Gut worms

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Gut worms are a parasitic disease that infects the stomach, which doubles the host's hunger rate.

Disease

General Symptoms:

  • Increased hunger rate (200% of base)
  • Increased vomit rate (to average once per day)
  • Pain (-10 mood)
  • Sick (-5 mood)

Advanced Symptoms:

  • None

Treatment:

  • Treated with medicine
  • Treatment duration: 120,000 ticks (33.33 mins), or 2 days
  • Total treatment quality required: 300%
    • For example, the disease can be treated with 3 treatments at 100% quality, or 5 at 60%.
  • Install a bionic stomach or other replacements to get rid of the disease and prevent future occurrences.

Analysis

Frequently when Gut Worms strike a colony, several members will be affected at once. With multiple colonists vomiting, the base can quickly become very dirty. If this happens in the kitchen, the risk of food poisoning increases, risking further vomiting. If vomiting occurs while a pawn is eating a meal, the eating process is cancelled, and the pawn will have to start over after vomiting. If already malnourished when Gut Worms (or Food Poisoning) strike, this can be a real problem, as things can spiral out of control, and the malnutrition severity can progress, even while seated at the dinner table actively trying to eat a meal. Pemmican is said to be better than meals in this situation, because a pawn may successfully eat a few small pieces of pemmican before the vomiting begins again. In this case, the partial progress toward getting full is not lost, and malnutrition may not advance. As with many other things in RimWorld, if Gut Worms are not managed well, minor problems can snowball into mental breaks, downing, death and loss of the entire colony. Preventative installation of a few bionic stomachs, especially in the main cook, is one possible strategy to help prevent future outbreaks of Gut Worms from spiraling out of control.

Version history

Prior to Beta 19, gut worms always required 5 treatments regardless of quality.