Characters

## Colonists

Colonists are the living inhabitants of each RimWorld colony. Each colonist has specific skills, positive and negative traits, and a character backstory. In general, every human is a colonist except for raiders/travelers/prisoners. The colonists come in various outfits based on their background, which can be seen by looking at the 'Character' tab in game.

### Skills

*Main article:Skills*
Every character in RimWorld has a set of skills; these skills govern their effectiveness in the relevant tasks.

### Needs

* Food: how well fed the person or creature currently is. An empty food bar indicates starvation, leading to malnutrition in various stages, and eventually death. Hunger lowers the mood of the person.
* Rest: how rested the person or creature still is. An empty rest bar leads to exhaustion, which usually means that the pawn will uncontrollably fall asleep on the spot. Being tired also puts the person in a bad mood.
* Recreation: the need for enjoyable activities; can be met in many ways. Unsatisfied recreation will trigger increasingly, eventually severe mood penalties.
* Beauty: the desire to exist in a visually pleasing environment. May trigger a mild mood penalty when unsatisfied, and a substantial mood bonus when satisfied.
* Comfort: people want to sit in comfortable chairs and sleep in cozy beds. Otherwise they get mildly irritated, but when satisfied it makes them quite happy.
* Outdoors: the need to be outside, ie. not under a roof or mountain top. Pawns that are indoors for too long grow increasingly unhappy.
* Indoors Content added by the Ideology DLC: the need to be inside, ie. under a roof or mountain top. Pawns that are outdoors for too long grows increasingly unhappy. Only appears and replaces Outdoors needs if pawn is at an ideoligion with specific meme.

## Animals

Wild animals occasionally spawn on the map according to the biome and from random events. These wild animals and tamed animals will wander and graze on vegetation, including player-grown plants, regardless of type. Growing food outdoors can sometimes attract animals to your base perimeter. Animals are an important source of food by the meat they provide once hunted and butchered.

Raiders will target tamed animals as often as colonists.

Animal trainers receive 90 XP per training or taming attempt. When animals nuzzle a colonist, it counts as a social interaction and is logged in the social tab of both the colonist and animal.

### Needs

* Food: Animals will eat any available food according to their diet. Herbivorous animals of the colony can be left to eat grass on their own. Note that animals require different amounts of food compared to humans, as represented by their Hunger Rate.

* Rest: Animals will sleep as needed. Tamed animals will sleep in animal sleeping spots, animal sleeping boxes, or animal beds. If none of which are available, the animal will crash out on the ground inside its allowed zone. A tamed animal will not sleep as long as its master is drafted.

## Prisoners

Prisoners are people, usually raiders, hostile tribals, or your own colonists undergoing a mental break, who have been taken captive. They are unable to leave their prison barracks and can only use facilities (such as a food dispenser or shelf) on their own if they are placed inside the prison barracks.

Colonists generally will not take food from prisoners' cells. However, colonists experiencing a "food binge" mental break may steal food from anywhere they can reach, including forbidden areas.

Animals that are allowed to venture into prison cells will occasionally eat food left for prisoners.

### Needs

* Provide individual prison cells.
* Provide a table and chair for prisoners to sit at.
* Provide a comfortable bed (using a skilled constructor to make good or better quality beds).
* Use marble tiles (or if underground, smooth stone) for flooring to provide a slight beauty boost.
* Give fine meals or better.

## Mechanoids

Mechanoids are deadly autonomously intelligent robots, most commonly encountered as hostiles in raids, ancient shrines and the ancient ship crash event.

## Raiders

Raiders are enemies who attack in groups when the storyteller's threat cycle is active (or any time, for Randy Random). The group size and strength of a raiding party is determined by 'points', which will be explained in-depth further down this article.

### Types

* Tribals
* Pirates
* Outlanders
* Mercenaries
* Spacer
* Empire
* Mechanoid

## Visitors

Occasionally an event is triggered that spawns a group visitors from a friendly faction at the edge of the map that comes and mills about the colony. Sometimes one member of the group has items to trade, indicated by a question mark over the pawn. To initiate trade, select a colonist and right-click the trader.

A visiting group's arrival could prove advantageous if the colony is assaulted by a mutual enemy while they are present.

When leaving, visitors will carry away wounded members of their faction.