I've been trying a run for nearly 2 hours.

You need to try it offline first (as in, without timer) and make plans. Use devmode if necessary to try out different things. Once you know what you must do, start practicing. Yes, it is very difficult.

Things to keep in mind: -- Craft quality -- Different materials -- Space -- Floors -- Plant pots, sculptures -- Wealth -- Cleaning -- You can exchange money to goods

https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Room_stats

I was unable to validate the formula on that page versus Beta19, but here are some of my findings:

— Simply increasing the room size does not give more impressiveness. In fact, a huge room that is entirely golden-floored is less impressive than a smaller room that is golden-floored. There is a balance point and it seems to be around 100~120 space. ­— Silver-plating your floors will boost the impressiveness a great deal, but it is not enough by itself. Gold-plating the floors is a much faster way to gain impressiveness, but it also gets really expensive really quick. Sterile tiles increase the cleanliness, but the added cleanness factor does not have as high effect to impressiveness as does the beauty & wealth of silver tiles. — Even awful sculptures (negative beauty) can generate impressiveness, if they are made of expensive materials. Conversely, masterwork sculptures generate impressiveness even if they are made of stone. — Wall materials do not matter. Don’t make jade walls. (EDIT: In 1.0 they do matter.) — Floor material under doors does not matter.

Based on my short test I don’t have a minmaxed theory for a wonderously impressive room yet. But the amount of wealth you must put into it seems to be in 50k—150k range. The actual amount depends on the other factors.

How can you get gold easily though? That is the main issue, I think.

Mining, deep mining, trading, and deconstructing golden objects (traded, ancient dangers, spaceship). For some ideas, look at how https://www.speedrun.com/RimWorld/run/y2q5pljy managed to get enough gold for a spaceship. Granted that’s a tiny amount compared to what might go into decorating, but.

So far the best recipe I have found, in terms of labor, is the following (gold-based budget):

— Room size: 9x8 (interior dimension) — Wall materials: Any will do, including wood. Skip corners if you like. You will need 2×8 + 2×9 walls, some of which can be doors. — Floor material: Any will do, including concrete, as long as there is a floor. — Masterclass constructor, so that each built item is at least “good”. — Build 69 golden dining chairs. Cost: 31050 gold. Chairs of any kind do not reduce space, a vital component in impressiveness. This means the room will be full of chairs except for three spots. — Build 1 golden horseshoes pin. Cost: 100 gold. Build this last. This causes the room to count as “rec room”, needed for the thought.

All chairs were at least “good” quality. A level 20 constructor will make most chairs “good”, maybe one in every hundred were only “normal”.

Gotchas: — Dirt reduces beauty, which may cause the room to be knocked down a step in impressiveness. The impressiveness score must be a tiny bit above 240 in order to get the wondrous rating. Surround the room with liberal amounts of any kind of floor you like, including concrete, to minimize the amount of dirt carried in. Or make sure you employ a meticulous cleaning slave. — As far as I know, it does not matter where in the room everything is. The horseshoes pin is an exception. Make sure the horseshoes pin is far away enough from at least one of the walls (i.e. there’s space to stand at least 5 tiles away from it). Do not put it in the middle of the room. — Make sure the horseshoes pin is the only remaining form of entertainment available. — Make sure you build the horseshoes pin last, and keep your pawns away from any other recreation room as well, until the room attains the “wondrous” status. — Make sure the pawn does not have an existing "rec room" thought from some other room, when you finish building the wondrous room. If they have a "slightly impressive rec room" thought and they do rec activity in a wondrous room, the "slightly impressive rec room" 24-hour timeout gets recharged instead of giving them a new "wondrous rec room" thought. This is a bug in the game.

Instead of a rec room, you could go for a medical bed (hospital), a table (dining room), or a bed (bedroom or prison), but the horseshoe pin only takes one floor tile. An animal bed (barn) does not have an associated thought, nor do kitchens, tombs, workshops, laboratories etc.

Wall materials, or floor materials under door, are irrelevant. For reducing dirt, you should have a cheap floor under the door though.

TODO: Test with stone sculptures.

Ideas for training constructors without consuming resources: — Neurotrainer mech serums (if only) — Build the world full of graves — Have someone practice firing at a certain spot in wall, and have your constructor simultaneously repair the wall from the other side. This is difficult to balance right.

Ideas for making money: — Drugs (esp. smokeleaf joints, as you don’t need neutroanime that you cannot source locally) — Organ trade (massive tribal raids! Don’t play peaceful mode). — Huge fields, day-around cook duty, sell fine meals — Shearing of woolly animals (e.g. go tame some alpacas) — Beer (but it takes a lot of work) — Stone sculptures (they take a lot of work, too, but if you live in a mountaineous map…) — Wood sculptures (if you live in a dense forest) — Clothes sale (massive tribal raids! Remember to strip before you kill). — Remember to caravan to trading towns. They give you more money than any traders accessible without leaving your map tile. — Max social stat + cowboy/bowler hat or tribal headdress. — Mining (each silver block gives you 35 silver) — See also: https://www.speedrun.com/RimWorld/guide/v7km1

Slightly hindered by the fact that an average trader only carries about 2000 silver. You need to trade 50 times to get 100000…

Based on the newest idea for money-making (https://www.speedrun.com/RimWorld/guide/v7km1) I am thinking of the following kind of plan:

— Crashlanded start. This gives you: ⸺ 800 silver ⸺ 300 wood ⸺ 450 steel — World needs: ⸺ A small amount of rich soil ⸺ Throughout year growing ⸺ Plenty of friendly faction bases nearby ⸺ Moderate amount of wood ⸺ Some steel ores, some silver ores, some valuable ores — Divided between the three colonists are the following skills: ⸺ 1 × max-social ⸺ 3 × max-artist (or at least 1) ⸺ 3 × max-construct (or at least 1) ⸺ 1 × some mining ⸺ 1 × some plants skill ⸺ 1 × some cooking skill — Plant: ⸺ Rice field — Construct: ⸺ 3 × beds (cost: 130 wood) ⸺ 3 × sculptor’s tables sharing the interaction spots with other things (cost: 150 steel, 225 wood) ⸺ 1 × dining table (cost: 28 wood) ⸺ 2 × tool cabinets (cost: 400 steel) ⸺ 2 × dining chairs (cost: 180 wood) ⸺ 1 × standing lamp (cost: 20 steel) ⸺ 1 × wood-fired generator (cost: 100 steel, 2 component) ⸺ 1 × orbital trade beacon (cost: 40 steel, 1 component) ⸺ 1 × comms console (cost: 120 steel, 4 component) ⸺ walls, doors, beds — Layout: ⸺ Something like this: The campfire is for cooking. — Sketch: ⸺ In the beginning you can only make one sculpture, so only build one sculptor table at first. Concentrate on the other tasks. ⸺ Start with the basic things: Rice field, beds, walls, doors. Mine some steel and silver. Mine all plasteel, uranium, gold and jade you can find. Deconstruct walls to yield bricks. Sell bricks as soon as you can ($70.2 per 100). Sell any plasteel ($702 per 100), uranium ($468 per 100) and jade ($390 per 100) you come by, using your level 20 healthy social person. ⸺ As soon as you can, build the comms console so you can sell the first sculpture as soon as it’s ready. If it’s masterwork or better, it will immediately finance two new sculptures. Otherwise you need to mine more silver or sell some other stuff, unless you already have a comfortable buffer of silver. Allow only max-artists to work on sculptures. Note that a silver small sculpture only weighs 3 kg, so you can carry plenty in a caravan. ⸺ Keep basic tasks running (sowing etc). Otherwise keep making sculptures. Use trading opportunities. ⸺ ??? Profit ⸺ Once you’ve got ~120000 silver or more, deconstruct your recreation items and begin constructing the wondrous room as described earlier. 15x15 interior dimensions + a few more empty squares, wooden walls & door; fill it with silver chairs (allow only the max-constructor(s) to work). Walls whatever, floors silver. 1 silver horseshoe pin. Meticulous cleaning. Well, needs testing :P If you come by gold during mining, don’t sell it, but use it in the construction. Chairs if you get at least 450. Floors otherwise. It will cut your budget significantly.

(May need lots of adjusting depending on things discovered when actually trying it out.)