RimWorld - Damned Colonists in Space

[Space Satan]

Only raid drops in such density breaching roofs

 

[Johannes]

Revenge of the cucks

 

[Space Satan]

Anomaly preview #1: Fleshbeasts, fleshmass heart, pit gate and dreadmeld
The flesh… is willing
Hi everyone! Tia here with the first of our
Anomaly
feature blogs where we go over the expansion’s content in detail. We’ll be posting these blogs leading up to release - which is in 3 weeks!

If you missed
RimWorld - Anomaly’s
announcement, read it here! And please wishlist Anomaly!



RimWorld - Anomaly
Colony SimBase BuildingSurvivalStrategySandbox
Coming soon
+ Wishlist
Coming Soon

REMINDER: Spoilers ahead! Reading these blogs will reveal some of the surprises in the expansion.

In the narrative framework of
Anomaly
, there are many threats. Some are mysterious and attractive, like the delightful golden cube. Others are insidious and progressive, like the metalhorror infestations. Finally, some threats are direct and aggressive. Today’s feature blog covers the latter - a family of new fleshy threats in the expansion: the squealing flesh beasts, their disgusting momma, and the all-consuming fleshmass heart.

THE FLESH BEASTS
You intercept a distress signal from a nearby camp. The frantic voice begs you to save them from something horrible and offers everything at their camp in return, including shards of dark archotechnology.

As the voice tries to explain what’s happening, the signal goes dead.

If you choose to help this poor soul, assemble your caravan and come well-armed.

You arrive - and it’s a massacre. Bodies everywhere, fleshy creatures roam freely, and throbbing tissues cake the walls of the encampment. Giant burrows dot the ground’s surface, connecting to tunnels deep in the earth.

These cancerous enemies are an amalgamation of many tissues and parts. When you destroy a bigger one, it explodes into several smaller creatures. This means one flesh creature can become many and easily overwhelm your soldiers and defenses.

Embedded in the organic mass are
fleshbulbs
, organs that store and refine nutrients. This chemical process generates a soft bioluminescent glow, allowing you to see the full extent of the horror, day or night.

If you’re fortunate when investigating an area blighted by the fleshmass, you might stumble across a swollen lump with something inside. These are
fleshsacks
- stationary fleshbeasts that act as digestive organs, supplying the surrounding fleshmass with nutrients. Note that fleshsacks are unable to break down non-organic matter, meaning that valuable items can occasionally be found within - if you want to go rummaging in there!

There are many approaches to clearing out a flesh infestation: you can focus on systematically slaughtering the remaining flesh beasts with guns, or bring out the incinerator to properly cleanse the area (with the risk of destroying flammable loot), or work on filling in their burrows first to prevent further reinforcements.

THE FLESHMASS HEART
If you’re unfortunate enough to encounter the fleshmass heart, it starts with a small circle of terrain that shifts and cracks apart, pulsating rhythmically as something digs upwards. Eventually, the fleshmass heart will emerge. It is a cancer-like creature that grows flesh across (and under) the surface.

From the heart, grows the fleshmass. This is an enormous assimilating creature that spreads across the landscape, consuming and covering the whole map with a quivering mass of meat. It defends itself with beasts and acid. You must fight it to acquire samples of its nervous system, then study them until you can venture to its heart and kill it for good.

The resulting fleshmass is a solid wall of twisted flesh, which throbs and shivers with horrible life. As it grows from the heart, it puts arterial roots into the ground in its quest for nutrients.

For any nearby colonists, the choices are simple - flee the colony or discover how to destroy the fleshmass. Whilst the heart itself is invulnerable due to rapid regeneration, the mass is susceptible to attacks. However, that doesn’t mean that it’s without weapons...

Embedded in the mass are
spitters
, defensive organs that filter toxins from the surrounding biomass, concentrate them into potent acid, and then spit it long distances. You don’t want your colonists to get hit by those.

The second line of defense is fleshbeasts, which normally emerge from temporary pit burrows that connect to a cave network deep below. These can be roughly categorized, depending on their mass.
Toughspikes
are man-sized lumps of roiling flesh with 2 spiked ‘limbs’ and a keratin-armored carapace.
Trispikes
are smaller three-pronged entities, which break down into the singular
fingerspikes
when killed. All of the ‘spike’ entities also throw hardened keratin or bone spikes.

Once your colonists have defeated the fleshbeasts and killed enough fleshmass
nerve bundles
, they will have gathered several
neural lumps
. Research these and you’ll discover the secret to defeating the heart, allowing you to capture and study it…

…

…

…oh, what? You thought that was the end? That’s just one way it could go.

THE PIT GATE
Another time, the ground might shake with a different result. Now a larger piece of terrain has begun sinking into the depths, forming a deepening hole, much wider than before. Inhuman shrieks rise from the depths. It'd be wise to move your colonists, buildings and items away from the emergence point.

Within a day, the pit’s floor will vanish from sight, falling into the depths where the fleshmass heart came from. A
pit gate
has formed and will remain open until you collapse it, occasionally releasing foes. To celebrate, a horde of fleshbeasts emerges, along with a noxious stench of rot…

To close the gate, the colonists must descend into it. Under the ground all is flesh, having infested a massive cave system. The tunnels are so crammed with biomass that it’s supporting the ceiling and walls, making it thoroughly unstable. Defeat the motive force of the fleshmass and the tunnels should collapse.

That motive force is housed in a
dreadmeld
- a mammoth leader creature made up of dozens of smaller fleshbeasts and buried inside the stinking fleshmass.

Its psychic connection to the fleshmass filling the cavern is strong. So strong that killing the dreadmeld will destabilize the whole organism! If you manage to take down the flesh momma, grab what you can (particularly the strange archotech shards it drops) and flee before it collapses and buries you all!

MORE TO COME!
So that’s the fleshmass, an amorphous, expanding cancerous blob from the dark-beyond. Whether it arrives as a distress call, bursts from the ground as a fleshmass heart, or lurks beneath in the twisted form of a dreadmeld, it just wishes to be loved - or rather, consume all life and turn it into more of itself. Who can’t empathize with that?

We hope you enjoyed our darling flesh-things. Please wishlist
Anomaly
on Steam and join the Reddit discussion for today’s preview blog!

Gaze into this twisted, dark space for more information (not too closely, lest it gaze back into you.)

• [HERE] Anomaly preview #1: The flesh beasts, pit gate, dreadmeld, and fleshmass heart
• Future blogs will be added to this list.

Be back with more blogs soon!
- Tia

 

[Space Satan]

Anomaly preview #2: Containment facilities, creatures, and release date
No, you’re trapped in here with me.

SPOILER WARNING: Read ahead at your own risk! These preview blogs WILL SPOIL some of the surprises in the expansion.
Hello, it’s Tia and I’m back with our next preview blog of
RimWorld - Anomaly!

Also, mark your calendars:
Anomaly
releases on
April 11, 2024
. Wishlist now to be notified when it’s out!

ON WISHLIST

RimWorld - Anomaly
Colony SimBase BuildingSurvivalStrategySandbox
Coming soon
Wishlist
Coming Soon

Check out our previous blog posts below:

• Anomaly expansion and update 1.5 announced!
• Anomaly preview #1: Fleshbeasts, fleshmass heart, pit gate and dreadmeld
• [HERE] Anomaly preview #2: Containment facilities, creatures, and release date
• Anomaly preview #3: Coming soon!
• Anomaly preview #4: Coming soon!

Today, we’re talking about how you’ll capture, research, and exploit the mysterious phenomena formed by the enraged monolith’s influence. You can build a grand containment facility with strong walls, floors, and doors to keep these entities locked up, and study them to further your knowledge of the madness that’s taken over the world. Exploit your chained horrors to use their power against your enemies - but be careful not to push them too far!

CAPTURE: SHAMBLERS
The first step is to work out how to take down and capture these entities without killing them.

The most straightforward entities are the walking corpses known as
shamblers
.

Deadlife dust
is a cloud of corrupted archites that raises any corpse it settles on as shamblers, repairing their rotting bodies for a time. It’s similar to the old resurrector mech serum, but far more twisted.

Deadlife dust works on all kinds of creatures (even your own dead colonists and beloved pets), but it doesn’t last forever. In a few days, the archites run out of power and the shambler returns to death. Colonists can weaponize deadlife dust as mortar shells and IEDs. Shamblers created this way will not attack your colonists, which means a battlefield of corpses can suddenly become gruesome weapons for your colony.

The shambling dead you encounter will attack all living creatures relentlessly and their immunity to pain makes them difficult to kill. However, that resilience is useful, because you want to take one “alive”. Work to incapacitate one by firing at it or hitting it with a blunt weapon. Then you can move on to step two: contain (described further down).

CAPTURE: REVENANTS
More difficult to capture is the
revenant
, a psychically-invisible human hunter that alternates between hunting people and hiding in its lair.

The name “revenant” comes from an old outlander tale about an evil spectre that haunts a village and every night rips a victim’s soul from their body. It leaves the vacant body behind, keeping the soul enslaved in its own personal hell.

Revenants can use psychic influence to appear invisible and enter your colony unseen. Once they get hold of a colonist, they can hypnotize him into an endless nightmare. The revenant will return again and again over time, hypnotizing your people one by one until it is stopped.

There are ways to track the revenant. If you damage it, the creature may leave chunks of flesh behind which you can study to improve your tracking. It can also be detected by proximity alarms, and its invisibility can be disrupted when it’s hit by EMPs, explosions, firefoam, fire or special bioferrite disruptor flares.

After each hypnotic attack, the revenant needs to sleep. Take this opportunity to form your hunting squad and find its lair while it hibernates - and attack it before it wakes.

CAPTURE: METALHORROR INFESTATIONS
Someone is infested. Someone is not who they seem. But who?

Metalhorrors
are parasitic creatures that control their hosts with filaments spread throughout the nervous system. They imitate their hosts’ behavior nearly perfectly, manipulating them to find opportunities to secretly infest other colonists.

As they multiply and grow in your colonists, they shed fleshy gray tissue - liquefied remains of their victims. If you find this tissue in your base, it is time to become suspicious and afraid.

There are many ways you can identify the infested. Analyze the gray flesh you discover to identify the metalhorror’s host, then perform surgical tests on your colonists… but can you trust your doctors? You could quarantine colonists to their rooms to see who the flesh comes from, or imprison and interrogate suspects to see if they give anything away. Of course, this all takes time, and the infestation could be spreading…

If detected, the metalhorror will cut its way out of the host and attack. Be careful when investigating – you may have a fight on your hands.

CONTAINMENT PROTOCOLS
So you’ve damaged an anomalous entity enough that it’s incapacitated? And some of your colonists are still alive? Well done! Now you can contain it and experiment on it!

Have one of your colonists carry the downed entity to a
holding spot
. These primitive roped locations can briefly restrain the weakest entities. Here your colonists can study them for uncanny research.

However, if you don’t actually want them to escape and tear your colonists to pieces, a mere holding spot won’t do. Build a proper secure facility, starting with a
containment platform
, which comes with built-in restraints. (You need one platform for each entity.)

To prevent an escape, colonists can also suppress entities or build an
electric inhibitor
to suppress them automatically. Wise colonists will also build separate containment cells, using special bioferrite flooring and walls that further suppress the creatures.

Be sure to lay out your containment facilities carefully. Keep an eye on each entity’s suppression level. Have killing fields and layered defenses prepared for when they escape. Because they will, inevitably, and every containment plan is only as strong as its weakest point.

RESEARCH & HARVEST
Once an entity is restrained, colonists can study it. To do this, you’ll need to ensure a colonist is assigned to
dark research
.

This separate technology track gradually increases your knowledge of the dark archotech behind the incursion. It also teaches you more about rituals, archotechnology, serums, and weapons.

Each entity can also be harvested. Build an
electroharvester
to draw electric power from the entity. A
bioferrite harvester
will generate organic metal which can be used for later power generation, sculpture, or outdoor heating, or for crafting at the new bioferrite shaper.

Note that both of these activities increase the entity’s rage, making it more likely to escape and take its revenge.

DARK ARTS AND CRAFTS
Now you have a regular supply of bioferrite, you can have fun with it - if your idea of fun is creating impossible monsters and strange machinery. (We know ours is.)

If you build a
bioferrite shaper workbench
, you can craft new gear and weapons from the organic metal. The weapons include:

• Nerve spiker:
  A crossbow loaded with toxic spikes that stun organic creatures.
• Incinerator:
  A terrifying flamethrower with an alternate-fire mode that produces a giant gout of flame (shared by the Hellcat assault rifle).
• Deadlife IEDs, mortars and packs:
  Distribution packs that allow you to raise shamblers from nearby corpses.
• Disruptor flares:
  Short-lived bioferrite beacons which stun psychic creatures and reveal invisible ones - useful for sightstealers and revenants.

Bioferrite can be used to make psychic weapons with various effects, from driving enemies into berserk rages, to sending them into psychic shock, to biomutating them into fleshbeasts. Other psychic pulsers can make every animal in the region either turn into a fleshbeast or go into a manhunting rage.

Bioferrite is also crucial for making serums at the new
serum lab workbench
. The serums include:

• Voidsight serum:
  Increases dark research speed at the cost of sanity.
• Juggernaut serum:
  Increases strength, speed, and recovery time.
• Metalblood serum:
  Makes a person resilient to damage, but vulnerable to fire.
• Mind-numb serum:
  Deadens emotions, preventing mental breaks at the cost of stopping inspirations too.

Using bioferrite, humans can be surgically (irreversibly) transformed into
ghouls
. These are mindless flesh-craving killers and fearless melee combatants who can be augmented with a variety of dreadful implants. (Ghouls will be discussed in a future blog post!)

TO COME
We’ve still got more horrifying reveals to come for
Anomaly
, and
April 11th
is only 2 weeks away!

 

[whydoibother]

How did I miss this? Their marketing flopped.
I've actually ran a similar campaign with mods, playing as a lone necromancer and crafting myself an army to defend my tower.

This looks very cool

Crawling:
When downed, humans can now crawl on the ground! Crawling colonists leave blood trails, move away from danger, and will seek out the nearest place to recover, like a hospital bed or sleeping spot. You’ll see enemies crawling around too. It’s rather dramatic.

 

[kris]

For a moment I thought the "Youko" character was eating the little person she was holding.

 

[whydoibother]

For a moment I thought the "Youko" character was eating the little person she was holding.

 

[Space Satan]

Today, we’re talking about the new rituals you can perform in
Anomaly
, as well as the followers of the void.

CULT RITUALS
Rituals were introduced in the
Ideology
expansion, allowing followers of different ideologies and religions to gather for ceremonies that would have social effects. Rituals in
Anomaly
are similar but go further, drawing upon the psychic power of a dark archotech to twist the laws of physics.

Your colonists aren’t the only ones who can learn these rituals. A cult has formed that worships the insane machine-mind. They will arrive and perform a number of rituals to attempt to destroy you.

Sometimes they will form a ritual circle and abduct one of your colonists by teleporting the victim to them (called
skip abduction
). Other times, they will summon a horde of bloody fleshbeasts to assault you.

They may surround the colony entirely, in a massive crowd, chanting in dark tones as they call forth the essence of hatred. These hate chanters will slowly drive your colonists insane until you go out to stop them.

BASIC RITUALS
Players can use these same rituals, and many more. To perform them, you need a
ritual spot
. If you can surround it with hideous
bioferrite sculptures
of the void and archotech
shard beacons
, so much the better. And dress your worshippers in a
ceremonial hood
or
cultist mask
to fit the void aesthetic.

Beyond the two basic rituals that the cultists can perform, the player can perform
draw shamblers, draw animals
, and
void provocation.


REGIONAL RITUALS
These rituals are like listening to a motivational speaker, but even more soul-destroying. These are
pleasure pulse, neurosis pulse, and blood rain.


Pleasure pulse
is the simplest. Like a region-wide psychic emanator, it makes your psychically sensitive colonists happier. However, unlike the emanator, it also reduces their desire to work.

Neurosis pulse
is an inversion of pleasure pulse. It drives your psychically sensitive colonists so that they work faster. However, it also irritates them whilst decreasing their need for recreation, meaning that they’re more likely to have a mental break. Use with caution!

Blood rain
is a dangerous ritual. It causes a blood-like psychofluid to fall from the sky that drives exposed animals and humans into a berserk frenzy. Be prepared if you must use this, putting all but the psychically deaf under shelter.

INDIVIDUAL RITUALS
Like skip abduction, many of the more horrible rituals require a living human target. These are
imbue death refusal, psychophagy, chronophagy, philophagy
and
brainwipe.

Imbue death refusal
links an individual with the void, preventing their final death. They still need to die for it to work, but it will bring them back near-instantaneously, in good physical condition. It does have side-effects however - notably the psychological impact of having died - and it wears off with use.

The three ‘-phagy’ rituals all have similar cruel effects. With
psychophagy
, the ritual invoker steals the victim’s psychic sensitivity;
chronophagy
steals their youth, aging them rapidly, whilst the invoker becomes younger; and
philophagy
steals their wisdom, giving the invoker their best skill. All three cause brain damage, putting the victim into a coma for several days. Think about what you’re willing to do to a prisoner before using these.

Brainwipe
is the final ritual, which erases a person’s memories without giving them to the ritual invoker. Given the many traumas a colonist can suffer in RimWorld, this is sometimes a blessing. They will forget them, alongside any allegiance they had. This will also make any prisoners with it easier to recruit, even unwavering ones. However, like the -phagy rituals, it can induce a long coma if the brainwipe ritual goes poorly.

TO COME
It’s almost time…
Anomaly
and update 1.5 is only 1 week away! We have one more blog post before then - see you there!

In the meantime, chat with us on Reddit and wishlist
Anomaly
so you’re emailed when it’s out!


Bye bye,
Tia

 

[Kruyurk]

I will buy the DLC but no spooky shenanigans allowed in my colony. I want everyone to experience a good vibe. Ok maybe I will try the Pleasure pulse, what harm could it do?

 

[Storyfag]

I appreciate the fleshly tentacles on the two cultists.

 

[Space Satan]

THE CUBE
Obviously, the
golden cube
is no threat. It’s no more than a beautiful gift sent by a good friend. This hand-sized cube shines like gold, but is impossible to scratch. As everyone knows, cubes make perfect companions.

It’s always invitingly warm to the touch, like a trusted pet or a hug from a good friend. If you look closely, you’ll see more than gold in the delightful way light plays across its surface. If you love the cube like we do, why not make a sculpture of the cube?

Don’t listen to the others who say that we’re unhealthily captivated by the cube. Ignore those who claim that our curiosity progressed to fascination and into obsession. That we’re psychically compelled to interact with it, and we feel sick if we can’t. They’re just jealous of our perfect, wonderful cube.

THE NOCIOSPHERE
The
nociosphere
is very much not as lovable as the cube. Even being near it hurts. It’s made of dark metal, covered with curved and jagged grooves, and emanates sensations of pain.

More worryingly, when it appears, the sphere appears to be increasing in activity. It’s not clear what will happen when this peaks but, if you capture it, you can decrease its activity by suppressing it. Then, you can study it.

If you study the nociosphere, you can learn that it has a single purpose - to inflict pain. If you can keep it suppressed, you will learn how to intentionally activate it, turning it into a weapon to use against your foes.

When activated, the nociosphere will teleport to a remote location of your choice and unleash a barrage of pain on anyone nearby. The nociosphere will continue to hunt down living creatures until it is destroyed, or it chooses to depart. This leaves you free to love the cube.

THE OBELISKS
We’ve gone from squares to circles and now to triangles. There are three varieties of obelisk, each with a different horrific effect. They all arrive from space, and they all radiate the same putrid psychic energy, which gradually intensifies as it approaches some dangerous limit.

You can send colonists to suppress an obelisk to prevent it from activating. You can also mark it for study to try to learn its purpose and perhaps make use of it. Or, you can attempt to destroy it - but doing so may unleash dangerous phenomena.

Once you’ve completed your research, your colonists will discover that it is a fragment of a much larger archotech structure that can act on organic matter at a distance. You may discover its function sooner than that, though - sometimes the obelisk self-activates, and sometimes merely suppressing or studying it is enough to unleash its power.

Love the cube.

The
warped obelisk
can turn living organisms including animals and people and trees into bloody flesh monsters. A colonist can be mutated in several different ways, from growing a bone-bladed tentacle to twisting their internal organs into something thoroughly alien.

Less monstrous but just as terrifying is the
twisted obelisk
. This doesn’t change an organism. Instead, its crackling energy seems to pull on nearby living things, eventually snapping them away to “somewhere else”. If a colonist is taken, you’ll have to hope they can find their way out of the endless rooms and hallways.

The final monolith-wannabe is the
corrupted obelisk
. This uses its inhumanly complex power to duplicate intelligent creatures, theoretically without limit. Your colonists’ twins are not always hostile, but the duplication process is imperfect and any twins will need the finest medical care to survive.

THE ENDGAME
The monolith
is the source of everything. The monolith is the conduit. Its power must be defeated. It threatens to twist and destroy everything we know.

But the only way out is through. You must grow the monolith’s power, widening the conduit that leads into the void, until you can finally crack it open and face the world-twisting hell it unleashes. Only then will you be able to step through into a place of nightmares, touch the machine god, and choose your fate.

ANOMALY’S RELEASE DAY
That’s all for now!
RimWorld - Anomaly
and

free content update 1.5
release this
Thursday, April 11, 2024.


Please wishlist
Anomaly
on Steam and share the news with your friends! We’ve seen how excited people are and all of your awesome comments, videos, fanart, and threads.


You can chat about this post and count down to release day with us on Reddit.

Thank you so so much for your support everyone! See you on Thursday!

- Tia
Worship the cube.

 

[Space Satan]

 

[Jonathan "Zee Nekomimi]

Me for the next 2 weeks or so trying to fix my mod list.

 

[Tyrr]

The last time I played this was when Royalty was released. Do you need the other older DLC (Biotech & Ideology) for the new DLC?

 

[Jonathan "Zee Nekomimi]

No, but may miss on certain features.

 

[Tyrr]

No, but may miss on certain features.

Yes, that's what I feared.
So the dlc are interconnected? To unlock all features in one dlc, you need the other ones?

 

[Jonathan "Zee Nekomimi]

no, just add extra content to a previous dlc depending on the case. If u so desire i can send u the files. All u have to do is drop they on your dlc folder and enable on the mod options.

 

[whydoibother]

Zombie pokemans: gotta catch them all!

 

[Trithne]

Me for the next 2 weeks or so trying to fix my mod list.

I've been playing on 1.5 for the last few weeks with a cut down mod list and its been refreshing.

I don't use a lot of the more out there mods under normal circumstances though, I mostly focus on QoL and logical improvements over adding 13 different varieties of catgurl, which means most of the mods I use will never update but they probably aren't actually affected.

 

[Jonathan "Zee Nekomimi]

logical improvements over adding 13 different varieties of catgurl.

Which one would that be? I know amd use the one about fox girls.

 

[La vie sexuelle]

logical improvements over adding 13 different varieties of catgurl.

Which one would that be? I know amd use the one about fox girls.

You use RimJobWorld, aren't you.

 

[Joggerino]

So many spoilers
I'm trying out the anomaly DLC and it's been fun so far. I am wondering how it plays with a normal start, I assume you can trigger the monolith at some point in a playthrough.
And that ghoul you start with is so tough, truly a perfect meat shield.

 

[whydoibother]

My first colony ended with a big raid coinciding with a caravan, producing a dozen corpses that the fog then turned into zombies (alongside a bunch of half digested squirrels and rabbits).

 

[La vie sexuelle]

Jonathan "Zee Nekomimi​

Use fox girls mod.
Called me for RimJobWorld reference.

 

[Jonathan "Zee Nekomimi]

because i don't use loverslab cringe mods.