Skills

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Every pawn in RimWorld has a set of skills which govern their speed and success in the various types of work. 
Performing certain jobs will award experience points (XP) towards improving a pawn's skill, reflected by their skill level. A pawn's skill levels can be viewed by selecting the pawn with the cursor, then navigating to the Bio tab in the pawn inspect pane.
Pawns may have a Passion for a skill which increases the rate of XP gain and mood, represented by an adjacent fire symbol in the pawn's Bio menu. Conversely, a skill may be entirely prevented by a pawn's backstory or traits, which is represented by " -- " dashes in place of the level number. 
A high skill level will grant improved speed and success in relevant jobs, up to Level 20. A low skill level will result in slow, poor performance at a related job, including Construction failure, wild animal revenge, surgery failure, low harvest yields, or poor quality crafting products. 
Possible pawn skills are Shooting, Melee, Construction, Mining, Cooking, Plants, Animals, Crafting, Artistic, Medical, Social, and Intellectual.
== Summary ==
Skills are improved by performing certain associated jobs, although some few related tasks do not provide skill experience. Performing these tasks will earn the character experience points either per task completed or per second they are pursuing that task, both of which will eventually level up the skill. The resulting higher skill level then improves the performance in all associated tasks and types of work. Skills are leveled up individually, and there is no single "character level" as in many role playing games.
In some cases, special management tactics can be employed to more effectively or specifically steer the skill training in the colony, especially during periods of low work in colony development. See the main article on skill training for more information.
=== Skills vs work types ===
Skills and work types (or "tasks") are two different, but related, concepts. In some cases, like "mine" (work type) and "mining" (skill), there is an almost perfect correspondence, but in many other cases there is not: the work types "tailor" and "smith", for example, are associated with the crafting skill. Some tasks listed on the work tab do not even have an associated skill (eg. "haul", "clean" and "firefight").
The Work tab, where you assign tasks to colonists, indicates which skills are relevant for a given task (by mousing over a tick box). It also shows you if the colonist has a passion for those skills (with an icon in the tick box), and if a significant proficiency has already been acquired (by emphasizing the tick box border). Lower skill pawns have their work box darker, and higher skill pawns have it lighter. Extremely proficient pawns have a golden box. When assigning work to a pawn with low skill in a certain job, the box will have a red outline. Passions appear as extremely small flames at the bottom-right hand side of the work box. All these aspects are important for deciding how to assign tasks and types of work.
In general, you want colonists to perform tasks they are good at (it is productive for your colony), as well as tasks they are passionate for (improves the associated skill faster and also keep them happy while working).
=== Improving skills ===
Skill leveling in RimWorld is very similar to many role playing games: experience points are constantly earned, and the skill is leveled up when certain thresholds are reached. Importantly, the effect of a skill improves by level, but it costs more and more XP to gain another level in a skill. This means that skill training is more effective the lower the skill level is.
When a player pawn gains a new level in a skill, a text mote will be displayed.
Experience points are generally gained at consistent rate per unit time - that is, while the rate may vary from one task to another, when performing a given task the only other factor is the time spent doing it. As higher skill levels often increase the speed a pawn performs tasks, this means that more tasks must be performed to spend the same amount of time working and thus gain the same amount of XP. This is not true for all tasks however, and some will simply give a lump sum of experience for each task completed.
Regardless of how XP is gained, it is multiplied by Passion and Global Learning Factor in the following way:
Real XP gained = Global Learning Factor x Passion Multiplier x Base XP gained 
Additionally, there is a soft cap of 4000 net XP gained per day per skill. Any XP gains past this point are multiplied by 20%. This cap resets a few seconds after midnight. Any XP losses will apply against the net gain (e.g. if a pawn were to gain 4500 XP, but lose 1000, they would still remain 500 XP under the cap). Experience from Skilltrainers does not apply to this cap, nor is it affected by the 20% multiplier.
==== Passion ====
Passion for a given skill is indicated by the presence of flame icons next to the skill experience bar on the character's Bio tab. These passions increases the rate at which a pawn learns specific skills, and may provide them a mood boost when performing activities related to the skill. Skill gains from using a skilltrainer are influenced by passion, making the item more valuable when used by characters with a passion for the associated skill. Typically, passion cannot be gained or lost in an adult pawn's lifetime, however children may gain passions at growth moments and the addition or removal of Skill Aptitude xenogenes can also affect passions.
The three levels of passion are:
	None: 	 No flames. 35% multiplier on experience gain. This is the most common passion level.
	Interested:	 One flame. 100% multiplier on experience gain and +8 mood ("Minor passion for my work") while performing related tasks.
	Burning: 	 Two flames. 150% multiplier on experience gain and +14 mood ("Burning passion for my work") while performing related tasks.
==== Global Learning Factor ====
A pawn has a default Global Learning Factor of 100%. Some traits, implants, Genes, and Hediffs can effect Global Learning Factor as an Offset, or a factor. Offsets are added to the base value of 100%. Then, the sum is multiplied by any applicable factors. For example, a pawn with the Fast Learner trait and a Learning Assistant implant has a final Global Learning Factor of 195%.
Offsets
* Too Smart trait: , while also inflicting a penalty to mental break threshold.
* Fast Learner trait: 
* Slow Learner trait: 
* Learning assistant implant : 
* Neural supercharger building : 
* Quick study gene : 
Factors
* Slow study gene : 
==== Experience multiplier table ====
Global Learning Factor	25%	45%	50%	70%	100%	120%	125%	145%	175%	195%	200%	220%	250%	270%	275%	295%	300%	305%	320%	325%	345%
None 	% 	% 	% 	% 	% 	% 	% 	% 	% 	% 	% 	% 	% 	% 	% 	% 	% 	% 	% 	% 	%
 	25%	45%	50%	70%	100%	120%	125%	145%	175%	195%	200%	220%	250%	270%	275%	295%	300%	305%	320%	325%	345%
 	% 	% 	% 	% 	% 	% 	% 	% 	% 	% 	% 	% 	% 	% 	% 	% 	% 	% 	% 	% 	%
=== Decay ===
Beyond skill level 10, XP points are continuously drained away. A skill level is lost only after falling to 0 XP points, and then losing a further 1000 points, preventing repeated level loss and gain right around a level threshold. Experience decay is strictly calculated based on the current skill level and is not directly affected by skill use; Instead, gained XP simply cancels out loss, and vice versa.
XP decays at an accelerated rate with higher skill levels. This means that all XP earned after 55,000 total XP (level 10) effectively has less value, especially for skills that a colonist does not use frequently, because it will disappear. In most cases, XP is gained by time spent on a skill, and not by effective work performed: Working faster does not make it easier or faster to gain XP, or compensate the decay loss. Level 20 (max level) is very difficult to acquire, usually only achievable by colonists solely dedicated to a single profession. 
The Great Memory trait halves the skill decay rate for a pawn.
=== Skill point acquisition strategy ===
The above implies that on average it is better to spread out the skill training over several colonists instead of having only one "expert", except for the artisan professions where it is usually good to have true experts in the colony.
For example, you need to acquire about 150,000 XP to make one colonist a "region-known master" (level 16); the same amount of XP would be enough to have three colonists at level 9 ("solid professional"). This avoids the risk of losing the only pawn that is capable of the task, and in most cases three level-9 workers are better than a single level-16 expert. Creating anything quality is a notable exception to this.
=== Experience table ===
Level 20 is the highest skill level achievable for a pawn.
Level	Name 	Total experience required	Experience till next level	Experience decay rate (exp/day)
- 	Incapable 	- 	- 	-
0 	Barely heard of it 	0 	1000 	0
1 	Utter Beginner 	1000 	2000 	0
2 	Beginner 	3000 	3000 	0
3 	Basic Familiarity 	6000 	4000 	0
4 	Some Familiarity 	10000 	5000 	0
5 	Significant Familiarity 	15000 	6000 	0
6 	Capable Amateur 	21000 	7000 	0
7 	Weak Professional 	28000 	8000 	0
8 	Employable Professional 	36000 	9000 	0
9 	Solid Professional 	45000 	10000 	0
10 	Skilled Professional 	55000 	12000 	30
11 	Very skilled Professional	67000 	14000 	60
12 	Expert 	81000 	16000 	120
13 	Strong Expert 	97000 	18000 	180
14 	Master 	115000 	20000 	300
15 	Strong Master 	135000 	22000 	540
16 	Region-Known Master 	157000 	24000 	840
17 	Region-Leading Master 	181000 	26000 	1200
18 	Planet-Known Master 	207000 	28000 	1800
19 	Planet-Leading Master 	235000 	30000 	2400
20 	Legendary Master 	265000 	32000 	3600
Note that these values are considered before gene levels (exp) if a pawn with good (skill) wants to go from level 4 to 5, they need 1000 skill exp points
== List of skills ==
Using or applying skills will give experience in the skill, and improve the character's proficiency. How much experience is gained depends on the passion for the skill. See passion below.
On this page, where experience gains are listed, an "Interested" passion with 100% skill gain is assumed. Note that this is not the "default" passion; "no passion" at 35% gain is far more common.
=== Animals ===
The animals skill determines how well a character handles wild and domesticated animals, and increases the chance to go undetected while hunting wild animals.
Higher animals skill has the following benefits:
* Chance to tame a wild animal increases. Some animals can not even be attempted to be tamed if the animals skill is too low.
* Chance to successfully train a domesticated animal increases.
* Animal handling, such as milking and shearing certain livestock, becomes more efficient, with a lower chance of wasting products.
* Mastering an animal, as in having it follow you and obey your commands, becomes possible for more animal races. The more wild a race is, the higher the animals skill required to be assigned its master.
* It becomes less likely for a colonist hunting an animal to be detected by the animal, and the animal retaliating. It still requires shooting skill for the colonist to be able to kill the animal.
=== Artistic ===
The artistic skill is the proficiency to create beautiful works of art at an art bench. 
Higher skill increases the chance for a higher quality, in this case more beautiful, sculpture. Note that higher skill levels do not increase the speed of creating sculptures.
The beauty and market value of sculptures increases tremendously at the highest quality levels. Combined with the fact that trade partners pay more for works of art compared to other items, this makes artistic a useful skill outside of decorating the home base.
Not very useful in the early game, but once you have a well-established colony, having a permanent artist would be beneficial to it.
=== Construction ===
The construction skill governs a wide variety of colonist tasks, centered around creating structures in the game world; it is an essential skill in any colony:
* Making all kinds of structures, like furniture, walls, power lines and spaceship parts. If a structure can be placed on the ground in form of a blueprint, its construction is usually facilitated by this skill. Many structures require a minimum skill to make.
* Deconstructing existing structures back into raw materials.
* Building and tearing down roofs.
* Laying and removing flooring, like carpet, concrete and stone tiles.
* Smoothing rock walls and stone floors.
Higher construction skill will
* allow the construction of more difficult to build structures.
* increase construction speed; the base speed at 0 construction skill is 50%, this is increased additively by 15% for every skill level.
* reduce the chance of a construction effort to be "botched", which will result in some resources going to waste, and require the construction effort to be restarted (ie. all work is wasted). The base chance of success is 75%, increasing by about 3% per skill level to 100% at skill level 8.
* increase the chance to make higher quality items, for items that have a quality rating, such as furniture.
Construction outcomes are influenced by the manipulation and sight capacities of the colonist.
Experience is gained continuously while working on a construction project. At 100% work speed this seems to translate to roughly 82 experience per point of work required.
Items with a required Construction skill level:
Name	Level
=== Cooking ===
The cooking skill affects how long it takes to cook meals and butcher dead creatures, as well as the Food Poison Chance for the person who eats the meal. It also affects Butchery Speed and Butchery Efficiency, how much meat is produced when butchering.
Cooking and butchering increase cooking skill. It is also trained by making smokeleaf joints at a drug lab and cooking psychite tea at a campfire or stove.
A Cooking skill of is required to be able to cook every item, a skill of 9 achieves the minimum Food Poison Chance, and a skill of 10 gives maximum Butchery Efficiency - assuming a healthy but otherwise unaugmented pawn. Levels above this only increase the speed of tasks. 
Project 	Experience Given Per Task
Simple Meal	60
Fine Meal 	110
Lavish meal	160
Pemmican 	80
Items with a required Cooking skill level:
Name	Level
=== Crafting ===
The crafting skill affects the creation of many of the items under the smith, tailor and craft work types. It does so in two ways; crafting quality and minimum crafting levels.
A pawn's Crafting skill is a driving factor in the Quality of produced Clothing, Armor, and Weapons. The quality of things such as Sculptures and Buildings are instead controlled by the Artistic and Construction skills respectively.
The speed of production for these tasks is unrelated to Crafting level, however, and is instead completely dependent on a pawn's General Labor Speed and the amount of labor required in the bill. 
Many work bills of the Smith, Tailor and Craft work types have a required minimum Crafting skill level. This restricts the creation of some items to skilled crafters regardless of their possible quality.
The Crafting skill also determines the time required to shred mechanoids, and the amount of resources produced from doing so.
 Items with a required Crafting skill level:
Name	Level
=== Medical ===
The Medical skill level is the main factor for medical treatment quality and speed, surgery speed and surgery success chance. 
Low quality treatment will increase the chance of infection, and the likelihood of permanent health conditions such as scars, in turn leading to chronic pain. Certain scars cause more than 10% pain, permanently weakening the consciousness of the patient, which reduces their work performance.
Medical surgery, if not successful, can fail in minor or major ways, even causing the death of the patient. The success rate is not only determined by the medical skill, but also other character stats like manipulation, eye sight and consciousness. It is not advisable to let an incapacitated doctor perform surgery.
Higher grade medicine and medical equipment like hospital beds and a sterile environment significantly boost the effectiveness of all medical treatments, independent of the skill level of the doctor.
Medical skill can be trained very quickly by performing euthanasia on fast-breeding animals such as chickens. This costs 1 medicine per procedure, but only requires herbal medicine. The procedure can be scheduled in the respective animal's health tab, and an animal sleeping spot must be available to perform the euthanasia.
Performing surgery trains the medical skill. The amount of XP that is awarded only depends on the duration of the procedure (varying by procedure and medical operation speed of the surgeon).
=== Melee ===
The melee skill determines a characters' effectiveness with melee weapons namely, their chance to:
* Land a hit in melee (see Melee Hit Chance)
* Dodge a melee attack, when not aiming or firing a ranged weapon (see Melee Dodge Chance)
The tables below are post-processed chances for a healthy pawn.
Chance to hit
Skill Level	Standard	Brawler	Skill Level	Standard	Brawler
0 	50% 	62% 	- 	- 	-
1 	53% 	65% 	11 	81% 	85%
2 	56% 	68% 	12 	82% 	86%
3 	59% 	71% 	13 	83% 	87%
4 	62% 	74% 	14 	84% 	88%
5 	65% 	77% 	15 	85% 	89%
6 	68% 	80% 	16 	86% 	90%
7 	71% 	81% 	17 	87% 	90.3%
8 	74% 	82% 	18 	88% 	90.6%
9 	77% 	83% 	19 	89% 	90.9%
10 	80% 	84% 	20 	90% 	91.2%
Chance to dodge
Skill Level	Standard	Nimble	Skill Level	Standard	Nimble
0 	0% 	20% 	- 	- 	-
1 	0% 	22% 	11 	12% 	33%
2 	0% 	24% 	12 	14% 	33.5%
3 	0% 	26% 	13 	16% 	34%
4 	0% 	28% 	14 	18% 	34.5%
5 	0% 	30% 	15 	20% 	35%
6 	2% 	30.5% 	16 	22% 	35.5%
7 	4% 	31% 	17 	24% 	36%
8 	6% 	31.5% 	18 	26% 	36.5%
9 	8% 	32% 	19 	28% 	37%
10 	10% 	32.5% 	20 	30% 	37.5%
=== 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.
=== Intellectual ===
This skill affects the speed at which research is completed.
=== Plants ===
The plants skill affects how fast a colonist sows and harvests growing zones, hydroponics and flower pots, and how fast trees and other vegetation is cut down. It also influences how much a colonist forages while in a caravan. Some plants require a minimum plants skill in order to plant them.
 Plants with a minimum Plants skill level to sow:
Name	Level
=== Shooting ===
The shooting skill affects a character's accuracy with ranged weapons.
The table below shows post-processed shooting accuracy per tile of distance for each skill level and trait combination, assuming the pawn is healthy:
Skill Level	Standard	Careful Shooter	Trigger-Happy	Skill Level	Standard	Careful Shooter	Trigger-Happy
0 	89% 	94.5% 	84% 	- 	- 	- 	-
1 	91% 	95% 	85% 	11 	97.25% 	98.333% 	95%
2 	93% 	95.5% 	86% 	12 	97.5% 	98.5% 	95.5%
3 	93.5% 	96% 	87% 	13 	97.75% 	98.666% 	96%
4 	94% 	96.5% 	88% 	14 	98% 	98.833% 	96.5%
5 	94.5% 	97% 	89% 	15 	98.167% 	99% 	97%
6 	95% 	97.25% 	91% 	16 	98.333% 	99.125% 	97.25%
7 	95.5% 	97.5% 	93% 	17 	98.5% 	99.25% 	97.5%
8 	96% 	97.75% 	93.5% 	18 	98.666% 	99.313% 	97.75%
9 	96.5% 	98% 	94% 	19 	98.833% 	99.375% 	98%
10 	97% 	98.167% 	94.5% 	20 	99% 	99.438% 	98.167%
Note that 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%.
The base accuracy at various distances are listed when you check the information of a pawn. This can show the actual shooting performance of a pawn, especially at long ranges.
=== 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
== Version history ==
* 0.0.245 - Skills now cap at 20. Added cooking, medicine, artistic, crafting but currently do nothing. Rebalanced shooting and melee to make skill more important. Shooting accuracy split into misses due to equipment and misses due to skill.
* 0.2.363 - High level skills now decay. Passions system added. 
* 0.9.722 - Old pawns now tend to spawn with higher skills. Low skill cooks can now cause food poisoning.
* 0.10.785 - Passion flames are now displayed subtly on the work overview screen. Reduced skill degradation rate. Reworked how skills generate so there will be more initial skill variation and age affect starting skills more.
* 0.12.906 - Animals skill added.
* B19/1.0 - Doing passionate work now affects mood instead of recreation. Adjusted balance of learning rates for various skills. Easier: Melee, shooting, social. Harder: Intellectual, growing, mining.
* 1.2.2753 - Pawns will now not lose their skill levels until they fall 1000 XP under zero. This stops pawns from quickly leveling up and down around a threshold. We now display a text mote when a player pawn gains a new level in a skill.
* 1.4.3527 - Fix: Can train shooting and melee on colony mechanoids.
Category:Characters