soil
Better workbench management - Basically the Rimworld version of DFHacks workflow - plus some other nice features like copy/paste/linking of bills
Miniaturisation Overloaded - allows you to move just about any bench/item without having to deconstruct/rebuild it
More Planning - colored planning tools, helpful in laying out room size, because you can then do furniture/benches in different colors rather than the white only available in vanilla
Zhentar vanilla tweaks - I use this only for the "sun lamp planning tool", makes it easy to plan out my indoor growing room, it just puts down a plan the exact size of the light provided by the sun lamp
WorkTab - Dwarf Therapist for Rimworld (better breakdown of jobs into sub-jobs, and also gives you a range of 1-9 instead of 1-4)
Research Pal - adds research queuing
Help tab - in game wiki provided through reading the games xml files for its info
Prepare Landing - allows a search function similar to searching for your embark in DF - I haven't used it yet, but will be my next game, just in midst of a long game now
Save Storage and Outfit Settings - allows saving these out of game so you can re-use your next game
Those are all pretty much just Quality of Life mods. I use some others that add content, but that changes from game to game. Using the mods above mostly just gives you a better vanilla experience. Some MAY be able to be cheesed a bit, but I can resist those temptations pretty easily, and not many in that list anyway.
These mods are mostly all on the Ludeon site, a couple are available via Steam or Github only though. If anyone is having any trouble finding something, let me know and I'll send you in the right direction.
The mods that I'd most recommend that change vanilla are:
Fluffy Breakdowns - changes the breakdown and repair mechanic in vanilla. With this, it adds a maintenance mechanic. As long as the maintenance level is kept over a certain percentage there is little chance of having a breakdown requiring a component to fix it. The lower the % goes, the higher chance that an actual breakdown will occur. There is also a setting in the mod for where you want them to start doing maintenance. This is set somewhere around 70-75% by default. So when it reaches that level it triggers a job for a pawn to come maintain it. As long as you have enough pawns doing that as compared to the number of things that need maintenance (basically any bench/power device that needs a component to build originally) you should be fine.
Hunting Alert - gives you an on-screen warning as soon as an animal starts hunting one of your colony members, not when they are already in combat with said predator