RimWorld does its best to make the life of your colonists a living hell. However, there are some moments when the pawns are just so good that it doesn’t matter.
Your colonists can be considered good if they have great traits or passions. These are the main things that will show you how promising a pawn is.
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However, there are hundreds of traits that you can’t memorize without too many in-game hours.
So, to help you make the best starting crew possible, here are the best traits that your colonists can have in RimWorld.
Table of contents
Best Traits in RimWorld Tier List (All Traits)
The easiest way to show you which traits are the best in RimWorld is by giving you a tier list. If you want explanations for the traits in the S tier, you can check them below after the tier list.
| Trait | Tier | Effects |
|---|---|---|
| Great Memory | S+ | -50% Skill Loss rate |
| Industrious | S+ | +20% Work Speed -5 Opinion of pawns without the same trait |
| Iron-willed | S+ | -18% Mental Break Threshold -75% Ideology Certainty Loss |
| Jogger | S+ | +0.4 Move Speed |
| Quick Sleeper | S+ | +50% Rest Rate |
| Sanguine | S+ | +12 Permanent Mood |
| Tough | S+ | -50% Damage Taken |
| Trigger-happy | S+ | -50% Aiming Time -5 Shooting Accuracy |
| Ascetic | S | +5 Mood for Awful Bedroom -5 Mood for Slightly Impressive Bedroom Mood not affected by quality of food -50% Ideology Certainty Loss |
| Body Modder | S | +4 to +13 Mood for Artificial Body Parts -4 Mood for not having an Artificial Body Part +8 to +40 Opinion of other pawns with Artificial Body Parts |
| Cannibal | S | Mood not affected by corpses, butchering humans, and cannibalism +15 to +20 Mood for eating Human Meat |
| Fast Learner | S | +75% Skill Learning Rate |
| Masochist | S | +5 to +20 Mood for being in Pain |
| Nimble | S | +15 Melee Dodge Chance -90% Trap Spring Chance |
| Psychically Hypersensitive | S | +80% Psychic Sensitivity |
| Steadfast | S | -9% Mental Break Threshold -50% Ideology Certainty Loss |
| Beautiful | A | +2 Beauty |
| Bloodlust | A | Mood not affected by corpses, butchering humans, and organ harvesting +8 to +13 Mood for death of strangers +400% likely to start Social Fights |
| Brawler | A | +4 Melee skill -4 Shooting skill +4 Melee Hit Chance -20 Mood for wielding a Ranged Weapon Disallows Shooting Passion and Shoot Frenzy Inspiration |
| Careful Shooter | A | +25% Aiming Time +5 Shooting Accuracy |
| Fast Walker | A | +0.2 Move Speed |
| Hard Worker | A | +20% Work Speed -5 Opinion of pawns without the same trait or Industrious |
| Kind | A | Will often make others feel good |
| Optimist | A | +6 Permanent Mood |
| Pretty | A | +1 Beauty |
| Tortured Artist | A | -8 Permanent Mood 50% chance of getting Inspired Creativity after a Mental Break |
| Bisexual | B | Will romance anyone |
| Gay | B | Will only romance same gender |
| Gourmand | B | +50% Hunger Rate +4 Cooking skill Only possible minor Mental Break is Food Binge |
| Neurotic | B | +20% Work Speed +8% Mental Break Threshold |
| Night Owl | B | -10 Mood during day (11:00 – 18:00) +16 Mood during night (23:00 – 06:00) |
| Nudist | B | +20 Mood when Naked -3 Mood for wearing any Apparel |
| Psychically Deaf | B | -100% Psychic Sensitivity |
| Psychically Dull | B | -50% Psychic Sensitivity |
| Psychopath | B | Mood not affected by most things |
| Super-immune | B | +30% Immunity Gain Speed |
| Teetotaler | B | Will never take non-medical drugs -25 Opinion of pawns with Chemical Interest or Fascination |
| Very Neurotic | B | +40% Work Speed +14% Mental Break Threshold |
| Abrasive | C | Will insult people a lot |
| Annoying Voice | C | Other pawns’ Opinion -25 |
| Creepy Breathing | C | Other pawns’ Opinion -25 |
| Lazy | C | -20% Work Speed |
| Misandrist | C | -25 Opinion of men |
| Misogynist | C | -25 Opinion of women |
| Nervous | C | +8% Mental Break Threshold +100% Ideology Certainty Loss |
| Pessimist | C | -6 Permanent Mood |
| Sickly | C | +4 Medicine skill Gets a disease every 30 days |
| Slowpoke | C | -0.2 Move Speed |
| Too Smart | C | +75% Learning Rate +12% Mental Break Threshold -50% Certainty Loss |
| Ugly | C | -1 Beauty |
| Undergrounder | C | +3 to +4 Mood when indoors -3 Mood when outdoors Mood not affected by Darkness |
| Wimp | C | -50% Pain Shock Threshold |
| Body Purist | D | -10 to -35 Mood for Artificial Body Parts -8 to -40 Opinion of other pawns with Artificial Body Parts |
| Chemical Fascination | D | -12 Mood if they have Chemical Need +6 if Chemical Need is fulfilled |
| Chemical Interest | D | -6 Mood if they have Chemical Need +3 if Chemical Need is fulfilled |
| Depressive | D | -12 Permanent Mood |
| Greedy | D | -8 to -4 Mood if bedroom is not Slightly Impressive or better |
| Jealous | D | -8 Mood if bedroom is not the most impressive |
| Psychically Sensitive | D | +40% Psychic Sensitivity |
| Slothful | D | -35% Work Speed |
| Slow Learner | D | -75% Learning Rate |
| Staggeringly Ugly | D | -2 Beauty |
| Volatile | D | +15% Mental Break Threshold +200% Ideology Certainty Loss |
| Pyromaniac | F | Will burn down your base |
The Best Traits in RimWorld Explained
Since there are many really good choices, we will talk about each trait that could be considered the best in RimWorld, in no particular order. The ones in the S tier are, by far, the best. They are all really good, and none of them is much better than the other.
Great Memory
Though this trait becomes a bit useless in the late game, the Great Memory trait is incredible if you don’t have a lot of pawns, and they all need to do a lot of jobs.
With the Great Memory trait, pawns will lose their skills over level 10 50% slower. This can be great if you have to make your talented colonists do a lot of jobs.
However, later in the game, this becomes a bit lackluster. You will usually have pawns only doing one or two things, so they won’t lose their skills in what matters. But, for Shooting and Melee, this is great.
Industrious
Getting things done fast in RimWorld is very important. Efficiency is a must if you want to get things done before raiders come.
The Industrious trait increases work speed by 35%, allowing your pawns to get their jobs done a lot faster. Combining this trait with the Jogger and Quick Sleeper traits will make your colonist the most efficient being on the planet.
One little downside of the Industrious trait is that they will get a -5 opinion of anyone who doesn’t have the trait. However, that is a small debuff that can easily be fixed with a lot of recreation time spent together.
Iron-willed
Do you know what the worst thing is in RimWorld? Mental breaks. Your pawn can suddenly go crazy and either beat people up, walk around aimlessly for days, or just burn the whole place down.
The Iron-willed trait will lower the threshold for metal breaks by 18%. Though this might not sound like a lot, if you would look at the threshold of a normal pawn and an Iron-willed one, the difference will look huge.
The normal minor break threshold is 35% mood. With the Iron-willed trait, it falls down to 17%. That is more than half. If you stumble into an Iron-willed pawn, you will want to recruit them as soon as possible.
Jogger
One of the worst things in RimWorld has to be how long it takes for pawns to go from one point to another. Luckily, the Jogger trait helps out with this problem by increasing the speed of your characters.
The Jogger trait adds 0.4 move speed (base is 4.6). This is an increase in speed of around 8 to 9%. Though this might not sound like a lot, just watch them run from a wild predator, and you will see how fast they are.
This is also amazing for people that have to often go outside and mine, plant, or hunt. The distances they have to travel will be a lot shorter if they walk faster.
Quick Sleeper
There is a long part of the day that your colonists will lose without having anything to say about it. The amount of time pawns spend sleeping could be better used doing something else.
With the Quick Sleeper trait, a pawn increases their rest 50% faster. This means that they will spend more time working and less time sleeping.
One problem you might bump into with this trait is that you will have to set up a weird work schedule where they sleep twice a day. Otherwise, they will be dead by the time sleep time comes.
Sanguine
The Sanguine trait will give your pawn a +12 permanent mood bonus. Combining this trait with something like Iron-willed will make your colonist never get mental breaks.
With the Sanguine trait, your pawn will almost always be happy. This is the same amount of mood buff you would get from a lavish meal, and it never disappears.
If you want to successfully survive on this planet, your pawns need to be happy. And the Sanguine trait is the best one in RimWorld when it comes to making colonists happy.
Tough
If a pawn has the Tough trait, then they will receive -50% damage from every type of damage. Bullets, melee attacks, fires, all of these only deal 50% of the damage they are supposed to do.
The Tough trait is one of the best traits in RimWorld since it makes sure that your colonists stay alive. It doesn’t matter if they get hit once or twice. They can still stand on their feet.
Less damage also means lower chances of getting permanent injuries. And since these can ruin a pawn forever, the Tough trait is a must-have trait for people that get hit a lot.
Trigger-happy
Though this might not sound like one of the best traits in RimWorld, it actually makes a huge difference in battles.
Aim time is really long for most weapons. And as long as you are not using a sniper rifle, accuracy will not be as important as actually shooting the gun.
The Trigger-happy trait lowers aim time by 50% but also lowers shooting accuracy by 5. For long distances, this can suck, but in close quarters, this trait will often save your life.
That’s everything you need to know about the best traits in RimWorld!
Have any input or suggestions for this guide? Let us know in the comment section below.
