Understand Skills

Overview

Every character in RimWorld has a set of skills; these skills govern their effectiveness in the relevant tasks. A character may be unable to undertake certain work types due to backstory elements, and as such, the relevant skills will be disabled entirely, and show ” – ” under skills on the character tab. Experience points are gained by performing a relevant task or may be boosted by using a neurotrainer.

Introduction

From the Work menu you can set the tasks you want your colonists to perform, though some colonists cannot perform all tasks.

It is possible to get your base working very efficiently by managing who does what job; hover over a skill box to see the colonist’s proficiency score out of 20. Each box will also show a colonist’s passion for that skill indicated by one or two flames. This will help you decide who you want doing each task. It is a good idea to study your colonists’ skills and apply them to their strengths. Using the wrong people will slow down your progression. To help keep you from using the wrong colonist for a job, a crunching sound is made when you assign a pawn to a work type which they won’t do well due to low skill.

In standard mode, colonists will either perform a task or not, with tasks on the left ranked more importantly than tasks on the right. In manual mode, each colonist’s tasks can be prioritized from 0 (blank) to 4. 1 is the highest priority, 4 is the lowest, and blank tasks will not be performed. Properly utilizing manual mode can make sure everyone always has something to do and avoids idle colonists.

Colonists will only perform work in their allowed area.

Some characters are incapable of certain work and/or certain categories of work (i.e. violent, dumb labor). This is listed under Incapable Of in the character tab. Characters with a skill level 0 in a skill are still capable of performing the relevant task, they will just be Extremely ineffective and inefficient.

For improved efficiency, colonists do cleaning and harvesting in batches.

Animals

Colonists have the ability to tame and handle a variety of wild animals. These animals can then be trained in four basic categories:

Obedience: (Training intelligence required: Simple, Steps: 1)

An animal trained in obedience follows its master and will attack nearby aggressors. An animal’s master is listed on the Training tab and on the Animals menu. The assigned master can be changed to another colonist with sufficient animal skill for that animal. Multiple animals may be assigned to a single master. Note that assigning an animal to the pawn it is bonded with will give that pawn a permanent +5 moodlet, and if a bonded animal is not assigned to its bonded pawn, that pawn gets a permanent -3 moodlet. This effect does not stack with multiple bonded animals, however one pawn can have both the positive and negative moodlets from two bonded animals.

Release: (Training intelligence required: Intermediate, Steps: 2)

When animals are released by their master, using the ‘release animals’ command, they may leave their master’s immediate area to attack enemies. When the ‘release animals’ command is turned off, animals will guard their master and only attack enemies nearby.

Rescue: (Training intelligence required: Advanced, Steps: 2)

Animals trained in rescue will rescue its master as well as nearby colonists. Only species of sufficient size can rescue.

Haul: (Training intelligence required: Advanced, Steps: 7)

Animals trained in hauling will haul just as colonists do, although each species has a specific carrying capacity according to its size. Only species of sufficient size can haul, but the size required is less than it is for rescuing, meaning some animals can haul items but cannot rescue. Animals will perform hauling intermittently.

• Animals: 2% plus 1% per skill level.
• Manipulation: 50% importance
• Talking: 90% importance

Handlers tame animals. Handlers rescue wounded animals, train, feed, milk, shear, and slaughter.

• Relevant skill: Animals
• Category: Animals

Artistic

Sculptures are created at the sculptor’s table and they have a quality when they are made. The Artists skill is a driving factor in the quality of the sculpture.

They come in 3 different sizes.

Sculptures are pieces of art made at a sculptor’s table that add (or not) beauty to any room they’re in once they are installed. A finished piece of art gets a quality that affects the beauty and market value. The artist’s skill is a driving factor in the quality of the sculpture. Sculptures can be reinstalled or uninstalled. Sculptures may be deconstructed for a partial salvage of materials. If a sculpture job is interrupted for any reason the sculptor will drop the piece on the table, and it will be in an unfinished state until the same author finishes it. A sculptor cannot work on another sculptor’s piece. The inspect pane indicates the name of the piece’s sculptor and how much work is remaining. The stockpile filter includes an entry for unfinished sculptures (under >Items >Unfinished) which allows the player to control where they are stored if keeping them by the table becomes an inconvenience.

Ensure a colonist is constantly set to create art. This boosts the skill quickly, especially if the colonist is interested in Art. The colonist will start by making low quality sculptures but will begin making very valuable masterworks before you know it.

You can sell the artwork for silver, or place them around the base for beauty. If the art is of a very low quality however, it’s best to deconstruct and try again.

Artists make sculptures at the sculptor’s table.

• Relevant skill: Artistic
• Category: Artistic

Construction

The construction skill affects how long a colonist takes to complete a construction or repair task. It also affects the quality outcome of some items such as beds, chairs, tables, etc.

Experience is gained each tick spent working on a construction project. At 100% work speed this seems to translate to roughly 82 experience per point of ‘work required’ for a construction job. At 200% work speed, disregarding colonist passions, each unit of ‘work required’ would reward only 41 experience.

Each point increases speed by 15%.

The act of construction and repair produces lots of XP all on its own. Construction can be quickly raised by repeatedly building and rebuilding furniture, which is itself useful for scoring higher quality furniture for the colony. Note that this will require a healthy supply of wood or cotton.

Dismantling gives XP as well, so you are earning while building or scrapping. Stonecutting gives construction XP instead of crafting XP.

Constructors build things, smooth floors, repair damaged buildings and structures, and fix broken-down equipment (requires components).

• Relevant skill: Construction
• Category: Skilled labor

Cooking

The cooking skill affects how long it takes to cook meals and butcher dead creatures. It also affects Butchery Speed and Butchery Efficiency, how much meat is produced when butchering.

Cooking and butchering increase cooking skill.

A cooking skill of at least 6 is required to make a fine meal.

A cooking skill of at least 10 is required to make a lavish meal.

Each point decreases cooking time by 11%.

Each point decreases butchering time by 10%.

Each point increases meat amount by 2.5%.

• Cooking : 40% plus 6% per skill level.
• Consciousness: 100% importance
• Manipulation: 90% importance
• Sight: 40% importance
• Global Work Speed

• Cooking: 75% plus 2.5% per skill level.
• Manipulation: 90% importance
• Sight: 40% importance, 100% max.

Butchering efficiency can go above 100%, which lets a colonist produce bonus leather and meat from a corpse. A colonist with Cooking skill of 20 (125%), 2 bionic arms (140%) and 100% Sight efficiency will get 70% more meat and leather. Add in the extremely rare Trauma Savant condition (+50% manipulation) for 126% extra meat and leather! Sight is capped at 100% so enhanced sight will not contribute any bonus.

The cook skill level is increased over time from colonists using the butchering table and stoves. The higher the level of cooking skill a colonist has the less likely chance the food will poison anyone. Higher cooking skill also allows them to unlock the fine meal or lavish meal recipes.

Cooks butcher animals, prepare meals, and brew beer.

• Relevant skill: Cooking
• Category: Skilled labor

Crafting

The crafting skill affects the smith, tailor and craft work types.

The Crafter’s skill is a driving factor in the quality of crafted clothing and neolithic weapons.

The crafting skill determines the time it takes for a colonist to cut stone, extract metal from slag, and disassemble mechanoids. It also determines the amount of resources produced.

Each point decreases crafting time by 10%.

Each point increases the resource yield by 2.5%.

Each stone cut into blocks provides 100 experience.

Crafting skill increases steadily with work time. Crafting is a pretty common task in mid-late game so there’s lots of opportunities to train.

Smiths create weapons at the smithing bench.

• Relevant skill: Crafting
• Category: Skilled labor

Tailors craft clothing at the tailor’s workbench.

• Relevant skill: Crafting
• Category: Skilled labor

Crafters do general low-skilled labor at work stations such as stonecutting and smelting.

• Relevant skill: Crafting
• Category: Skilled labor

Growing

The growing skill affects how fast a colonists sows and harvests growing zones, hydroponics and flower pots.

Some plants require a minimum growing skill in order to plant them:

Each point increases speed by 12%.

XP is given at a steady pace for both planting seeds and harvesting crops. Simply giving a colonist lots of time to farm will increase their skill. Give your farmers extra time to work by having non farmers haul the harvest.

Growers plant and harvest domestic crops.

• Relevant skill: Growing
• Category: Skilled labor

Plant cutters harvest food from wild plant and cut down marked plants.

• Relevant skill: Growing
• Category: Dumb labor

Medicine

The Medicine Skill is the driving factor in determining base medical treatment quality, surgery success chance, and the speed at which medical operations are performed. People with lower medicine skill are more likely to give Poor quality treatment, meaning that poorly treated open wounds are still susceptible to infection and also have a chance to leave a scar – which permanently lowers the health of the affected body part, along with giving a constant amount of pain. Certain scars can be painful enough that they give more than 10% pain, meaning that the consciousness of the affected individual is permanently weakened, which affects their performance in all aspects from work to shooting.

Doctors which are either physically hindered (e.g. missing an arm) or sick (e.g. food poisoning) and/or have low medicine skill are significantly more likely to fail at surgery. The severity of an operational failure varies from only a minor failure; where the part being installed (if installing) may still be re-usable and only do moderate damage to the patient. However, there can also be a catastrophic failure where the part being installed will be destroyed, and there will be surgical cuts doing severe damage, and possibly even being fatal.

Note: Medicine can be trained very quickly by performing euthanasia on fast-breeding animals such as chickens.

The Medicine skill is the center skill of doctoring in Rimworld. It directly multiplies the treatment quality, as well as the surgery success chance and healing speed, before other factors are taken in.

All values in this table take post-processing into account where necessary:

* Note that level decay begins at level 10 (Expert), at which point colonists will be constantly losing experience at an increasing rate the higher the skill is.

There are currently three types of medicine in RimWorld: the organic herbal medicine, the bog standard medicine, and the coveted glitterworld medicine – in order from least potent to most potent.

Treatment Options

Five treatment options are available; none at all, doctor care, herbal medicine or worse, regular medicine or worse, or best quality medical care.

Doctor care

Sometimes when supplies are short, or you need to save your stocks of medicine for better purposes, doctors will attempt to improvise a treatment. Note that it is not possible to do surgeries without medicine, and treatment is much slower than with any form of medicine, especially being unable to treat multiple wounds in a single treatment.

Herbal Medicine

Herbal medicine is an organic medicine which can be grown from healroot , or purchased from tribal traders. It is not very powerful, and its best application is in treating injuries, the flu, and chronic diseases – but it can be good at treating more severe diseases in the hands of a skilled and/or enhanced doctor. Although it’s not recommendable to use herbal medicine for surgery, you might just about be able to get away with it if your surgeon is fully bionic and of a very good skill level (at least level 12), but don’t expect any miracles.

Medicin cont.

Medicine

Standard medicine is the benchmark of medical treatment solutions, and is also producible at a drug lab by combining herbal medicine, neutroamine, and cloth. It can additionally be purchased from outlanders and orbital traders, or occasionally dropped by pirate raiders and mercenaries.

Medicine is best used for treating severe injuries or illnesses. It also works good enough for most surgeries, though the risk of failure is still present. Odds can be improved by as little as a shot of go-juice or luciferium for boosted consciousness.

It’s not the best idea to excise cancerous growths using ordinary medicine due to its 0.7x success factor and 25% death chance on failure- unless your surgeon has at least a surgery success chance of 128.5% (achievable with a pair of bionic arms) – which translates to a roughly 90% success chance.

Glitterworld Medicine

Glitterworld Medicine is the most powerful medicine out of the three types available, and can only be produced on high-tech Glitterworlds. Despite the high price, Glitterworld Medicine carries a value which no other medicine can carry: enhanced medical potency. Naturally, due to the cost, Glitterworld Medicine isn’t worth the price for treating trivial diseases or injuries – but it makes surgery significantly easier, and allows even mediocre doctors to guarantee success in operations.

Whether it be bringing somebody from the jaws of death from the plague or excising cancerous growths, or installing bionics: Glitterworld Medicine is your answer. Injuries and more secure situations with diseases: ordinary medicine will cut it, or even herbal (especially for the former).

Repeated surgery such as adding and removing bionic limbs can boost a colonist’s Medicine skill at the cost of medical supplies. Simply treating frequent wounds from battle, prisoners and animals will increase skill quickly. If that proves insufficient it is simple to deliberately inflict wounds (such as punching someone) then treat them. More injuries means more chances to heal.

You should use regular medicine or above to reduce the risk of surgery failure.

If there are no willing volunteers, you can also train medical skills on animals, though brutalizing animals will cause a -5 relations penalty.

• Attach Artificial or Bionic limb to pawn (~2000 skill @ Interested)
• Operations: Remove Part (~2000 skill points)
• – This will leave the pawn bleeding, and you can patch them up (~200 skill).
• Operation: Reattach Part (~2000 skill points)
• – Barring a catastrophic failure, it can be repeated as needed.
• Euthanasia (~900 skill points)
• Instead of slaughtering dead animals, allowing doctors to practice on them can quickly level up their doctoring skill.

Doctors bandage wounds, treat the sick, and perform operations. Doctors also automatically rescue downed colonists. Doctors tend to colonists and colony animals that are resting in a bed.

• Relevant skill: Medicine
• Category: Caring

Melee

The melee skill determines a characters’ chance to:

• Land a hit in melee.
• Dodge a melee attack, when not aiming or firing a ranged weapon.

The tables below are post-processed chances for a healthy pawn:

Chance to dodge

* Note that level decay begins at level 10 (Expert), at which point colonists will be constantly losing experience at an increasing rate the higher the skill is.

Fighting anything with a melee weapon will level melee. Work such as Hunting can level any combat skill. With melee hunting animals will always attack back so be warned.

Hunters hunt animals marked for hunting, but will require a weapon to do so (you will be notified via message of colonists with the Hunting job that are unarmed).

• Skills: Shooting, Melee
• Category: Violent

Mining

The mining skill determines how long it takes for a colonist to mine out each rock, and how much they can obtain from each mineral vein mined.

Each point increases speed by 15%.

Mining skill steadily increases with time. It is sufficient to choose a dedicated mining colonist or two and they will master the skill over time.

You want to resesearch Deep Drilling technology. Once the required technologies have been researched, any valid area determined by the Ground-penetrating scanner can be mined using a Deep drill. A colonist is needed to operate a deep drill and is given mining experience.

Miners dig out marked sections of stone and minerals; and operate deep drills.

• Relevant skill: Mining
• Category: Skilled labor

Intellectual

This skill affects the speed at which research is completed.

Each point increases speed by 15%.

Research skill steadily increases with time, so a dedicated researcher should give the best results.

Researchers do research work at a research bench to unlock new items and building options.

• Relevant skill: Research
• Category: Intellectual

Shooting

The shooting skill affects a characters’ accuracy with a ranged weapon.

The table below shows post-processed shooting accuracy per tile of distance for each skill level and trait combination, assuming the pawn is healthy:

* Note that level decay begins at level 10 (Expert), at which point colonists will be constantly losing experience at an increasing rate the higher the skill is.

Shooting accuracy for the pawn is calculated per tile, meaning that while a trivial increase (like 1% or so) in shooting accuracy may not matter up close, it can make a huge difference in long distances.

For example:
A colonist with shooting accuracy of 99% has a base accuracy of 72.5% against a target 32 tiles away.

With 98% accuracy, the base accuracy against the same target becomes only 52.4%.

Each level increases pre-curved shooting accuracy by 5%, with level 0 starting at 0%.

By drafting a colonist and ordering him or her to attack something indestructible or reparable, you can train their shooting skill outside of the regular “training” they receive when the colony is under attack. This is much, much slower than shooting at a hostile target.

Enrage an animal then get a colonist who’s capable of moving faster than it to distract the animal. Meanwhile, get your trainee to fix his sights on the animal. Run around as much as possible until the animal is killed or downed.
Shooting at the animal, which is hostile, gives XP at the same rate that you would shoot at other hostile targets. If you want your living target to last longer, the trainee should shoot as far away as possible.

Hunters hunt animals marked for hunting, but will require a weapon to do so (you will be notified via message of colonists with the Hunting job that are unarmed).

• Skills: Shooting, Melee
• Category: Violent

Social

The social skill affects the impact of social interactions on other characters’ mood, the impact of gifts on faction relations, the recruitment chance for prisoners and trader prices. A small amount of experience is gained every time two colonists have a social interaction with each other. Characters have a talking stat that somehow interacts with this skill.

Each point increases social interaction impact by 10%.

Each point increases gift impact by 5%.

Each point increases recruitment chance by 5%.

Each point makes trade prices 1.5% better.

Each social chat with a colonist gives 4 social xp per per speech balloon at 1x skill modifier and 0 mood modifier. Having a friendly chat with a prisoner in order to convince him/her to join the colony gives roughly 50 social xp at 1x modifier per speech balloon. If you are recruiting prisoners, be sure that the one whose social skill you want to train is the warden. Keeping a prisoner you don’t want to recruit, or who would be difficult to recruit at “friendly chat” will allow the Warden to keep having conversations indefinitely, allowing skill training.

Wardens feed prisoners, chat with them, and try to recruit them, as chosen by the player. Wardens also carry out prisoners releases and executions. These options can be selected for each prisoner on the Prisoner tab found on the inspect pane.

• Relevant skill: Social
• Category: Social

Passion

As well as their skill levels, each character can have a level of passion for each skill. The level of passion determines the rate at which the character will develop that skill. A characters’ passion level for a particular skill is depicted by a flame icon beside the skill on the character tab.

Once colonists have learned 4000 exp amount in a day, they’ll learn at a much-reduced rate (20%) until the next day.

The levels of passion are:

Skills with no flames. Characters with no passion for a skill only gain experience toward that skill at 33% of the standard rate.

Skills with one flame. Characters that are interested in a skill will gain experience at the standard rate of 100%.

Skills with two flames. Characters with a burning passion for a skill will gain experience at 150% of the standard rate.

The above stacks with global learning speed modifiers such as the Too Smart trait. For example, a colonist with a Burning passion on a skill and the Too Smart trait will learn at 270% the standard speed.

Experience Table

There is no level 21, as the max experience in the game is capped at 230999, 1 exp short of leveling up. It doesn’t fall below 9 (Skilled Professional) either, remaining maxed at 10,000XP.

* Note that level decay begins at level 10 (Expert), at which point colonists will be constantly losing experience at an increasing rate the higher the skill is.

Notes

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