RimWorld – How to Train Animals (Trainable Animals, Skills)

There are many types of animals that you can find and tame in RimWorld.

Most of these are really good sources of food. However, with a bit of training, they can become incredibly useful for a lot more things.

Recommended Read: How to Butcher Animals in RimWorld

They can help you haul items to your base, they can defend some of your pawns, and they can even save dying colonists by carrying them to a medical bed.

So, to get some of the best companions in the game, here is how to train animals in RimWorld.


Table of contents


What Animals Can You Train in RimWorld

Though you can tame all the animals in RimWorld, only a few can be trained to learn advanced skills.

You can figure out if an animal is intelligent enough to learn new skills by checking their Trainability stat in their info menu.

Most animals will have a “None” status in Trainability. The only animals that you can train will have the “Simple,” “Intermediate,” or “Advanced” Trainability status.

In case you were curious, here are all the intelligent animals that you can train in RimWorld, in alphabetical order, along with their Trainability level:

AnimalTrainability
Arctic foxIntermediate
Arctic wolfAdvanced
BarkskinIntermediate
ClawerIntermediate
CougarAdvanced
ElephantAdvanced
Fennec foxIntermediate
Grizzly bearAdvanced
HuskyAdvanced
Labrador retrieverAdvanced
MegascarabIntermediate
MegaslothAdvanced
MegaspiderAdvanced
MonkeyIntermediate
PantherAdvanced
Polar bearAdvanced
Red foxIntermediate
RhinocerosIntermediate
SpelopedeAdvanced
ThrumboAdvanced
Timber wolfAdvanced
WargIntermediate
Yorkshire terrierIntermediate

Skills You Can Train Your Animals To Do in RimWorld

There are 4 skills you can train your animals in RimWorld to fulfill:

  • Guard (Trainability: Simple)
  • Attack (Trainability: Intermediate)
  • Rescue (Trainability: Advanced)
  • Haul (Trainability: Advanced)

All of the skills are relatively simple. With the Guard skill, the animal can follow a pawn around and protect them when attacked.

The Attack command will allow you to send your animal to damage your enemies.

The Rescue ability will let your animal get downed pawns out of harm’s way. They need to be relatively close to the animal, though.

The Haul skill is the same as the one colonists use to get items into the stockpiles.


How to Train Animals in RimWorld

Here is what you need to do to train an animal in RimWorld:

  1. Select the animal and click on the Training option in the lower left half of the screen.
  2. You will see all the skills we listed above, along with Tameness, with either a red “X” next to them or a green checkmark. Click the red “X” signs and turn them into green checkmarks.
  3. Your pawns will now know that they have to train the animal those skills.

If you can’t change the red “X” into a checkmark, that means that the animal you are trying to train is not smart enough. Make sure that the animal is in the list above.

Your pawns will now slowly feed the animal and teach it how to do those skills in order of difficulty.

Players have to teach their animals a single skill more times than one. For example, you will see next to the Guard skill 0/3. This means that you will have to attempt to teach that animal the skill 3 times for it to actually learn it.

As long as you have someone doing the Handling job, your animals will slowly learn what you have selected them to learn.


That’s everything you need to know about how to train animals in RimWorld!

Have any input or suggestions for this guide? Let us know in the comment section below.

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