In Rimworld the pawns in your colony and the traits that make up which kind of personality they have can drastically change the things you will need to do for them to keep them happy. These are not only great for giving each pawn a unique personality to add to the stories you experience while playing, but can make the pawns much stronger. There are some traits that can turn a great pawn terrible, a bad pawn good, and some change very little.

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The traits your pawns have are nearly as important as their passions. The passions are the flames next to stats that represent their enjoyment of a task, which leads to faster learning and leveling of that task. While the starting stats your pawns have can always be increased by doing the task and leveling it up, traits are set in stone per pawn — which means that you will want to consider which traits any pawn has regardless of stats, as some pawns are just more trouble than they are worth. Here are some of the strongest traits in the game.

10 Tough

Pawn without Tough dying to a cougar

Your colony will get raided occasionally, and it only gets more intense as your colony's wealth goes up. You may even be the aggressor and raid others, but no matter what kind of combat you are doing, having pawns that are hard to kill is important in avoiding the heartbreak of their untimely demise.

Tough is a great trait for pawns that will be fighting on the front lines, or just for overall survivability. Tough halves all the damage the pawn would take, making them much harder to kill overall. The difference in kill time on a Tough pawn is very noticeable, as some enemy raiders may even have this trait, making them very hard to kill without focusing fire in a timely fashion. This trait is very strong, just make sure that the pawn that has it has decent combat stats or they won't get to make use of it very often.

9 Quick Sleeper

Quick Sleeper in Rimworld sleeping on the ground

Quick Sleeper is a very useful trait to have on important workers since it allows them to spend less time sleeping and more time working on the colony's needs. The sleep bar filling faster means they are spending less time sleeping and more time awake and working each day without getting their mood lowered by lack of sleep. Quick Sleeper is great on any pawn since no matter what sleeping is something a pawn will do, so you will be getting value from this trait the entire time you have that pawn even if they sleep on the ground. In Rimworld speed is the name of the game so anything that makes pawns do something faster is a nice bonus and welcome in any colony.

8 Jogger

Jogger Trait Rimworld

In terms of efficiency, moving fast helps with just about any task. Hauling resources around, positioning in combat, and getting from place to place all are impacted by pawn movement speed. Movement speed is a buff to most things a pawn will need to do which can make it a powerful buff for just about every aspect of the pawn. For pawns that need to travel a lot for work or base defense movement speed is a nice touch that feels really nice to have. In the same vein, Fast Walker is a similar trait but half the speed. It is still a good trait as any amount of movement speed for no penalty is a good trait, but Jogger is just the best version of it so be on the lookout for pawns that have either.

7 Industrious

Industrious Rimworld building fast

This trait makes pawns work 35% faster than other pawns with the tradeoff of a -5 opinion of pawns less gifted than they are who don't possess this trait. This is a pretty noticeable increase in work speed which can create a much more efficient colony for such a small opinion trade-off. Working faster is great for workers to do things like cooking, crafting, building, or research all of which benefit greatly in their own ways making pawns with this trait really nice to have in your colony. Hard Worker is a similar trait but only a +20% buff with the same -5 opinion of pawns without Hard Worker or Industrious.

6 Super-Immune

Super-Immune Rimworld colonists resting off disease

Super-immune is a trait that increases the Immunity gain speed by 30% which makes it really hard for disease to threaten pawns with this trait. Immunity is the pawn's current status when fighting infection. The infection rate goes up steadily depending on if the pawn has been treated with medicine. If the infection gets 100% filled before the immunity bar then it will lead to that pawn's death. This trait can save lives but does not impact anything until disease or infection gets involved. When it does matter this trait can be huge for keeping an important pawn alive through illness.

5 Very Neurotic

Very Neutoric trait Rimworld

This trait is a bit of a double-edged sword as it grants +40% work speed which is 5% more than industrious but at the price of +14% mental break threshold which means they will mentally snap faster than other pawns. For all the same reasons that Industrious is a good trait, Very Neurotic and its slightly weaker counterpart, Neurotic (+20% work speed, +8% mental break threshold,) are very strong traits as long as you spoil the pawns who have them a bit to protect their mental health. Unlike Industrious where the work speed comes at a very low cost, these traits are more of a balancing act of working hard and having their needs met, but it is worth it to watch the bar above any task shoot forward as they fly through anything they do.

4 Sanguine

Sanguine buffing mood in Rimworld

Pawns in Rimworld will more often than not be faced with pain, suffering, and some less-than-ideal conditions. Once their mood gets low enough there is a chance of a mental break. These breakdowns can vary in severity from food binges which can be easy to manage given you have enough food stored away, to picking fights they can't win with the local wildlife resulting in their death. This is not ideal so keeping your pawns happy and mentally well is important to keeping things running smoothly. Sanguine is a flat +12 mood bonus at all times just because they are naturally upbeat about things. This buffer is really helpful for keeping pawns mentally well in the face of the hardships colonists may face.

3 Psychopath

Psychopath in Rimworld unphased by death

This one may seem like a head-scratcher, but Psychopath gets a bad rep for nothing. Depending on the type of colony you are running, be it, cannibals, organ farmers, slavers, or really anything morally dubious, normal pawns with empathy and such are displeased by such behavior and can be negatively effected by such acts. Psychopaths on the other hand are not even phased by things like bodies around the colony, death or beloved friends or pets, selling people into slavery, the works! If this is the type of colony that appeals to you, it is important to have like-minded individuals to avoid annoying penalties to mood. The only downside to this trait is that they don't get a mood boost from kind works and things like that. So basically, no mood buff or debuff by good or bad things. This trait gets a bad rep when really it isn't a bad thing at all. Just makes the pawns a little quirkier than the others.

2 Fast Learner

Fast Learner cooking for fast xp gains

The stats of your pawn start with a foundation to what roles they will have in the colony but your pawns gain experience as they work to increase the skills for tasks they do. Fast learner increases this learning by +75% which is a huge increase to the rate your pawns level up their skills not even taking into account the passions they may have for any particular skill. A Fast Learner pawn can quickly raise their skills and this is even more true for skills they are passionate about which makes them a powerhouse later on when they've had some time to grow the skills in the jobs they are most often doing, and easily able to raise their skills for what they may lack. The Fast Learner trait is useful for any pawn as it helps them grow skill in anything which allows them to adapt to any role you may need to be done in the colony, as well as becoming masters of their craft faster.

1 Bloodlust

Bloodlust Rimworld Trait

Death is a part of colonist life. Raids, famine, and any number of other incidents may occur in the colony. These violent acts are unavoidable and most well-adjusted colonists might find things like murder, corpses, and organ harvesting a little obscene. But pawns with Bloodlust love these things and actually get a mood boost for these violent acts. There is a slight downside that they may start more social fights but when the pros are weighted against the cons it's a landslide victory. Mood boosts from killing or witnessing murder, and wearing clothes made of human skin

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