Training

There are various methods to train your colonists various skills. Below are a few of the many ways possible.

Shooting training

The best way to train shooting is to assign the colonist to the "hunting" task. Giving them a long-range weapon, for example a bolt-action rifle makes hunting safer, because animals are less likely to enrage and retaliate if shot at from long range. To be safe, only hunt passive animals that will never retaliate.

Deliberately damaging your own structures or buildings does not improve your shooting skill.

Aggravating animals

Outside of hunting, some resilient animals such as the Megasloth, Rhinoceros and Thrumbo can give a lot of shooting skill by kiting them, and slowly shooting them to death with a low DPS weapon. You need to be very careful with this approach, because those animals do a lot of damage if given the chance to get into your melee range. They will probably stagger or even stun you, and possibly down or even kill the colonist.

The best weapon types for this tactic are weapons with a fast windup and high shot frequency, not too short a range, and low damage. This makes you use the skill more often, by firing more shots, and has your "training dummy" last longer from low damage.

This approach does require extensive micromanagement, and you won't be able to perform other manual tasks in the colony in the meantime. It is even possible that actually killing the animal will take so long that your colonist will pass out from exhaustion or go into starvation. You must have a capable shooter available to finish off the animal and end the training if necessary.

Melee training

Fighting anything with melee attacks will increase the melee skill. Hunting with melee attacks works, but animals are prone to fighting back so be warned (this is true even for animals that never retaliate when hunted from range). If you want to train a fighter this way, put them in the best possible armor so they will take less damage from the animal. Taking no damage at all is often not possible, so do not train a colonist that you require to be in good shape. Also be aware that attacking herd animals (like muffalos and wild boars) can enrage the entire herd it is in, which will usually lead to your colonist being trampled by the herd, and in the worse case even killed.

Tame animals will fight back, so they are not safe training dummies; they can however be kept in a controlled environment which makes them more convenient targets (restricting them to a zone makes it impossible for them to chase you).

Using melee attacks does raise the skill very quickly, and you will hit the "soft" XP cap of 4000 points in a matter of a few attacks. Disengage afterwards, because training over the soft cap is not efficient.

To level melee more safely, take prisoners who are incapable of "Violent" and repeatedly punch, then heal them in their prison cell. To avoid accidentally killing your prisoners, use fists only with neither a melee nor ranged weapon equipped. Carefully watch the health of the prisoner pausing the game between each punch if needed. A colonist with no weapon (not even a ranged weapon) does up to 7 base blunt damage per punch (see Base Melee Stats for details), so when any single body part falls below 8 hp remaining, stop and allow the prisoner to heal.

Construction training

Construction is already trained quite efficiently by simply using the skill, since construction is such a common activity in an expanding colony. Smoothing walls and floors counts as construction, is very time consuming, and does have no quality penalty associated with it. If there is a lot of wall and floor area to be smoothed in your colony – always the case in an underground base – restrict the trainee colonists to the respective areas by creating a temporary zone, and let them do wall and floor smoothing exclusively for a while.

Making furniture is not the best way to train construction, because colonists with low skill will produce low quality furniture, which has then to be deconstructed and re-built, wasting material in the process. You can, however, keep deconstructing and reconstructing the furniture until the desired quality level is produced (the popular Quality Builder mod helps tremendously if you want to employ this strategy).

If you are about to build a lot of walls in the colony, you can temporarily take your capable builders off the construction task, and have the workers that you want to train take over the task to build the walls (and roofs). Walls do not have a quality stat, so it is not possible for your still low-skilled builders to create bad products. They will be slower, and probably "botch" construction several times, but the end result will be the same.

Do not train construction when high value material is involved, such as cloth (for carpets) or components (when making things like power generators). If the colonist "botches" construction in these cases, a fair amount of material will be irretrievably wasted; only do this if you have plenty of surplus so it would not matter.

Training construction with the repair task

You can damage structures, usually purpose-built stone walls, deliberately by damaging them with melee attacks, shots or grenade blasts, and then have your construction builders repair them.

This will not train shooting skill. Use the shooters only to damage the structure, then undraft them and have them resume their regular colony duties. Of course the shooters could be the very same people who will do the repair work just after. Shooting skill does not matter much in this case, as pretty much everybody is able to hit a wall from point blank range...

• High durability materials for the walls, like granite or even plasteel allow for longer repair sessions, without risking the wall being destroyed by accident. Repairing takes no resources, but replacing a completely destroyed wall does.
• You do not have to build the walls yourself. It is possible to claim one of the, usually many, ruins on the map, or simply add them to your home area, then damage and repair them.
• Smoothed walls are repairable. You can smooth the outside wall of any mountain range, which will already train construction, then shoot at the wall, and repair it afterwards. Rinse and repeat.
• Designate the colonists you intend to train so that they can only repair. The easiest way to do this is to create a temporary zone restriction and apply it to these colonists. Have the zone encompass the bedrooms, food source, recreation and repair area, so the trainees will not be able to perform tasks outside of the zone, but can still satisfy their basic needs. The zone can be made of separate areas on the map, it does not have to be one consecutive space.
• Skill training becomes much less effective after 4000 XP has been acquired in a skill during a day. Take the trainees off the training task by removing their zone restriction after the XP cap has been reached for the day.

Mining training

Mining skill steadily increases with time. It is sufficient to choose a dedicated mining colonist or two and they will master the skill over time. If you want to focus certain colonists on mining, restrict them to a zone created for the purpose. The zone must allow them to tend to their basic needs (rest, food and recreation).

Keep in mind that low mining skill will yield fewer resources from ore veins. Do not have low-skilled miners dig at valuable resources like compacted machinery. Mining training should be done only on bare stone.

Once the required technologies have been researched, deep drills can be built, and any valid area determined by the ground-penetrating scanner can be mined. A colonist is needed to operate a deep drill and is given mining experience. Low-skilled miners will be slower at extracting the underground resources than proficient colonists would.

Cooking training

The cooking skill level is increased by butchering, cooking meals at a stove or campfire, and also by making smokeleaf joints. Low cooking skill increases the chance of the produced meals being "spoiled", and giving the colonist (or animal) consuming them food poisoning. This is a fairly disrupting condition that should be avoided; keep that in mind when training low skilled cooks if you plan to have your colonists consume the meals produced.

Making smokeleaf joints

If a cook has low skill but high passion for cooking, it is usually efficient to train them as an additional cook for your colony. The downside is that meals prepared by this character, while he or she is still learning, bring a higher chance of food poisoning with them. Cooks can, however, also be trained by having them make smokeleaf joints out of leaves at a drug lab. The rolling of joints will train cooking just as cooking meals would.

Set up a dedicated work bill at the drug lab, and restrict it to the character that you would like to train in cooking. The character needs to have priority to "Craft" things on the work tab. Make sure the drug lab is not occupied by other tasks; the easiest way is to put the smokeleaf job in the first slot on the list of bills.

This strategy requires the respective technologies to be researched, and to make or buy smokeleaf leaves as ingredients. The latter is, of course, a way to train the plants skill. Smokeleaf products have good recreational and cash (trade) value. Training cooks with smokeleaf is an excellent strategy for these reasons.

Growing training

XP is given at a steady pace for both planting seeds and harvesting crops. Simply giving a colonist lots of time to farm will increase their skill. Give your farmers extra time to work by having non farmers haul the harvest.

You can earn some XP by weeding out large tracts of land, perhaps to act as firebreaks. This is quite intensive.

Crafting training

Crafting skill increases steadily with work time. Crafting is a pretty common task in mid-late game so there's lots of opportunities to train.

If you wish to conserve materials, you can task the pawn on an electric tailoring bench which has been switched off. XP is given at a constant rate, regardless of work speed, so this will give more XP with the same amount of materials.

Assembling components is an effective albeit expensive way to top up crafting for level 8+ craftsmen.

Artistic training

Ensure a colonist is constantly set to create art. This boosts the skill quickly, especially if the colonist is interested in Art. The colonist will start by making low quality sculptures but will begin making very valuable masterworks before you know it.

You can sell the artwork for silver, or place them around the base for beauty. If the art is of a very low quality however, it's best to deconstruct and try again.

Initially it's better to use cheap materials like wood. After artists are leveled up sufficiently, switch to more expensive materials.

Medicine training

Repeated surgery such as adding and removing bionic limbs can boost a colonist's Medicine skill at the cost of medical supplies. Simply treating frequent wounds from battle, prisoners and animals will increase skill quickly. If that proves insufficient it is simple to deliberately inflict wounds (such as punching someone) then treat them. More injuries means more chances to heal. You monster.

You should use regular medicine or above to reduce the risk of surgery failure.

If there are no willing volunteers, you can also train medical skills on animals, though brutalizing animals will cause a -5 relations penalty.

• Limb replacements:*
  • Attach artificial or bionic limb to pawn (~2000 XP @ Interested)
  • Remove part (~2000 XP)
    • This will leave the pawn bleeding, and you can patch them up (~200 XP).

• Euthanasia (~900 XP)
  • Instead of slaughtering dead animals, allowing doctors to practice on them can quickly level up their doctoring skill.
  • It requires medicine, be sure to have that handy. Herbal medicine will do for this, and you can grow quite a lot cheaply.

Social training

Each social chat with a colonist gives 4 social xp per per speech balloon at 1x skill modifier and 0 mood modifier.

Having a friendly chat with a prisoner in order to convince him/her to join the colony gives roughly 50 social xp at 1x modifier per speech balloon. If you are recruiting prisoners, be sure that the one whose social skill you want to train is the warden. Keeping a prisoner at "friendly chat" will allow wardens to keep having conversations indefinitely, allowing skill training. However, this costs a lot of food over time to keep the prisoner alive.[

Research training

Research skill steadily increases with time, so a dedicated researcher should give the best results. Research skill is rendered useless as soon as the research topics are over.

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Guides

Progression

Quickstart Guides • Basics • Intermediate Midgame Guide • Advanced Endgame Guide • Ending the game

Scenarios

Lost Tribe Guide • Rich Explorer Guide • Naked Brutality Guide • The Mechanitor Guide

Survival

Extreme Heat Guide • Extreme Cold Guide • Extreme Desert Guide • Ice Sheet Guide • Sea Ice Guide • Events Guide

Combat

Defense tactics • Offense tactics • Weapon Guide

Construction

Colony Building Guide • Defense structures

Production

Food production • Money making guide

Other

Skill Training • Permadeath save conversion guide •
Ideology Min-Maxing