How to Use the Nutrient Paste Dispenser in Rimworld — Set Ready Game (2024)

In Rimworld you will have a colony of pawns to keep safe and of course well fed. One of the hardest parts about managing a large colony is keeping a food supply for your colonists. One technology that makes this a little bit easier is the Nutrient Paste Dispenser. With this, you can create meals easily out of raw food.

This guide will show you how to unlock the nutrient paste dispenser and how to use it to keep your colonists well fed and automate the cooking process.

What is the Nutrient Paste Dispenser and How is It Unlocked?

As aforementioned, the nutrient paste dispenser is a machine that creates meals to eat. This machine will eliminate the need for your colony to have any cook at all. The nutrient paste dispenser takes in raw food types and uses power to create Paste Meals. Although colonists will get a small debuff from eating these meals (as they are quite bland and uncreative) there are some good things about this machine!

One of the best things about using a nutrient paste dispenser in your colony is that your characters will never suffer from food poisoning again. Although this machine spits out boring paste meals, at least they are healthy! It doesn’t matter which raw materials are used or creating the meals, colonists will not get sick from eating these. You will also not have to have a pawn constantly cooking meals. This frees them up for any other activities around the colony.

How to Unlock the Nutrient Paste Dispenser

In order to unlock the nutrient paste dispenser, you will have to complete some research. If you don’t already have it, you can unlock the research panel by crafting and placing a Research Bench. This will allow you to study new technologies and advance your colony. Firstly, you will have to research Electricity. You will then be able to research the technology for Nutrient Paste. This will unlock the Nutrient Paste Dispenser and the Hopper.

Once you’ve unlocked these two things, you can build them under the Production menu.

How to Use the Nutrient Paste Dispenser

Now that you have it unlocked, build the nutrient paste dispenser somewhere in your colony. Keep in mind that this facility needs power in order to work so you will have to have a power supply running to it at all times. Once you have it built, you will also need to build at least one Hopper.

The Hopper is the part of the machine where you will place the raw food to be turned into paste. Make sure you build a Hopper somewhere against the Nutrient Paste Dispenser. You can build multiple Hoppers if you want to have a large supply of food going to the machine. Place down a hopper with the straight end against the Paste dispenser like in the image below.

Once you have raw food in the hoppers and the nutrient paste dispenser is powered up all the hard work is done! You have your own personal cook. Keep in mind that anyone who eats a meal from this will suffer a small mood debuff whenever they eat a paste meal.

Deciding What to Put in the Dispenser and Keeping it Cold

One great thing about the dispenser is you can choose to have it just for certain food types. For example if you’d rather use all the large corn harvest to make paste meals and save the meal for your gourmet chefs to cook with, that’s possible!

You can select the Hopper item and change what is being stored there by selecting the Storage button. Here you are able to check which items will be allowed to be stored here and which will not. (Keep in mind putting human meat in here will still give the Ate Human Meat debuff. Even after it’s turned into paste, apparently they still know.)

It also is a good idea to build some refrigeration around the hoppers. That way all of the food that is stored here will stay nice and cool so it won’t spoil. You can see an example of what I built around my nutrient paste dispenser in the image above.

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