// Management · RimWorld Mod

Rabies

Rabies mod preview for RimWorld

Adds rabies, a viral infection transmitted through bites and scratches from manhunting animals.

Adds rabies, a viral infection transmitted through bites and scratches from manhunting animals.
Unvaccinated pawns bitten by carriers face a race against the clock — the virus incubates
silently for up to two weeks before symptoms emerge. Once the furious stage begins, it is fatal.

TRANSMISSION
Carrier animals — 15% of manhunters carry rabies, visible in their health tab.
Carrier bites carry a 40% exposure chance per attack. Non-carriers pose no infection risk.
In the furious stage, infected pawns can spread the disease through melee attacks.
Animals that eat infected corpses risk exposure (90% for rabid corpses, 85% for carriers).
Cannibal colonists eating rabid human corpses face the same risk.
Penoxycyline prevents infection entirely if taken before exposure.

DISEASE PROGRESSION
Exposure — silent incubation lasting 5 to 10 in-game days. Medicine or better clears it with twice-daily tending.
Herbal medicine cannot overcome the progression. Miss the window and it's too late.
Prodromal — fever, fatigue, unnamed fear. Glitterworld medicine can still cure. Medicine slows it.
Furious — berserk episodes, panic, wandering, hydrophobia, insomnia. Untreatable. Contagious.
Terminal — paralysis, organ failure, death. A red threat letter fires when this stage begins.

ANIMALS
When a animal's incubation converts to active rabies, it immediately goes permanently manhunter.
A threat letter fires. The animal will attack everything until the disease kills it.

COMPATIBILITY
No additional mods required. Compatible with Necrotic Fever and Bob's Beer Hat.
Both mods share Penoxycyline as protection stockpile it and prioritise high-risk colonists.
Safe to add to existing saves.

CHANGELOG
v1.8 – Corpse transmission fix

Fixed the bug reported by Zornstein, where eating an infected corpse wasn't causing rabies
exposure including cases where pawns near a stored corpse in a freezer seemed to catch it
without eating anything. Both directions of that bug are now fixed:

Pawns no longer catch rabies just from being near a corpse, you actually have to eat it.
Pawns who genuinely do eat an infected or carrier corpse will now correctly risk exposure, as originally intended.

v1.7 — Documentation and string cleanup
- XML comment blocks corrected exposure duration, medicine values,
carrier chance, and medicine tier names all now accurate
- Orphaned animal onset letter strings removed (letter removed in v1.3)
- Rabies_PanicFlee key renamed to Rabies_Tantrum matches actual mental state
- ExposureAnimal text corrected "within a week" changed to "within days"

v1.6 — Pre-release code review
- Fixed BaseSeverityPerDay constant was 0.143, should be 0.19. Variable
incubation range was slightly off; now correctly gives 5-9 days.
- Furious and terminal alert letters now exclude animals only fires for
colonists and prisoners. Animals progress silently.
- Hydrophobia terrain scan throttled via per-pawn cache (500 tick interval)
— prevents performance issues with multiple infected pawns.
- HediffDef lookups in transmission check now cached as static properties.
- rolledCorpseMeals HashSet pruned each pass no unbounded memory growth.
- Stale comments corrected throughout source files.

v1.5 — Furious stage alert
- Red threat letter now fires when a pawn enters the furious stage (severity 0.25)
in addition to the existing terminal alert. Fires once per infection, persists
through save/load.

v1.4 — Wildlife incident + balance
- Added RabiesWildlife disease incident fires independently of manhunter
events via RimWorld's disease scheduler. Applies RabiesExposure to 1-2
wild animals silently. They convert and go manhunter with no warning.
- Biome registration: Temperate Forest (15), Temperate Swamp (12),
Boreal Forest (8), Tropical Rainforest (10), Tropical Swamp (8),
Arid Shrubland (5), Glowforest/Odyssey (10). Absent from arctic biomes.
- Manhunter carrier chance dropped from 30% to 15% to balance the two
introduction routes wildlife incident is now the primary silent threat,
carriers are the secondary risk during active manhunter events.

v1.3 — Design change
- Removed onset letter when a wild animal goes rabid. The player now has no
advance warning the animal silently converts and heads for the colony.
The carrier warning still fires on first attack. The surprise is the threat.

v1.2 — Bug fix
- Panic mental state replaced with Tantrum PanicFlee caused infected pawns
to path to the map edge and exit permanently. Tantrum keeps the pawn on the
map and fits the terror theme — a delirious pawn destroying things around them.

v1.1 — Bug fixes and balance
- Corpse ingestion now uses proximity detection (2 tiles) instead of job detection
— more reliable across all animal types and eating behaviours
- Corpse ingestion rolls every 500 ticks while eater is adjacent near-guaranteed
transmission over a full meal rather than a single missable roll
- Transmission chances corrected: active Rabies corpse 90%, carrier corpse 85%
- Carrier bite warning upgraded to ThreatSmall no longer easy to miss in combat
- Herbal medicine confirmed unable to clear exposure at all multiplier values
- Exposure duration tightened to 5–9 days (was 9–19)
- Exposure now requires twice-daily tending (was once daily)
- Medicine terminology corrected throughout herbal / medicine / glitterworld
- "Industrial medicine" references removed from all descriptions and alert text

v1.0 — Initial release
- Two-phase disease: RabiesExposure (silent incubation) then active Rabies
- Three active stages: prodromal, furious, terminal
- Carrier system: 30% of manhunting animals carry rabies, visible in health tab
- Bite transmission from confirmed carriers (40% per bite)
- Penoxycyline prevents infection entirely
- Berserk, wandering, and panic mental states in furious stage
- Catatonic breakdown in terminal stage
- Pawn-to-pawn transmission during furious attacks
- Corpse ingestion transmission (active Rabies 90%, carrier 85%)
- Animals go permanently manhunter when incubation converts to active Rabies
- Variable incubation (5–9 days, randomly determined per exposure)
- Hydrophobia mood penalty near water terrain in furious and terminal stages
- Insomnia: faster rest drain and sleep interruption in furious and terminal stages
- Filth generation scaling with disease stage
- Self mood thoughts across all four phases of the disease
- Witness mood debuff for healthy pawns sharing a room with an infected pawn
- Red threat letter on terminal stage entry
- Compatible with Necrotic Fever and Bob's Beer Hat no additional mods required