Cutting the Anima Tree in RimWorld: Scream, Wood, and When to Keep It
Cutting the Anima Tree in RimWorld: Scream, Wood, and When to Keep It
Don't cut an anima tree for lumber. When it dies, every pawn on the map gets anima scream: −6 mood for 5 days, scaled by psychic sensitivity. You get 25 wood and a chopped stump. The tree does come back, about 30 days later on a random tile, so cutting is how you move a badly placed one. Keep it if you have a tribal with the Natural meditation focus, or expect to recruit one.
Verified against Steam RimWorld 1.6.4871Royalty DLC. Ideology and Biotech notes are labelled.
- Scream: −6 for 5 days
- Wood: 25
- Regrows: about 30 days
- Linking: 20 anima grass
Decision
Should you cut the anima tree?
The tree is a free, repeatable source of psylink levels for every Natural-focus pawn you have. Losing it does not remove levels a pawn already earned. You can't plant or transplant one in vanilla, so the only way to move it is to destroy it and wait.
| Choice | When | What it costs |
|---|---|---|
| Keep | You have a tribal with Natural focus, or might recruit one | Keep artificial buildings out of the 27.9-tile red ring where you can |
| Cut to reroll | It sits near the map edge, in a raid path, or on the only good building ground | Anima scream now, and the new spot may be worse |
| Cut for wood | Never. 25 wood is what an ordinary tree gives | Scream plus the loss of your psylink source |
Cost
What happens when the anima tree dies
Any death counts: chopping, explosions, alphabeavers, a defoliator ship. Every pawn on the map with a mood gets anima scream. A pawn who chops it gets the wood and leaves a chopped stump. If something else kills it, you get a smashed stump instead.
| Psychic sensitivity | Usual source | Scream mood |
|---|---|---|
| 0% (deaf) | Trait or gene | 0 |
| 50% (dull) | Trait or gene | −3 |
| 100% | Most pawns | −6 |
| 140% (sensitive) | Trait | −8.4 |
| 180% (hypersensitive) | Trait | −10.8 |
Psylink levels your pawns already have stay. The new tree needs its own 20 anima grass before anyone can link again, and anima grass only lives 60 days anyway, so plan on regrowing it.
Rerolling twice in a row stacks the scream. On a colony with psychically sensitive pawns, two stacked screams can push pawns toward a mental break. Let the first one run out before the next tree dies.
Reroll
It grows back somewhere you didn't choose
About 30 days after the old tree dies, a new one spawns as a random event. Most maps get one anima tree, and larger maps can get two. Extreme desert, ice sheet, sea ice and glacial plains get none. A glowforest starts with no tree but gets one later.
The game looks for an outdoor tile you can stand on with some fertility, at least 15 tiles from the map edge and at least 40 tiles from any artificial structure, with 22 or more fertile tiles within 10 tiles. If no tile qualifies, it lowers the bar to 10 tiles from structures and 18 fertile tiles within 20. Because it avoids your buildings, the new tree usually lands away from your base.
Cutting is the only vanilla way to move the tree. If the new spot is worse, you can cut again and take another scream.
Intentional cut
How to cut it on purpose
- Select the tree and look for the Prevent cutting toggle. While it is on, Cut plants and Chop wood won't mark the tree.
- Turn Prevent cutting off.
- Designate Cut plants or Chop wood. The game warns you that you are marking an anima tree.
- Let a pawn finish the chop. You get the scream message, the stump and 25 wood.
- Wait for the new tree. When it appears, check where its red ring falls before you build anything near it.
Failure modes
Accidental cuts: zones, roofs, beavers
Most lost anima trees die to something other than a deliberate chop order. Check these:
- Roof areas. Builders cut plants that are in the way of a roof. Keep roof areas off the tree and off the grass around it. Use the remove roof area tool if a room's roof crept over.
- Growing zones over the trunk. Keep zones off the tree tile, especially after you have turned Prevent cutting off.
- Alphabeavers. They eat anima trees. Thrumbos don't. In biomes with the Beavers! event, walling the tree in keeps them away.
- Defoliators. Defoliators and defoliator ships kill the tree.
- Fire. The tree can't burn, but anima grass can. A ring of flooring around the grass area stops wildfires.
- Pollution (Biotech). Polluted terrain kills the tree. Keep toxic wastepacks and polluting buildings away from it. Toxic fallout doesn't hurt it.
Why keep it
Natural focus, anima grass and linking
When players say they "bond" with the tree, the game means the anima linking ritual. Only pawns with the Natural meditation focus can grow anima grass and link. That focus comes from the childhood backstory: some tribal childhoods give it, and nothing else does. Psychically deaf pawns can't be linked. Children can take part in the ritual but can't be the one linking.
Meditating near the tree grows anima grass. Growth slows down after 12, 24 and 48 pawn-hours of meditation in one day. At 20 patches, start the linking ritual. It takes about 5 hours, uses up 20 grass and gives the pawn one psylink level. Extra participants give back some grass, up to 8 with seven or more. Up to four shrines or animus stones can boost the tree. Levels from a psylink neuroformer or an Empire bestowing ceremony can keep going up through the tree.
If grass isn't growing, open the pawn's info card and check the meditation focus types. A pawn without Natural focus can meditate next to the tree all day and grow nothing.
| Artificial buildings in the red ring | Focus strength |
|---|---|
| 0 | 0% |
| 5 | −8% |
| 10 | −15% |
| 50 | −30% |
The same buildings slow anima grass growth, by up to 30%.
Placement
Build around it or build over it
Keep the ring clean
Keep artificial buildings outside the 27.9-tile red ring. Floors, smoothed stone walls, graves, campfires, torch lamps, spots, nature shrines and animus stones don't count. Put meditation spots by the trunk and the bedrooms just outside the ring so the walk stays short.
Build over it on purpose
Some players wall the tree into the base so meditators are safe from raids and beavers. You keep the tree but lose most of its focus bonus, and grass grows slower. This works when the tree sits right where your base has to go. If it doesn't, cut it and reroll.
Don't mix this tree up with the Gauranlen tree from Ideology, which makes dryads, or the polux tree, which cleans pollution. They are different plants.
To plan the base around the red ring, use the base layout planner. Fallout and the anima tree are covered on the toxic fallout page.
DLC
Ideology and Biotech
Ideology. Precepts that dislike tree cutting add their own mood hit on top of anima scream when your pawns chop a tree. With those precepts, cutting the anima tree costs you twice.
Biotech. Psychic sensitivity genes change the scream the same way traits do, and a psychically deaf gene also blocks linking. Children can't be linked, but they still get the scream.
Quick checks
Before you click Cut
- Is Prevent cutting still on? Leave it on unless you mean it.
- Do you have a Natural-focus pawn, or could a tribal join later?
- Is the current spot really unplayable, or just a bit annoying?
- Can the colony take −6 times sensitivity for five days right now?
- Is it actually the anima tree and not a Gauranlen tree?
Default answer on 1.6.4871 with Royalty: keep the anima tree. Cut it only when it blocks the whole base plan, then lay out the meditation area around wherever the new one spawns.