RimWorld Gut Worms Survival Tool | Outbreak Manager + Cure Calculator
Stop The Food Spiral.
Calculate treatments, manage outbreaks, and decide when plain tending is enough and when a stomach upgrade is the smarter call.
The tool uses a planning estimate for doctor setup, then clamps it against the current medicine cap. The detailed calculator below can be overridden if your real tend quality lands higher or lower.
Use industrial medicine and protect the cook.
A short three-tend plan is usually enough here, so the real job is protecting the kitchen, keeping meals close, and not missing the next 48-hour window.
- Assign your best doctor to treatment duty now.
- Move meals onto a shelf near the kitchen and hospital.
- Clean the kitchen and dining path before vomiting creates a second problem.
- Protect the cook, doctor, and cleaner before everyone else.
Formula used: treatments = ceil(300 / tend quality). Rough cure time = (treatments - 1) x 48 hours if you hit every tend on time.
Current load band
Tempo hit- Expect a meaningful food tax, but not a full collapse.
- Protect the cook and doctor first.
- Shorten hauling and hunting routes until the next tend lands.
| Role | Default call | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Cook | Protect | Food flow and vomiting risk share the same room. |
| Doctor | Protect | Missed tend windows stretch the whole problem. |
| Crafter / Researcher | Keep nearby | Stationary work wastes less time under doubled hunger. |
One tend at this quality adds 95 / 300 total tend quality.
Hospital beds add +0.10 medical tend quality. A linked vitals monitor adds another +0.07 to that bed and also boosts surgery success.
Outbreak protocol checklist
Protect the food loop- Protect the cook, main doctor, and cleaner before everyone else.
- Put meals on shelves near the hospital, kitchen, and the busiest indoor room.
- Pull infected pawns off long hauling, long mining, and map-edge hunting.
- Run a cleaning pass on kitchen, dining, hospital, and the path between them.
- Watch the next 48-hour tend window like a countdown, not a suggestion.
| Role | Action | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| Cook | Protect | Highest combined impact on food use, kitchen filth, and colony rhythm. |
| Doctor | Protect | Weak treatment cadence makes every other patient worse. |
| Cleaner | Keep in core base | Vomiting filth creates the second crisis players mistake for the first. |
| Hunter / Miner | Bench long range | Doubled hunger punishes distance harder than the disease hurts indoors. |
| Crafter / Researcher | Keep nearby | Stationary work loses less time to extra meals. |
| Method | Route | Timing | Tradeoff | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Conservative treatment | Vanilla | About 4-10d | Cheapest route, but hunger and vomiting keep taxing the colony until the total tend quality reaches 300. | Stable colonies with industrial medicine and a clean treatment loop. |
| Bionic stomach | Vanilla | Immediate after surgery | Medicine 5 surgery, 2 medicine, 10 plasteel, 3 advanced components. Local core def gives gut worms immunity, 125% efficiency, and a 0.5 food poisoning chance factor. | The cook, main doctor, or any pawn whose sickness breaks the base. |
| Healer mech serum | Vanilla rare | Immediate | Targets the single worst health condition on the pawn, so it is best when gut worms is actually the biggest problem on that body. | Irreplaceable pawns when surgery or a long tend plan is too slow. |
| Biosculpter medic cycle | Ideology | One pod cycle | Clean non-surgery branch, but it ties up the pawn and the pod. | Colonies already built around pods and planned downtime. |
| Reprocessor stomach | Royalty | Immediate after surgery | DLC route that cures now and helps the future food bill at the same time. | Food-tight late-game colonies that want a calmer long-term diet. |
| Nuclear stomach | Royalty | Immediate after surgery | Extreme hunger relief, but it is a high-commitment body mod with a real downside. | Specialists in colonies where food is the permanent bottleneck. |
- Gut worms is a tendable local infection in the stomach.
- The tend component uses a 48-hour base tend duration.
- The incident can hit 20% to 50% of the colony in one roll.
Hospital bed: +0.10 medical tend quality offset. Linked vitals monitor: +0.07 more. Sterile tile cleanliness: +0.6 and faster cleaning.
Why These Numbers
The planner uses the current 1.6 values that matter most for gut worms planning: the disease disappears at total tend quality 3, uses a 48-hour tend duration, and applies +100% hunger with +0.2 pain and vomiting.
- Hospital beds improve medical tend quality by +0.10 and surgery success by 1.10.
- Vitals monitors add +0.07 medical tend quality, +0.05 surgery success, and +0.02 immunity gain speed to linked hospital beds.
- Bionic stomach installs use the standard artificial body part surgery base: Medicine 5 and 2 medicine.
- Healer mech serum is powerful, but it only fixes the worst health condition on the pawn, so it is not a guaranteed gut-worms-only button if another condition is worse.
Does gut worms go away on its own?
No. The planning rule that matters is total tend quality 3, so time alone only extends the hunger-and-vomit tax.
What is the honest default medicine?
Industrial medicine. It is the first common tier that can realistically push solid treatment setups into the short 3-tend lane.
When should I stop tending and just operate?
When the pawn is central to food, treatment, or travel and the calendar cost of staying sick is worse than a clean stomach install.
Why does the kitchen seem cursed afterward?
Because vomiting creates filth in the exact rooms where food poisoning risk matters. Treat the disease and protect the clean path at the same time.