Characters - RimWorld Wiki (2024)

RimWorld is a game centered around the story of its characters, from player-managed colonists to AI-controlled wanderers and raiders.

Each character possesses a set of skills, traits, and a personal backstory.

Character[edit]

Humanoids have a Character tab that displays the pawn's first name, nickname (display name), and last name, followed by their sex, race, character type, and age. The player may change a colonist's nickname by clicking the edit button, at the top right.
It is also possible to Banish a colony member by clicking the door icon, this action will generate a confirmation window and if confirmed, it will cause a -3 mood debuff to all other members and loss of any worn gear. Banishing a character that would die if banished will give your colony a -5 mood debuff. This is mostly useful for cleanly removing colonists you obtained and don't want, instead of using other methods of removal.

Some characters have spent decades or centuries in cryptosleep. They have their biological age followed by their chronological age in parenthesis. Their biological age indicates how much they've aged, not counting time spent in cryptosleep. Their chronological age is their age since their date of birth, including time spent in cryptosleep. Biologically older characters will tend to have higher skills, developed by experience. They may also have gray hair and age-related health difficulties such as cataracts, a bad back, dementia, or frailty.

With the addition of the Royalty DLC, characters can also possess psylinks that grant them versatile psychic abilities and royal titles from the Empire.

Skills[edit]

A character's skills denote how effective they are at the relevant tasks. Depending on their backstory, a character may have some skills permanently disabled.

Backstories[edit]

Each character has a maximum of two backstory elements: a childhood and, if old enough, an adulthood. These elements affect the colonist's starting skills and may prevent the use of some skills entirely.

Note: It is possible for characters to be generated with contradictory backstories (e.g. childhood backstory elements disabling skills that adulthood elements are themed around).

Traits[edit]

A character's traits are permanent modifiers that affect their stats like walk speed, work speed, base mood, and mental break threshold.

Records[edit]

The Records tab shows stats for doing various activities.

Abilities[edit]

If a character possesses a psylink, Abilities will show which psychic powers a character can cast and supplementary information about each power.

Needs[edit]

All humanoid characters have Thoughts and at least three needs, Food, Rest, and Mood. Colonists have additional needs.

Mood[edit]

Main article: Mood

A characters' mood is the total value of the effects of their thoughts and traits. If a colonist's mood drops below their mental break threshold, they will suffer a mental break.

Thoughts[edit]

Thoughts are a summary of a character's experiences over the last day or so. Thoughts are either positive or negative, and can be generated in myriad ways, including things like observing their immediate surroundings, being hungry, and sleeping on the floor.

Health[edit]

In RimWorld, each living creature has a detailed anatomy, each part of which is subject to injury. Injuries can be temporary or permanent, and range from bruises and scratches, to dismemberment and fatality.

Depending on where the injury occurs, it may simply hamper the colonist's effectiveness, cause them to be completely incapacitated, or even killed.

Social[edit]

Characters have a Social tab that lists their relationships and interactions with others.

Roles[edit]

Make use of your favourite colonists’ strengths and skills by assigning them formal social roles. Each belief system defines special roles that believers can take on.

Growth Stages[edit]

Characters can give birth to babies, adopt/recruit childrens to colony, or grow one either from a surrogate female or in a vat. How they are cared for will affect their overall once they reached adult while as a children, including backstories and skills.