Complete Colony Guide (Upgrades & Traits) in Warhammer 40K Rogue Trader

Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader puts you in the shoes of a Rogue Trader, as its name says, so you’ll need to get upgrades and traits for every Colony.

Rogue Traders in Warhammer are powerful Imperial servants who get to control a starship and also manage a variety of colonies across the galaxy.

In this guide, we’ll tell you everything you need to know about colonies, their upgrades, and their traits!

Complete Colony Guide for Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader

How To Get Every Colony

All five colonies in the game can be acquired during Act 2 of the game. In fact, four of them are tied to the main story and completely unmissable due to that!

However, Foulstone is a notable exception as it can be missed entirely if you make certain dialogue choices.

How Colonies Function

All of these 3 main stats can be raised up to 10 by completing Projects and obtaining certain Traits.

On top of these main stats, there are also a variety of resources that are required for research projects. There are a lot of them, such as weapons, provisions, people, and Adamantium.

However, all of these resources can be earned by completing quests, Colony Projects, and through using Extractiums on your colonies.

You can get Extractiums by purchasing them from vendors and by trading.

All resources mostly work the same as far as your Rogue Trader is concerned, it’s just that different resources are required for different projects!

But, we’ve mentioned projects quite a few times already without explaining what they are, right? Well, time to change that!

What Colony Projects Are and Which Ones To Get

Colony Projects are, in essence, upgrades for your colony. They can be researched from the Colony Management screen for each colony, and there are dozens for each colony.

They all require varying amounts of resources, and they all have a variety of effects.

For example, some of them will increase your reputation with certain traders, while others will just make the colony generate more of a certain resource.

Most projects are also Colony-exclusive, too. For example, Foulstone’s projects are different from the ones available to Janus.

With so many projects to pick from, it can be hard to figure out which ones you should get! To make things a bit easier, here’s a list of some highly recommended projects for every colony:

Foulstone – A Celestial Protector, Indulgences For Sale, Touched by Holiness, Good Tidings, Maglev Railways, Shrine, Thousand-Faced Relic, Crucible, Dirty Bureaucracy, Lightbringers, Missionaries, False Wonders, Holy Defenders.

Janus – Ultrequisitors, The Secret of the Winterscales, Dark Sages, A Cure for Sloth, The Reaping, Forest Fortresses, Great Fire, Xenos Intoxicant, Secret Lair, Payment in Organs, Pleasure World, Scriptorium Schools, Rose of Zamarkand.

Dargonus – Ecstasiums for the Nobility, Shield of the Emperor, Genetic Mercy, Doctrine of Rationality, Decree on Diligence, Adeptus Arbites, Militia Navy, Call to Arms, Charter of Minimal Rights, Bastion, Schola Progenium, Praising the Muses, Holy Profit.

Kiava Gamma – Restoration, Compassion for the Silent, The Motive Force Is Life, Giants, Chapel of Enumeration, Flawless Servitors, Mag-Trains, Armoured Rage, Orbital Shipyard, New Life, A Mechanical Trade, Sacred Flame, Archive of the Expanse

Vheabos VI – Punishment of the Thinkers, Extractium Metallica, Enviro-Dome, Test of Wills, Warp Guides, Lair in the Void, Dreamless, Penal Battalion, Earthbreaker, Pure Blood, Extractium Ignifera, Captive Xenos, Navy Whips.

These are generally the best overall, but you can make changes that better fit your characters and builds too.

Colony Traits

Lastly, let’s look at Colony Traits. These are smaller upgrades that you can earn during the game’s events or by purchasing them via Contracts.

Contracts can be found in their own tab inside your Journal. They can be unlocked by making certain dialogue choices throughout the game or by just progressing through quests.

You can choose to fulfill Contracts anytime you wish, all of them just require you to pay a certain amount of your colony resources.

In exchange, you’ll either get different resources or obtain Colony Traits.

There are also two types of Colony Traits, which you can differentiate by their color.

Golden ones are the “Chronicle of the Protectorate” traits, which are based on choices you make during events and when researching projects.

They generally don’t affect a colony’s functionality, they just explain its story.

Green ones are the common traits you’ll get by meeting certain objectives in quests or by completing contracts, and they all provide boons to your colonies.

Truth be told, most of the important Colony Traits you can get are decided at the end of Act 2, as we will explain in our next section.

Important Colony Traits To Get

As you can see, “The Emperor and My Right” is the main quest that will grant you Colony Traits. After all, it’s an important quest during the story and it revolves around how you plan to manage your colonies!

However, you only get to choose 2 of your companions for their Colony Traits. We’ve chosen Jae’s and Pasqal’s traits due to them being the best overall.

Anyway, this brings us to the end of our guide! We hope we’ve helped you make the most out of managing your colonies in Rogue Trader.

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