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Breedable Insects

Have you ever wanted to raise an army of megaspiders and painstakingly took the effort to tame a male-female pair, only to find out that they don't actually mate and produce offspring?

Well then, this mod is for you.

Update (20 April 2021): Updated the preview image and description, and included a patch for Tameable VFEI Insects (add-on for VFE-Insectoids)
Update (11 April 2021): Fixed a typo in the LifeStageDef patch which might have caused a harmless error
Update (7 April 2021): Fixed megascarabs being able to reproduce


Breedable Insects does exactly what it says. Spelopedes and Megaspiders now lay eggs every 12 and 24 days respectively. Just like most other egg-laying animals, these eggs will become fertilised if they mate during that period, otherwise they will lay unfertilised eggs. Fertilised spelopede eggs take 8 days to hatch into newborn spelopedes, while megaspider eggs take 12 days to hatch into newborn megaspiders. Newborn megaspiders and spelopedes both take 12 days to grow to mature adults.

Megascarabs do not reproduce, however. This keeps the mod lore-friendly, as vanilla descriptions of the megascarab indicate that it cannot reproduce individually.

Furthermore, it is now slightly easier to tame spelopedes and megascarabs (although megaspiders are still 95% wild and thus very difficult to tame). Spelopedes have advanced trainability, and megaspiders have intermediate trainability. Megascarabs' trainability has not been changed. In addition, megascarabs will nuzzle colonists frequently.


1. Does it add other new mechanics like insect jelly production, milk production, chitin, etc?
A. No. There are other mods that do all of that stuff, but in my opinion, they really break the game balance and/or try to add too much stuff. This mod has a very simple purpose, which is to enable insects to reproduce without needing hives. That's it.

2. Do wild insects reproduce?
A. No. In vanilla, wild animals do not mate, so they won't lay any fertilised eggs. Hostile wild insects will reproduce the usual way, i.e. by making more hives that spawn new insects every now and then. However, if you have the Wild Reproduction mod, they probably will be able to reproduce by egg-laying as well (note: this might make infestations a bit harder).

3. Insects I'm trying to tame keep attacking my tamer! Why?
A. This is normal behaviour, because non-wild insects will be part of the permanently hostile faction until you tame them. This is why insectoid taming is incredibly dangerous, but it balances itself out because they are quite powerful battle creatures. If you're having trouble taming them, I suggest waiting for an inspired taming event, or using another mod that adds easier methods of taming (such as VFE-Insectoids, which adds a taming artifact).

4. Is it compatible with:
- VFE-Insectoids?
A. Yes. Note that the insectoids from VFE-Insectoids will not reproduce (except for the insect queen, who periodically spawns larvae). You can get the Tameable Insects for VFE-Insectoids mod if you want to be able to tame them (see below).

- Better Infestations?
A. Yes.

- Wild Reproduction?
A. Yes.

- Insects Have Chitin?
A. Yes.

- Tameable Insects for VFE-Insectoids?
A. Yes. This mod includes a patch that makes gigalocusts and megapedes reproduce using eggs as well. Other VFEI insects remain unchanged. Note that any gigalocusts and megapedes that were already on the map will still be genderless and will therefore be unable to reproduce; newly spawned ones will be assigned a gender. Also note that royal megaspiders will not be able to reproduce on their own since they are a male-only species designed to mate with the queen.

- Insect Husbandry?
A. No. Both these mods try to perform similar changes to insect behaviour, but Insect Husbandry also adds more stuff, such as jelly production. If you are using Insect Husbandry, there is no need to use this mod.

- InsectUpgrades?
A. No. Both these mods try to perform similar changes to insect behaviour, but Insect Husbandry also adds more stuff, such as insect armour and items. If you are using InsectUpgrades, there is no need to use this mod.

- Any other mod that changes insects/breeding/eggs?
A. This mod uses xpath patching to work. As long as the other mod is also only adding nodes using patches, and not replacing nodes or overwriting defs entirely, it should be fine.

5. Is it safe to add to ongoing saves?
A. Yes, absolutely. Just to be sure though, make a backup of the save file in case something unexpectedly goes wrong.

6. Is it safe to remove from ongoing saves?
A. Yes. Before you remove it though, make sure insects on the map aren't currently mating with each other, and remove all insect eggs from the map as well as from pawns' inventories, as I'm not sure of what would happen otherwise. Also, make a backup of the save file in case something unexpectedly goes wrong.

7. Will you add a mod options/settings menu?
A. Not at the moment. I am very new to modding, so I don't have the experience and knowledge to do it currently. However, if and when I learn how to do it in the future, I might decide to do so.


Thanks to TheGoofyOne for creating InsectUpgrades and Insect Husbandry, which inspired me to create this mod.

RimWorld is owned by Tynan Sylvester.


There are no currently known issues.

If you find any bugs or balance issues, please inform me in the comments section or discussions section, along with log files/screenshots. I will try to fix them as soon as possible.