Human resources

Human Resources are everything that a human body can offer: slavery, organ harvesting, wearing human skin, and outright cannibalism. Most pawns have a severe distaste for these things, but in dire circumstances it can be necessary to use every resource.

Most forms of HR impart significant mood penalties on many colonists, but they are also a potential route to survival and even a source of income. A number of traits can make this feasible as a core strategy for a colony. Some colonies might even make it the preferred standard for living, especially with mods or the Ideology DLC.

Mood penalties

"Normal" colonists in base game (Core RimWorld) receive penalties whenever anyone in the colony: butchers corpses, harvest organs, kills a pawn through organ harvest, or sells slaves. Colonists will also receive penalties for seeing corpses, eating human flesh, or wearing human leather. They also don't like butchering corpses themselves. Colonists will know about organ harvesting and slavery (but not butchering) even while on a caravan, or in another settlement. Debuffs from slavery, organ harvesting, and for a human butcher all stack, so it becomes very dangerous unless your colony is filled with psychopaths/cannibals.

Some additional care can be taken to maintain mood levels through other means, such as providing additional recreation, psychic soothe pulsers, better meals, drugs or improved quality bed. However, reserving these mood regulators for your organ farm could mean that a poorly timed psychic drone on top could seriously mess with your colony.

A pawn's Ideoligion may change what they feel about these practices - they might enjoy or even require them. See Human resources#Ideoligion for more details.

Mood table (Core)

Without any DLC:

Trait	Observes corpse	Observes rotting corpse	Butchers human	Somebody butchers human (colonywide)	Eats raw human flesh	Eats meal with human flesh	Wears human skin clothing	Trades human flesh or leather	A slave is sold (colonywide)	An organ is harvested (colonywide)
None (average colonist)	−3 Mood (0.25 days. 3 stacks. 0.5 stack multiplier)	−7 Mood (0.25 days. 5 stacks. 0.3 stack multiplier)	−6 Mood (6 days. 4 stacks. 0.75 stack multiplier)	−6 Mood (6 days. 1 stack)	−20 Mood (1 day. 1 stack)	−15 Mood (1 day. 1 stack)	−3/−5/−7/−8 Mood	–	−3 Mood (4 days. 5 stacks)	−5 Mood (7.5 days. 5 stacks. 0.75 stack multiplier)
Psychopath	–	Normal penalty	–	–	Normal penalty	Normal penalty	Normal penalty	–	–	–
Bloodlust	–	–	–	–	Normal penalty	Normal penalty	+3/+5/+7/+8 Mood	–	Normal penalty	+4 Mood (stack unknown)
Cannibal	–	Normal penalty	–	–	+20 Mood (1 day. 1 stack)	+15 Mood (1 day. 1 stack)	+3/+5/+7/+8 Mood	–	Normal penalty	Normal penalty

The Ideology DLC changes the impact of these actions. All Ideoligions have precepts for corpses, cannibalism, etc., which will change the moodlet accordingly. While some precept values are designed to be similar to the base game, they are not identical. For example, the value Corpses: Ugly, used if you select the option "Classic-like", provides a -4 moodlet for observing a fresh corpse, instead of the -3 in the base game. See Human resources#Ideoligion Table for more details.

Traits

The three traits below make a colonist react indifferently or even enthusiastically towards human suffering or abuse. If there are more than one of the traits on the same person, the most beneficial one applies (e.g. a Cannibal will always receive +20 mood per day by eating raw human flesh, no matter what other traits that colonist has).

• Psychopath: No issue with slavery or organ harvesting

• No issue with seeing fresh corpses or butchering corpses
• does NOT like seeing rotten corpses, eating human flesh, or wearing human skin clothing

• Bloodlust: No issue with organ harvesting. Likes to wear human leather, doesn't mind wearing tainted apparel (i.e. taken from a dead body)

• No issue with seeing corpses (even rotten) or butchering corpses
• does NOT like cannibalism or slavery

• Cannibal: Loves human flesh and likes to wear human leather

• No issue with seeing fresh corpses or butchering corpses
• does NOT like slavery or organ harvesting.

Uses

Humans and their corpses can be used for many valuable services:

Unprocessed corpses

Animals don't mind eating humans - it isn't cannibalism, after all. You may want to leave a pile of raider corpses for your wargs and other carnivores/non-grazing omnivores to eat, which also acts as free corpse disposal. Feeding human corpses has no penalty for the colony, except for those who see the corpses. Haulers will invariably see the corpses, but Carrier dryads and Lifter mechs don't even mind (set a zone so that human haulers won't go to the corpse area).

Corpses may also be stripped from their clothes. With an electric smelter, you may scrap armor and weapons for small amounts of resources like steel, which is useful once ore deposits are depleted. Apparel stripped from a corpse is considered tainted, so actually wearing it will give mood penalties to non-Bloodlusted colonists. However, it's often worth the small penalty to use a set of marine armor, or that megasloth wool parka in an ice sheet.

Organ harvesting

See also: Surgery and Medical Surgery Success Chance

Organ harvesting requires a live pawn, a doctor and 2 units of herbal medicine or better. Organs must be undamaged; diseased organs are not available to harvest. The kidneys, lungs, liver and heart are all options for harvesting, for use in other colonists or selling on the market. You can harvest the following from a healthy pawn until they die:

• 1 kidney worth  900
• 1 lung worth  1,000
• Either 1 heart or 1 liver, worth  1,200.

Harvesting three organs is worth a total of  900 +  1,000 + ( 1,200 or  1,200) =  3100 market value.

• If you have a prosthetic heart, which costs  230, you can install it to obtain the more valuable organic heart. Then, you can harvest the liver  1,200, for a total of  4070. This is more efficient if you can craft your own prosthetic hearts - buying prosthetic hearts may actually cause a deficit for trade, as you always sell items at a loss.
• If the heart and liver are both unavailable, you may harvest a second kidney for a total of  2800 or lung for a total of  2900.

If unwilling to organ-murder the donor, then you shouldn't remove the heart or the liver, leading to a value of  1900. If a prosthetic heart is available, then you'll profit to  2870. If the organ "donor" is still alive, they'll receive a -30 mood penalty per organ removed, at 75% stacking, up to 5 times. Expect survivors to break, so check their melee skill accordingly. Alternatively, you can install peg legs and wooden hands to reduce their effectiveness, at the cost of 1 wood and even more medicine.

Pawns with bionic attachments are much more valuable: the full part may be retrieved and worth its normal value. Prosthetics may also be obtained, but are worth less than bionic parts. Removing an artificial part doesn't count as organ harvesting^{[Fact Check]}.

Their default market value is displayed above. In practice the actual buying/selling price is the market price modified by trading skills/etc., and failing the surgery makes things more expensive.

Mood

Colonists receive a colony-wide -5 mood debuff from an organ harvest. Organs past the first count, or "stack", for a smaller debuff: 5 organs give -15 mood. If a vital organ (one that kills when harvested) is removed, then an additional and separate -6 mood penalty is received for organ murder.

The organ harvester themselves receives another -5 mood debuff, with progressively smaller stacks (5 organs, -15 mood), unless they wouldn't care. Finally, the organ harvester receives a social penalty.

Cannibals don't like organ harvesting - if it isn't on the plate, it probably isn't ok. Bloodlusted pawns and Psychopaths don't mind, however. Single organ harvests (say, to replace a lost lung) are manageable, if the surgeon doesn't mind or is treated well. But mass organ farms require a colony filled with special traits, suitable ideoligion, or massive mood buffs to function.

Human butchering

By default, "humanlike corpses" is turned off under the [Details...] tab under [Bills] on a butcher table, to avoid accidental over-enthusiasm. Simply go in and turn click it back on, and get to your dark deeds. Butchering a human produces human meat and human leather.

Before difficulty modifiers, each undamaged corpse, butchered by a pawn with 100% Butchery Efficiency (or 10+ Cooking skill), is worth  284 in market value from raw resources - human meat and human leather. Corpses may be further processed - converting them to simple meals and normal quality dusters provides an average of  370 per corpse. This is before considering corpse damage, duster quality, trading skills/etc.... In most practical scenarios, pawns will die from damage, and you'll recieve less material.

Human meat

Human meat is nutrition like any other. The meat itself can be used as a last resort, or as a nice mood buff for cannibals. To cannibals, raw flesh is even better than a lavish meal, with a +20 positive moodlet. Cooked human meat still counts as human meat, although it gives a lesser debuff/buff. Like butchering, you must edit a meal's bill in order for your pawns to start cooking with humans.

Raw human meat inflicts a massive mood penalty, which may be situationally useful. It can activate inspirations for a tortured artist. Low mood makes conversion easier, and even cause a Crisis of Belief.

Human meat can also be used in a biofuel refinery to create chemfuel, used to make kibble and other animal meals, and used in a biosculpter pod with no penalties (beyond the initial butchering). The action of cooking human meat has no penalty, but eating the meat is another story.

A human corpse provides an average of 92.5 human meat, before missing body parts and difficulty modifiers are taken into account, for a market value of  73.92. Human meat itself is worth less than ordinary meat, but not when processed. Therefore, it can be cooked into  9.25 simple meals worth  138.75 for 47.5 work, or processed in a biofuel refinery for  46.25, worth  106.37. Fine meals are more valuable if you have the vegetable ingredients for them.

Human leather

Human leather, the other by-product of butchering a human, is terrible as a protective textile, but has a high market value. If made into clothing, wearing such items give a mood boost to pawns with the bloodlust or cannibal traits.

Without DLC, creating human armchairs or dusters is the most valuable way to use textiles. If the Royalty DLC is enabled, this role is instead taken by formal vests and corsets.

They also provide an average of 50 human leather, worth  210 on its own. It is enough for 5/8ths of a duster; when converted into normal quality dusters, each corpse is worth around  231.25 for 105 work. However, there may be leftover human leather, which is not accounted for.

Mood

Butchering a corpse gives a colony wide -6 debuff. This doesn't stack; butchering 1 or 100 corpses has the same effect, so butchering corpses en mass is more mood efficient. This can easily be managed, such as improving a colony's recreation, dining, or bed rooms. Shelves are recommended if you have pawns that don't like seeing corpses on the ground. Even with shelves, "vulnerable" pawns will almost invariably see corpses at some time, which may make things less manageable.

Other than the intial butcher, there isn't a special penalty to using human material. Pawns don't like eating human meat (even in nutrient paste) or human clothes - but they don't mind human meat used for kibble, for instance.

The butcher themselves receives another -6 mood debuff, which does stack as they butcher more corpses (up to 4). It is recommended that they be a Cannibal, Bloodlusted, or a Psychopath, as all three traits don't mind butchering at all. Cannibals alone don't mind eating human meat, and receive a great mood boost for eating it, raw or cooked. Of course, an Ideoligion friendly to cannibalism and/or corpse butcher makes things easy.

Selling slaves

Main article: Slavery

Slavery in Core RimWorld is the sale of prisoners to other factions. Humans have a base value of 1750. This is reduced and increased by various traits (including skills), reduced by injuries, ailments, and organ loss, and increased directly by their bionics' value. It is a quick way to get decent amounts of money quickly. However, not all traders accept slaves - the most notable being slavers and faction bases.

A healthy pawn can give a lung, a kidney, and a heart/liver, worth  1150. Harvesting organs seems to have no penalty to corpse value^{[Fact Check]}, so butchering the corpse then gives a value of  284 without any further processing. This gives a total of  1434 before further processing. Meanwhile, the value of a slave is proportional to their skills and injuries. Most often, it's less than the base human market value, and possibly less than their organs - see the information tab (once they've healed) for their value.

If a pawn is highly valuable, then they'll likely have skills or traits valuable to you, so consider recruiting them. Therefore, at a certain point, harvesting a prisoner for their organs and/or butchering them is significantly more profitable.

In the Royalty DLC, prisoners can also be sold for honor to a Royal Tribute Collector - 3 honor each, equal to  200 gold or  2000 silver's worth in gold. Mood debuffs happen as usual. The quality of the prisoner, so long as they can walk, doesn't matter. Therefore, you can organ-harvest prisoners and then convert them into honor. However, like slavers, the empire only comes every so often.

Honor itself can be converted into silver at a 4 honor : 500 silver rate, or  375 silver per prisoner. This may seem worse than other options, but nearly all items are sold at less than market value. If a pawn is below Social skill 16, then selling a heart or liver alone is worth less than 1 slave's worth of honor.

Mood

Selling slaves incurs a smaller mood decrease than organ harvest. Pawns will suffer a mood penalty of -3, stacking up to -15 for 4 days once slaves are sold. In Core RimWorld, only Psychopaths are immune to slavery debuffs. An ideoligion that supports slavery is a different story. Other pawns will have a significant negative opinion of whoever sells the slaves.

Selling slaves in small amounts - 1 or 2 slaves every 4 days - provides a small and easily manageable mood debuff. You can improve their rooms, temporarily use drugs or lavish meals, or simply tanking the mood if the colony is happy otherwise. However, Slavers only appear occasionally and stay around for 1-2 days, which makes selling slowly difficult without a nearby faction base.

Alternatively, as the penalty caps out at a stack of 5, selling more than 5 prisoners does not increase the debuff further. Thus, selling in a single burst can be more efficient so long as the larger debuff can be withstood. Timing the sale with the occurrence of a wedding or party for example can help. Slaves can be stored in cryptosleep caskets to eliminate their upkeep cost while waiting to sell them. Note that prisoners must generally be anaesthetized to do so, and after removing them from the casket they will take some time to both wake up and fully recover which can affect both whether they can be sold and their price. Plan ahead to give them time to recover before their time of sale.

Slaves (Ideology DLC)

Main article: Slavery#Ideology

With Ideology, slaves become controllable workers. Slaves are acquired through threatening prisoners and dropping their will down to zero. Slaves are unable to do certain tasks, like research or artistry. However, they will ignore other incapabilities, so enslaving a pawn will override their refusal to do dumb labor.

Compared to colonists, slaves have a large mood boost and no recreation need. However, they work at 85% speed, and you run the risk of a slave rebellion, similar to a prison break. The frequency of slave rebellions are determined by mood, suppression, proximity of weapons, and the presence of colonists.

Slaves in the colony provides a variable mood increase or decrease per individual slave, depending on Ideoligion. In exchange, they are potentially worth infinite value, so long as you can keep them fed and suppressed. And like in the base game, you can sell them for a tidy profit.

Ideoligion

With the Ideology DLC, pawns can tolerate - or even enjoy - certain illicit practices. The following precepts are relevant:

• Cannibalism:

• Cannibalism: Acceptable - Negates penalties for butchering humans and human flesh, enjoys eating human flesh
• Cannibalism: Preferred (or greater) - Negates penalties for butchering humans, enjoys eating human flesh and wearing human leather

• Corpses: Don't Care - Negates penalties from seeing corpses, fresh or rotten.
• Organ Use: Acceptable - Negates all penalties from organ harvesting.
• Slavery:

• Slavery: Acceptable - Negates penalties for selling prisoners or using slave labor
• Slavery: Honorable - Mood buffs for selling slaves and enslaving others

Ideoligion table

Cannibalism Precepts	Butchers human	Somebody butchers human (colonywide)	Eats human flesh	Wears human skin clothing	Eats non-human flesh meal
Cannibalism: Abhorrent	−12 Mood (6 days)	−5 Mood (5 days. 5 stacks. 0.75 stack multiplier)	−20 Mood (1 day. 1 stack)	−2/−4/−6/−8 Mood	–
Cannibalism: Horrible	−6 Mood (6 days)	−3 Mood (5 days. 5 stacks. 0.75 stack multiplier)	−12 Mood (1 day. 1 stack)	−2/−3/−5/−6 Mood	–
Cannibalism: Disapproved	−3 Mood (6 days)	−1 Mood (5 days. 5 stacks. 0.75 stack multiplier)	−5 Mood (1 day. 1 stack)	−1/−2/−3/−4 Mood	–
Cannibalism: Acceptable	–	–	–	–	–
Cannibalism: Preferred	–	–	+2 Mood (1 day. 1 stack)	+1/+2/+3/+4 Mood	–
Cannibalism: Required (Strong)	–	–	+4 Mood (1 day. 1 stack)	+2/+3/+5/+6 Mood	−2 Mood (1 day. 1 stack)
Cannibalism: Required (Ravenous)	–	–	+6 Mood (1 day. 1 stack)	+2/+4/+6/+8 Mood	−4 Mood (1 day. 1 stack)

Corpse Precepts	Observes Corpse	Observes rotting corpse
Corpses: Ugly	−4 Mood (0.5 days. 3 stacks. 0.5 stack multiplier)	−6 Mood (0.5 days. 5 stacks. 0.3 stack multiplier)
Corpses: Don't care	–	–

• Organ Use: Acceptable*
• Slavery*

Gene harvesting (Biotech DLC)

Pawns can be kept as prisoners for their genetic potential, to perform periodic Gene extractions and extract ovum's from female prisoners.

If their sole purpose is genetic you can install peg legs and remove them so that the prisoners can never escape.

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Guides

Progression

Quickstart Guides • Basics • Intermediate Midgame Guide • Advanced Endgame Guide • Ending the game

Scenarios

Lost Tribe Guide • Rich Explorer Guide • Naked Brutality Guide • The Mechanitor Guide

Survival

Extreme Heat Guide • Extreme Cold Guide • Extreme Desert Guide • Ice Sheet Guide • Sea Ice Guide • Events Guide

Combat

Defense tactics • Offense tactics • Weapon Guide

Construction

Colony Building Guide • Defense structures

Production

Food production • Money making guide

Other

Skill Training • Permadeath save conversion guide •
Ideology Min-Maxing