To butcher animals in Rimworld you must first build a Butcher Table. After the butcher table is build, select the table and under the Add Bills tab select the Butcher Animals option. Your colonists that are assigned to cooking will automatically find animal corpses and butcher them to obtain meat and materials.
In this article I will go further in depth with how to butcher animals in Rimworld and include pictures as sometimes Rimworld’s UI can be a little bit confusing. I’m sure after you read this guide you will be a professional animal harvester.
Why would I want to butcher animals?
Butchering animals is basically going to be the way you will obtain food in the beginning of the game all the way until the end of your run. By butchering animals you will not only gain a food source in the meat that is harvested, but also a type of fur or textile material depending on what animal you butcher.
For example, butchering a chicken will net you Birdskin, whereas butchering a n Alpaca will provide you with Alpaca Wool. Different types of textiles have different stats. For example, a T-shirt sewn together will Alpaca Wool will provide you with more heat insulation than using cotton.
Even if you want to keep animals as pets you may come to a point in your playthrough where butchering one of your beloved pets becomes a necessity. In a game like Rimworld where nuclear winters, toxic fallout and blight can all destroy your great food plantations meat is always available through the animals, (and humans) on the Rim.
What do I need to Butcher?
Before you can butcher animals you will need to build a Butcher Table. To do this, open up the architect menu on the bottom left hand of the Rimworld game screen. Select the Production tab. When you left-click on the butcher table you may see that you can make if out of different materials. A steel table will obviously be less flammable than a wooden one, but if you don’t have the steel to spare then a Wooden Butcher Table will be just fine.
You can place the butcher table wherever you want on the map. Be aware that if you choose to place the butcher table outside, or in temperature conditions that are not ideal, there will be a work speed penalty enforced. Putting the table outside will change the work speed factor to 90% (meaning it will be 10% slower than a table that is inside.)
Be aware that butchering animals causes a lot of filth on the ground. Putting the butcher table inside the kitchen area will cause your colonists to make foods that will make people sick very often. If you are going to put the butcher table inside somewhere, it is advised to build a small separate room just for butchering.
After selecting a type of table you can left click the map to place it. You can see a transparent chair icon next to the butcher table. You may build a chair in front of the table for your colonists that will improve their work efficiency and raise their mood a bit when working at the station.
You can have a colonist prioritize building the table by selecting a colonist that is assigned to construction and right-clicking the building project.
Creating a Bill to butcher animals
Now that you have the Butcher Table you are ready to start carving up your furry friends. Butchering animals in Rimworld is automated and once you set up the action you colonists will do the job whenever it has the priority over any other task.
To create the bill to butcher animals click on your newly finished Butcher Table and click on the Bills tab.
Once you select Bills you are taken to a menu where you can assign different tasks to be performed at the Butcher Table. You colonists will not automatically butcher animals without you first assigning the job to the table. Once you click the Add bill option you will have a dropdown menu of everything you can currently do at the Butcher Table. Select the Butcher Creature option as shown in the image below.
After selecting Butcher Creature you will see the bill appear in the menu. You can click the + or – buttons to quickly add more or less creatures to be butchered. Say you chose ’10’ as the number. Your colonists would butcher the first 10 animals available and then stop doing the task until you added more. This is good for micromanaging your food supply and trying to make the food last. If you’d like for your colonists to simply butcher the animals whenever they are available then select the Do X times tab and change this option to Do forever. Your colonists will take whatever animals corpse is around and butcher them automatically.
Note: Only colonists that are assigned to cook will butcher animals. You can have colonists prioritize different jobs by clicking on the Work tab and changing the priority of each individual task. To have a colonist butcher animals immediately you can select them and right-click the butcher table to see the option. You can only do this if there are animals available to butcher.
Setting up an efficient zone for butchering animals
When you have a colonist butchering animals you may find them running to the other side of the map to find animals to cut up. This can be inefficient and quite dangerous as you might find that your cook is out on the other side of the map with no way to defend themselves. You can set up a zone near your butcher table for your colonists to deliver animal bodies to. We will go through the method of setting this up in detail.
You can also use this method once you have a little cold storage or freezer set up to preserve your fresh kills and create a stockpile of animal bodies.
To begin with, open up the Architect menu on the bottom left of the UI. Select Zone to see the different types of zones you can create. For the example of this guide we will be selecting the Dumping Stockpile Zone as it is the easiest to use for creating an animal corpse stockpile. You can also use a regular stockpile zone but then you will have to mess around a lot more with the filters.
Once you have selected the Dumping stockpile zone you can click and drag an area on the map to set up your zone. Try to put the zone near the butcher table as it will keep your cook from having to run too far to do his job and make them more efficient.
Once you have put the zone down you will need to do a little bit of configuration to have dead animals be brought here. To change what types of items will be in the stockpile select your zone and select the Storage option within the UI. You can then see a list of all of the types of items that area allowed to be stored in the stockpile and which items will not be stored here. By default a Dumping stockpile will have both animal human corpses, but also chunks allowed. Chucks are the large pieces of material you may see around the map and can be obtained by mining. (At the top of the image above there is a limestone chunk).
As shown in the image above, to have your colonists only bring animal corpses here simply unselecting everything apart from this option. Once you have this zone setup hunters will bring the animal corpses straight over to this zone, leaving your cook with an easy task ahead of them. This is why I suggest using the Dumping stockpile as when you use the regular stockpile you will have to either filter out each item, one-by-one or deselect them all and manually add corpses with clear all.
Now go and create some food and clothing!
Now that you have butchered animals in Rimworld you can make food and clothing for your colonists. Clothing can be created by building a tailoring bench and creating bills the same way that you did for butchering animals. Clothing will not only keep your colonists warm during the colder months, but can also be traded for that sweet, sweet silver. Or perhaps you will have a request from a neighboring tribe to make 20 T-shirts in exchange for a anti-grain warhead. Having a good supply of textiles and meat is a good idea in Rimworld as anything can, and will, happen.
Thanks for reading this short guide on how to butcher animals in Rimworld. If you have any more comments, questions or suggestions write a comment down below!
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