RimWorld Traits Guide & Traits Tier List

hey everyone Adam here with another rimworld guide and tier list of sorts we actually made most of this guide before biotech was announced but decided to put it on the back burner for a bit to see if the new DLC changed or added anything and sure enough it did so in this guide I've roughly tiered ranked or categorized the traits but don't Focus too much on my personal rankings the answer on traits just like most topics in rimworld really is it depends sometimes you'll find pawns with the top tier traits and due to their passions or health conditions they're just not worth keeping sometimes you'll find Pawns of the traits at the very bottom and you'll still want to keep those puns for one reason or another so much of this ranking system really is it depends so if you say I would rather have this trade over that one instead of what Adam says well then I'd probably agree with you in your situation different situations really do call for different things and maybe you play very differently than I do and want different things than I do and you know what that's fine just know this is coming from a min max High difficulty settings mindset so today I'm just trying to give a practical summary that's useful and easy to understand for most traits for some traits I'll be providing information and numbers that you probably haven't seen before for other traits I'll be skipping over some of those small quirks especially the very obvious ones and yes some information is missing I've done my personal best to give you what I think is most relevant in a reasonable amount of time all right we're going to be starting off with my personal favorite and number one trait Above All Else tough the only way for me that tough isn't the number one trait is if you never take damage in combat tough is in its own category and should be the first trait you look for in a colonist tough reduces damage by half which is absolutely crazy one of the things in rimworld that I hate the most is when one of my amazing pawns gets one shot by some tribal Archer tough basically prevents most One-Shot opportunities in the game all right really quick I want to mention God Pawns sometimes people ask me what I mean by God pawns I do use that phrase quite a bit in my playthroughs and for me it's generally a pawn that has two or three of the top tier traits and no other downsides these six traits and tough are the main ones I think about when I call someone a god Pawn there's no firm definition of God Pawn of course and a god Pawn comes with a lot of it depends these are not the only traits I think of when I think of godpon the godliest of God pawns though are tailored for a specific task for example a melee God Pawn might want tough Nimble and brawler with a burning passion for melee the passions the pawn has can be just as important as the traits all right after tough we have the big six I consider mood a big deal in sanguine and iron world are huge Boons to mood management if you care more about preventing mental breaks then you're going to want Iron willed if you care more about Inspirations then you'd probably prefer sanguine these become even more important later in the game when pun's expectations increase and when playing with ideology and appointing a leader or moral guide these can sometimes be even more crucial due to their Supreme expectations speaking of Inspirations here's the numbers for those mood needs to be quite High to reliably get Inspirations at 50 mood when Inspirations first become possible callus only gets about one inspiration every three and a half years there's tons of nuance and it depends on traits there's even more Nuance for these two I can't go over all the details for everything so I'm just going to try and keep things practical if you care about mood these two are amazing if I had to rank the traits after tough though I would choose industrious and fast learner industrious would get the number two spot when I'm choosing starting colonists will cause industrious colonists simply get more work done very roughly as a rule of thumb in terms of Works being alone someone with industrious at five skill level is equivalent to a normal Pawn at seven skill 10 skill industrious is equal to 14 normal skill it's important to note though that industrious only affects work speed jobs that are most beneficial to industrious are any job that can be done in a single place or anytime you want jobs done quickly these include things like research smoothing a large area building lots of walls planting trees or large fields of crop and so on if you want a high skill level you want fast learner fast learner is ideal for jobs where the skill level is important medical social shooting melee making high quality art weapons Furniture clothing the fast learner bonus is actually gigantic just check out this chart a fast learner with one passion gains more experience than a regular colonist with two passion let's say you start the game with a level 5 medical doctor who has a single flame passion in medicine let's say that doctor reached level 10. we'll ignore skill decay in this example where would they be if they had a double passion about 11 and a half if they're a fast learner with one passion they be at skill level 12. bass learner with double passion 14 and a quarter industrious may be what I want to get an amazing start but fast learner is what I want to reach high skill levels how good industrious and fast learner are can depend on the colonist's Passions industrious isn't particularly good with only passions and things that aren't affected by work speed for example industrious with passions in melee shooting animals social medical I don't really care how fast they sheer sheep like I said there's tons of it depends on traits and these two are no different even at the top of the tier list all right let's talk about jogger another of my personal favorites anytime spent walking is time wasted jogger reduces the time walking which means jogger increases the time spent working the jogger productivity bonus is rather small basically just under 10 percent that only applies to the walking time between jobs of course but the real strength of jogger is ComEd jogger means you can kite some enemies that would otherwise run you down when you stop to fire jogger also means you can more quickly get into your defensive position your melee joggers can more quickly melee lock enemies jogger means your colonists can escape from dangers where other colonists will get caught and killed you might be thinking to yourself I don't need jogger I'll just install Bionicle eggs later no you'd probably rather have jogger with a bionic leg right you can always use bionics implants and drugs to make Economist better but those are improvements not replacements for the bonuses or penalties of traits which are more permanent a regular colonist with a bionic leg will always be a step behind a jogger with a bionic leg quick sleeper is the jack of all trades master of none trait a quick sleeper colonist is awake about 10 more hours of the day that's more hours for working and also means more hours gaining skill experience the quick sleeper rest bonus is larger than the bonus going from a normal to a Masterwork bed quick sleeper applies to virtually every type of worker all the time because it simply means more hours to do the things that they need to do it's just a small 10 bonus but hey 10 is 10 and it adds up over the course of a playthrough but Adam I don't really care about quick sleeper I just put everyone in a Masterwork bed it's not a one or the other sort of thing you can still put a quick sleeper in a Masterwork bed and get even more bonus time you want both the bed Improvement and the Irreplaceable trait keep in mind that your quick sleepers usually need so little sleep they often can't fit in a 24-hour standard schedule be sure to check out my scheduling guide where it explains that often you want to switch quick sleepers to either a biphasic schedule or if their mood's already fine and you want more productivity switch them to an all anything schedule on to the next tier what I like to call all positive so after tough and the big six I consider this big list of traits essentially pure positives they're all good to have virtually all the time but usually not always they have less positive impact than tough and the big six hard worker fast Walker steadfast and Optimus are simply weaker versions of some of the big six they are still great but they're just simply smaller bonuses so I won't go over those in huge detail super immune is another great example of an it depends trait early game in the jungle it can be god tier late game with good medicine doctors good beds super immune's not particularly that big of a deal let's talk about great memory great memory only applies to skills over level 10. the further above tin the faster the skill experience is lost if you're colonists with great memory doesn't have a skill over 10 great memories doing nothing here are some of the numbers on great memory essentially what these numbers mean is that a great memory colonist at level 16 skill will save about one level worth of experience every rimworld year at level 14 great memory saves one skill in a little over two years at level 18 two skill levels per year great memory is terrific at those High skill levels but isn't really doing much in the low teams and it's doing absolutely nothing before level 10. Nimble kind and mascist essentially only have the potential to do good things these are all good to have but relative to the traits like tough and the big six they usually aren't as significant as always these three traits can really depend on your play Style and what you find important the next section of traits is what I like to call mostly positive God pawns can still potentially have some of these traits in fact some God pawns specifically want some of these traits but situationally there are potential downsides the downsides here can range from more technicalities to potentially problematic for example brawler is amazing on melee colonists if you aren't using melee though having a minus 20 for holding a ranged weapon is a big drawback technically it's a potential drawback you don't have to have them equipping a weapon but you get the idea aesthetic makes it easy to get plus 5 mood via an awful bedroom aesthetic Royals don't need a royal bedroom and aesthetic ponds don't mind eating raw food it's important to note that raw food can still cause food poisoning for these ponds though and now in 1.4 Aesthetics don't even mind eating nutrient paste all of these means aesthetic is quite a strong trait especially if you want to mitigate a bit of the noble requirements in the royalty DLC however there is a trade-off ascetics can't get fine or lavish meal Buffs and they can't receive the very highest bedroom mood Buffs from something like a wondrously impressive bedroom Aesthetics also can cause problems when in relations with non-aesthetics the drawbacks of Aesthetics are rather small and Niche relative to the positives though body monitor can potentially have some drawbacks in the early game you can install a denture anytime on anyone and it has minimal consequence you'll still need another colonist at that time though who's a doctor who needs medicine and a successful surgery a denture changes body monitor from a negative four Baseline to a plus four now later in the game with bionics body monitor becomes terrific tortured artists come with a -8 mood but they have a 50 chance of getting a crafting inspiration after a breakdown this crafting inspiration will make it so the next item or furniture they make will be two tiers higher this is one of the easiest ways in the game to get legendary weapons and armor especially if you combine it with ideology's production specialist role you don't even need to pair this up with a mood-breaking trait like gourmander pyro to get the result the trick is in the name you literally torture the artist strip and wall a tortured artist in a tiny cell in the dark give them something to do so they can gain XP while they're tortured they can't harm anyone just wait until they mentally break and fall over then unwall them and you are good to go no worry about them harming themselves or others while mentally broken when they're literally walled in and can't leave as I mentioned when the breakdown is over they'll have a 50 chance to get that crafting inspiration for me one of my most sought after colonists is a good crafter who's a tortured artist whereas if I have a tortured artist that can't craft or build anything it's basically just a pure mood hit alright let's talk about a set that I see pretty heavily debated all over the place trigger happy versus careful shooter well it is complicated very generally speaking though careful shooter is more beneficial for overall damage for low skilled Shooters and or when it very long range trigger happy is generally better for high skill Shooters and or when at shorter range trigger happy is also terrific for grenade tossers and with a royalty DLC trigger happy does also affect cycasting time time to fire is also a really big deal in some defensive setups a colonist who is a careful shooter is simply not going to fire as often in some kill box or defensive setups by the time they aim their weapon your other colonists will have already done most of the work whereas Trigger Happy in contrast shoots first personally with my playstyle I vastly prefer trigger happy I usually specifically design my defensive setups where time to fire is very important if you're doing a fair bit of firing from long range with not so amazing shooters or if the enemies don't die instantly then careful shooter can be positive for you [Music] the mechanics behind fast learner and industrious are so good that neurotic very neurotic and too smart are still potentially amazing traits with big it depends asterisks on them it's important to remember that colonists can have both fast learner and too smart or both industrious and very neurotic those combos have the potential to be the godliest of God pawns at their role one of my favorite pawns ever was an industrious very neurotic dual drill arm Miner he could basically walk through mountains our medic with a burning passion who would go from Level 5 to level 11.6 if they had fast learner and too smart at the same time instead they would be at level 16. a huge difference however neurotic very neurotic and too smart come with significant mood draw mags preventing mental breaks including minor breaks is critical potentially the steps taken to overcome the mood penalties of these traits May wipe out some of the increased productivity there personally I usually have extra mood above the minor brake threshold in my colonies so I generally find these traits to be overall positives these traits highly depend on your colony's ability to handle mood if you're having mood issues with your Colony definitely check out my scheduling guide as well as our upcoming mood guide the previous traits were all mostly pauses but the following traits are closer to a 50 50 positive negative ratio so you can think of them as sort of a neutral in most situation night owl and undergrounder have clear benefits and drawbacks keep in mind that move and work speed penalties of Darkness still apply to these two traits those penalties are 80 movement speed and 80 work speed that's roughly having the lazy trait and four copies of Slowpoke trait when you're in the dark you do not want any colonists working in the dark including Night Owl or undergrounders of course this changes with ideology's Darkness Meme and precept Etc but that's a rare exception nudist is somewhat positive the negative to a nudist wearing clothes is only a minus three making a nudist wear clothing is not a big deal essentially think of a nudist as get naked to prevent mental breaks just like in real life now keep in mind without clothing your nudist is going to be more prone to being damaged or killed in combat and if you're on extreme temperature Maps it might not be feasible to let them hang out as often psychically sensitive and hypersensitive are extremely powerful if you have the royalty DLC and are getting cycasters the main bonus is the increased total psychic heat level if you don't have the royalty DLC or aren't doing side casters these four psychic traits mostly only affect psychic drones and suits I personally consider preventing mental breaks critically important so outside of cycasters I prefer psychically dull and death pawns with their abilities to somewhat ignore psychic drones recluse is a new trait with the biotech DLC recluse gives a mood bonus for having four colonists or less from five to ten colonists there are no penalties nor bonuses at 11 colonists or above there are mood penalties for the recluse trait children do count as colonists prisoners count even temporary colonists like guests and Quest Lodgers count unfortunately as you can see recluse is pretty clear when it is situationally good or bad all right on to the next section chemical interests it's important to note that chemical Fascination and interest was changed they no longer give random mood breakdowns in old versions of the game these two would cause random drug binge mental breaks kind of like a gourmand's food binge or a Pyro's Fire Starting but it's been changed for a while now I'm going to explain exactly how these traits work mechanically from here on out I'm just going to start calling them both hymns Kims have two separate and independent Parts first Kim's have a mood bonus or penalty for taking or not taking drugs Fascination will have a bigger potential bonus and bigger potential penalty their chemical need is what the mood changes are based on separately both traits will always have the possibility of consuming drugs for recreation or for addiction essentially these marks at take for addiction and take for recreation are always checked for Kim ponds the Kim's chemical need bar does not matter for this random taking of drugs the Kim's overall mood doesn't matter either how recently they've taken drugs also doesn't matter all that matters is when this colonist does Recreation drugs are a potential option for them and if the colonist is addicted to a drug they will try to take the drug at 10 percent of that specific drug there's a few other things to keep in mind Kim's will respect zones and they'll also respect forbidden items Kim's will try to choose a drug for recreation from their inventory first if possible also note that luciferium and minoxylin are not recreational drugs hymns will only do Recreation according to their schedule and I don't mean their drug schedule I mean their work sleep schedule here are some information from my schedule guide video note that only anything or Recreation allow Recreation Recreation scheduled will do Recreation anytime the recreation meter is above 95 percent anything only allows Recreation when the meter is below 35 comically if you schedule your Kim to all sleep they'll never do Recreation and thus they will never take drugs for recreation The Only Exception is if you're colonist Idols an idling colonist will do Recreation at 95 just like if they were currently scheduled to Recreation so be extremely careful of scheduling lots of recreation or letting Kim's Idol because if you do they're gonna start taking lots and lots of drugs you do have several reasonable options to manage your Kim pawns though a you can limit Recreation scheduled on anything Recreation only halves at 35 or less here's a biphasic with no Recreation schedule that you can use for your Kim ponds if you'd like B is that you can have these colonists hold fairly safe drugs in their inventory like beer or tea or ambrosia in C where the royalty DLC you can just use meditation because that also gains Recreation but they're not going to take drugs to meditate which one you should do in your situation is very much it depends and I've thought all of these were reasonable options at times in my playthroughs finding multiple of these plans together can also be very effective as well if your Kim is an addict your options are arresting them forbidding all drugs of that type zoning them away from all drugs of that type accepting their addiction and just living with it or you know cutting off their legs until they get over it and thus earn leg privileges back again there's no singular best way to handle Kim's but now you know the mechanics and can make the appropriate choices for your play style on to the war crimes tier psychopath Cannibal and bloodlust opened the potential for committing war crimes and other heinous acts not that we needed more of an excuse with rumor anyway but I digress I'm assuming most War crime aficionados out there already know the details of these traits I'm going to only touch on them briefly bloodlust and cannibal bows get mood bonuses for wearing human leather clothing blood lust pawns can wear tainted clothing without penalty cannibal has no downsides for the individual pawn and could definitely belong in one of the higher categories of positive traits Psychopaths and bloodlust also have notable negative social aspects which I'll get to in just a moment so before I get into social trades I'll do a quick little rant some things in rimworld are very gamified and unrealistic for example no need for water infinite ammunition and no Third Dimension similarly some of these traits work unrealistically I am solely going to be talking about these traits from A rimworld mechanics perspective social interactions and relations in Rim world are somehow simultaneously incredibly complex and comically oversimplified I'm just trying to keep it practical many details will be overlooked on purpose so this guide isn't even longer than it already is so anyway here's the crash course on social interactions in real world the executive summary is that we care about three main potential social issues insults rebuffs and social fights insults and rebuffs cause negative mood which can also cause mental breaks which can also cause death or other problems just check out my first episode of the Igor run for a demonstration of that our simplest and most effective tool is to isolate the problem causers via scheduling anytime two colonists are within six tiles they have a chance to socially interact the main interactions are these four but other possibilities include romance attempts and with ideology conversion attempts the best way to think of social thoughts is to consider them to have momentum for example with deep talk colonists c eye to eye and each gets positive social thoughts of one another that increases the chances of further deep talking and more positive thoughts of each other in the future insults decrease the social thought from receiver to insult her insults aren't directly responded to with insults but they do cause negative mood and can cause social fights social thoughts from interactions Decay and reset over time when social relations between colonists get bad we offset schedules let it reset and potentially try again later some people though like a male misogynist and a female misandrist are probably going to hate each other no matter what we do so as the great philosopher The Offspring said you've got to keep them separated [Music] social impact affects the strength of insults and deep chance call us with higher social impact will more easily gain friends or enemies when looking for a social specialist ensure they like other people an abrasive or a psychopath social Specialists can be problematic because abrasive is four times more likely to toss out insults and a psychopath will never gain those beneficial deep talks nor Chit Chats many of these social traits and other traits start with some social momentum here's a chart I've probably forgotten a few trades but I think I got most of them and you get the ideal role the top six traits all have the social effect on themselves the difference between annoying voice and creepy breathing is a little market value really the next seven traits all have starting social thoughts towards others ugly staggeringly ugly pretty beautiful gay bisexual asexual they all have potential to cause more rebuffs than a standard colonist that can potentially make any of these a problem causer even though beautiful pawns start with a plus 40 social thought from others they can still be problem causers because so many others hit on them which causes a rebuff mood hit to both them and the person coming on to them so these traits are essentially pure negatives but that does not mean upon within is instantly considered a sacrifice rather than a new member all of these traits can be managed you may find some easier to manage than others though depending on your play style greedy or jealous at worst are a -8 mood greedy can be handled with a simple wooden room and a good wooden sculpture this is just a simple example you can make a bigger room with nicer materials but this is how easy it can be jealous doesn't matter if everyone's in a barracks and I love using a Barracks as they're so strong with my playstyle even if you are using bedrooms one jealous colonist isn't too difficult to satisfy but two or more can be really difficult because trying to make bedrooms exactly equal gets very problematic with the inevitable temporary specks of dirt at worse jealous is like I said before a minus eight mood debuff teetoler removes the option for drug use if you don't use drugs at all then it's not a big deal removing an option though is still a pure negative as far as gameplay is considered though a colonists would always be potentially better without this trait wimps can be frustratingly annoying with gut worms mechanides diseases and food poisoning in general they're falling over in combat isn't always a bad thing though sometimes they lay down well before they take mortal wounds which can keep them alive you might have also seen me utilize a wimp Pawn in some of my runs to game the adoption Factor hormones and pyros on average break down once every 50 days regardless of their mood yes even at maxed out mood you'll still have your pyro going around setting things on fire like I said about once every 50 days Gorman can replace other minor breaks pyro can replace Other Extreme brakes however these brakes mean you can't control the colonists and the colonists will break zoning rules that can be potentially deadly you may consider these breaks manageable but they are uncontrollable random mental breaks simply not having these traits would definitely be better after all you don't want your pyro going out and opening the doors if you're trying to hunker down and wait out a Manhunter events I will give a quick note that 1.4 and biotech did give additional options to pyros for mood Buffs this is of course nice but again it's not going to stop their fiery meltdowns Slowpoke is yet another pure negative trait but this one's fairly manageable really Slowpoke is just barely worse than a missing toe later with bionics they'll still be a little slower than normal bionic leg Pawn but it's definitely not a huge deal at that stage of the game body purist is another pure negative the negatives may be manageable if you don't use artificial parts and don't lose body parts of course in real world fingers and toes are apparently made out of butter and come off very easily so that's pretty hard to do pessimist and nervous are just pure mood penalties may be able to overcome these mood penalties and not consider them disqualifying if you have an amazing double passion crafter with pessimists for example it'll be relatively easy and worth keeping them happy alright the terrible tear delegate is a new trait from the biotech DLC delicate is the anti-tuff trait but porcelain isn't as potent a delegate ponderacy's 15 more damage that can quickly lead to a lot more lost toes fingers and of course unfortunate deaths and even terrifying social fights there is no upside to having a delicate colonist at all avoiding dangerous combat and social fights is very important for keeping delicate pawns alive and whole depressive and volatile are big mood penalties and they're generally disqualifying traits for me but again potentially these two are not disqualifying if they're combined with others significantly positive traits or if you have mood very very under control you know don't banish your level 18 burning passion tough crafter just because they're depressive lazy and slothful are usually disqualifying traits as well potentially these may not be as crushingly awful on things where work speed isn't important to you combat pawns that focus on melee or shooting only in skills like social don't particularly care about work speed with ideology you may have several shooting Specialists and lazy is going to matter very little to those shooting specialists if you've watched some of my old playthroughs you'll know that sickly once altered disease cooldown but that is no longer the case on average a sickly Pawn will get an extra disease of their own every 30 days there are steps you can take to manage a sickly Pawn but you can do those same steps to a non-cyclic pawn sickly ponds with luciferium penoxylin bionics Etc go from bad to manageable but a normal Pawn with all that stuff goes from normal to good all other things being equal you'd virtually always prefer a non-sickly pawn but perhaps you find a sickly pond with amazing and important skills and traits that you need in your run and that's fine all right one of my least favorite traits in the game slow learner so as we discussed fast learner is probably the number two maybe number three trait in the game depending on the rest of the stats on the pond well slow learner is worse than fast learner is good if that makes sense a slow learner with a burning passion is essentially the same as a regular colonist with no passion whatever non-passionate skill levels you see on a slow learner they're never going up so it's not really slow learner it's more like non-learner even with slow learner being down at the very very bottom of the worst possible traits situationally I'd still take one in my do all Quest challenge run that I recently did I did take a slow learner with tin skill and social and the sanguine trait I needed a good moral guide that wasn't going to be breaking down and that's what I was given and I think that does it just remember that the answer to which trait is better or worse than the other really is it depends there are so many factors in a game of Rim world that it's hardly ever a black and white conclusion I hope this guide in tier list has helped illuminate exactly how some traits work though so you can determine for your own situation whether a potential colonist is good or bad if you enjoyed this rimworld trades guide and tier list or it helped you add it all please consider subscribing to the channel liking the video leaving a comment down below and sharing it with others if you'd like to reference a written version of the sky to be sure to head over to my website Adam versus everything.com guides and if you have any questions at all please join my Discord it's a public Discord you can find the link to that in the pinned comment and the description and as always thank you for watching

Channel: Adam Vs Everything

Views: 92,670

Keywords: rimworld, rimworld biotech, rimworld guide, rimworld tutorial, rimworld traits, rimworld traits tier list, rimworld traits guide, rimworld best traits, rimworld biotech children guide, rimworld biotech children traits, rimworld biotech baby traits, rimworld which traits, rimworld beginner's guide, rimworld guide for beginners, rimworld guide 2022, rimworld guide advanced, rimworld biotech guide, rimworld tips, rimworld genetics, rimworld how to play, rimworld console guide

Id: nXU3YZx9eQ4

Length: 31min 55sec (1915 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 13 2022