Death

Death, in RimWorld, is the end of a pawn's life; it is marked by the cessation of all bodily functions and the generation of a corpse object. A pawn can die in many ways, and much of the core gameplay is focused on attempting to prevent this. Pawns die primarily from injuries and ailments, but may also die through other means, such as from special events or dev tools.

Most pawns become a corpse upon death; however, some do not, depending on special circumstances, and some causes of death will not result in the creation of a corpse.

Plants are not pawns and are also termed by the game as "dying" when they are destroyed, however this page will focus predominately on death from the point of view of pawns.

Summary

A dead pawn can no longer act, and creates a corpse if its body was not completely destroyed. No organs or artificial parts may be retrieved, and any apparel items they were wearing will become tainted. Death activates a death acidifier.

Colonist deaths cause various mood penalties. Pawns connected by family or relationship will be especially devastated. Animals bonded to a dead pawn may receive a mental break, while a bonded animal dying gives a mood penalty to the pawn it's bonded to. A pawn's Ideoligion may change how they feel about various deaths.

Causes

• Loss of a vital body part. For humans, this is the torso, brain, head, neck, heart, and liver. Losing both kidneys or both lungs is also fatal.
• Reaching 0% Consciousness, Blood Filtration, Blood Pumping, Breathing, or Digestion.
• Taking over a total amount of damage across all body parts. For adult humans, this is 150 HP. For other pawns, this is (150 HP * health scale).
  • For example, an elephant, with a health scale of 3.6, would take a maximum of (3.6 * 150) = 540 HP of damage. Note that pain will usually down humans and other organic pawns far below this HP threshold. An unmodified baseline human would be downed from 80 HP at the maximum.
• Having certain ailments reach 100% severity. These include:
  • Blood loss
  • Malnutrition
  • Fatal diseases
  • Hypothermia & Heatstroke
  • Artery blockage & Heart attack
  • Drug overdose
  • Toxic buildup
  • Resurrection psychosis
  • Biostarvation
• Randomly while majorly overdosing or under Luciferium withdrawal.
• Having collapsed rocks from overhead mountain fall on top of them.
• Chance to die when failing certain specific surgeries, such as installing a prosthetic heart or removing a carcinoma.
• Drug dependency gene, after 60 days without the drug.
• During human pregnancy.
• Chronophagy, Philophagy, and Psychophagy Psychic rituals can kill the target pawn.

Enemy pawns have an additional chance to die when downed from any source except blood loss, even if their condition otherwise would not kill them. This chance is dependent on current population and the storyteller settings, and can be adjusted at any time.

In addition, enemy mechanoids will always die when downed.

Resurrection

Resurrector mech serum is the only Core (non-DLC, non-modded), gameplay way to resurrect a dead pawn. It only works on non-desiccated corpses. Resurrection runs the risk of causing blindness, dementia, or resurrection psychosis. The chance of each side effect happening is based on how much the body has rotted; a preserved (frozen) corpse can be resurrected many years after death with a low risk of side-effects.

When preserving a corpse via freezing, it is recommended to ensure the freezer used is kept at a very low temperature and is well-insulated; over time, repeated power loss due to solar flares, raids, etc. can repeatedly thaw the body and allow it to rot. Taking the mentioned precautionary steps can mitigate or prevent intermittent rotting entirely.

Deathless

The deathless gene prevents death no matter how injured the pawn gets; the only thing that can kill a deathless pawn is total destruction of the brain. Destroying the head or the neck will also destroy the brain. In cases when a pawn would usually be dead but possesses the deathless gene, they will simply enter a regenerative coma; once all fatal injuries/ailments have healed, they will remain in the coma for 7 days.

Pawns with both the deathless and the deathrest gene will enter deathrest, rather than a coma. Once fatal injuries and/or aliments are cured, the pawn goes through ordinary deathrest, which lasts for 4 days by default.

In both cases, all fatal injuries or aliments must be healed before they can begin these countdowns. Pawns recover from injuries, ailments, and diseases at the normal rate^[Verify] during their coma, but still only heal issues that they could heal normally. For example, a pawn will sufficiently recover from "fatal" blood loss to begin the countdown in under a day, diseases will disable the pawn until 100% immunity is reached. But, except for the torso, no body parts are regenerated, so a destroyed vital organ such as a heart must be surgically replaced before they can start to wake up.

Death refusal

Death refusal is a hediff which resurrects a pawn shortly after their death. It can be applied to a pawn via the "imbue death refusal" psychic ritual. It reduces the target's skills by a certain amount depending on the quality of the ritual; a lower quality ritual will result in more skill loss. Any vital organs which were destroyed during death are repaired upon resurrection. A pawn will suffer from death refusal sickness for a brief time after being resurrection.

Nonhuman resurrection

Allied mechanoids can be resurrected at a mech gestator or large mech gestator. This takes 1 gestation cycle (1.8 days by default) and a size-dependent amount of steel. You can't revive enemy mechanoids, even if they were once part of your faction. The apocriton can revive enemy mechanoids.

Ghouls can be resurrected with ghoul resurrection serum.