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Checking on pawns

Colonists (the game calls them pawns) need attention constantly: who is hurt, who is in a bad mood, who should be on the guns. This page covers how to get a fast read on any pawn from the map without opening a full screen.

For selecting pawns, cycling through colonists, and building combat groups, see selecting pawns.

The at-a-glance info keys

These keys give a quick spoken summary of the pawn under the cursor, or the currently selected pawn if the cursor is not on a specific one.

  • Alt+H: quick health readout, focused on what matters in combat or triage: consciousness, movement, manipulation, and whether the pawn is bleeding. Use this to decide who needs immediate attention.
  • Alt+M: mood.
  • Alt+N: needs.
  • Alt+G: gear (what they are wielding and wearing).
  • Alt+K: top 3 skills.
  • Alt+B: the pawn's recent combat log (their last several fights).

These prioritize the thing under the cursor first, then fall back to the pawn you selected with comma/period or an Alt+number. Place the cursor on an enemy raider and press Alt+H to get the raider's health, not your selected colonist's. Move the cursor off anything specific and the keys report on the selected pawn instead.

Finding conditions with type-ahead

For a deeper read on a pawn's health state, open the pawn's inspect view (press Enter on the pawn under the cursor, or Ctrl+Alt+Enter on a pawn selected via the colonist bar). From the top section of the inspect screen, start typing to jump to a condition:

  • "inf" jumps to infections.
  • "leg" or "arm" or "head" (or even "hea") jumps to everything wrong with that body part.

Arrow Up and Down through matching results. This is the fastest way to find a specific injury or condition without scrolling through the full list.

The skills table (Alt+P)

To compare every colonist's skills side by side, press Alt+P to open the skills table. It lists all your colonists against all their skills.

Inside the table, Alt+S sorts by the column you are on, so you can jump to a skill column and find your strongest pawn for it. Press Alt+S again to flip the sort direction, and once more to clear it.

This pairs naturally with setting up work priorities: find your best cook in the skills table, then assign cooking to them.

Where to go from here

These keys assume you are on the colony map. For the basics of moving the cursor and camera, see the map. For a deeper read on a single pawn (full health detail, operations, traits, relationships), open the relevant tab via the inspect view. The at-a-glance keys above are for the constant spot-checks that keep a colony running.