Sometimes, when you are selecting animals to tame you will come across the message ‘cannot tame no useable food’ in Rimworld. This is, exactly how it sounds. We will go over some of the reasons your might be getting this message and some things you can do to prevent any problems taming animals in Rimworld.
Make sure you have the right taming food for the animal
Different animals in Rimworld have different diets. Animals can be carnivores, herbivores or omnivores. Meaning they will only like a specific diet and only accept some foods as taming food. To figure out what diet each animal has you can click on the animals and enter the information page for the selected animal by clicking the small ‘i’ in the UI. There it will tell you the animals diet. For example certain animals won’t eat meat, and will have to be tamed by using berries or a different source of vegetarian meal.
Kibble, beautiful kibble
Kibble is the best and most universal source of training and taming food available Rimworld. Check out our guide on how to make Kibble here.
Kibble can be used to tame any animal in Rimworld with the exception of the Warg creature. The Warg will have to be tamed using raw meat and nothing else. Every other animal in the vanilla version of Rimworld can eat kibble and be tamed and trained by it. Otherwise, for animals like muffalos and alpaca, you will need a vegetarian source of food, like corn, haygrass or berries.
I have the correct food but still can’t tame animals?
If you are sure that you have a type of food that can tame a certain animal there could be a number of reasons why you still cannot tame the animals. Check below to see some of the common reasons why:
No colonist assigned to taming
Ensure you have at least one colonist assigned to taming within the work tab. If there are no colonists assigned to taming, make sure you have one that actually can tame animals and select him to be the handler by clicking ‘Handle’ in the jobs.
Taming skill is not high enough to tame
You may have a colonist able to tame animals but for certain animals your handler will have to have a certain skill level in handling to be able to tame animals. Lesser creatures like rats won’t have a minimum required taming level, so if you are looking to grind your skills up as a tamer, be sure to have your colonist tame as many creatures as they can.
The food is disallowed or in an area your colonist can’t reach
Ensure that the food type that you want to tame the animal with has not been forbidden. You can see which items are forbidden by finding them in your Rimworld colony and checking whether they have a little red ‘x’ over them or not. If the item is forbidden you can unforbid it by selecting the option below or by pressing the F hotkey.
Make sure the item is not stuck in an area your colonist can’t reach. This can include being trapped within walls with no door. Some colonists may be assign to only stay in a certain area/zone of the map. If you have confined your colonist to an area of the map, make sure there is the correct type of food within their zone and that they can get to the animal that they are to tame.
I hope this has given you some insight on how to fix the ‘cannot tame no useable food’ problem in Rimworld and gave you a better understanding of how animal handling and taming works in Rimworld in general.
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