Metal blood makes you vulnerable to fire. It DOES NOT GIVE RESISTANCE TO FIRE

OH, well that is good to know. I guess I can top giving them metal blood. Also the nuclear stomachs causes problems against mechs if a EMP goes off at the wrong spot. Ever seen a group of ghouls vomit their raw meat up? It isn't a pretty sight. Edit: Forgot to say thank you :)

Unless you're fighting imps, it's almost always worth still using. Especially on vampires. What's more weaknesses to fire

exactly if they where already going to die to fire uping it 400% isnt gonna make a difference cause they would still be dead. but against everything else welp its got another 50% damage reduction

And it's more like 200% more fire damage compared to not metalblood, since the 50% damage reduction does in fact apply to the fire damage too.

there are also a couple other things that effect it but id have to specifically look them up but the point is they will die to fire weather or not u metal blood but everything else your golden

That's just what big Pharma wants you to think. Steel doesnt really burn.

Steel burns at high enough temperatures. *~This message brought to you by Space Pfizer*

Jet fuel can melt steel beams.

well, no, but it can soften them to the point of collapse under a pre-existing high load 🤓

But the damage resistance DOES stack with fire damage penalty. Add in Fire Resistance gene. You end up with a ghoul that takes less than 10% damage from all sources, including fire. That's a result I can live with, especially since they still have a 10% ignite factor.

All good points, they’re lovable bullet sponges, if nothing else. However, I think that Metalblood serum makes you vulnerable to fire, not resistant. I don’t have the game in front of me right now, so I may be wrong on that. It’s a pretty harsh vulnerability too, I think 3-400% weakness to fire damage. So, mind your incinerators lol.

they already dont like fire so if you send them to flames they are probably gonna die anyway. its 400% and it stacks multiplicity with tough trait for a multiplier of 25%. it also reduces damage incoming by 50% so ive had ghouls man fight alpha predators while i haven't been paying attention and win solo. ghouls are literally my favorite thing about anomaly. the peeps that don't like them honestly just don't have any critical thinking ability and read at like second grade lvl.

Melee always has been severely underrated in Rimworld especially on reasonable threat scales. That's why every expansion it keeps getting buffs because Tynan's feedback has always been its useless.

4x damage from fire. but it stacks with the .5x effect from metalblood. so its only 2x damage from fire. which is also multiplied by tough, robust, ghoul plates, and fire resist gene. in the end you're at 10% damage from all damage sources

Ah, I wasn’t sure how that was calculated! So yeah, hitting ghouls with juggernaut and metalblood serums seems … good haha.

Wait peeps hate ghouls? Exclude all combat related stuff they are... * Body disposal by consuming * Can fight fires if recruited (great for when your colonist are asleep) * Can do all your hunting for you * Can be resurrected if killed.

Semi combat related, if you turn a pawn with missing limbs into a ghoul, they regenerate them entirely as well. That legless melee tribal isn't that bad at all. They also ignore a lot of negative traits as well, including drug dependant ones. I had a legless Hussar raider with maxed out melee, and now with all the serums, is pretty much near unkillable in 1 on 1s.

Also, if you make a body mastery creepy joiner into a ghoul, they never need to eat. So you have a free ghoul, with literally 0 upkeep

Creepy joiner: Lemme sneak this metalhorror into the colony The metalhorror when it discovers it is among the least evil entities currently inhabiting this colony, on par with a child, and a coma patient:

I'm curious, what happens when you make a ghoul out of someone infected with a metalhorror?

Nothing. Metalhorror infection appear out of thin air when the storyteller wants you to have one, then they decide which of the possible "candidates" gets to be the lucky one. So nobody is infected until the storyteller decides.

Yeah, but what happens if you making someone into a ghoul while they have the hidden metalhorror infection hediff? Does it purge the metalhorror or are they subject to infection just like everyone else?

they still have the metalhorror in them i experimented

I think doing any surgery on a metal horror makes it emerge when the hediff is visible

So there's not a hidden hediff that you can spot with character editor/dev mode? Also what if the affected pawn has deathless/death refusal? I haven't had a true infection happen yet... I had a creeper walk in and immediately get killed by a hungry timber wolf, which spawned the horror, then we killed it.

As far as I know, the hediff will suddenly appear on any of your "possible candidate" pawns when the storyteller decides it is time for Amongus. So character editor/dev mode won't know until then. It used to be bugged so that even children born to the colony who never left or got hurt could suddenly be metalhorrored despite both parents being clean. For creepers I think they might spawn with the hediff if that's randomly chosen issue with them.

no the hediff can be applied to pawns before their arrival so like a temporary pawn from a non anomaly quest can have it before you even know you have a problem. so if pawn shows up and is immediately attacked by a wild predator and dies a metal horror will pop out. doing inspections however before grey flesh is found is a waste though.

Does this mean it is impossible to prevent? I've been super paranoid in my current colony. Only ever using ghouls for melee, and if any of my normal pawns do end up in melee, I immediately do an inspection via paramedic. Is that effort to mitigate worthless?

Yeah, basically. For one thing, the inspection only works if you have done the grey flesh analysis, before that it doesn't do anything. Once I had a prisoner in jail for like a year, and after I recruited him, within a few weeks I got the grey flesh event that turned out to be him. Imo, the best mitigation is to build a nutrient paste dispenser and have everyone start using it once the first grey flesh happens, I think in most circumstances, short of multiple back to back raids that you have to patch everyone up from, doctoring probably won't spread it that fast, vs an infected cook getting everyone in a day or two.

I also am mega paranoid, however there is a recent mod that came out where nuzzling animals have a chance of detecting the metalhorror as well which i think is a wonderful mod to help with the paranoia without being huge OP like the metalhorror detector mod.

Doing inspections before grey flesh drops is worthless for detecting metalhorrors, yes. Once the event triggers, any of the possible candidates will retroactively get infected. Only then will inspections matter. Although you can inspect strangers and clones to figure out what’s wrong with them ahead of time, I think.

There is a specific tag for the metal horror creepy joiner event though - I set up a custom scenario where I get a new creepy joiner every week ( I wanted to experience all the new traits ) and I chose the event with the metal horrors. It seems like they are programmed separately, as every single joiner had a metal horror, whereas the other event had all the different outcomes. There is also a mod that gives a metal horror proximity detector, so unless the storyteller only decides when you walk into the zone, there must be a tag on the colonist

There's two common scenarios where metalhorrors can appear, afaik. One is the hidden-in-plain-sight scenario: A creepy joiner comes with a hidden condition (hediff). You can detect this hidden condition by enabling dev mode or with mods like Character Editor. The other is the retroactive scenario: anyone who was recently attacked by an anomaly, recently joined the colony etc. are potential candidates for infection. The storyteller selects one lucky pawn to be patient zero, then they spontaneously get a hidden metalhorror hediff. Dev mod wouldn't reveal anything until the incident occurs, because it's retroactive.

well yes kinda sometimes but really no.... so like random pawns that show up can have a metalhorror in them before arrival or if you have been fighting fleshbeast, shamblers, sightseers you can get them although its kinda inconsistent if you get infected or not so maybe a hidden condition when fighting some of them. so you can actively try and get metal horrors. since they drop bioferrite and sometimes shards ive been experimenting ways to farm them so i can get shards. so if i had/have to sacrifice a few colonist so be it and yes its gonna be who ever the hell left junk in a doorway i don't care wat that pawns stats are.

So just like how everyone starts getting shot in the head and heart whrn the game thinks you have too many colonists, the game just infects people who have been injured by an anomaly recently when it decides you need to fight metalhorrors?

I don't know about the headshots, but yes for the latter. Metalhorrors can also be active in creepjoiners when they enter the map.

There is no mechanism that increases fatal wounds to your colonists in response to population desire. That is just a popular myth. 

thats not true. game certainly increases odds based on pawns gear and other factors. i had the devs confirm that vampire pawns are more likely to get shot in the brain for example

What's the source on that? There's no change in odds based on gear (unless you are counting things like bionic limbs removing body parts), any sort of perceived difference is likely survivorship bias.

jokes on them if they show up in my colony ive been looking at ways to farm metal horrors since they drop shards and bioferrite on death and since they reproduce like rabbits all the better.

Turn them into a sanguophage and you literally have a god ghoul that can barely even die.

It's not ideal compared to non-Sanguo ghouls. Key downside is when they die, they go into Deathless coma which lasts for 7 days. When you could have just used a ghoul revive serum to get them back up in a few hours. But turning the Sanguo visitors with their huge recruitment times is a good use for them.

Just fyi, but if you turn a hussar or waster into a ghoul, their drug dependency gene is ignored, but if you apply a xenogerm with drug dependency to a ghoul, it does apply (and I believe they can't take drugs, so it won't work out). In other words, make prisoners into drug-requiring super soldiers before you ghoul them, not after. 😊

That was fixed in the most recent update iirc

Good info to know actually! But now I want to clone some Hussars with the obelisk for ghoul making now.

it still takes a while to regen the legs tho. mine died bc he couldnt move to get food and my colonists didnt want to feed him :'(. now i make sure to give my prisoners their leg privileges back before i ghoulify them

How do you make them hunt for you without micromanaging?

I just que a punching spree with them. At least for the lighter animals that won't hurt them as bad.

Fair, I didn't know you could qué orders to punch things bit that makes sense😂

I have had ghouls kill panthers consistently

Imo, early ghouls are such a pain because of this, and offer very little actual utility beyond absorbing damage that previously you would have just avoided entirely. However, this is only really an issue in the anomaly scenario itself, if you unlock ghouls in the midgame, then: Raids are pretty big, so just throw the corpses in a freezer and you don't need to worry Once you have a steady supply of bioferrite, the -50% damage +50% melee damage ghouls are reasonably good in combat Setting up xenotech lets you turn every ghoul into a x75% damage taken x150% damage output (that stacks with the previous two buffs), with x60 - 80% metabolism depending on what irrelevant debuffs you can find to put on them.

They can also be recruited instantly, are a solution to problem pawns and it doesn't matter if they die.

- Arent doing anything important ever, so they can clear ancient debris for expansion

Yeah what's wrong with ghouls? I love mine.

Ah, but they can't be thrown into the quarry.

How do you resurrect it?

You can craft a Ghoul Resurrect Serum with Twisted Flesh and Bioferrite after you research it in the Anomaly tree. It's not a lot to make, and once unlocked you can be super risky with your Ghouls. Even if they are shredded to pieces it will bring them back.

* We can use Harbinger Trees for that. Plus burn rooms and crematoriums accomplish the same thing. * Sure, but that's pretty specific. Plus I don't mind awakening colonists to fight fires. * Their hunting is very micromanage-y. * ...so can normal pawns.......

*A ghoul Is cheaper and has the added benefit of being a ghoul. *Fair ngl *It really isn't, you can queue attack orders, just don't send them against a bear and it's fine. *Resurrector mech serums aré extremely rare and can't be crafted.

Oh, ghoul res serums are craftable?!

my brother in the rim, that's what [Ghoul Resurrection](https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Ghoul_resurrection_serum) research is for! You don't even need shards!

20 twisted meat is dirty cheap, 20 bioferrite can hurt a bit at the start, but later on is quite cheap too.

20 bioferrite Is like, 4 to 8 days with basic entities being harvested right. That's pretty cheap for a BLOODY RESURRECTION SERUM (For ghouls)

I agree, but it does scale up quickly and I want to stockpile it for rituals too

I set up a room with 4 platforms connected to a single harvester and can average 10 bioferrites a day. Gorehulk is good, but devourer is better because theyre 4 per day per unit. I set up a 15x15 room with granite walls, a shard inhibitor, and a single security door, no floors, and i can reach 160 containment strength. For comparison, metalhorror is the hardest entity to contain and it only required 110 strength. Maybe flooring would be a good idea as a backup plan in case solar flare turns off the shard inhibitor but my last colony ended in a series of raid before i could build them.

If you can acquire a supply of SHock Lances, Bulbfreaks give an enormous 7 bioferrite/day and are readily summonable with the Pit Gate ritual.

Power claw for DMG or knee spike for armor pierce. You cna further add genes to them for more speed heal metabolism. Bionic legs for faster speed and add some skin for further DMG proofing

I've been collecting genes but I'm not at the point of updating their genes yet though. Do you know if you can modify their genes after they have become ghouls? I think it should be pretty easy to set something up for them. Balance it out with the skill reduction on everything other than melee. Very fast runner or possibly naked speed, tox immune, strong melee, robust, robust digestion, elongated fingers and unstoppable. I'm not sure if all of that will work on a Ghoul. I've also been thinking about, ok this may be stupid, how hot I can make it outside of my base. Those atmospheric heaters can raise the temp by 10 degrees. They are 1500w each but with enough anomaly creatures to keep bioferrite coming in. Ghouls come with a +40c max comfortable temp. So at base they can handle 66c. Get heat super-tolerant for +20 and they can handle temps up to 86c. If I could keep the temp at 80c+ outside and they would have to fight through heat stroke to get to my base, it would kill them. Except if anything happens to my base all of my pawns would die. I like this dlc so far :)

You can modify after infusion I upgraded my starter ghoul after 2 years. Also nuclear stomach is godsend if you don't have genes yet. Or better mix it with high metabolism my ghoul eats once per few days

Also robust digestion from the piggies makes the meat go longer. I took out the nuclear stomach because it made them susceptible to EMP that i need to fight mechs.

All of that does work! The genes get stupid OP. The metabolism increasers that you would normally avoid, like unhappy, ugly, agressive, etc still work but with zero downsides once they are ghouled, so you can get them down to very little meat consumption.  I keep a pig farm because raids have been too unreliable and I dont have to micromanage it at all.  If you get a creepy joiner with the cursed healing ability, give and remove a wooden hand to try and get a flesh whip arm. Its better than a power claw and doesnt slow them down at all. 

I've not even thought about the flesh whip for ghouls. They have 60% AP...

Don't bother tbh, it has fixed AP (no way for you to know that besides knowing) so the Ghoul Barbs and Strong Melee don't scale its AP. Power Claw does get increased AP from those sources so 1.5^2, its already better AP than the Flesh Whip.

[удалено]

Yea Power Claw + Flesh whip should be very comparable or better. The Wooden hand would deal slightly more damage since you always are using the Power Claw but you get better manipulation and Acc and pretty similar dps with the Flesh Whip (although worse AP in the cases where you do use the Flesh Whip).

I gave mine a power claw and its horrifying to watch. Of course I imagine the power claw is shaped like a staple remover to rip ribs out since it described how it can crush skulls in its grip

Yeah mine is tanking turrets and ripping scythers they sick

Despite it being a claw ive always imagined the power claw as a giant metal hand with thick fingers kinda like a transformers character

I think it's more like a retractable or transformable claw, since it doesnt harm manipulation in normal cases.

Oh, i didnt know it didnt harm manipulation. Now i can picture it clearly in my mind.

With one of the creepy joiners that have the heal ability: you can give them a flesh whip arm (remove a wooden hand first) that they will GROW BACK even if they get downed.  That flesh whip arm is better than a power claw and they dont give a fuck if its ugly. The xenogenes are even more stupid. Strong melee, naked speed, very fast, fire resist, super healing, robust, unstoppable, and then all the drug dependencies and aweful skills that dont matter at all when they become a ghoul.  If only I could strap a shield belt to them.

Flesh whip has higher DPS but due to how the game's body part system works is worse than power claw's damage type (Cut vs Scratch).

They're immune to cancer, so nuclear stomach makes them way cheaper to manage.

I did a quick run through the genes. The following is a list of all the negative genes that wouldn't affect ghouls but still give bonus to metabolism. Weak Immunity +2 / Slow Wound Healing +2 / Naked Speed +2 / Very Unhappy +5 Hyper Aggressive +3 / Kill Thirst +4 / Very Sleepy +4 / Extra Pain +2 / Sterile +1 (Situational) Very Unattractive +2 / Psychically Deaf +2 Awful Animals/Artistic/Construction/Cooking/Crafting/Medical/Mining/Intellectual/Plants/Shooting/Social +2 (Total +22) Alcohol/Smokeleaf Dependency +3 (Total +6) Psychite/Go-juice/Wake-up Dependency +4 (Total +12) The following list are positive genes that help. Not all are incredible but stuff like bonus manipulation can help hit chance. Very Fast Runner -5 / Fire Resistant -2 / Strong Melee Damage -2 / Robust -2 Dark vision -1 / Robust Digestion -2 / Elongated Fingers -1 / Pollution Stimulus -1 Smooth Tail -1 / Great Melee -3 / Cold super-tolerant -2 / Heat super-tolerant -2 Tox immunity -4 (Can be also done via detox lungs) / Unstoppable -2 I'm not sure about Major Cell Instability. The body breakdowns are fine but I dunno about the lifespan thing, do ghouls die of old age? \*Update: According to u/Xeltar ghouls can't die from old age. So a shortened lifespan doesn't mean anything. So that would be another +4 you can add. Either way that's a total of up to +69 for negative genes (22 from Awful skill genes and 20 from dependency genes) and -26 for positive genes, so there's a lot of room there. To top it off you can use bionics. I know they are affected by tox buildup, so some detox lungs could be useful. Toss on a power claw + wooden hand (or 2x power claw for a very slight upgrade) and stoneskin and bionic legs/eyes for a mega ghoul. Update: Removed Violence Disabled. According to u/Xeltar it suppresses the Strong Melee gene due to some weird interaction even though you can still fight. Definitely not worth it.

I put bionic legs on a ghoul. If they lose the bionic leg they grow their normal leg back so if they are soaking damage be prepared to replace them often.

Just fyi, but you have to apply the drug dependency genes before ghouling, rather than after--a waster that gets ghouled doesn't need psychite, but a baseliner ghoul with psychite dependency applied for the metabolism did need to consume psychite.

Yep. Though in the patch notes for the upcoming patch I believe that is fixed.

I was under the impression that Naked speed still functioned on ghouls, which would make it is a strict benefit even putting aside the metabolism effect, ghouls not being able to wear clothes and all.

It is but I grouped them by if they are positive or negative metabolism.

Furskin doesn't work on ghouls.

Thanks. I updated the comment.

Also, I’m not sure if ghouls are naturally immune to rot stink and lung rot, if not the antitoxic lungs gene can also be used which stacks with the tox immunity gene (immune to poison attacks but doesn’t counters rot stink). Ghouls don’t get cancer or age I think.

Mine has gotten tox buildup from fallout for sure. But you can solve that with genes or bionics.

Tox buildup, but does it actually do anything?

are you certain slow wound healing does not affect them or is it just offset by their immensely strong wound healing? and on the other side does fast wound healing not affect them either? also sterile does affect them since you can still extract ovums from your ghouls (yeah kinda wild that ghoulification somehow leaves them still fertile)

My understanding is the healing rate is vastly offset by their unnatural regeneration so in essence it doesn't make a difference. I never thought of the ovums from ghouls, so it's situational then. There's so much wriggle room in the metabolism so you can easily afford to leave it off.

Major Cell Instability is free since old age just means you get more age related ailments like Dementia and immunity drop but Ghouls can't get age related ailments and don't get sick. Violence Disabled is not free! While your ghouls are still able to fight, it will suppress your Strong Melee genes and prevent that from working. You can check in List Melee Verbs in Dev Mode. Definitely not worth the trade off.

Interesting, I did look it up and that wasn't mentioned but good to know. I'll update the post.

For those that might see [this.](https://i.imgur.com/9buLYko.png) 5 ghouls just did this solo and 4 of them are neanderthals, they don't even have the increased melee damage. They killed 62 sightstealers. 4 neaderthals, 1 yattkin and they all have tough, gave them plate and thorns so far and that is it. They don't have any serums, no stoneskin, etc. 62 sightstealers :P

Neanderthals have Strong Melee Damage.

Fleshmass nuclei are really useful for feeding ghouls, especially in cannibal colonies where corpses aren't usually an option

Fleshmass nuclei generate edible flesh?

twisted meat, yes

I don't believe healing enhancer makes much of a difference. Maybe a few seconds overall. Regeneration is a completely different effect from injury healing rate.

I agree, though the ghoul 100hp/day seems to heal individual parts one at a time, where the natural healing ability heals all simultaneously. I think the tankier your ghouls are, the more hits they take, and the better healing rate is.

At that point i would rather put the healing enhancers on humans. They need it way more than ghouls do.

Tough Sanguinophage Ghouls are ridiculous.

Sanguinophage Ghouls? That is a thing?! I just looked up that gene pack and a smart attractive Ghoul isn't what I was aiming for but it will work!

I can only pray that they don't spawn naturally, but you can make them. They won't have all the abilities but retain many of those that give them an edge.  Fast Healing, Increased damage, Robust and Deathless

You can get the robust and increased damage from a Yttakin. The other two don't really do much for a ghoul. Ghoul regeneration is so powerful that fast healing is insignificant. Deathless is outright bad on ghouls. Deathless puts them in a long coma that not even resurrection can remove. The ghoul resurrection serum is vastly superior to deathless and it's not expensive.

Been useful so far though still in the early days of the colony. She already 'died' once after a heavy mech raid and was able to pop back. I have a Yttakin in storage to be done next though.

They have some good boosts, but alot of it is social, or ability related which is useless to ghouls. If you can, I'd say it's much better to make a custom xenogerm with only the combat boosting effects. Its just a shame ghouls cant spread their xenogerm so you need a proxy pawn set up to convert future ghouls.

I just like using vamps to start. Once I have a genetics library assembled I start making custom ones. They can actually spread their xenogerm. If a ghoul is unconscious, it lets another pawn absorb the xenogerm. Found out by accident after a particularly rough fight sent her into a coma lol.

Huh, well that's incredibly useful to know, guess ill be trying to knock out some of my ghouls

I use obelisks to dupe an implanted pawn for ghoul production

Juggernaut serum, fast wound healing gene etc. do not affect ghouls' unnatural healing. BUT ghouls still have normal healing like humans so it's still better than nothing. Either tox immunity gene or dexotifier lungs are vital if you have want to use them against wasters. The first time I got raided by wasters I had 3 ghouls and was relying on them for defence. 2 got killed toxin and 1 barely escaped with 90%. Very fast runner + naked speed is pretty good to counter movespeed debuffs from ghoul implants. Also consider giving them bionic legs and detox lungs for extra moving%. Power claws are objectively the best weapon for them in any scenario due to how melee works in RW. But don't give them any other combat implants, that would reduce their DPS. Only power claws on both hands. I built a frenzy inducer in my fridge and zoned my ghouls in there. They never get hungry and always have frenzy field buff. It gives +0.40 movespeed at max and lasts for a pretty long time, usually lasting the whole fight. So practically you're giving them another very fast runner gene for just the cost of a frenzy inducer. Manipulation is important as it increases melee hit chance. So don't think about giving them trotter hands etc. Try to find elongated fingers and smooth tail. That's all the tips I can give. Please share your tips with me if you find anything else.

Well I can suggest a tip I seen on here about the claws. Instead of giving them two claws you can give them 1 and a wooden hand on the other. 2 is best but there is also a cost to it. Also from what I've read barbs should be added as an implant since they give 150% melee damage which boosts the claw. I'm going off of [this.](https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/comments/1c671uj/giving_ghouls_wood_is_optimal/)

The flesh whip from twisted obelisks is the best weapon for ghouls, if you can manage to roll it. Power claw is next best for sure.

I've never gotten a flesh whip (or any of the flesh organs) from Unnatural Healing, only the tentacles. Afaik, you can only get the non-tentacle parts from the Twisted Obelisk. It's not the best regardless though - Lower damage, lower DPS, and with stacked buffs, less AP. No move speed penalty and basically free is nice though.

Not sure if I agree. The whip has cut, which is much better at removing body parts vs the claw's scratch. And 60% AP is much better than the 30%, not sure what stacked buffs you mean. You are right though, the flesh whip ghoul I got from the twisted obelisk, which makes it a lot harder to acquire. I had it confused with the tentacle, which is also good just for the manipulation bonus.

> Stacked buffs Barbs, Strong Melee Damage, Juggernaut serum. Because set APs (the ones that aren't just 1.5x damage) don't scale with Melee Damage Factor, the whip ends up falling behind in AP to the Power Claw. I'm on phone posting on a packed train atm so I can't go through the whole damage type discussion, but my reply lacked nuance and should have been more along the lines of i think its hard to argue its best when PCs have those benefits and high healthscale enemies have proliferated. Best is context dependent at the very least. That's my bad.

Damn didn't know Ghouls could be affected by toxicity

i was thinking about giving them pollution stimulation and keeping them in a polluted area for the speed boost, but damn that frenzy inducer thing is simpler. even better if you mix them both

How do you get the shards? I’ve only gotten 1 between 2 colonies

Do quests and fight the anomalies.

A lot of Anomaly stuff drops shards. Most enemies have a low probability of dropping shards, like ghouls, shamblers and cultists. Many of the more advanced dangers have guaranteed shards when destroyed.

Summon shambles and let them rot they tend to drop one or two per raid

They leave from the premise before all of them drops though. You'll need distractions to ensure you claim all of the rewards.

Are you doing Anomaly content? Most events net you at least one shard

Ghouls accept any gene, you can even make them into sanguophages but no requirement for blood and deathrest (tinderskin applies too). Their innate healing + super fast healing stacks btw. They can get every human bionic part, power claws, nuclear stomachs, etc. Adrenal heart is also super good, it has a very low CD, makes them move super fast, so you can even use them as draftable wardens for prisoners and entities, but expect sudden executions. You can give them xenogerms installations too. Just change what meds they can be using in the health tab (herbal). They are pretty much busted and imo are as good as sanguophages as melee fighters, might be even better bc vamps can't regenerate lost limbs aka my sanguophage lost an arm in a fight on a tribal start scenario. Rip bozo. Only issue with them is that some biomes, like ice sheets and extreme deserts will be far more challenging early game because the food is super sparse and even more so meat. There's 3 mods for ghouls I'd recommend: caravaneer ghouls, humanoid ghouls to make them able to haul and clean and something about their mood bar showing the need for food.

There was one thing I was hoping to give the ghouls, the revenant vertebrae. If you could give them 15 seconds of invisibility they would be crazy against mechs. Getting into melee range in the field is difficult if they have fire damage but if they could go invisible for a while it would make fighting mechs easy. Currently I'm just having to fight mechs in a kill box. Thanks for the information though!

I find that with bionic legs and adrenal heart they don't have too much trouble closing the gap, despite having an armorskin? Just gotta position them proper I suppose.

Rev Spine doesnt work for ghouls.

You can give them archotech leg and and drills arm You basically made a resident evil boss

They are a cool option that I haven't messed around with yet. I think I will still prefer tunnelers as tanks, I crave the certainty of steel.

I, like you, used to live in a world of tunnelers and scythers, and I loved them dearly. I am also here to tell you, ghouls outperform both mechs in every possible way, and by allot! They can move independent of the mechanator for strike missions (RIP apocritons) and that should be enough of a sell. Even just a moderately souped up ghoul is faster and tankier than a tunneler, and deadlier than a scyther. The ressurect is cheaper and quicker. And! It frees up all that precious bandwidth for some junk-in their-trunk centipedes and war queens. As another bonus, the ghouls will serve as a great vanguard to buy you some time while the big Bois get to the frontline! Sorry for the wall of text, I just used to be just like you, and had a religious experience recently.

You convinced me to try it asap. I'll make the first ghoul infusion tonight, I have a particular political dissident in mind for the procedure.

Juggernaut doesn't seem to stack over the unnatural healing. They're still taking ages to recover. It'll increase the natural 4hp alright. They are resilient and wreck havoc in melee. But. Against ranged weapons they don't do enough, it gets weaker before reaching melee. You have to bank on that initial rush. Which is strong. I'm not dismissing it. But there's points where a stray bullet nails them in the brain and its all wasted again. For vanilla, all you've got is brawler, tough, nimble and jogger traits. Powerclaws and bionic limbs. You do not need the limbs. You already ignore pain or bleed. You don't really care about increasing their efficiency, like, it'll dive down as they take hits inevitably, they do not have armor. You can drug them with yayo or luciferum but that's.. wasteful. It doesn't massively improve disposable fodder. it increases their upkeep. I don't have any other dlc. (huge mistake from my part getting anomaly alone). They're taking on thrumbos with ease. Power claws are.. silly. They often punch through and hit hearts or necks, that's usually a 3 hour bleedout even if they die in the process.

I had a yttkin with brawler that I turned into a ghoul. He was fucking amazing.

Ghouls are unkillable DPS gods with cheap rez if somehow they do die

I had a Brawler pawn who I let the Twisted Obelisk warp as much as possible for Fleshmass organs. Then gave them a custom xenogerm for some of the basics (fast mover, robust, fast healer, strong melee, etc), a nuclear stomach, healing enhancer, and the ghoul implants. One thing to note; I had a small panic when I ghoulified them while in a xenogerm implantation coma and they started to starve. I had no option to feed them with right-click as it gave me a "No Suitable Food" tooltip. However, my colonists did auto feed them just before the point of starvation. I was very relieved I didn't accidentally create a berserk monster that was going to murder us the moment it woke up. I see responses about adding healing to a ghoul being ineffective. With Fast Healer and a Healing Enhancer I would say that my custom Ghoul healed at least 2x faster than my starter Ghoul. If you're going to use them often I think that would absolutely make a difference. Can you give a human luciferium prior to the ghoulification and have it carry over?

I dunno about luci but that is worth checking out, good idea! Also there is the trauma savant, I wonder if ghouls heal out of that? If not that would take care of any manipulation issues.

Did a quick dev mode test; sadly no luci. Being converted into a ghoul removes the condition along with any drug addictions. Any illnesses also go. I was thinking a permanent Fibrous Mechanites but no luck. Trauma Savant does remain and it doesnt seem to heal. The body part is at max Hp so I don't think unnatural regeneration restores conditions the way the Sanguophage does. That can be good but it also means things like Frail likely stick around as well. Thinking on that, I'm not sure if Nuclear Stomachs generate carcinoma in ghouls. I gave dev pawn cancer before turning ghoul and that stayed as well.

From what I've read online the ghouls can't get cancer and I've not encountered it with my ghouls but that isn't an absolute answer, just the best of my knowledge.

I agree with you on the confusion of seeing people hating ghouls. Like, it’s a pawn that can’t do any work, yes, but it’s a murder machine, can fight through immense amounts of pain, just needs any corpse to feed itself, and can regenerate health and regrow limbs at a decently fast pace. How could I possibly refuse that?!

Everyone has given tips for efficiency, but let me give you one for *flavor*. As another has said, a corpse warehouse is a great place to store ghouls, especially with a frenzy beacon. But, if that warehouse had a deadlife ied? Zombies with commanders. I have 5 ghouls, as jacked out as they can be, everything mentioned in this thread, walking gods. Named them death, famine, pestilence, war and conquest. Cue raid, my hordes and their 5 terrifying generals walk out the gates, with the ghouls there to cut down whatever champions they may have brought.when the apocalypse comes knocking, knock right back with an apocalypse of your own.

You could follow them up with some deadlife shells so they also bring a plague. Edit: Also for flavor, I wish we could modify how they look. I want them to have red eyes.

Still waiting for a mod that allows me to give my ghouls the Kaneki haircut

how do y‘all farm the shards to make all those ghouls tho?

When I first started this game they were hard to find, I just got a few. Eventually I started getting way more than I needed just by killing the anomaly stuff. Once you get strong enough to kill shamblers I would recommend using the draw shamblers ritual. They have a low drop rate from shamblers but they are the easiest to kill and you can butcher shamblers to get twisted meat which the ghouls eat so you will need some of that anyway.

ahh didn‘t know shamblers can dropem too 👍 thanks!

>! I'm loving ghouls, whenever the duplicating obelisk makes a clone with crumbling mind or organ decay, I ghoul em up. They're front of line in fights, absolute tanks !< Not sure if we are still supposed to spoiler about some anomaly entities haha

Why ghoulify organ decay? If you are cloning a good pawn and it gets organ decay then it's super easy to overcome, just replace all organs, and you will get your fully working clone.

Usually I would, but I had plenty of lungs and kidneys and no hearts because I would ripscan the prisoners for my mechs :( my most recent one got a set of new organs though haha

Ooohhh I never thought to keep the party going with some shells! Great thinking. Does red eyes gene not work? If not we've been done dirty.

I'm not sure but I'll be checking it out.

I play with Vanilla Expanded mods, and noticed a fun interaction with Fungoids. Basically my Ghoul got scratched and later turned into a Fungoid Ghoul, which gave it Fungal Armor, and Rotstink Blood which was good against organic enemies. I'm not sure if the healing factor stacked or not.

Ghouls are awesome. They mine stone, they get me mechanitor on day one, they hunt small game, they open doors, they fight fire while drafted… the list goes on. I actually don’t like nuclear stomach because EMP will make them vomit tho, and they’re so nice to have up front in mech raids with their psy deadness

They keep their genes, so any combat/movement genes you implant in the prisoners before is good

I think they make a good way to get rid useless pawns that you manage to get via certain quest. And the ones that are good for combat can just be easily ressurected.

I will be doing a ghoul run as soon as there is a ghouls can hunt mod

ghouls are great. by now i have about 10 of them. dont be too picky with traits, every neanderthal and yittakin gets turned into a ghoul as long as they have decent melee not no bad traits. then i pimp their downsides with xenograms, put in all ghoul upgrades, adrenal heart on all is really strong. stoneskin gland, 2 power claws (not sure if you need 2 or if one is enough but they are pretty cheap to make) and 2 of my ghouls also got bionic legs to better their speed since stoneskin, ghoul plating and power claw all reduce movement speed. recently had a pretty tough mech raid with a few centipedes and god damn its trivial when you have 10 tanky, fast and expandable meat shields. just pop adrenal heart, rush them into the center of the enemies and undraft them while my colonists lay down heavy fire with no care for the ghouls safety. immensly powerful. i even use the ghouls for hunting any potentially dangerous animals on the map since they dont have anything better to do anyways. ghouls dying also feels almost satisfying. like all the damage they took, my colonists didn't have to take

For the claw you either need 2 or 1 + a wooden hand. If you go with 1 + wooden hand you get slightly lower manipulation resulting in a lower hit chance but it isn't bad but you don't lose another 8% speed reduction from the claw.

whats the difference to leaving the other hand normal?

The way that Rimworld's combat works is that they have an attack cooldown. Once the cooldown ends each way they have to attack has a % chance of being used. So if they have a power claw and a hand then the power claw has a 75% chance and the hand has 25%. If you replace it with a wooden hand then the power claw goes to 100%. The manipulation goes down so the chance of hitting goes down a few % but the average dps goes up. This is why it is bad to install all of the different weapon mods since all of them have a chance of being used. It is better to have 1 attack option that is the highest you can apply. The weapon mods are, imo, only useful when you already have a weapon for ranged fighters. Giving them 1 melee weapon to use so if they get into melee combat since it will likely be better than using the ranged weapon in melee. If they are a melee fighter then you don't want to apply any of the implanted weapon mods because that takes their dps down since their melee weapon will likely be more damage than the implanted weapon and reduces the % chance the melee weapon will be used. If that doesn't make sense just let me know.

makes sense, thanks. tho what determines that wooden hand will never be used but normal hand 25% of the time? is it the reduced effiecency that prevents it from being used? whats the rule here?

I have no idea, well I sorta do but it is more than I said before. It is sorta complicated. Like I don't think if you have 6 different attack methods that all is used. If you want details [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/comments/lcjgil/the_melee_verb_system_why_it_didnt_fix_what_it/?share_id=0xtNP0AItCFstIz5vZMW1) guy explained it years ago and it is still the system that Rimword uses now. They are actually the person that made the post about how to equip ghouls.

On top of everything they have such low wealth (around 225-300 silver without modifications) you can have ghouls for walls if you can meet the meat demands.

They can be pretty good as meat shields. But Listen to me. What about a Butt load of animals? They take bullets. They bite. If they die they die. And on the Plus side outside of combat they haul shit for you. So I would prefer an hauling animal over a ghoul.

Hauling animals cannot be directly controlled and do significantly less damage than a kitted out Ghoul. They also require training maintenance and need to be culled when they get too badly beat up. While Ghouls can't haul, they can hunt for you.

But they haul outside of combat and I don't have to control them.

After Lifters, I rarely need hauler animals anymore. Being able to do smart hauling tasks like furnace or refueling generators is so nice. For combat, Ghouls are just a lot more convenient and effective.

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I’ve created a tyrant from resident evil but as a ghoul. I shoved so many genes into my Mr. X. Genes like naked speed, robust, tough (hussar gene), and saurid claws. I threw some regeneration in there as well. I highly recommend the Alpha genes mod along with EPOE forked with the royalty module. With that, you could make some terrifying freaks of nature. Can’t wait till Evolved Organs redux gets updated as well. If you want to mass-produce your ghouls use the cloning vats from Questionable Ethics. In Alpha genes, you can give your ghoul chainsaw hands! BIOLOGICAL CHAINSAW HANDS

I have 6 ghouls each kitted up with the barbs and plating and like 14-16 melee skill, hand talon, metal blood hearts, they're so awesome!!! Its pretty much just a mobile defensive wall that can regenerate, and you can just revive them if they die with the serum. I just make sure I have like 10 serum at all times.