Human resources

Human resources are everything that an otherwise-useless human body, living or dead, can offer. If you aren't squeamish, organs and other resources can be extracted from prisoners, prisoners can be sold as slaves or executed or used for even darker purposes, and corpses can be broken down for food and leather. You may be doing what you need to survive in terribly harsh circumstances, or simply profiting off of your enemies' misfortune.

However, exploiting human resources can impart significant mood penalties on many colonists. 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 the Ideology DLC or mods.

Note that selling items gets less than market value, sometimes much less. In practice the actual buying/selling price is the market price modified by trading skills, etc. and difficulty.

Prisoners

Living prisoners can be stripped of their possessions and clothing without penalty, and recruited (assuming they aren't unwaveringly loyal), taken as slaves, or converted to loyal ghouls. But what about prisoners not worth taking on as permanent members of your colony?

Selling as slaves

Not to be confused with keeping pawns as slaves, prisoners can be sold as slaves to other factions. Humans have a base value of 1750. This is modified by traits, skills, injuries, ailments, and organ loss, and increased directly by their bionics' value. Most often, prisoners are worth less than the base human market value. Selling a prisoner is a quick way to get a decent amount of money quickly, inflicts a smaller mood penalty than some of the other options, and gives us a baseline to compare other options to. However, you may need to wait: only slave caravans, slave ships, and faction bases accept slaves. Of those, only faction bases are reliably available for trade, and visiting them requires a caravan.

Royal tribute collector

Prisoners can also be sold for honor to a Royal tribute collector, inflicting the usual mood penalties. Each prisoner is worth 3 honor each, equal to  200 gold, nominally worth  2000 silver. The market value of the prisoner, so long as they can walk, doesn't matter. Therefore, you can organ-harvest a lung and kidney ( 1900), then convert the prisoner into honor. Like slavers, the Royal tribute collector only visits every so often.

Honor itself can be converted into silver at a 4 honor :  500 silver rate, or  375 silver per prisoner. It is important to note that unlike honor conversion, all other ways of selling human resources get less than market value. However, even a Social skill 0 pawn would still only need to sell items with a total base market value of  625 to be more profitable. Generally, it's best to only take the honor if you actually want it as the final product, not to convert it into silver.

Extracting organs

See also: Surgery and Medical Surgery Success Chance

A healthy pawn can give a lung, a kidney, and a heart or liver, worth  3100, and you can still butcher their corpse. Most prisoners are worth more as organs than as slaves, and organs can be used for your own diseased or injured pawns, or more easily sold than slaves. However, each harvested organ and deceased patient inflicts stacking mood penalties under normal circumstances.

Organ harvesting requires a live pawn, a doctor, and 2 units of herbal medicine (worth  20) or better for each organ. Organs must be undamaged; diseased organs are not available to harvest. The kidneys, lungs, liver, and heart are all options for harvesting. You can typically harvest the following from a healthy pawn:

• 1 kidney worth  900
• 1 lung worth  1,000
• Either 1 heart or 1 liver, worth  1,200. Harvesting either will typically kill the donor pawn.

Harvesting these three organs is worth a total of  900 +  1000 + ( 1,200 or  1,200) =  3100 market value.

If you're unwilling to organ-murder the donor, then you shouldn't remove the heart or the liver. One lung and kidney are worth a total of  1900. 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.

Not all pawns and circumstances are typical. Some pawns are worth more or less as organ donors.

If the heart and liver are both unavailable (typically due to injury or sickness), you may harvest a second kidney for a total of  2800 or lung for a total of  2900.

If you have a prosthetic heart, which is worth  230, you can install it to obtain the more valuable organic heart. Then, you can harvest the liver worth  1,200, for a total of  4070. (If you don't want to organ-murder the patient, skip the liver, for a total value of  2870.) This is more efficient if you can craft your own prosthetic hearts, as items are always bought and sold at a loss.

If the pawn has the Deathless gene, then you can harvest all 6 organs for a total of  6200. A sanguophage quest can net a huge sum of money. If installing the xenogerm yourself, 1 archite capsule costs  700 to buy, for a net profit of  5500.

A Void touched pawn with the Deathless gene will grow back organs, and can be duplicated using a Corrupted obelisk to create a renewable source of organs for infinite profit, but this requires completion of the Anomaly (DLC). Deathless void touched prisoners will be comatose until vital organs are regrown, preventing them from attempting any breakouts.

Artificial body parts

Most artificial body parts can be surgically removed without any mood debuffs, to be reused for your own colony's pawns or resold. Removing artificial parts reduces the market value of the prisoner, both by deducting the value of the implant, and (in most cases) also because of the now-missing body part and decreased capacities.

Removing a bionic heart or prosthetic heart will immediately organ-murder the patient, with the usual mood penalties. This can also happen with a detoxifier lung or detoxifier kidney if the patient doesn't have a second lung or kidney remaining.

Peg legs and wooden hands and feet will only yield  1 wood when removed, which is worth less than the medicine necessary to extract them. Dentures can be removed but do not yield a part to resell. Flesh tentacles, flesh whips, fleshmass lungs, and fleshmass stomachs cannot be extracted, only removed, and spawn a hostile Fingerspike when removed.

Joywires, death acidifiers, and mindscrews cannot be removed.

Removing a bionic spine, revenant vertebrae, or both legs leaves the patient helpless, unable to walk or feed themselves. This can be exploited to leave prisoners helpless to escape for long-term exploitation, by installing two peg legs and removing them, at the cost of some medicine. However, this also significantly reduces to the market value of the prisoner, and prisoners who cannot walk cannot be sold to the Royal tribute collector.

Execution and fluid ideoligion

Executing a prisoner normally incurs a small mood debuff, varying depending on whether the prisoner was considered guilty or not. However, in addition to the positive thought that followers of a fluid ideoligion with the Execution: Respected if guilty or Required precept get from executing prisoners, the ideoligion will also get a development point for each eligible prisoner executed. Note that ripscanning is considered an execution.

Hemogen

Pawns can be kept for hemogen pack production, or directly bloodfed on by those with Hemogen needs. Hemogen packs take a long time to create and are only worth  5 silver per pack, so this is not particularly profitable, but it is valuable for building a stable supply of packs for your hemogen-reliant pawns and as a way of completely automating the training of medical skill.

Genetic extraction and manipulation

Pawns can be kept as prisoners for their genetic potential, to perform periodic gene extractions and extract ova from female prisoners. (Like hemogen packs, ovum are only worth  50 silver and thus not significantly profitable on their own.) They can be kept long term to safely extract genes after the genetic shock wears off, or they can be extracted in rapid succession to get two extractions done quickly at the cost of killing them.

Prisoners can also be used to split up genepacks that have multiple genes, by installing those genepacks in them, then running extractions on them to get separate genepacks for the genes. This works best on baseliners, who are less likely to give a genepack with a non-cosmetic gene attached to the individual gene you want to extract.

Sanguophage prisoners can also be forced to spread their xenotype.

The dead calm gene (naturally present in genies) will prevent prison breaks while still allowing the prisoner to walk and feed themselves. This will remove any existing xenotype however. Deathrest can also be used.

Subcore production

Prisoners can be kept to continually scan in a subcore softscanner to produce standard subcores, or "ripscanned" (executed) in subcore ripscanner to create a high subcore. The former is generally not worth keeping a prisoner by itself, but can be worth it when you're already keeping them for other reasons. The latter can be combined with organ harvesting and butchering: take a kidney and a lung, ripscan them, and then butcher the corpse.

For selling, standard subcores are just barely profitable (just  77 silver) compared to their base components and are not worth the time. A high subcore requires  223 silver of non-human material and is worth  1,000 silver, for a Market Value profit of  777. This is still less than a heart or liver, but the death is considered an execution rather than organ-murder.

Under some unusual circumstances, high subcores can be more profitable than organ-murder:

• A pawn with Deathless can be harvested for all 6 major organs (2 lungs, 2 kidneys, heart, liver) and then ripscanned for a total profit of  6977 silver.
• A pawn with death refusal can survive being ripscanned once for each charge of death refusal.

Psychic rituals

Some psychic rituals require a target, which can be a prisoner as long as they have psychic sensitivity above 0% (i.e. the target is not psychically deaf or psychically dead).

• Chronophagy de-ages the invoker at the cost of  20 Bioferrite and aging the target.
• Psychophagy costs  20 Bioferrite to temporarily increase the invoker's psychic sensitivity and permanently render the target psychically dead.
• Philophagy costs  1 shard and permanently transfers skill experience from the target's highest skill to the invoker.

Imbue death refusal can be used on a prisoner (at the cost of  1 shard) to grant that target charge(s) of death refusal, which can allow them to survive normally-fatal exploitation for gene extraction or ripscanning. This doesn't protect against organ-murder, however.

Corpses

Human resources don't end when the heart stops - or gets removed.

Unprocessed corpses

Pawns generally do not like seeing human corpses, which makes hauling them from place to place difficult. Hauling them to storage can be handled by non-human labor, however: Animals trained to haul, carrier dryads and lifter mechs can carry human corpses without penalty. Simply set a zone so that human haulers won't go to the corpse area.

Similarly, 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, ghouls, and other carnivores/non-grazing omnivores to eat. This doubles as free corpse disposal. Feeding raw human corpses to animals or ghouls has no penalty for the colony.

Tainted clothing

You can also strip corpses of their clothes. Except for utility items, apparel stripped from a corpse is considered tainted, reducing its market value by 90% and preventing traders from buying it or, under normal circumstances, accepting it as a gift. Wearing tainted clothing will give stacking mood penalties to colonist pawns who do not have the Bloodlust trait or inhumanized hediff. However, it's often worth the small penalty to use a single critical piece, such as a suit of marine armor, or a megasloth wool parka in an ice sheet.

With an electric smelter, you can scrap armor for small amounts of the metallic resources used to make it even if that armor is tainted, which is moderately useful as a labor-intensive source of small amounts of metal.

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 a base yield of  140 human meat and  75 human leather.

Before Difficulty and Storyteller modifiers, each undamaged adult corpse, butchered by a pawn with 100% Butchery Efficiency (or 10+ Cooking skill), is worth  427 in market value from raw resources - human meat and human leather. Corpses may be further processed - converting them to packaged survival meals and dusters provides an average of  338 per corpse.^[Detail] This is before considering corpse damage, duster quality, trading skills, etc. In most practical scenarios, pawns will die from damage, and you'll receive less material.

Human meat

Human meat is nutrition like any other. The meat itself can be used as a last resort for most pawns, at the cost of a massive mood penalty: −20 for eating raw meat and −15 for meals made of human meat. For cannibals, these penalties are reversed to mood bonuses, however. Like butchering, you must edit a meal's bill in order for your pawns to start cooking with humans.

A human corpse provides an average of 140 human meat, before violent death, missing body parts, and difficulty modifiers are taken into account, for a market value of  112. Human meat itself is worth less than ordinary meat, but not when processed. Selling, cooking, or otherwise processing human meat doesn't carry any additional mood penalties. It can be used in any meal that requires meat, but cannot be processed into saleable meals without vegetables. Human meat can also be processed in a biofuel refinery for  70 chemfuel, worth  161. It can also be used to make kibble or fuel a biosculpter pod.

If you must have a non-cannibal subsist on human meat, making the meat into (carnivore) lavish meals reduces the net mood loss to only −3 for non-cannibals, in addition to those penalties accrued from butchering the corpse. This can be useful when food is scarce but raider corpses are not.

Human leather

Human leather, the other byproduct 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 and a mood penalty to those without.

Without DLC, creating human armchairs or dusters is the most valuable way to use textiles. If the Royalty DLC is enabled, formal vests and corsets are more efficient. Like human meat, working or selling human leather does not have any penalties, once it has been butchered.

Undamaged adult corpses 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.

Shambler traps

Corpses can be left in a strategically-placed pile to be revived as friendly shamblers as needed, by using deadlife dust from a deadlife shell, deadlife pack, or IED deadlife trap. This is one of the few productive uses of desiccated or rotting corpses. However, even if the corpses were fresh, they will be rotting (or desiccated) when the shamblers expire. Corpse piles can also pose a threat to your own base if they aren't under a roof, as they can be revived as hostile shamblers by a death pall event.

Harbinger trees

Harbinger trees convert fresh corpses (including human) and fresh meat (again, including human) into more of themselves, and can be harvested for  30 twisted meat and a skill- and difficulty-dependent amount of bioferrite (base amount  15). This is wasteful compared to butchering the corpses yourself and selling the products, but doesn't incur any mood penalties other than possibly from seeing the corpses, and requires much less labor.

Harbinger trees will eat rotting or desiccated corpses but do not gain any nutrition from them.

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, wearing human leather, or wearing tainted clothing. 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.

Mood penalties are occasionally useful in their own right. Low mood can cause mental breaks, activating inspirations for a tortured artist. Low mood also makes conversion easier, and can even cause a Crisis of Belief.

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

Without the Ideology DLC:

	Scope	None (average colonist)	Psychopath	Bloodlust	Cannibal	Inhumanized
Observes corpse	One pawn	−4 Mood (0.5 days, 3 stacks, 0.5 stack multiplier)	–	–	–	Normal penalty[Unverified]
Observes rotting corpse	One pawn	−6 Mood (0.5 days, 5 stacks, 0.5 stack multiplier)	Normal penalty	–	Normal penalty	Normal penalty[Unverified]
Butchers human	Butcher pawn	−6 Mood (6 days, 4 stacks, 0.75 stack multiplier)	–	–	–	Normal penalty[Unverified]
Somebody butchers human	All same-colony pawns	−6 Mood (6 days, 1 stack)	–	–	–	Normal penalty[Unverified]
Eats raw human flesh	Eater	−20 Mood (1 day, 1 stack)	Normal penalty	Normal penalty	+20 Mood (1 day, 1 stack)	Normal penalty[Unverified]
Eats meal with human flesh	Eater	−15 Mood (1 day, 1 stack)	Normal penalty	Normal penalty	+15 Mood (1 day, 1 stack)	Normal penalty[Unverified]
Wears human skin clothing	Pawn wearing clothing	−3/−5/−7/−8 Mood	Normal penalty	+3/+5/+7/+8 Mood	+3/+5/+7/+8 Mood	-
Wears tainted clothing	Pawn wearing clothing	−5/−8/−11/−14 Mood	Normal penalty	-	Normal penalty	-
A slave is sold	All same-faction pawns worldwide	−3 Mood (4 days, 5 stacks)	–	Normal penalty	Normal penalty	Normal penalty[Unverified]
An organ is harvested	All same-faction pawns worldwide	−5 Mood (7.5 days, 5 stacks, 0.75 stack multiplier)	–	–	Normal penalty	Normal penalty[Unverified]
Harvests organ	Doctor	–	–	+4 Mood (1 stack)	-	-

Note that the "Someone's organ harvested" debuff does not affect the colonist performing the operation, nor the patient. The patient will have the "My organ harvested" −30 Mood debuff instead.

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 necessarily identical. 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, butchering corpses, or wearing human skin clothing.
• Does NOT like seeing rotten corpses or eating human flesh.

• 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), 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.

Mood

• −3 - Slave sold (4 days). Stacks up to -15 for 5 slaves.
• Significant negative opinion of whoever sells the slaves.

Selling slaves incurs a smaller mood decrease than organ harvest. 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 tank 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.

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, observing non-rotting human corpses, and 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*

Version history

• 1.3.3117 - Fix: Selling prisoners doesn't trigger negative thoughts on selling to slavers.

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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 • The Sanguophage Guide • The Odyssey 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