One of the many features in Rimworld is the ability to take organs out of pawns and either sell them, or transplant them into other colonists that may need replacements. Harvesting organs can also be a very profitable enterprise for your colony although it comes at a cost of negative mood buffs. To harvest organs in Rimworld, select the colonist or prisoner you wish to harvest organs from, go to the health tab and select ‘Add Bill’. You can then select one of the options, depending on what you’d like to harvest and one of your doctors will automatically begin the operation.
If you are still having trouble with this short explanation we will go into detail below on how to get your very own organ harvesting operation started.
What will you need to harvest organs in Rimworld
Before you can begin taking out kidneys and lungs in Rimworld you will need to have a few things in preperation:
- A colonist or pawn with organs capable of being removed. In vanilla Rimworld this includes 2 lungs, 2 kidneys, a liver and a heart.
- A bed or sleeping spot where the operation can take place
- A unit of medicine to apply anesthetic to the patient to put them to sleep
- A non-incapacitated colonist who is assigned to do medical tasks
- A questionable moral compass
Getting started on the organ trade
Once you have assembled all the things above you are ready to get started. Select a prisoner or colonists that you would like to remove some ‘unnecessary’ organs from and select their health tab from the bottom left UI menu.
Once you open up the health tab you will be able to see every health information that you have available to see on this pawn. If you are planning on transplanting some of this persons organs into one of your colonists, then assure that the organ is in healthy working order. For example some pawns may have a lung problem such as asthma. An asthmatic lung is worth just as much money as a healthy lung to sell though, so if you are interested in organ trading don’t worry about any side-effects.
Once you have the health tab open you will see a button on the left side of the UI that reads ‘Add bill”. This is where you will add an order to be performed on the subject. Click the button to see a drop-down menu of every operation that can currently be performed on your patient.
In the image above you will see some of the options that are available to my colony. Only selecting the harvest options will yield you with a tradeable item in game. For example, choosing to install a wooden foot will not give you an extra human foot item, it will simply cease to exist.
Select the harvestable organ of your choice to have the action be performed automatically by your colonists. You should always try to have your colonists with the highest medical skill remove the organs as there is a chance of failure when performing any kind of operation. The surgeon may fail the operation in a minor way, which would mean they may have successfully taken the organ, but cut the patient upon removal. The doctor may also accidently mess up and destroy the organ altogether leaving you with nothing to show for your efforts.
Surgery success will depend on a lot of different factors. Some of these include:
- The bed quality: A hospital bed gives the greatest surgery success chance in the vanilla game of Rimworld. If you are running an organ harvesting operation in Rimworld this is a must-have
- The light level in the room: Realistically you’d want to be able to see as much as you can when operating on someone. This goes for Rimworld as well. If you plan to operate in a pitch black room, chances are you will mess up
- Your colonists Medical Skill: The higher the colonists medical skill the greater chance they have at a successful surgery. This one is pretty obvious
- The cleanliness of the room: Depending on how clean the room is your patient may be more prone to infection. Research and lay down sterile tiles to make your hospital as clean as it can be.
- Temperature: Having a hospital too hot or cold will affect the work your doctor is doing
Get that organ harvested quick!
You can priorities a colonist to immediately start the operation. To do this select your doctor of choice and make sure they are actually assigned to medical work first. After selecting your doctor, right click a pawn with a pending operation and select prioritize operating on “pawn name”. You doctor will grab a unit of medicine if there is one available and go over to the patient to begin the operation.
If one of the patients is one of your colonists and isn’t automatically going to a medical bed, select them, right-click the bed and select the ‘Rest until healed’ option.
Your doctor will begin the operation and hopefully be successful. You will see a small progress bar appear over the patient showing how long it will take to finish the surgery. If the surgery fails in a minor or major way, an alert will pop up on the left side of the screen telling you that there was some problem with the surgery. If the operation is a success, no alert will show up but you should see an organ sitting on the ground next to the bed.
You can examine the organ by selecting it and then choosing the ‘i’ button in the sub-menu. You can see the average market value for the item and some other information about it.
What to do with the organs once they are harvested
Once you have harvested some organs in your game of Rimworld you have a few different options. You could choose to sell them for pretty great profit. This can be a very wealthy enterprise if you are constantly being raided and have a lot of prisoners. You could also choose to install them into your own colonists who are missing the organs. You can check which colonists are missing vital organs by viewing their health tab. You could also just keep the organs in a freezer until you may need them one day.
Be aware that harvesting organs from innocent people and even raider will horrify most colonists and make them more prone to psychotic breaks. To counteract this, there is a trait in Rimworld called Psychopath. If your colonists is a psychopath they won’t have any negative feelings about harvesting organs from healthy people or even selling people as slaves. If you plan to have an organ harvesting operation it may be a good idea to only recruit psychopaths. Or another option would be to have one psychopath colonist travel to a different part of the map to settle a new colony. Any organ harvesting that happens here wouldn’t affect your other colony at all, so you could send your prisoners over there to be harvested.
That wraps up all you need to know about harvesting organs in Rimworld. Do you have any more tip or tricks to do with organ harvesting in Rimworld? Write a comment down below and share your great and honestly, scary knowledge.
Related: Rimworld Neutroamine | 10 Must-have mods for Rimworld