RimWorld: How To Deal With Chemical Hunger (2024)

One of the biggest challenges in RimWorld is dealing with and managing all the various traits that your pawns have. While some of them can be quite beneficial in general, many traits can be actively detrimental to the mood and psychological wellbeing of your pawns if not properly managed.

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Two of these dangerous traits are Chemical Interest and Chemical Fascination. These are two tiers of the same general idea - that the pawn in question has an interest in recreational drugs and will become rather unhappy if they are unable to satisfy this curiosity.

Trait Overview

Chemical Interest and Chemical Fascination operate in largely the same way. They only vary in how strong the pawn's personal drug curiosity is.

• A pawn with the Chemical Interest trait can gain up to +3 Mood if their interest is satisfied. If it is not satisfied, their Mood can be given a malus of up to -6.
• Chemical Fascination is the stronger version of the trait. The potential Mood buff with Chemical Fascination is +6, but pawns who go unsatisfied risk up to -12 mood.

As you can see, it is within your interests to make sure that any pawns with an interest in drugs are able to satisfy their need - but be aware of the risk of addiction. Also, prepare for the possibility that these pawns will go on drug binges if there are any drugs available on the map. They will ignore their restrictions and rules to get their fix and can quickly work their way through your stores.

What Drugs Count As Recreational?

A large-scale drug lab in RimWorld

There are various drugs in the game and the majority of them count as recreational for the purposes of satiating pawns with the Chemical Interest or Chemical Fascination traits.

The table below details these drugs and also states a "safe dose interval" for each. This is the minimum amount of time that pawns can wait to take the drug again without the risk of addiction or building a tolerance. Some drugs are never safe to take, making addiction possible with the first usage.

As you can tell from the table above, only Ambrosia, Beer, Psychite tea, and Smokeleaf are really safe to keep in production for the purposes of satisfying a pawn with drug curiosity. The others are simply too dangerous for regular use.

How To Deal With Drug-Hungry Pawns

The drug scheduler in RimWorld

Once you have a steady production line for your drug of choice, set the relevant pawn's drug use schedule to use that drug at their safe dose interval. Out of all the options, one unit of beer taken once a day is probably the cheapest and easiest way to do this. You could even alternate beer with smokeleaf or psychite tea to be extra safe!

The potential problem is that when these pawns go on drug binges they will likely use enough drugs to build up a large tolerance to their drug of choice. Consider having multiple types of safer drugs in separate locations to cycle through for these pawns. It's a lot of micromanagement, but it can be worth it if that pawn has great skills!

NEXT: RimWorld: Beginner Tips