Gut worms

Parasitic worms in the gut. They cause vomiting. They also consume the victim's food, which increases hunger.

— Description

Gut worms are a parasitic disease that infects the stomach, causing pain and nausea and doubling the host's hunger rate.

Stages

General

• Hunger Rate Factor: +100%
• Pain: +20%
• Vomiting (MTB of 1 day)
• -5 Sick mood, stacking with any mood effect from the pain.

Progression

Gut Worms do not increase in severity over time, nor are they cured over time. Direct treatment is the primary way to cure it.

Treatment

Gut Worms will be cured when the treatments performed on it reach a cumulative tend quality of 300%, thus it is important to maximize the Medical Tend Quality of the Doctor performing the tending and the quality of the medicine used. It takes 48 ingame hours (2 days, or 120,000 ticks (33.33 mins)) between each treatment. For example, the disease can be treated with 3 treatments at 100% quality, or 5 at 60%, or 1 at 130% plus 2 at 85%.

Other treatments

• Administer healer mech serum - instantly treats the disease
• Install a bionic stomach (or other stomach replacements)
• Use the medic cycle of the Biosculpter pod

Analysis

Frequently when Gut Worms strike a colony, several members will be affected at once. With multiple colonists vomiting, the base can quickly become very dirty. If this happens in the kitchen, the risk of food poisoning increases, risking further vomiting. If vomiting occurs while a pawn is eating a meal, the eating process is cancelled, and the pawn will have to start over after vomiting.

If already malnourished when Gut Worms (or Food Poisoning) strike, this can be a real problem, as things can spiral out of control, and the malnutrition severity can progress, even while seated at the dinner table actively trying to eat a meal. Pemmican is said to be better than meals in this situation, because a pawn may successfully eat a few small pieces of pemmican before the vomiting begins again. In this case, the partial progress toward removing hunger is retained, and malnutrition may not advance.

As with many other things in RimWorld, if Gut Worms are not managed well, minor problems can snowball into mental breaks, downing, death and loss of the entire colony. Preventative installation of a few bionic stomachs, especially in the main cook, is one possible strategy to help prevent future outbreaks of Gut Worms from dominoing out of control.

Version history

• 0.13.1135 - Added.
• 0.19.2009 - Gut worms no longer always required 5 treatments regardless of quality, and instead is based on cumulative treatment quality.

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Disease

Deadly diseases

Flu • Infection • Lung rot • Malaria • Plague • Sleeping sickness • Organ decay • Blood rot • Infant illness

Non-fatal diseases

Fibrous mechanites • Gut worms • Muscle parasites • Sensory mechanites • Paralytic abasia

Animal diseases

Scaria