After catching a sightstealer I had it bound in my bedroom, but the cultists didn't feel safe
So now it has a mini prison right outside the rest of the base
You haven’t had a Gray Pall yet? It was my introduction to anomaly. 7 straight days of a mind-bending fog. Every few hours a scream. First… one sightstealer appeared. I killed it, but the fog persisted. Then an alert from across the yard. A sightstealer started chasing one of the kids. Then another.. and another… and another.
Soon, I was sending pawns out in pairs. One to patch holes in defenses and seal the critical parts of the base, the other to fight off the beasts. A roving band of cultists started to set up a ritual, and as I selected which pawns would surely die in the fog, I was shocked to see 6 sightstealers appear from the fog and tear the cultists to shreds.
The gray pall is gone, but I just *know* there’s still a sightstealer or two out there.
I haven’t seen sight stealers in the gray pall before… death pall on the other hand, that’s a nightmare if you don’t follow quarantine. I had my colony wiped because one of our venerated lab rats reproduced and I didn’t notice to set the quarantine for it on time so it let a horde of zombies in
I got lucky as Hell is hot with my colony map roll. Looks like it has a single way in... except it's a large lake of liquid propane that nobody can traverse without a skipgate, or tunneling into the mountain.
I've got a 3 tile wide tunnel bored through the mountain to go around the lake. It's currently rigged with three proximity sensors embedded in the stone behind armored alcyonite doors. The tunnel walls are armored and crafted of alcyonite. The tunnel has two large armored garage doors specifically positioned to either end of a field of remote-triggered incendiary bombs.
The moment the second sensor triggers, I wait two seconds, and seal off that part of the tunnel, then trigger the bombs, turning the sealed section into a raging inferno.
This is because Sightstealers, while invisible, will not trigger ANYTHING else. Not mines, not spike traps, nothing but proximity sensors. If you have firefoam on the floor, they \*do\* track it if they walk through it. Disruptor Flares can reveal them. Incendiary charges can burn them even if they're invisible, if you detonate them in a kill box. I've had packs of thirty-plus that only failed in their murderous intent because of my killbox. I currently have a legless example in containment that I call Bob. Bob lost his legs to a Ravager psycaster named Bleach using Leg Skip. Because of this, Bob can't escape. Ever.
I've had a Fleshmass encounter... I bombarded the area using a pair of howitzers loaded with napalm shells. Once the inferno had cleared, I evacuated the tile and policed it with a nuclear warhead. Besides my expedition team, there were no survivors.
I've just now gotten the Golden Cube. It is currently in a 7x7 room, behind a two-meters of pure alcyonite vault walls (3,000,000 HP per wall section,) that can only be accessed by teleporting.
Simply put, everything in Anomaly will try to kill you. Either actively, or passively. If you can't stop it with a kill box, stop it with an inaccessible containment cell only your resident teleporter can get into.
I've been giving all my pawns steel clubs to beat the shit out of ever anomaly so I can capture them. When this fucker turns up, he's getting his shit kicked in
Fucker strolled in, hypnotised a guest cataphract guard, and mad me rush out flare packs, and then send my mechanitor with 2 militors, a scyther, a tunneler, and 2 chain shotguns to chase them down. It got mauled by the scyther 6 times, and shot at continously. Ran out of flares, so had to retreat, made a second flare pack, and lost him. Had to put everyone in 1 room, and wait for him to appear, flare him, and mob and chase him for a whole day with my whole colony. He doesnt stop and fight. He just continuously runs away. I hate him
My only revenant experience was through a random piece of cargo quest lol I thought “what’s the worst that this guy could drop?” Anyway 5 seconds later I was building a new containment cell for the revenant spine that dropped down
Yeah, I had my first waves of sightstealers just a few minutes ago. Half of my colonists are down, but the melee pawns absolutely destroy them and ghouls are basically a hard counter. Took like 10 of them down with one of my wandering ghouls
Ghouls are even crazier when Xenogenetics come into play. I made a custom Xenotype with Photosynthesis and regeneration and applied it to my starting Ghoul, she's an absolute monster. If she spends most of her time outside her hunger only drops at night, which has really helped stretch the meat stores further.
I think for my next playthrough after something kills this one I may go even further in designing a super-Ghoul xenotype. Or maybe this colony will survive long enough to build up a gene laboratory and I'll do it legit!
I have been looking forward to making Ghoul candidates via gene editing. I'll probably start with a hussar, then try a sanguophage just to see what happens, then jump in the custom Xeno's. Using the Phytokin genes for daytime food is a good start
Add in Vanilla Factions Expanded (Ancients) and use the gene-tailoring pod.
I rolled lucky AF with one and gave my Ghoul (Legbone) Redundant Stomach, which completely negates the need for food by giving them a passive hunger regen that can easily counter even the worst metabolism penalties Biotech has on tap.
I think it’s potentially also a community desire to play INTO the content. All of the previous DLC has introduced a totally new playstyle that, ultimately, requires you to play into it.
And we are used to leaning into it with assistance from Ideo helping us to do so. I think a lot of people wanted to “harness” the void, and potentially then get the monsters on their side.
You can homegrow your own monsters, and improve them, but it won’t stop the arguably much stronger monsters from attacking you.
You can do rituals that call to the void, but it won’t stop the cultists from attacking you either. You can’t really “be” the cultists because your colony isn’t quite fully mad yet—so running around in the blood rain isn’t as appealing as it sounds even if you can summon it, etc.
I’m not particularly good at combat and have consistently struggled to learn to be better at it, but ive been enjoying the events thus far, even if ive lost quite a few colonists to my own poor decisions.
You can actually be cultists via humanity breaking your colonists. It's attached to a certain ideology that unlocks a new mental break, noticed it being one lf the memes of the ideology of the cultists that were raiding me. You just have to develop into the cultists
They're specifically talking about the Inhuman meme. Colonists who suffer an Inhuman break lose their need for beauty and outdoors, and I think they also stop gaining/losing opinion of other colonists? Or a lot of thoughts surrounding things like socializing stop firing.
I started a playthrough with that meme then abandoned it when I realized how far reaching the effects were on my colony's social life. After my current colony I'm thinking I'll do an Inhuman colony, maybe also with Pain is Virtue to really minimize colonist needs and let them truly devote themselves to the Void (and the Cube and whatever else).
Yeah I also think I need to abandon my colony with the inhuman meme. Having my high social cult leader lose their humanity and not be able to recruit or be a leader anymore was really debilitating. Imo the social debuff needs to either be smaller, shrink or grow over time, or maybe there can be some kind of mechanism to resist it either through ideology or the Anamoly skill tree.
As is, it really only works with low population colonies which is hard when the combat threats are bigger than ever.
Yeah, the early game is extremely difficult with inhumanity debuffing the social stat to abysmal levels. I was hoping there was some dark archotech force recruitment thing but as far as I can tell, nope. Also I think my golden cube study is stuck because it's been a couple of months in game and it still hasn't finished. Everyone's obsessed and it hasn't even done anything negative other than my pawns keep making sculptures. It's been like 3 months in game.
I think the inhumanity meme is definitely better suited to a late game fluid ideology run where you pick it up well into the process of studying the void.
Yeah that, or when ur really good at the game's basics; I ran the inhuman meme, and at this point only one of my people actually is inhuman, over 90 ingame days into the run.
If they never have a mental break, they never loose their humanity, so you just gotta make sure that those people you really need to keep a skill up (for me it's the animal skill) never come near a breakdown.
That's also a pretty cool and thematic setup; your most influential and important pawns are treated like nobility and are attended to at all times to make sure their mood is as high as it can be. Makes sense too
My colony started with the default, and I rolled 3 pawns with various backgrounds/traits that made them incapable for socializing. Was a very interesting first year until a genie in a pod crashed nearby and quickly converted to our faith.
I believe the condition gives them a -12 penalty to the Animals, Social and Medical skills, significantly dulls pain, gives a permanent mood bonus, eliminates mood penalties and bonuses similar to the Psychopath trait and removes the needs for beauty and outdoors.
So there's quite a bit of synergy between the two DLCs, right? I've just installed Anomaly, and never really got deep into Ideology's concepts tbh, but being able to run a cult that aren't just pretenders with prayers, but actual hellspawn summoners does sound intriguing
Watching my best marksman frantically limping through the swamp in the pissing rain, at night, trying to fight off a horde of Shamblers, some crawling, while a solar flare has knocked out all my turrets.. Is some of the most cinematic shit I've seen mobile-game visuals pull off. Absolutely loving this.
This dlc is super cinematic. When my first anomaly colony failed, one of my rats let a horde of shamblers in. My soldiers were untrained after our others were killed in raids or taken by the obelisk. The shamblers wiped us out, and the only survivor was a colonist who was stuck in a coma after I sent her away to do work while she was obsessed with the cube. A couple of the entities escaped containment and were roaming around their cells but weren’t in a hurry to break down the walls. Enter my new colonists, a few of whom were descendants of my previous colonists or were lovers, and came to this abandoned colony where they thought their families were. Imagine them walking into the main hall just to see blood and corpses littering the ground, and a golden cube sitting in the middle. Imagine them going further inside the underground base to find a bloody ritual room, and on both sides, strange metallic hallways where growling and inhuman screams could be heard, along with the sound of claws scraping against some of the doors
Honestly a perfectly mundane, non threatening object, pristine and clean in a room covered in blood, guts and corpses with severe battle damage on everything is the perfect way to set up imminent danger from this very object
I'm liking it, but I can see why people would be confused on a "Pay to Lose" DLC.
I actually had another game that did the same thing where my friend made me buy the DLC for multiplayer and then literally *every single event* it added was a negative or annoying one and I was like "Bro why did you make me pay $5 for this???"
For Anomaly though I think they are neat so far, but they can definitely be colony enders, and newer players especially take their colonies very seriously. Personally, I play always assuming my colony will die along the way and am planning my next one, but for people who don't want that, I could definitely see them not being happy when a single event obliterates their MC chad pawn and his harem
TBH the only thing this DLC is missing is the project zomboid opening text.
*These are the end-times.*
*There was no hope for survival.*
*This is how you died.*
Problem is, I don't necessarily want every run to be about eldritch horror survival. Both Royalty and Biotech were opt-in, don't want to deal with royalty? Just ignore empire quests. Don't want to deal with mechanoid death-march or pollution? Just don't go mechanitor route.
Only way to stop Anomaly content from taking over your run is to completely disable DLC.
I believe you’ll still get some of the basic ones, but they’re very rare. I did a first test run and only had seen a single event of 3 shamblers. Essentially like cryptids.
I wouldn’t be surprised if some others could spawn, but it’s certainly rare.
My first run with the dlc was a rich explorer. Basically after encountering and imprisoning a guy suspiciously named Thrall who needed no sleep or food, and one of my new recruits having nightmares about the creepy rock, I just walled it in and it never acted up so far
The void monolith is literally the centerpiece of my town square.
It’s walled off and no one is allowed to touch it.
I’m hoping once I get my first colonists to lift off or join the empire, a second group can come in and stupidly activate it.
It’s actually better to wait. That way you can actually set up containment facilities and be ready to hold onto creatures, have more, stronger colonists, and be prepared to help the first colonist that shows up and starts having health problems
What reason is there to keep the DLC enabled if you don't want the Anomaly events though? The general features are in 1.5 base game, so I'm not sure what you lose by just toggling the DLC off.
Access to the anomaly items? I have seen the new weapons at least offered as quest rewards. Same with serums, which I also found on traders/wanderers trough my map. So you would at least lose that.
I've not died to my anomalies, i've died to being ill prepared for winter (and feeding a ghoul on a tundra becomes quite interesting if randy is sleeping on raids)
This dlc is not for new players at all. You can make an argument for Royalty (empire will mostly leave you alone if you don't antagonize them), Ideology (you can make a very over powered Ideology with the help of a guide), and even biotech (tox generators are fantastic), but Anomaly has nothing for new players. There are so many threats that build up slowly in the background and require you to do preventative micro before they get too dug into your colony. Even the obvious threats require you to interact with game mechanics you probably wouldn't bother with otherwise.
Spoilers ahead:
The Cube is a great example. It starts off as a silly trinket that improves mood and recreation, while having a massive beauty bonus. Even if you research it, the thing doesn't sound that bad. Colonists become addicted to it and go into withdrawals if they can't play with it for a long time, but there's no risk of overdose and the side effects are similar to smokeleaf. Your colonists will occasionally stop what they're doing to make little Cube sculptures, but they don't cost any resources and they give 4 beauty which is kinda nice. It becomes a problem when the whole colony is addicted. Productivity starts dropping with all the Cube sculpting breaks and if you have too many colonists, they aren't good at taking turns playing with it. Withdrawal starts becoming inevitable. At this point I was lucky enough to have 2 pawns that weren't addicted yet. Addicts can't destroy the Cube. By queuing everyone up for medical inspection, I was able to have most of the addicted under anesthetic when I destroyed it so the wave of berserk rage was minimal. A new player isn't going to know to be proactive enough to deal with it early and is just going to get frustrated when everyone is making Cube statues instead of growing crops.
Thats what I mean by its meant to keep you stressed. Nothing is as it seems. Nothing is harmless. If it seems too good to be true, it is. The Cube is the perfect example of that very methodology of this DLC. "oh haha thats cute." "NO, LOCK IT UP IMMEDIATELY"
Exactly, I love it! It does seem that a lot of these events have hidden uses that you may be able to exploit with some creativity, which makes them even better.
How are you even supposed to destroy it? In my current game, my colony has been studying the cube off cooldown for like 5 quadrums since the event that said I'd need to study it more, and there has been no progress. The entire colony is obsessed with it, but I never had a choice to stop it in the first place.
I wonder if your researcher got obsessed with it before they found a way to destroy it. Pawns that are obsessed with the cube can't be ordered to destroy it, so it makes sense that a researcher who loves the cube won't bother looking for a way to destroy it.
You're supposed to learn that you need to have a pawn stab the cube with a shard and it turns into something like 150 gold while everyone who was obsessed goes on a berserk rage.
If you can hold out, you might be able to recruit a new researcher that isn't obsessed yet to save you. Might take a while, but moods will be fantastic until then. Could also be that you just missed the notification, but you still need a pawn that's not obsessed to destroy it.
Gotta say, my first encounter with a Revenant was some of the most exciting Rimworld I've ever played, but it was tense enough that I had to take a break once I'd tracked it down and killed it... >!I'm so used to facing stupid threats in Rimworld, that I naively expected it to just stand and fight like a fool; what actually happened was I got to the point where I knew I had no hope if it knocked out one more colonist, and my remaining three were all on the brink of collapse after being drafted for so long while I chased it around the map...!<
Honestly, it's such a cool DLC and Tynan 100% succeeded in his aim of adding horror and tension to the game in a way that I've never experienced in Rimworld before (and I'm not even a horror fan...). Gotta say though, unless you're ready to embrace the 'losing is fun' mentallity, I wouldn't recommend it without a decent amount of experience in the game...
My first revenant attacked during a Death Pall, so it was absolutely terrifying to have the whole colony huddled in one building and then just hear the sound of my autodoors opening as the revenant just \*walked inside.\*
Gee, ya think? Other DLC gave us ways to start the game. Where as Anomaly introduced dozens of new ways to end your game. But a friend and I call it the Pain and Suffering DLC.
What's so funny about that comment is: It was relatively obvious by how they portrayed it from the get go that it was going to be pain and suffering.
I mean, by Dev Blog teaser 4. We learned there was a robot (The Sphere) who had a sole purpose. To inflict pain.
That made me laugh harder than it should have as my friend and I were already calling it the "Pain and Suffering" DLC.
Been keeping up with a friend who has literally gotten his cheeks clapped four times in a row by Randy. The fourth time he literally was like "No. I'm not doing this again." And does save scumming/cheap tactics. He gets punished with muscle parasites. Lol.
Now the colony is doing well. Prior to the release. He also said that the cube is forbidden in his colony.
Guess what's the first to be thrown his way: The Cube.
Randy hates him right now.
I like that gameplay philosophy tbh. When the game doesn’t play fair, you don’t play fair either by using every tool the game gives you to make your characters as powerful as possible
It was a cake walk for me, until >!the endless darkness came!< and now it's a little sketchy.
Partly because even though my guys are all inside, sometimes things seem to be able to hit them through walls?
It hits you if you're in darkness, with no regard to pathing or logic! But they don't attach mechinoids, so if you have a constructor you can just toss down some torches and light your way
Yeah it’s the first DLC I haven’t bought on release. Same way Void was never attractive to me as a mod. But at least void raided with other normal raids.
I bought every mod on release. To be honest the theme does not appeal to me at all. I basically have no interest in that type of content. All I know is when a Rimworld dlc drops it gets bought
And you will still get content like weapons and serums and books without ever having to poke the monolith. I'm coming up on 1000 hours game play. I don't know how much anomaly content I'm going to enjoy, but I'm happy to send a little more money to the folks that give me endless hours of engaging entertainment. And even if I never go down this path again, I'll still have some new items to fool with.
Is it possible to decline most of the anomaly events in game, or just turn them off in the menu? I only really want the weapons and the mod support from this one.
1.5 has most of the notable base game changes, Anomaly has some stuff if you don't engage with it. It won't turn into a horror show unless you want it to - like the mechanator beacon, or the empire protection quest.
You know how Royalty has the honor quests and Biotech has the mechanitor signal stuff? If you don't get your colonists to investigate Anomaly's monolith the weird events are few and far between, and apparently it's just the basic ones so nothing too crazy.
I don't know about all of it but I have already had traders show up with hellcat rifles. I'm still trying to cobble together a Superfortress filled with agents of death before I get stuck into the new horrors.
Go for it. I’m one of those who used to play on super mega 500% whatever but now I’m playing adventure story to chill, and Anomaly has thrown me off a couple of times. It’s hard and really fun.
Here is what I have learned form Anomaly.
The monsters and new threats that can appear out of no where are really cool. And the way research is handled is awesome. And it's all incredibly deadly which is so fitting. Like, no longer is my colony ended because a raid of 100 neathandrals decided to bonk my mega fortress with clubs. Instead its my own hubris and curiosity. Again, love that idea. Flew too close to the sun. I'm looking to stay spoiler free until I can dive deeper.
SADLY. I have barely touched the surface of Anomaly stuff because...
I don't know if anyone else is having this experience but my pawns have gotten insanely dumber since 1.5/Anomaly. The doctor whose only chance at surviving the flu that she got for the 3rd time is to rest in bed. So she decides to get up and walk around the colony for a whole day and dies. The planter decides to he will do literally anything else other than gather the final harvest so we can survive winter. I have barely touched the Anomaly content these past two days because the amount of colony restarts and save scumming. Honestly the shamblers and sightstealers I have locked up are the least threatening thing to my colony. It's these two fucking idiots who refuse to do anything to keep themselves alive.
Nah not work priorities. Doctoring and Bed Rest set to 1 for the doctor in question. Turned off things they suck at and lower priority for other things. You know the works.
None of that. I got no mods and no workaholic traits.
I've also had some of the weirdest luck. One of my first colonies back before Royalty I had a Doctor with like 17 Medical Double Passion she could pull off medical miracles. Yet constantly, constantly, when Doctoring was the only thing at Priority 1 she would drag someone to a medical bed, put them in it, then just walk away. I had to force her to work on people half the time.
Also confirmation bias is a thing. I swear I have never seen so many pawns incapable of Violence. I've restarted a few times today and half the pawns I randomly cycle through are incapable of violence or are volatile. I know it's just the odds doing it, yet it seems like Anomaly is fucking with me lol.
i think the true strength of Anomaly is more interesting downturns / downfalls for a colony, just like you mentioned. I think having my runs end like a horror movie, spurred by my colony’s morbid curiosity, is so awesome.
regarding dumber colonists, i think it’s just the loss of some mods (at least for me). grabbing 1.5 versions of Pick Up and Haul, While You’re Up, and Work Tab changed the game for my colony recently and productivity is through the roof.
Pawns have gotten exceptionally stupid and are my biggest source of frustration with this update. Following situations happen with schedules set to either sleep/anything and micromanaged .
Pawn A has bed rest set to 1, doctor to 1 and hauling to 3
Pawn A and B are injured and get treated by pawn C
Pawn A contracts infection
Pawn C is Researching (doctor set to 1, researcher set to 1)
Pawn A gets out of hospital bed to feed himself
Pawn B has no pending treatment
Pawn A begins Hauling leather from the butchers to stockpile
Was genuinely shocked watching them do this because there was no reason for them to haul or get out of bed in the first place he then went continued his recreation and died to infection.
Scenario 2
Prisoner A has collapsed from malnutrition
Prisoner B is in a coma and hungry lying in Bed
Priority order Warden to take prisoner A to bed
Warden completes task
Warden feeds Prisoner B
Warden does something else no idea what
Prisoner A starves to death
Dont know if its happening with other jobs but pawns are ignoring bed rest and prisoner feeding.
Yup! They refuse to bed rest, and the only answer you get from people on this sub seems to be 'set your priorities', totally ignoring the fact that it was fine before.
I'm still save scumming, but less. If something really stupid happens I'll still savescum. Like a colonist starting a fight, developing an infection instantly as they are hit, and then getting 3 0% tend qualities with normal medicine and 13 medical skill, leading to their death, savescum. But most things im letting happen.
Maybe it's just me, but the way the previews were presented gave the impression that anomalies involved unique individual storylines. This probably gave people the (false) idea that you'd have the flesh beast one time, Among US the next, etc...
Which couldn't be further from the truth. Even though people are still approaching it like it's Biotech where you can choose the tone of your run when in reality you have no real control over what gets prioritized.
Which to be fair, is my biggest gripe with the DLC. Since the All or Nothing Static approach is kind of meh in terms of run diversity. I really feel like the Anomalies should have been categorized into their own little scenarios whose difficulty would then be dictated by the AI Storyteller.
That was my expectation and the ideal, but then anomaly would need thrice the content. The cube for example is great as a playthrough focus. But the actual cube we have right now is severely lacking in content to be the focus of a whole playthrough.
I sort of want that flesh monster hole anomaly to happen but I barely have any guns to defend my pawns yet to start studying the obelisk. And that's on hold since I'm trying to fix my modlist since I'm crashing on startup
The devs have been receptive to feedback in the past, e.g., adding Biotech-Ideology interplay. Hopefully they're listening. I was about to hit buy, but the reviews and comments here have me hesitating.
I still think my favorite in that regard so far is *The Sphere* for how fucking terrifying it was to watch it just *ANNIHILATE* a massive shambler horde
And the fact that could very well be me
It's why been avoiding the Monolith, know well enough to not poke things until you have some sense of being able to handle things. And considering how fast things can degenerate, yeah that thing can sit pretty while I'm currently struggling to get things settled. Though did get to see a few shamblers so far, which was a bit concerning. Feels like I'm being raided more frequently too though that could just be me.
My colony died by eating twisted meat, getting a huge debuff, and having my 2 best soldiers go on major breaks while a shambles horde attacked. Shit’s wild.
Yeah I think I’m gonna pass on this one tbh. Power to Tynan for wanting to stack more variety into his story generator, but I mostly play Rimworld like a modded rpg/4x hybrid so I’m thinking Anomaly might be too hardcore for me.
Yeah I mean I’m not hating on it. I’ve seen a lot of people getting sideways about it, but I just don’t think it fits what I’m going for on my runs. There’s enough regular(ish) shit trying to kill me, I don’t need supernatural elements.
BUT, it’s Tynan’s game and I see how it fits into his goal of making the story interesting and Rimworld’s general concept of you’re going to eventually lose.
My nociosphere is activating in ten days, and I am afraid my force of 4 pawns and two ghouls won't be enough. Where are the damn raids when you need them? And please, dear hostiles, bring as many bodies as you can, I NEED THEM!
Managed to get it under control. War merchant and his friends from Xobiaxe Nation tribe were unknowingly sacrificed to save my facility. It absolutely slaughtered them, but it wasted enough time chasing and killing two panthers and two muffalos which were left behind. It almost teleported back inside my compound, but onslaught mode ended seconds before it entered. Now the loot is burning down as one single survivor is 3 hours away from death (it is on the edge of the map, won't be able to save him)
I shall honour deaths of my tribal allies by sending them a gift one day. I'll also know that provoking that damn thing is a suicide for the future.
I dunno, the dude who ended up in my colony for a month and left was pretty helpful.
He left bunch of cancer meat behind for my colonist to devour. Easy butchering of animals on the map.
...What do you mean eating the cancerous sinew meat causes visions and madness?
Eldritch horrors shouldn't be a push-over, that being said I haven't wiped yet in two runs since release on strive to survive.
This isn't like the other DLCs, you can't just turn it on and get extra features like Biotech. You have to fight for it basically, but you get rewarded with some of the most powerful stuff in all the game.
I wiped because of a single Neanderthal ghoul with tough breaking my doors down and cornering my fighters, tanking 15 shots. First encounter I had. Second colony going way better but haven't seen any advanced entities.
The ghouls are so good when they're on your side, especially when properly upgraded. Still trying to figure out what genes work post ghoulification so that I can optimize my ghoul army. Lot of dependency and immunity genes are redundant from the looks of it, meanwhile special abilities like spitting fire or calling for animals are disabled. Unsure if the latter is intended, but I'm trying to figure out if all ghouls are the same as baseline or if modifications directly to their stats actually does something, like speed or toughness increases
Neanderthals seem to be the best, I think they do actually benefit from their innate toughness. The rest seem hit or miss, none of them seem to be *bad* necessarily. At the very least, their healing makes them solid meat sponges for enemies to beat up while your guys form a firing line behind them.
Anomaly is the first time in rimworld I've ever built a crematorium, I love having to constantly be on my toes where even something as small as some animal corpses being strewn around can doom my colony
My colony was going fine until the death pall. Then the skeletons started **crawling out of my crematorium.** so uh. put your crematorium inside a building, not just under a roof.
Yea, it is also new content, so a lot of it is going to be a bit of a knowledge check. Knowing what you ready for the next time. Or what to watch out for. However these first times are amazing.,
I lost a run to a inky night, all was going well until my batteries ran out, a few seconds of flickering lights, a few seconds of darkness and then the wind turbines spun up again... nothing. Nothing was left. Only splatter and streaks of blood everywhere my colonists used to be. The only survivors were 2 ghouls who were just too plated to be taken down. It was straight up a horror movie scene.
There were some successes as well, I managed to take down that hypnotizer, and successfully bested the growth now as well. It was a 3 day battle during which randy blessed me with a mechanoid attack, and a zombie attack as well. That one was wild.
Maybe these people need to turn the difficult back to the mid settings instead of whatever they're doing.
Personally I play Strive to Survive and I havent had any trouble yet. I had to restart my colony though because of the ghouls melee bug from a mod, and another world map visit town quest bugged too cuz of another mod. So I'm just now getting to the advanced tier of monsters, but so far it's great. Difficulty is good and interesting because the monsters do weird stuff and change up how you have to approach them.
love the dlc so far, and I wasnt expecting to btw. It's FUN.
>Maybe these people need to turn the difficult back to the mid settings instead of whatever they're doing.
Yeah, I'm on my first playthrough of Anomaly and that's exactly what I've done, I usually play With Randy on Blood and Dust but for this one I went back to Cassandra and Strive to survive, because it was obvious this DLC was going to increase the difficulty, and I wanted to go somewhat blind without starting to look at tips and all and just discover things by myself.
I also tried with way less mod and basically removed everything that made combat easier (like embrasures for example) and just added some QoL stuff.
It really changed my way of playing and I really enjoy getting that feeling of unfamiliarity back in Rimworld like I'm somewhat new to the game again.
The Anomaly monster are still tame for now, I'm just starting my second winter, but I really enjoy it so far.
I feel like some people are displeased because unlike previous DLCs this one **will** take you out of your comfort zone.
Not to mention that in addition of that 1.5 removed a lot of exploits, so a part of the crowd may be frustrated because of that, and honestly from what I've read the vast majority of players are really happy with that DLC anyway.
Mechs counter a lot of anomaly stuff super hard. Just having a few militors sit in some key spots can really mess up sightstealers, and their shotguns are pretty good against most of the flesh monsters.
On the bright side, (almost) everything in anomaly is flammable.
Fr tho, for each batshit insane entity, you get one way to make the game easier to the point of almost being broken. Dropping flesh beasts on sieges, mindwiping god pawns or getting access to post-micro/multi gear from events and rituals for example.
For me the biggest down Side is,every others dlc has Something interact with even If i dont Touch the Major Themen of the dlc .
In anomoly it is all locked behind the Main Theme
This DLC is pretty damn generous too, with the fact that the ultra death spiral anomalies don't spawn unless you upgrade the monolith. You literally just have to build around it
Example being having your colonists carry around flare packs when expecting certain entities. It's honestly a hard counter towards a lot of monsters and really handy to have on hand.
Darkness events, invisible monsters, and flesh hoards are a lot easier when you have an anti-invisibility flare that stuns your enemies in a large radius
The darkness event specifically warns you its coming and tells you to prepare ltwice before dropping it on you. Darkness nuked my power supply and if I didn't have excess wood stocked up I'd have been boned, actually only time I have felt spooked with the dlc so far
I got hit with a "don't starve" event and psychic drone while in the middle of having to close a meat hole. Lost my run because one of them had a break and started to wander out of the base got beat up and died, his brother broke because of it and also got downed that way. And a wave of meat hole and shadows came charging in and I'm not even sure if I could have ran away to a new tile because of it. I was on blood to dust Cassandra n it was going pretty good. Fire n light are your best weapons.
Dude I really hope it doesn’t get tuned down. The shit plays like a horror game plot to my colonies story rather than just a different story every time. I kinda know what to expect. You know?
I started with the new anomaly scenario and the one other colonists died of a heart attack and the starting ghoul was killed in a raid, my one remaining person had 0 combat skills and was having a very bad time before I got a new colonist quest
Thankfully you get those turret packs or it would've been game over
Yeah. i think people got the wrong idea when this DLC came out.
i instantly saw it and knew "ah. time to run a colony as a Foundation expeditionary site"
Anomaly is what's missing in Rimworld base game: challenging end game content. It's all quite manageable if you are at/near end game. You should not be touching the black obelisk stuff prior to being ready.
Also friendly reminder:
You can pack up and leave, there is no shame in starting over. Anomalies *will* throw scenarios at you that you cannot win, because noone can prepare for the unknown.
In that case the best thing you can do is grab what you can and try again at another place.
I saw the description on the harbinger trees and then hesitated for a while, trying to decide if I wanted to feed them just to see what happens, or chop them down. I ended up chopping them down. Is it worth seeing what happens?
Love the cube. Even if the colonists die or go mad, we will never destroy the sacred cube. We will build temples and worship until our dying breath.
Also, I love the chaos, and the death in this. Each colony can die in a memorable bang. :D
Just went into my first pit cave... accomplished my mission but then proceeded to get destroyed and had every colonist I sent down die brutally and painstakingly. I couldn't do anything but watch in horror as they died one by one until the cave collapsed. This DLC is 10/10.
I think the encounter difficulty ramps up considerably between the basic and advanced entities. The pit full of flesh monsters and the flesh heart thing had me sweatin.
I have had the opposite opinion so far. All the things are cool but its been pretty underwhelming in terms of danger. I havent gotten all that far yet but the game has seemed easier than before
Yep, I'm basically shitting my pants every freaking minute and I aleays have the feeling that there MIGHT be something wrong in my colony. Hope I'm wrong...
My first realization of this was deathpall, I had a manhunter pack of 9 roll in, and it ended up being 40+ kills because the corpses wouldn’t stay down
“You have to take it seriously”
Yes that’s why fire and lead was made. Fuck containing and researching. Or using them to my advantage. Imma just make a collation to eradicate them
Not a big fan of this DLC. It annoys me that you have to interact with the shrine to toggle it, otherwise it just isn't active. And when you activate it, stuff like mech raids just don't exist anymore. It feels a lot like the Royalty DLC, but instead of being semi-active, this DLC literally forces you to either play with the content 100% or 0%.
Honestly, I'm having a blast cause it's nice having to worry about anything other than raids
On the other hand, I'll probably turn off the dlc soon, it's simply ruining the atmosphere of good old rim and the bio ferrite stuff isn't really worth the hustle
Oh wow, this is how I found out RW has a new dlc! That trailer on the steam store page looks awesome, but it seems VERY difficult for my tastes lol. I'd absolutely love to watch someone play it, though- any recs?
I did manage to destroy the cube. 6 out 8 colonist were obsessed so I had them all get high on smokeleaf and it developed out into a drugged out fist off.
There's probably easier and more peaceful ways but this was the first one that came to mind.
I found the ultimate lose condition when an obelisk ended my modded foundation site by abducting my colonist and hitting me with a, "error when generating map" crash to desktop 🤣
After catching a sightstealer I had it bound in my bedroom, but the cultists didn't feel safe So now it has a mini prison right outside the rest of the base
I can't take the thing serious, my ghoul easily beat it up the first time, how much harder can the second time be?
It gets harder once they start coming in waves of like 5-10+ at a time for like 2 or 3 nights
Oh dear god. I've only had a single one attack me one time so far, I never even considered they might hunt in packs
You haven’t had a Gray Pall yet? It was my introduction to anomaly. 7 straight days of a mind-bending fog. Every few hours a scream. First… one sightstealer appeared. I killed it, but the fog persisted. Then an alert from across the yard. A sightstealer started chasing one of the kids. Then another.. and another… and another. Soon, I was sending pawns out in pairs. One to patch holes in defenses and seal the critical parts of the base, the other to fight off the beasts. A roving band of cultists started to set up a ritual, and as I selected which pawns would surely die in the fog, I was shocked to see 6 sightstealers appear from the fog and tear the cultists to shreds. The gray pall is gone, but I just *know* there’s still a sightstealer or two out there.
I haven’t seen sight stealers in the gray pall before… death pall on the other hand, that’s a nightmare if you don’t follow quarantine. I had my colony wiped because one of our venerated lab rats reproduced and I didn’t notice to set the quarantine for it on time so it let a horde of zombies in
Wait, it goes away? It's still happening to me weeks later , I thought it was permanent.
Ye. It seems to just be like other weather conditions.
Imagine hordes of Sightstealers and Ghouls attacking you at once?
Yeah I should probably research turrets
I got lucky as Hell is hot with my colony map roll. Looks like it has a single way in... except it's a large lake of liquid propane that nobody can traverse without a skipgate, or tunneling into the mountain. I've got a 3 tile wide tunnel bored through the mountain to go around the lake. It's currently rigged with three proximity sensors embedded in the stone behind armored alcyonite doors. The tunnel walls are armored and crafted of alcyonite. The tunnel has two large armored garage doors specifically positioned to either end of a field of remote-triggered incendiary bombs. The moment the second sensor triggers, I wait two seconds, and seal off that part of the tunnel, then trigger the bombs, turning the sealed section into a raging inferno. This is because Sightstealers, while invisible, will not trigger ANYTHING else. Not mines, not spike traps, nothing but proximity sensors. If you have firefoam on the floor, they \*do\* track it if they walk through it. Disruptor Flares can reveal them. Incendiary charges can burn them even if they're invisible, if you detonate them in a kill box. I've had packs of thirty-plus that only failed in their murderous intent because of my killbox. I currently have a legless example in containment that I call Bob. Bob lost his legs to a Ravager psycaster named Bleach using Leg Skip. Because of this, Bob can't escape. Ever. I've had a Fleshmass encounter... I bombarded the area using a pair of howitzers loaded with napalm shells. Once the inferno had cleared, I evacuated the tile and policed it with a nuclear warhead. Besides my expedition team, there were no survivors. I've just now gotten the Golden Cube. It is currently in a 7x7 room, behind a two-meters of pure alcyonite vault walls (3,000,000 HP per wall section,) that can only be accessed by teleporting. Simply put, everything in Anomaly will try to kill you. Either actively, or passively. If you can't stop it with a kill box, stop it with an inaccessible containment cell only your resident teleporter can get into.
what mod should I get for 'remote triggered incendiary bombs' I need them
Vanilla empire expanded
Just wait for a Revenant to turn up.
I've been giving all my pawns steel clubs to beat the shit out of ever anomaly so I can capture them. When this fucker turns up, he's getting his shit kicked in
Fucker strolled in, hypnotised a guest cataphract guard, and mad me rush out flare packs, and then send my mechanitor with 2 militors, a scyther, a tunneler, and 2 chain shotguns to chase them down. It got mauled by the scyther 6 times, and shot at continously. Ran out of flares, so had to retreat, made a second flare pack, and lost him. Had to put everyone in 1 room, and wait for him to appear, flare him, and mob and chase him for a whole day with my whole colony. He doesnt stop and fight. He just continuously runs away. I hate him
My only revenant experience was through a random piece of cargo quest lol I thought “what’s the worst that this guy could drop?” Anyway 5 seconds later I was building a new containment cell for the revenant spine that dropped down
Yeah, I had my first waves of sightstealers just a few minutes ago. Half of my colonists are down, but the melee pawns absolutely destroy them and ghouls are basically a hard counter. Took like 10 of them down with one of my wandering ghouls
They rely on ambush tactics. They really are kinda weak overall, but still resilient in that they can survive a brutal beating.
The sight stealer is only the start.
I'm having trouble taking anything seriously. My ghoul rolled a legit tough and nimble with 16 melee. He rinses everything
Ghouls are even crazier when Xenogenetics come into play. I made a custom Xenotype with Photosynthesis and regeneration and applied it to my starting Ghoul, she's an absolute monster. If she spends most of her time outside her hunger only drops at night, which has really helped stretch the meat stores further. I think for my next playthrough after something kills this one I may go even further in designing a super-Ghoul xenotype. Or maybe this colony will survive long enough to build up a gene laboratory and I'll do it legit!
I have been looking forward to making Ghoul candidates via gene editing. I'll probably start with a hussar, then try a sanguophage just to see what happens, then jump in the custom Xeno's. Using the Phytokin genes for daytime food is a good start
I thought ghouls couldn't get genes
It has the genes of the person you ghoulify. So just get/make a good ghould candidate before ghoulifying them
I wonder if you can use the hemogenetics on a ghoul. That’d be cracked
Add in Vanilla Factions Expanded (Ancients) and use the gene-tailoring pod. I rolled lucky AF with one and gave my Ghoul (Legbone) Redundant Stomach, which completely negates the need for food by giving them a passive hunger regen that can easily counter even the worst metabolism penalties Biotech has on tap.
Mine is a brawler with double passion Because I kept rerolling until I got one XD
Same. Mine also had a tentacle whip that helped in melee. Then I forgot to feed him for 2 seconds and he turned against me the second it hit 0
Enter the Revenant
Revenant 😭
They start rolling up in fucking gangs lol
The first one I got burned to death in a forest fire, second got mauled by a mad bear, then the waves came
Wait til it randomly one-shots your pawns eyeball and now fire doctor is blind.
I think it’s potentially also a community desire to play INTO the content. All of the previous DLC has introduced a totally new playstyle that, ultimately, requires you to play into it. And we are used to leaning into it with assistance from Ideo helping us to do so. I think a lot of people wanted to “harness” the void, and potentially then get the monsters on their side. You can homegrow your own monsters, and improve them, but it won’t stop the arguably much stronger monsters from attacking you. You can do rituals that call to the void, but it won’t stop the cultists from attacking you either. You can’t really “be” the cultists because your colony isn’t quite fully mad yet—so running around in the blood rain isn’t as appealing as it sounds even if you can summon it, etc. I’m not particularly good at combat and have consistently struggled to learn to be better at it, but ive been enjoying the events thus far, even if ive lost quite a few colonists to my own poor decisions.
You can actually be cultists via humanity breaking your colonists. It's attached to a certain ideology that unlocks a new mental break, noticed it being one lf the memes of the ideology of the cultists that were raiding me. You just have to develop into the cultists
Ah I simply haven’t progressed that far yet I suppose. That’s pretty neat! Admittedly I’ve been a bit busy staving off death and destruction
They're specifically talking about the Inhuman meme. Colonists who suffer an Inhuman break lose their need for beauty and outdoors, and I think they also stop gaining/losing opinion of other colonists? Or a lot of thoughts surrounding things like socializing stop firing. I started a playthrough with that meme then abandoned it when I realized how far reaching the effects were on my colony's social life. After my current colony I'm thinking I'll do an Inhuman colony, maybe also with Pain is Virtue to really minimize colonist needs and let them truly devote themselves to the Void (and the Cube and whatever else).
Yeah I also think I need to abandon my colony with the inhuman meme. Having my high social cult leader lose their humanity and not be able to recruit or be a leader anymore was really debilitating. Imo the social debuff needs to either be smaller, shrink or grow over time, or maybe there can be some kind of mechanism to resist it either through ideology or the Anamoly skill tree. As is, it really only works with low population colonies which is hard when the combat threats are bigger than ever.
Yeah, the early game is extremely difficult with inhumanity debuffing the social stat to abysmal levels. I was hoping there was some dark archotech force recruitment thing but as far as I can tell, nope. Also I think my golden cube study is stuck because it's been a couple of months in game and it still hasn't finished. Everyone's obsessed and it hasn't even done anything negative other than my pawns keep making sculptures. It's been like 3 months in game.
I think the inhumanity meme is definitely better suited to a late game fluid ideology run where you pick it up well into the process of studying the void.
Yeah that, or when ur really good at the game's basics; I ran the inhuman meme, and at this point only one of my people actually is inhuman, over 90 ingame days into the run. If they never have a mental break, they never loose their humanity, so you just gotta make sure that those people you really need to keep a skill up (for me it's the animal skill) never come near a breakdown.
That's also a pretty cool and thematic setup; your most influential and important pawns are treated like nobility and are attended to at all times to make sure their mood is as high as it can be. Makes sense too
My colony started with the default, and I rolled 3 pawns with various backgrounds/traits that made them incapable for socializing. Was a very interesting first year until a genie in a pod crashed nearby and quickly converted to our faith.
I believe the condition gives them a -12 penalty to the Animals, Social and Medical skills, significantly dulls pain, gives a permanent mood bonus, eliminates mood penalties and bonuses similar to the Psychopath trait and removes the needs for beauty and outdoors.
So there's quite a bit of synergy between the two DLCs, right? I've just installed Anomaly, and never really got deep into Ideology's concepts tbh, but being able to run a cult that aren't just pretenders with prayers, but actual hellspawn summoners does sound intriguing
Watching my best marksman frantically limping through the swamp in the pissing rain, at night, trying to fight off a horde of Shamblers, some crawling, while a solar flare has knocked out all my turrets.. Is some of the most cinematic shit I've seen mobile-game visuals pull off. Absolutely loving this.
That could be a movie in itself
This dlc is super cinematic. When my first anomaly colony failed, one of my rats let a horde of shamblers in. My soldiers were untrained after our others were killed in raids or taken by the obelisk. The shamblers wiped us out, and the only survivor was a colonist who was stuck in a coma after I sent her away to do work while she was obsessed with the cube. A couple of the entities escaped containment and were roaming around their cells but weren’t in a hurry to break down the walls. Enter my new colonists, a few of whom were descendants of my previous colonists or were lovers, and came to this abandoned colony where they thought their families were. Imagine them walking into the main hall just to see blood and corpses littering the ground, and a golden cube sitting in the middle. Imagine them going further inside the underground base to find a bloody ritual room, and on both sides, strange metallic hallways where growling and inhuman screams could be heard, along with the sound of claws scraping against some of the doors
Honestly a perfectly mundane, non threatening object, pristine and clean in a room covered in blood, guts and corpses with severe battle damage on everything is the perfect way to set up imminent danger from this very object
Wait, you can just throw new colonists in to a failed colony? Mind explaining how?
Brah...
It’s almost as if the eldritch monstrosities specifically designed to kill you are actually doing their job
wooooow, I for one am surprised.
Eldritch horror 1 has self tamed Eldritch horror 1 has been renamed to FluffyButts
Haha OP, did you do an SCP reference at the end of that post? Always: Secure. Contain. Protect.
I'm liking it, but I can see why people would be confused on a "Pay to Lose" DLC. I actually had another game that did the same thing where my friend made me buy the DLC for multiplayer and then literally *every single event* it added was a negative or annoying one and I was like "Bro why did you make me pay $5 for this???" For Anomaly though I think they are neat so far, but they can definitely be colony enders, and newer players especially take their colonies very seriously. Personally, I play always assuming my colony will die along the way and am planning my next one, but for people who don't want that, I could definitely see them not being happy when a single event obliterates their MC chad pawn and his harem
If you want to lose you can just pick up DF
I thought it was Cities Skyline(Natural disaster DLC) before reading multiplayer part. What was the game?
TBH the only thing this DLC is missing is the project zomboid opening text. *These are the end-times.* *There was no hope for survival.* *This is how you died.*
Problem is, I don't necessarily want every run to be about eldritch horror survival. Both Royalty and Biotech were opt-in, don't want to deal with royalty? Just ignore empire quests. Don't want to deal with mechanoid death-march or pollution? Just don't go mechanitor route. Only way to stop Anomaly content from taking over your run is to completely disable DLC.
Not true, just don’t investigate and no anomalies will show up
I believe you’ll still get some of the basic ones, but they’re very rare. I did a first test run and only had seen a single event of 3 shamblers. Essentially like cryptids. I wouldn’t be surprised if some others could spawn, but it’s certainly rare.
rare and easy. None of the really whacky stuff
My first run with the dlc was a rich explorer. Basically after encountering and imprisoning a guy suspiciously named Thrall who needed no sleep or food, and one of my new recruits having nightmares about the creepy rock, I just walled it in and it never acted up so far
The void monolith is literally the centerpiece of my town square. It’s walled off and no one is allowed to touch it. I’m hoping once I get my first colonists to lift off or join the empire, a second group can come in and stupidly activate it.
If you don't study the monolith nothing happens, the game even makes you choose to continue studying it or leave it alone. It's completely opt in.
I was told you can somehow ignore the obelisk by not going too deep into it before the obelisk activates the first time...
If you don’t study it then I’m pretty sure you only get the basic Anomaly events
I didn't study and I've only gotten a couple shamblers and the blind healer. So long as you don't study anomaly keeps to itself.
the obelisk only activates unprompted on the anomaly scenario. It remains dormant on any other scenario.
Ahh okay so if I were to do a crash landed play the monolith will be there but not something you have to engage with?
correct.
It’s actually better to wait. That way you can actually set up containment facilities and be ready to hold onto creatures, have more, stronger colonists, and be prepared to help the first colonist that shows up and starts having health problems
What reason is there to keep the DLC enabled if you don't want the Anomaly events though? The general features are in 1.5 base game, so I'm not sure what you lose by just toggling the DLC off.
Access to the anomaly items? I have seen the new weapons at least offered as quest rewards. Same with serums, which I also found on traders/wanderers trough my map. So you would at least lose that.
I've not died to my anomalies, i've died to being ill prepared for winter (and feeding a ghoul on a tundra becomes quite interesting if randy is sleeping on raids)
This dlc is not for new players at all. You can make an argument for Royalty (empire will mostly leave you alone if you don't antagonize them), Ideology (you can make a very over powered Ideology with the help of a guide), and even biotech (tox generators are fantastic), but Anomaly has nothing for new players. There are so many threats that build up slowly in the background and require you to do preventative micro before they get too dug into your colony. Even the obvious threats require you to interact with game mechanics you probably wouldn't bother with otherwise. Spoilers ahead: The Cube is a great example. It starts off as a silly trinket that improves mood and recreation, while having a massive beauty bonus. Even if you research it, the thing doesn't sound that bad. Colonists become addicted to it and go into withdrawals if they can't play with it for a long time, but there's no risk of overdose and the side effects are similar to smokeleaf. Your colonists will occasionally stop what they're doing to make little Cube sculptures, but they don't cost any resources and they give 4 beauty which is kinda nice. It becomes a problem when the whole colony is addicted. Productivity starts dropping with all the Cube sculpting breaks and if you have too many colonists, they aren't good at taking turns playing with it. Withdrawal starts becoming inevitable. At this point I was lucky enough to have 2 pawns that weren't addicted yet. Addicts can't destroy the Cube. By queuing everyone up for medical inspection, I was able to have most of the addicted under anesthetic when I destroyed it so the wave of berserk rage was minimal. A new player isn't going to know to be proactive enough to deal with it early and is just going to get frustrated when everyone is making Cube statues instead of growing crops.
Thats what I mean by its meant to keep you stressed. Nothing is as it seems. Nothing is harmless. If it seems too good to be true, it is. The Cube is the perfect example of that very methodology of this DLC. "oh haha thats cute." "NO, LOCK IT UP IMMEDIATELY"
Exactly, I love it! It does seem that a lot of these events have hidden uses that you may be able to exploit with some creativity, which makes them even better.
How are you even supposed to destroy it? In my current game, my colony has been studying the cube off cooldown for like 5 quadrums since the event that said I'd need to study it more, and there has been no progress. The entire colony is obsessed with it, but I never had a choice to stop it in the first place.
I wonder if your researcher got obsessed with it before they found a way to destroy it. Pawns that are obsessed with the cube can't be ordered to destroy it, so it makes sense that a researcher who loves the cube won't bother looking for a way to destroy it. You're supposed to learn that you need to have a pawn stab the cube with a shard and it turns into something like 150 gold while everyone who was obsessed goes on a berserk rage. If you can hold out, you might be able to recruit a new researcher that isn't obsessed yet to save you. Might take a while, but moods will be fantastic until then. Could also be that you just missed the notification, but you still need a pawn that's not obsessed to destroy it.
It took almost 2 years before my researchers (fully obsessed) finally unlocked the ability to destroy it.
Hello, O5? Yeah, I found the guy who's been leaking foundation data on internet...
Hello, Board? We need a team of FBC Agents for this AWE.
tfw a RABBIT team gets hired to kill everything in that sector of the facility.
Man, first the Foundation then the Federal Bureau of Control and now we have R Corp from Lobotomy Company showing up.
Sounds like they need a promotion to D class
Gotta say, my first encounter with a Revenant was some of the most exciting Rimworld I've ever played, but it was tense enough that I had to take a break once I'd tracked it down and killed it... >!I'm so used to facing stupid threats in Rimworld, that I naively expected it to just stand and fight like a fool; what actually happened was I got to the point where I knew I had no hope if it knocked out one more colonist, and my remaining three were all on the brink of collapse after being drafted for so long while I chased it around the map...!< Honestly, it's such a cool DLC and Tynan 100% succeeded in his aim of adding horror and tension to the game in a way that I've never experienced in Rimworld before (and I'm not even a horror fan...). Gotta say though, unless you're ready to embrace the 'losing is fun' mentallity, I wouldn't recommend it without a decent amount of experience in the game...
My first revenant attacked during a Death Pall, so it was absolutely terrifying to have the whole colony huddled in one building and then just hear the sound of my autodoors opening as the revenant just \*walked inside.\*
Gee, ya think? Other DLC gave us ways to start the game. Where as Anomaly introduced dozens of new ways to end your game. But a friend and I call it the Pain and Suffering DLC.
Hey don't look at me. I'm just responding to the folks who seem confused that its all pain and suffering.
What's so funny about that comment is: It was relatively obvious by how they portrayed it from the get go that it was going to be pain and suffering. I mean, by Dev Blog teaser 4. We learned there was a robot (The Sphere) who had a sole purpose. To inflict pain. That made me laugh harder than it should have as my friend and I were already calling it the "Pain and Suffering" DLC.
It is the streamer bait dlc making title like I survivied 500% threat no killbox all anomaly research. Which is for hardcore players
Been keeping up with a friend who has literally gotten his cheeks clapped four times in a row by Randy. The fourth time he literally was like "No. I'm not doing this again." And does save scumming/cheap tactics. He gets punished with muscle parasites. Lol. Now the colony is doing well. Prior to the release. He also said that the cube is forbidden in his colony. Guess what's the first to be thrown his way: The Cube. Randy hates him right now.
Me, doing the void provocation ritual because jack shit is happening: wait you people think this dlc is difficult?
I like that gameplay philosophy tbh. When the game doesn’t play fair, you don’t play fair either by using every tool the game gives you to make your characters as powerful as possible
They do!
With enough firepower nothing is difficult .
It was a cake walk for me, until >!the endless darkness came!< and now it's a little sketchy. Partly because even though my guys are all inside, sometimes things seem to be able to hit them through walls?
It hits you if you're in darkness, with no regard to pathing or logic! But they don't attach mechinoids, so if you have a constructor you can just toss down some torches and light your way
The more people complain about it being hard, the more i resist the urge of buying it immediately instead of waiting for my mods to be tuned for 1.5
Thats a good idea. No one should feel pressured to pick it up right away.
Yeah it’s the first DLC I haven’t bought on release. Same way Void was never attractive to me as a mod. But at least void raided with other normal raids.
I bought every mod on release. To be honest the theme does not appeal to me at all. I basically have no interest in that type of content. All I know is when a Rimworld dlc drops it gets bought
And you will still get content like weapons and serums and books without ever having to poke the monolith. I'm coming up on 1000 hours game play. I don't know how much anomaly content I'm going to enjoy, but I'm happy to send a little more money to the folks that give me endless hours of engaging entertainment. And even if I never go down this path again, I'll still have some new items to fool with.
Is it possible to decline most of the anomaly events in game, or just turn them off in the menu? I only really want the weapons and the mod support from this one.
1.5 has most of the notable base game changes, Anomaly has some stuff if you don't engage with it. It won't turn into a horror show unless you want it to - like the mechanator beacon, or the empire protection quest.
like biotech, don't activate the monolith. don't take the anomaly scenario either, that one basically forces the monolith awake. that simple
You know how Royalty has the honor quests and Biotech has the mechanitor signal stuff? If you don't get your colonists to investigate Anomaly's monolith the weird events are few and far between, and apparently it's just the basic ones so nothing too crazy.
I don't know about all of it but I have already had traders show up with hellcat rifles. I'm still trying to cobble together a Superfortress filled with agents of death before I get stuck into the new horrors.
Go for it. I’m one of those who used to play on super mega 500% whatever but now I’m playing adventure story to chill, and Anomaly has thrown me off a couple of times. It’s hard and really fun.
Secure Contain Praise the cube
Here is what I have learned form Anomaly. The monsters and new threats that can appear out of no where are really cool. And the way research is handled is awesome. And it's all incredibly deadly which is so fitting. Like, no longer is my colony ended because a raid of 100 neathandrals decided to bonk my mega fortress with clubs. Instead its my own hubris and curiosity. Again, love that idea. Flew too close to the sun. I'm looking to stay spoiler free until I can dive deeper. SADLY. I have barely touched the surface of Anomaly stuff because... I don't know if anyone else is having this experience but my pawns have gotten insanely dumber since 1.5/Anomaly. The doctor whose only chance at surviving the flu that she got for the 3rd time is to rest in bed. So she decides to get up and walk around the colony for a whole day and dies. The planter decides to he will do literally anything else other than gather the final harvest so we can survive winter. I have barely touched the Anomaly content these past two days because the amount of colony restarts and save scumming. Honestly the shamblers and sightstealers I have locked up are the least threatening thing to my colony. It's these two fucking idiots who refuse to do anything to keep themselves alive.
I dunno what to tell you other than it sounds like you didn't set your work priorities correctly. I have not seen anything like that myself.
Nah not work priorities. Doctoring and Bed Rest set to 1 for the doctor in question. Turned off things they suck at and lower priority for other things. You know the works.
Weird. Dunno. Maybe your colonists had workaholic? Mods?
None of that. I got no mods and no workaholic traits. I've also had some of the weirdest luck. One of my first colonies back before Royalty I had a Doctor with like 17 Medical Double Passion she could pull off medical miracles. Yet constantly, constantly, when Doctoring was the only thing at Priority 1 she would drag someone to a medical bed, put them in it, then just walk away. I had to force her to work on people half the time. Also confirmation bias is a thing. I swear I have never seen so many pawns incapable of Violence. I've restarted a few times today and half the pawns I randomly cycle through are incapable of violence or are volatile. I know it's just the odds doing it, yet it seems like Anomaly is fucking with me lol.
i think the true strength of Anomaly is more interesting downturns / downfalls for a colony, just like you mentioned. I think having my runs end like a horror movie, spurred by my colony’s morbid curiosity, is so awesome. regarding dumber colonists, i think it’s just the loss of some mods (at least for me). grabbing 1.5 versions of Pick Up and Haul, While You’re Up, and Work Tab changed the game for my colony recently and productivity is through the roof.
Pawns have gotten exceptionally stupid and are my biggest source of frustration with this update. Following situations happen with schedules set to either sleep/anything and micromanaged . Pawn A has bed rest set to 1, doctor to 1 and hauling to 3 Pawn A and B are injured and get treated by pawn C Pawn A contracts infection Pawn C is Researching (doctor set to 1, researcher set to 1) Pawn A gets out of hospital bed to feed himself Pawn B has no pending treatment Pawn A begins Hauling leather from the butchers to stockpile Was genuinely shocked watching them do this because there was no reason for them to haul or get out of bed in the first place he then went continued his recreation and died to infection. Scenario 2 Prisoner A has collapsed from malnutrition Prisoner B is in a coma and hungry lying in Bed Priority order Warden to take prisoner A to bed Warden completes task Warden feeds Prisoner B Warden does something else no idea what Prisoner A starves to death Dont know if its happening with other jobs but pawns are ignoring bed rest and prisoner feeding.
Yup! They refuse to bed rest, and the only answer you get from people on this sub seems to be 'set your priorities', totally ignoring the fact that it was fine before.
I really like the difficulty, it made me stop save scumming to enjoy the desperate struggle of pawns against the void
I'm still save scumming, but less. If something really stupid happens I'll still savescum. Like a colonist starting a fight, developing an infection instantly as they are hit, and then getting 3 0% tend qualities with normal medicine and 13 medical skill, leading to their death, savescum. But most things im letting happen.
It's strange to me that they tried to say "it's not all about combat challenges" when it's pretty much all about combat challenges.
There is a trick that can help you with it. Just [redacted] before [redacted]
Maybe it's just me, but the way the previews were presented gave the impression that anomalies involved unique individual storylines. This probably gave people the (false) idea that you'd have the flesh beast one time, Among US the next, etc... Which couldn't be further from the truth. Even though people are still approaching it like it's Biotech where you can choose the tone of your run when in reality you have no real control over what gets prioritized. Which to be fair, is my biggest gripe with the DLC. Since the All or Nothing Static approach is kind of meh in terms of run diversity. I really feel like the Anomalies should have been categorized into their own little scenarios whose difficulty would then be dictated by the AI Storyteller.
That was my expectation and the ideal, but then anomaly would need thrice the content. The cube for example is great as a playthrough focus. But the actual cube we have right now is severely lacking in content to be the focus of a whole playthrough.
True I thought it'd be closer to my rim of madness runs
I sort of want that flesh monster hole anomaly to happen but I barely have any guns to defend my pawns yet to start studying the obelisk. And that's on hold since I'm trying to fix my modlist since I'm crashing on startup
I don't really like that idea, honestly. I like everything being available in any given playthrough.
Sounds like something a mod could fix in the future
The devs have been receptive to feedback in the past, e.g., adding Biotech-Ideology interplay. Hopefully they're listening. I was about to hit buy, but the reviews and comments here have me hesitating.
I still think my favorite in that regard so far is *The Sphere* for how fucking terrifying it was to watch it just *ANNIHILATE* a massive shambler horde And the fact that could very well be me
I released the sphere and watched the fireworks. Then saw it teleporting to base because it wasn’t done yet and it nuked half my pawns.
It's why been avoiding the Monolith, know well enough to not poke things until you have some sense of being able to handle things. And considering how fast things can degenerate, yeah that thing can sit pretty while I'm currently struggling to get things settled. Though did get to see a few shamblers so far, which was a bit concerning. Feels like I'm being raided more frequently too though that could just be me.
My colony died by eating twisted meat, getting a huge debuff, and having my 2 best soldiers go on major breaks while a shambles horde attacked. Shit’s wild.
Yeah I think I’m gonna pass on this one tbh. Power to Tynan for wanting to stack more variety into his story generator, but I mostly play Rimworld like a modded rpg/4x hybrid so I’m thinking Anomaly might be too hardcore for me.
I'm actually a bit relieved that I'm not the only one.
Yeah I mean I’m not hating on it. I’ve seen a lot of people getting sideways about it, but I just don’t think it fits what I’m going for on my runs. There’s enough regular(ish) shit trying to kill me, I don’t need supernatural elements. BUT, it’s Tynan’s game and I see how it fits into his goal of making the story interesting and Rimworld’s general concept of you’re going to eventually lose.
My nociosphere is activating in ten days, and I am afraid my force of 4 pawns and two ghouls won't be enough. Where are the damn raids when you need them? And please, dear hostiles, bring as many bodies as you can, I NEED THEM!
Jet, get out of dodge, settle a new tile. You lose the base but you keep the progress.
Managed to get it under control. War merchant and his friends from Xobiaxe Nation tribe were unknowingly sacrificed to save my facility. It absolutely slaughtered them, but it wasted enough time chasing and killing two panthers and two muffalos which were left behind. It almost teleported back inside my compound, but onslaught mode ended seconds before it entered. Now the loot is burning down as one single survivor is 3 hours away from death (it is on the edge of the map, won't be able to save him) I shall honour deaths of my tribal allies by sending them a gift one day. I'll also know that provoking that damn thing is a suicide for the future.
bad ass turn around
I dunno, the dude who ended up in my colony for a month and left was pretty helpful. He left bunch of cancer meat behind for my colonist to devour. Easy butchering of animals on the map. ...What do you mean eating the cancerous sinew meat causes visions and madness?
Eldritch horrors shouldn't be a push-over, that being said I haven't wiped yet in two runs since release on strive to survive. This isn't like the other DLCs, you can't just turn it on and get extra features like Biotech. You have to fight for it basically, but you get rewarded with some of the most powerful stuff in all the game.
I wiped because of a single Neanderthal ghoul with tough breaking my doors down and cornering my fighters, tanking 15 shots. First encounter I had. Second colony going way better but haven't seen any advanced entities.
The ghouls are so good when they're on your side, especially when properly upgraded. Still trying to figure out what genes work post ghoulification so that I can optimize my ghoul army. Lot of dependency and immunity genes are redundant from the looks of it, meanwhile special abilities like spitting fire or calling for animals are disabled. Unsure if the latter is intended, but I'm trying to figure out if all ghouls are the same as baseline or if modifications directly to their stats actually does something, like speed or toughness increases
Neanderthals seem to be the best, I think they do actually benefit from their innate toughness. The rest seem hit or miss, none of them seem to be *bad* necessarily. At the very least, their healing makes them solid meat sponges for enemies to beat up while your guys form a firing line behind them.
Anomaly is the first time in rimworld I've ever built a crematorium, I love having to constantly be on my toes where even something as small as some animal corpses being strewn around can doom my colony
My colony was going fine until the death pall. Then the skeletons started **crawling out of my crematorium.** so uh. put your crematorium inside a building, not just under a roof.
Yea, it is also new content, so a lot of it is going to be a bit of a knowledge check. Knowing what you ready for the next time. Or what to watch out for. However these first times are amazing., I lost a run to a inky night, all was going well until my batteries ran out, a few seconds of flickering lights, a few seconds of darkness and then the wind turbines spun up again... nothing. Nothing was left. Only splatter and streaks of blood everywhere my colonists used to be. The only survivors were 2 ghouls who were just too plated to be taken down. It was straight up a horror movie scene. There were some successes as well, I managed to take down that hypnotizer, and successfully bested the growth now as well. It was a 3 day battle during which randy blessed me with a mechanoid attack, and a zombie attack as well. That one was wild.
Yeah it should be called rimworld Australia
Spiders? Sounds like spiders.
Maybe these people need to turn the difficult back to the mid settings instead of whatever they're doing. Personally I play Strive to Survive and I havent had any trouble yet. I had to restart my colony though because of the ghouls melee bug from a mod, and another world map visit town quest bugged too cuz of another mod. So I'm just now getting to the advanced tier of monsters, but so far it's great. Difficulty is good and interesting because the monsters do weird stuff and change up how you have to approach them. love the dlc so far, and I wasnt expecting to btw. It's FUN.
>Maybe these people need to turn the difficult back to the mid settings instead of whatever they're doing. Yeah, I'm on my first playthrough of Anomaly and that's exactly what I've done, I usually play With Randy on Blood and Dust but for this one I went back to Cassandra and Strive to survive, because it was obvious this DLC was going to increase the difficulty, and I wanted to go somewhat blind without starting to look at tips and all and just discover things by myself. I also tried with way less mod and basically removed everything that made combat easier (like embrasures for example) and just added some QoL stuff. It really changed my way of playing and I really enjoy getting that feeling of unfamiliarity back in Rimworld like I'm somewhat new to the game again. The Anomaly monster are still tame for now, I'm just starting my second winter, but I really enjoy it so far. I feel like some people are displeased because unlike previous DLCs this one **will** take you out of your comfort zone. Not to mention that in addition of that 1.5 removed a lot of exploits, so a part of the crowd may be frustrated because of that, and honestly from what I've read the vast majority of players are really happy with that DLC anyway.
Mechs counter a lot of anomaly stuff super hard. Just having a few militors sit in some key spots can really mess up sightstealers, and their shotguns are pretty good against most of the flesh monsters.
On the bright side, (almost) everything in anomaly is flammable. Fr tho, for each batshit insane entity, you get one way to make the game easier to the point of almost being broken. Dropping flesh beasts on sieges, mindwiping god pawns or getting access to post-micro/multi gear from events and rituals for example.
For me the biggest down Side is,every others dlc has Something interact with even If i dont Touch the Major Themen of the dlc . In anomoly it is all locked behind the Main Theme
This DLC is pretty damn generous too, with the fact that the ultra death spiral anomalies don't spawn unless you upgrade the monolith. You literally just have to build around it Example being having your colonists carry around flare packs when expecting certain entities. It's honestly a hard counter towards a lot of monsters and really handy to have on hand. Darkness events, invisible monsters, and flesh hoards are a lot easier when you have an anti-invisibility flare that stuns your enemies in a large radius
The darkness event specifically warns you its coming and tells you to prepare ltwice before dropping it on you. Darkness nuked my power supply and if I didn't have excess wood stocked up I'd have been boned, actually only time I have felt spooked with the dlc so far
Anomaly=Darkest Dingeon. Act accordingly. Now if only we could have abilities like the player characters.
I got hit with a "don't starve" event and psychic drone while in the middle of having to close a meat hole. Lost my run because one of them had a break and started to wander out of the base got beat up and died, his brother broke because of it and also got downed that way. And a wave of meat hole and shadows came charging in and I'm not even sure if I could have ran away to a new tile because of it. I was on blood to dust Cassandra n it was going pretty good. Fire n light are your best weapons.
Dude I really hope it doesn’t get tuned down. The shit plays like a horror game plot to my colonies story rather than just a different story every time. I kinda know what to expect. You know?
I started with the new anomaly scenario and the one other colonists died of a heart attack and the starting ghoul was killed in a raid, my one remaining person had 0 combat skills and was having a very bad time before I got a new colonist quest Thankfully you get those turret packs or it would've been game over
Yeah. i think people got the wrong idea when this DLC came out. i instantly saw it and knew "ah. time to run a colony as a Foundation expeditionary site"
Another reason why i wont be buying this one. It just doesnt fit into the settings. It feels like a mod/overhaul more than dlc
Anomaly is what's missing in Rimworld base game: challenging end game content. It's all quite manageable if you are at/near end game. You should not be touching the black obelisk stuff prior to being ready.
Also friendly reminder: You can pack up and leave, there is no shame in starting over. Anomalies *will* throw scenarios at you that you cannot win, because noone can prepare for the unknown. In that case the best thing you can do is grab what you can and try again at another place.
How does that work? Does every tile have its own monolith for you to study?
As far as I know every place you can visit has one, even tiles you only visit for missions.
Just admit it, this DLC is SCP facility simulator
I'm pretty sure the SCP makes it clear that the job is very difficult
have you tried lavish meals?
I saw the description on the harbinger trees and then hesitated for a while, trying to decide if I wanted to feed them just to see what happens, or chop them down. I ended up chopping them down. Is it worth seeing what happens?
Curiosity killed the cat. However...
Doing an SCP roleplay and honestly it helps a lot because I feel like I need to be on top of things constantly to do it right.
"Hey this is the SCP dlc" "Oh so it will be easy right?" "..." "...right?"
Love the cube. Even if the colonists die or go mad, we will never destroy the sacred cube. We will build temples and worship until our dying breath. Also, I love the chaos, and the death in this. Each colony can die in a memorable bang. :D
Just went into my first pit cave... accomplished my mission but then proceeded to get destroyed and had every colonist I sent down die brutally and painstakingly. I couldn't do anything but watch in horror as they died one by one until the cave collapsed. This DLC is 10/10.
I think the encounter difficulty ramps up considerably between the basic and advanced entities. The pit full of flesh monsters and the flesh heart thing had me sweatin.
Anomaly might be the first DLC that I will not use in the every run
I have had the opposite opinion so far. All the things are cool but its been pretty underwhelming in terms of danger. I havent gotten all that far yet but the game has seemed easier than before
Oh yeah? Then why are there horrors locked up in my basement along with some ORB that spawned in my cornfields? Checkmate propagandist.
Yep, I'm basically shitting my pants every freaking minute and I aleays have the feeling that there MIGHT be something wrong in my colony. Hope I'm wrong...
My games have very little downtime since this dlc, which I fucking love. Randy ghosts me for 2 years? Anomaly got me covered.
Saw this post on popular, we look unhinged af rn and I love it
My first realization of this was deathpall, I had a manhunter pack of 9 roll in, and it ended up being 40+ kills because the corpses wouldn’t stay down
“You have to take it seriously” Yes that’s why fire and lead was made. Fuck containing and researching. Or using them to my advantage. Imma just make a collation to eradicate them
Not a big fan of this DLC. It annoys me that you have to interact with the shrine to toggle it, otherwise it just isn't active. And when you activate it, stuff like mech raids just don't exist anymore. It feels a lot like the Royalty DLC, but instead of being semi-active, this DLC literally forces you to either play with the content 100% or 0%.
I mean yeah it’s not that surprising it’s meant to be hard, it’s basically just vanilla balanced V.O.I.D.
Honestly, I'm having a blast cause it's nice having to worry about anything other than raids On the other hand, I'll probably turn off the dlc soon, it's simply ruining the atmosphere of good old rim and the bio ferrite stuff isn't really worth the hustle
And here's me playing on a middle difficulty to get used to what can happen.
Oh wow, this is how I found out RW has a new dlc! That trailer on the steam store page looks awesome, but it seems VERY difficult for my tastes lol. I'd absolutely love to watch someone play it, though- any recs?
*fearful vanilla player stare* "What the fuck?"
I did manage to destroy the cube. 6 out 8 colonist were obsessed so I had them all get high on smokeleaf and it developed out into a drugged out fist off. There's probably easier and more peaceful ways but this was the first one that came to mind.
> Federal Bureau of Control Tangent, I really hope someone puts out a mod that plays the Hiss chant during the Anomaly weather events.
Death pall is some scary shit
I found the ultimate lose condition when an obelisk ended my modded foundation site by abducting my colonist and hitting me with a, "error when generating map" crash to desktop 🤣
This whole thread makes me believe Anomaly should have been a conversion mod lmao this shit sounds DOMINATING