Is there any way to make pets immortal or stop them from dying?

[Morrigan]

Im a new player and I can't seem to go an hour without a pet dying and its really distressing to me. I avoid books and movies if there are animal deaths. Its just not something I can handle, even if its a poorly animated little doodad in a video game.

Please help.

[Ducks on Fire]

I edit the starting scenario to just not have a pet. They aren't all that useful in the beginning anyway. Otherwise you could try zoning it to stay in a building with food so they aren't randomly eaten or whatever, or to stay close enough to the colony that someone might be near enough to help if it's being hunted. You can set up a safe zone to send it to during raids if you want it to be free most of the time.

Just a forewarning though, the rim is a very harsh place and most stories here end in tragedy.

[Ombrero]

use the hand of god (aka devmode) to resurrect it eachtime he dies

[marcusaddamsson]

Animals in Rimworld are often in harm's way. Pasture animals are surprisingly good at running away from trouble, assuming they have a large enough pasture. Combat animals (megasloths are my current favorite) are just really useful... way more useful than a pawn with melee skills. Megasloths can easily take twice as much dmg as a pawn, even a pawn with really good clothing, and they can heal up much better/faster, they can lose a limb and still be very effective, and they don't have moods. I've been using Megasloths more lately 'cuz they're herbivores, which is just easier to budget/save food for... carnivores can be a bit more challenging on the road and in winters.

And then there's the bonded yorkshire terrier you can start with. Sigh. Create a small area in your kitchen/rec room called 'UselessShit' and hope he occasionally nuzzles someone sometime. Last one of those I had... poor bugger got crushed to death by a drop pod invasion, while he was munchin' kibble in the kitchen.

[Wantoomany]

What will you do if Randy sends you a manhunter pack of 100+ flesh eating house cats?

[marcusaddamsson]

Originally posted by Wantoomany:

What will you do if Randy sends you a manhunter pack of 100+ flesh eating house cats?

Well, I've had two different timberwolf invasions... 27 and 47. But it all happened outside my walls, so other than some zoning changes, no big deal. Mind you, Cassie decided to send me two different visitor groups (each murdered almost instantly), and both of them had 'relationships' to colonists, one guy lost a son, other a fiancee. Used the pleasure cycle on sculpting pod for the first time...

[Limdood]

As a new player, you're not likely to have this habit formed yet....but set many zones. One of the most useful is "indoors" and just expand the zone as your base expands. Danger rears it's head? rezone your animals and pawns.

If you have a whole-map wandering husky and you get a raid while the husky is outdoors, it's toast without a safe zone to run to...but the game doesn't know what you want everyone to do, least of all your animals...you have to tell it with zones.

[Jaasrg]

What's killing them?

[boytype]

Not sure about truely immortal, but effectively you can use mods to get them 80% of the way there.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=746425621

This mod adds lots of prosthetics for animals, including bionics level ones. It also has a compatibility patch for some of the most popular prosthetic mods that allow even higher level ones to work with animals.

But even with just the base mod, it will help a lot. You can replace lost limbs and parts if pets are damaged by attackers or predators. You can replace organs and install brain mods to help address any diseases or conditions that they develop due to old age.

I have not used it on many run-throughs but I have had a fully bionic elephant and dog. Elephants live for a tremendous time anyway, but the bionic doggo was perfectly fine and not suffering from anything terrible after an almost 20 year playthrough.

[Barabasz]

Originally posted by Morrigan:

Im a new player and I can't seem to go an hour without a pet dying and its really distressing to me. I avoid books and movies if there are animal deaths. Its just not something I can handle, even if its a poorly animated little doodad in a video game.

Please help.

best way is to make 2 zones. 1 for domestic animal and another for domestic animal safe zone. put your domestic animal zone as inside of your base and a small area outside to make them able to hunt and do other outside things animals do. and put your second as a specific room of your base. whenever you get a threat like a raid, go to your animals list (5th option in the bottom menu buttons) and on each domestic animal select your safe zone in the allowed area list. you can click and drag across all of them to mass select the zone. now animals will go to a specific zone whenever theres a threat and raiders wont target them as they are inside of your base.

[Morrigan]

Originally posted by Wantoomany:

What will you do if Randy sends you a manhunter pack of 100+ flesh eating house cats?

Cry.

[Vermillion Cardinal]

Originally posted by marcusaddamsson:

Animals in Rimworld are often in harm's way. Pasture animals are surprisingly good at running away from trouble, assuming they have a large enough pasture.

As long as the pasture area isn't breached in some manner. I've had enemies pathing into my base and holing up at the entrance, or breaking pieces of fencing, that causes every damn animal in the vicinity of the resulting fight to decide that it's best to flee through that very opening and putting themselves into the crossfire instead of advancing in the opposite direction.

If animals dying for whatsoever reason is a big deal for OP, they might want to disable manhunter events and run a colony with no animals whatsoever I guess.

[Ittrix]

It's funny to me that pets are almost a bad thing.
Instead of going "booyah, I got a dog!" often times I go "oh ♥♥♥♥ we've got dogs. Kill it! Kill it Kill it Kill it! Quick, before someone bonds and I have to take a mood hit!"

That's rimworld for ya though. Taming Thrumbos? Naw. Beating the ♥♥♥♥ out of thrumbos and repeatedly saving them until they form a bond? Hek yeah.

[AldouzTek]

Originally posted by Ittrix:

It's funny to me that pets are almost a bad thing.
Instead of going "booyah, I got a dog!" often times I go "oh ♥♥♥♥ we've got dogs. Kill it! Kill it Kill it Kill it! Quick, before someone bonds and I have to take a mood hit!"

That's rimworld for ya though. Taming Thrumbos? Naw. Beating the ♥♥♥♥ out of thrumbos and repeatedly saving them until they form a bond? Hek yeah.

You can psycast Word of Inspiration to a colonist with decent social skill to get taming inspiration then tame a Thrumbo with 100% chance

[Wantoomany]

Originally posted by Morrigan:

Originally posted by Wantoomany:

What will you do if Randy sends you a manhunter pack of 100+ flesh eating house cats?

Cry.

There is no crying in Rimworld. Those are not pets, they are fluffy meals delivered right to your door step.

[Halfshell]

Originally posted by Limdood:

As a new player, you're not likely to have this habit formed yet....but set many zones. One of the most useful is "indoors" and just expand the zone as your base expands. Danger rears it's head? rezone your animals and pawns.

If you have a whole-map wandering husky and you get a raid while the husky is outdoors, it's toast without a safe zone to run to...but the game doesn't know what you want everyone to do, least of all your animals...you have to tell it with zones.

Just don't have this "indoors zone" be the "home zone" because many features, such as putting out fires and auto rebuild key off of home zone.

Also there is an Immortality mod. Animals can be immortal in it. I didn't use it that much so idk if theres an in-game way to transfer immortality.. but someone else more savvy could probably tell you how to hack your pet to be immortal with that mod.

Edit: Also if you really cannot handle a certain animal, get Cherry Picker mod you can remove any animal (like cats and huskies) out.