How to Treat Food Poisoning in RimWorld (1.6.4633) | Outbreak Tool

RimWorld 1.6 Food Poisoning Tool & Guide (Core Build 4633)
Code-backed local 1.6.4633 answer

Stop the vomit spiral before it kills your workday

Food poisoning in the installed RimWorld build is a one-day self-decaying hediff, so the fast fix is not medicine. Put sick pawns on bed rest, lock down suspect meals, switch emergency feeding to nutrient paste if you have it, and bring the kitchen back to -2 cleanliness or better before cooking again. The tools below use the exact local values from Hediffs_Global_Misc.xml, RoomStats.xml, Stats_Pawns_WorkRecipes.xml, Difficulties.xml, and Buildings_Production.xml.

24h baseline duration
-2 cleanliness shuts off dirty-room roll
0.1% cook floor at skill 9+
-15 cleanliness on butcher table
0.5x bionic stomach poison factor

Quick-Treat Workflow

The four moves that stop a colony-wide meal cascade right now.

1

Bed Rest First

Set Bed Rest and Patient to top priority. The local hediff has no tend or immunity comp, so movement discipline matters more than medicine.

2

Forbid Recent Meals

Lock down recent cooked stacks and move them to a suspect pile. Do not keep feeding from the same batch while pawns are still dropping.

4

Clean Before Rebill

Do not resume meal bills until the cook tile is back above -2 cleanliness and the bill is restricted to your best cook.

Practical rule: if Room Stats at the stove says Outdoors, treat it as broken immediately. The local roomless food-poison score is 2%.

Outbreak Triage

Plug in your current mess and get the first moves in the right order.

Read from Room Stats at the cook tile.
Switch to paste and lock the kitchen
Critical
  1. Set Bed Rest to 1 for the sick pawns.
  2. Forbid risky stacks and switch to nutrient paste.
  3. Clean before any new cooking.
Fallback call Paste is safe enough to stabilize the colony.
Main bottleneck Dirty kitchen is still live.

Recovery Timeline

The local FoodPoisoning hediff starts at severity 1 and decays at -1 per day.

0.0h
Current stage Initial
Time left 24.0h
Move factor 80%
Eat factor 50%

The first 4.8 hours are the initial stage. The hard part is the long middle block: 14.4 hours of major food poisoning with 50% moving.

Food Safety Matrix (1.6 Data)

What you can feed during an outbreak, and what can still poison pawns.

Food Code signal Poison route Outbreak call
Nutrient paste meal
Core fallback 		Nutrition 0.9, no local FoodPoisonChanceFixedHuman entry on MealNutrientPaste. Does not carry the normal raw-food fixed poison stat and avoids low-skill kitchen throughput problems. Best core emergency feed while you clean and reassign cooking.
Simple / fine / lavish meals
Needs clean kitchen 		Cooked meals inherit the meal poisonable path; risk comes from room roll plus cook skill roll. Dirty-room chance from RoomStats.xml, cook chance from Stats_Pawns_WorkRecipes.xml. Use only after you fix cleanliness and lock bills to a real cook.
Raw plant / animal food
2% fixed 		FoodPoisonChanceFixedHuman 0.02 on raw plant and animal product defs. Humans can be food-poisoned even without a cook or kitchen. Bad fallback for a human colony unless starvation is the alternative.
Kibble
2% fixed 		FoodPoisonChanceFixedHuman 0.02 on Kibble. Same fixed human poison stat problem, plus awful mood value. Do not stabilize human pawns with kibble unless you are desperate.
Rotten food
Never 		CompRottable.cs calls the food poisoning path when the food is not fresh and the eater is susceptible. Rotten food is not an outbreak recovery food. It is how you start another letter. Destroy or keep away from humans.

Biotech baby food is intentionally left out of the calculator because the local game folder only contains Core defs, not the Biotech data pack.

Kitchen Risk Calculator

Combine room cleanliness, cook skill, difficulty, and stomach factor to estimate the risk per bite.

-1.0
At -2 or better the dirty-room curve goes to 0%.
6
Skill 6 is 0.5%; skill 9+ bottoms at 0.1%.

Final risk per bite

0.50%

A clean room with a decent cook is usually survivable. The current danger is the cook roll, not the room roll.

Breakdown

Room roll 0.00%
Cook roll 0.50%
Base food roll 0.00%
Difficulty x stomach 1.00x

Troubleshooting & Hidden Pitfalls

When the room is already clean but somebody still vomits on the dining table.

Your stove tile is not in a valid indoor room, so the local roomlessScore applies a flat 2% dirty-area chance. Fix the tile, wall, or doorway setup first.
A clean room only removes the room roll. It does not erase the cook roll. Skill 0 is 5%, skill 4 is 1.5%, skill 6 is 0.5%, and skill 9+ bottoms at 0.1%.
Treat the recent batch as suspect. Forbid or dump it, make a tiny clean test batch, and only reopen normal meal storage once new meals are produced under the fixed setup.
The local butcher table has -15 cleanliness by itself. Even if you replace it with a butcher spot, blood and traffic still contaminate the meal room.

Code-Backed Facts

The numbers this page uses from the installed game files.

FoodPoisoning Starts at severity 1 and decays at -1/day. That is why the baseline recovery is one in-game day.
RoomStats Food poison chance curve hits 0% at -2 cleanliness, with 5% at -5 and 2.5% at -3.5.
Cook skill 5% at skill 0, 0.5% at skill 6, 0.1% at skill 9+.
Difficulty Food poison chance factors run from 0.3x Peaceful to 1.2x Losing is Fun.
Butcher table -15 cleanliness on the object itself. Keep it out of the cook room.
Sterile tile +0.6 cleanliness, 0.6 cleaning time factor, and still the strongest core kitchen floor.

Internal Resources

Relevant defs and related pages on this site.

[[FoodPoisoning]] [[FoodPoisonChance]] [[MealNutrientPaste]] [[SterileTile]] [[How to Make a Kitchen in RimWorld]] [[How to Make a Nutrient Paste Dispenser]]
Patch target: local 1.6.4633 rev1266 install. Values used here come from Core XML and source files in the game folder, not from guesses.

Quick Treatment Rules

If you only need the no-fluff answer: food poisoning is not a tending problem in this build. It is a rest, meal-control, and kitchen-discipline problem.

  • Draft and undraft sick pawns next to a bed if they insist on wandering.
  • Forbid or dump recent cooked meals until you know the new batch is clean.
  • Switch the whole colony to nutrient paste if a dispenser is online.
  • Clean the cook tile first, then the rest of the room, then reopen meal bills.
  • Restrict cooking to your best cook until the room is stable again.

Stage timing from the local hediff: Initial 4.8h, Major 14.4h, Recovering 4.8h.

Emergency Priorities

[FoodPoisoningEmergency]
BedRest=1
Patient=1
Doctor=2
Clean=1
Cook=0
Haul=2
Basic=3

[CookException]
ApprovedCookSkill=6+
KitchenCleanliness=-2.0 or better
RoomStatsAtStove=Indoors

[MealPolicy]
AllowNutrientPaste=true
AllowRecentCookedStacks=false
AllowRawFood=false
AllowKibble=false

Kitchen Rules That Actually Matter

The clean-room breakpoint is lower than many players think. You do not need a pristine +cleanliness kitchen to shut off dirty-room poisoning. You just need to reach -2 or better and keep the cook tile from dropping back under it.

Signal Local value What to do with it
Dirty-room food roll -5 = 5%, -3.5 = 2.5%, -2 = 0% Chase -2 first. Sterile perfection can wait.
Butcher table -15 cleanliness Never share the cook room with it.
Sterile tile +0.6 cleanliness Prioritize the cook tile and interaction lane first.
Outdoors cooking 2% roomless score Fix doorway and room-state issues before anything else.

Difficulty and Pawn-Side Modifiers

Kitchen cleanliness and cook skill define how likely a bad meal is to exist. Difficulty and stomach factor change what happens when a pawn eats that potentially poisoned food.

Difficulty Factor Practical read
Peaceful 0.3x You can get away with messy early kitchens longer.
Community builder 0.5x Still forgiving, but not free.
Adventure story 0.75x Bad kitchens start hurting more regularly.
Strive to survive 1.0x Baseline numbers used by default in the calculator.
Blood and dust 1.1x Small kitchen mistakes get punished faster.
Losing is fun 1.2x Use strict cook gates and a real safe-food fallback.

Bionic stomach applies a local 0.5x food poisoning chance factor. That is good on high-value cooks and fighters, but it does not excuse a filthy kitchen.

Local 1.6.4633 File Map
File Value used Impact on the page
Version.txt 1.6.4633 rev1266 Build target for every calculator on this page.
Hediffs_Global_Misc.xml FoodPoisoning severity 1, -1/day Sets the 24-hour timeline and stage tracker.
RoomStats.xml Food poison curve reaches 0 at -2 cleanliness Defines the kitchen breakpoint and room roll.
Stats_Pawns_WorkRecipes.xml Cook skill poison curve 5% to 0.1% Drives the cook portion of the calculator.
Difficulties.xml Food poison factor 0.3x to 1.2x Adjusts the eater-side multiplier.
Buildings_Production.xml Butcher table -15, paste dispenser 0.3 nutrition per dispense Supports the prevention and safe-food calls.
CompRottable.cs Rotten food routes into food poisoning Why rotten food is never an outbreak recovery choice.

FAQ

Does medicine help?

No tending path is defined on the local FoodPoisoning hediff. Rest, meal policy, and kitchen cleanup are the real fixes.

How long does it last?

Baseline local duration is one in-game day: 4.8h initial, 14.4h major, 4.8h recovering.

What cook skill is safe?

There is no true zero from skill alone. Skill 6 is 0.5% and skill 9+ is 0.1%, so most colonies should gate meal bills at 6+ until the room is stable.

Why am I still getting cases in a sterile room?

Check cook skill, room state at the stove, suspect bulk stacks, and any hidden butchering or traffic contamination. A clean room only removes one part of the roll.