Need to butcher animals in RimWorld? We’re talking about animals like monkeys, hares, rats, squirrels, and so much more. Corpses like these aren’t so hard to come by as you play even the most basic of scenarios. Special events — like the mad animal attack — will bring them right to your doorstep. Not to mention you can eventually tame your own livestock and make them into meat. But how do you actually butcher animals in RimWorld for yourself? Let’s take a look and make ourselves some monkey meat!
The answer to this somewhat grizzly question is more complicated than it seems. Though it’s not actually that difficult. You just need to know where to look and, most importantly, what to build. Unlike harvesting other materials, animal butchering in RimWorld requires more than a stockpile area. You need either a butcher table (made from stone, wood, or steel).
How to Butcher Animals in RimWorld
You can also use a butcher spot in a pinch. Though it’s less effective. “Spots” only provide 70% of the usual meat you would get if you butcher an animal at a table. The upside is that butcher spots don’t require materials, construction time, or even a colonist capable of construction. You just need two tiles of open ground within your settlement area.
With a butcher table or a butcher spot in place, you need to create a “Bill.” This is the default RimWorld term for queuing up tasks associated with a particular piece of equipment. As long as there is a colonist willing and able to complete each Bill, they will continue to do so until the parameters you provide are met, such as butchering animals up to five times. You can also set this to happen “until you have X” or “do forever.”
In the case of animal butchering, however, “do forever” is often preferred. This is because it only affects dead animals that would otherwise likely spoil. Just remember that butchering (harvesting a dead animal) is a separate action from slaughtering (killing a live animal).
To start a Bill, just click on your butcher table or spot. Its description window will appear in the bottom-left of the screen. Above that is a brown menu tab that simply says “Bills.” Click on it to open a list of which Bills are already active. From here, you can also select the brown “Add Bill” button to queue up more.
Queueing Butcher Bills in RimWorld
Which options you see depends on the type of equipment you select. When it comes to butchering, however, you should see “butcher creature” and “make kibble.” Kibble is great for feeding pets. Yet we obviously want to butcher an animal in this case. To do so, simply opt to butcher a creature. The Bill will execute exactly one time by default. Meaning your next available colonist will butcher one dead animal. No more, no less.
You can customize this further by clicking either the yellow plus and minus buttons — increasing or decreasing the total number of animals butchered. You can also click the “do X times” button. This creates a dropdown menu (as shown in the screenshot above) with all three types of Bill queues: do X times, do until you have X, and do forever.
Once again, you can pretty safely select “do forever” when you want to butcher an animal. The process will turn the creature into meat. Which type of meat depends on the animal. Hares produce hare meat; monkeys produce monkey meat; rats produce rat meat. You get the idea! The names don’t usually matter that much, though. Meat is mostly meat as far as RimWorld is concerned. You can use 10 units of any type to produce a Simple Meal, for instance. This is also why it’s quite useful to use a butcher table instead of a butcher spot; you need quite a lot of meat to make even basic sustenance.
Whatever Bill you choose, an appropriate colonist will automatically collect dead animals to butcher.
Tips to Butcher Animals in RimWorld
There are a few of other basic things to keep in mind when butchering, too.
First, you should also have a stockpile zone with available space. This is simply a designated spot to keep certain raw materials — such as raw meat. The meat will spoil after a certain number of in-game days. Faster if you leave it outdoors, unroofed, and/or unrefrigerated. But the rate at which colonists consume meals (especially when you consider how much raw meat is needed for cooked food) you should be okay in the early game.
Second, despite the name, butchery is tied to the Cooking skill. A higher level in Cooking will allow colonists to butcher faster and produce more meat. While the total yield is mostly determined by the size of the animal, better cooks can get a bonus. This also means you need a character with the Cooking skill enabled to actually butcher animals in RimWorld at all.
Third, you can select and deselect which animals will and/or won’t be butchered by choosing the “Details” section of the butchery Bill. This includes a checklist of all possible animals (and humanoids) which you can restrict with a red X or allow with a green checkmark.
Last but not least: if you’re having trouble butchering an animal, but have tried everything you can think of, it may just be a bug. This seems to be a fairly common feature that breaks when using certain RimWorld mods. There’s little to be done in such cases except to uninstall the mod and/or restart from an earlier save. You can also start a new colony altogether. Though that hardly fixes the problem in the truest sense…
And that’s what you need to know to butcher animals in RimWorld! Whether it’s wild or domesticated, you just need the right tools and the right people for the job. Best of luck keeping your colonists (and possibly their pets) fed as you survive among the stars.
