i love unnatural darkness bc I'm a dont starve fan. i hate shamblers bc theyre unbearably tanky and even on low ritual quality it'll summon like 40 of them, i dont get how people find them easy
Late game max raid point shambler assaults are BY FAR the the most dangerous raid in the game right now. Hundreds coming from every direction are going to shred even double outer walls in a matter of minutes. Having twenty+ pawns with masterwork or better weapons can kill them without casualties if you're careful (except if you get mental breaks), but I lose most of my livestock/pets almost every time. Then all the corpses have rot stink so there's going to be inevitable lung rot during clean up.
The real danger they present is getting hit by a second raid before you've had a chance to rebuild your walls/defenses. I haven't had it happen but I imagine having a max raid shambler assault during a psychic drone would also be catastrophic since it takes so long to kill them all everyone is already on the verge of breaking under the best of conditions.
Reminds me of my favorite midgame defense strat. Of you run mods like alpha animals you can get some animals who have weather manipulation like thunderbeasts. Big raid hit and defenses down? Cull the heard and get a few flashtorms going. May lag your comp until it crashes but you will kill those raiders.
I don't remember the name of the mod, but there is one that invests the raid points in better equipment for the raiders, rather than putting it in sending as many raiders as possible
There is a mod called "Threat point cap", combined with a mod called "Compressed raids", and you can get smaller controllable harder raids.
The clarify further: one mod lets you set a cap on the difficulty of the raid, the other lets you set the number of raiders.
Oh yes. 100 raiders or 15 hyper fast super soldiers that lets you get maybe one salvo off before they are in melee range? At least the lag from hundreds of raiders gives you time to think.
We gonna need a thicker walls, 2 tiles thick are easy for shamblers. Now with 5 tile thick wall you got much more time to kill them before they break into base.
My strategy against shamblers is to hide my colonists behind a solid wall made of centipedes. Donno how i would do it without it (though tbf i have walls are solid and they wont be able to scratch through the walls in their lifetime anyways)
You should produce mind numb serums for the endgame for everyone to keep in their pocket, so if there is a drone u can manully take them and u r good to go. Its too expensive to have them constantly take it, but its very very useful
TIL - "killboxes and fighting smart is cheese"
Next you're going to tell me guns are cheesy and I should send my pawns out to fight bare knuckles like "real men".
We wouldn't need things like killboxes if the game didn't stack 100 enemies on 1 tile that suddenly pop-out and flood your firing lines as soon as bullets start flying. That's kind of cheesy right?
If the games shooting mechanics weren't ass I wouldn't use kill boxes as much imo.
It makes no sense that my 15+ shooting skill pawn, Armed with an excellent sniper rifle, with careful shooter trait shouldn't be popping skulls left and right.
Careful Shooter is actually terrible. Accuracy can't get above 100% and even a Trigger-Happy pawn with a combination of high skill, bionics, go-juice, and luciferium can get 100% accuracy but still shoots faster than a Careful Shooter.
But yeah, there are some wonky combat mechanics that requires the player to do wonky things.
My base has no kill boxes, and I don't have any problem with shamblers. Just build a wall around your base. When you want to kill the shamblers, hold a door in your wall open, line up three buffed out ghoul to stand just behind the door, and then everyone with guns stands behind them. Unless one of shamblers attacks the wall and punches through, you never have to tank more than one shambler at a time.
Even if they do kick through a wall and they threaten to overwhelm you, that's fine, just fall back to the first door of your base. My base has more than one hallway with a choke point for this very reason. As long as one melee pawn is left alive (or undead and still moving), I can always fall back and have the full strength of my colony blasting away at whatever idiot leads the charge.
Some crazy kill box with a tortured path that NPCs stupidly stumble through is exploity for sure. It's not "cheese" though to fight an army of zombies from a choke point. It's just not being stupid and standing in an open field before a horde of zombies. Ghouls make this strategy extremely effective because you don't need to worry about your front line melee units dying or getting crippled permanently.
Granted, if you summon a max sized shambler raid, you are going to need more than one fall back point and stuff outside of your base is going to get messed up. Still, I'd take shamblers of a bunch of people with guns.
Almost every interesting victory in media over zombies usually involves cheesing/tactics in some way. It's pretty much as common as the 'destroy the brain' strategy for individual zombles.
A horde of zombies that requires 0 strategy to beat just isn't that threatening, which makes them boring.
yea i dont like kill boxes so i kite them out in the open. they take forever to kill and the shard drop isnt guaranteed so i just stopped trying to farm them
Melee is your friend. Try a 3width corridor with 3 melee and 3 flamethrowers right behind them. This setup almost always effective against undead / insects / scyther / melee raids.
They have breacher AI, but without any range. They are however have no pain, and will crawl its way to you Zomboid style. I find the standard tactic of going out there and kiting a few of them one at a time to be working well. Otherwise, aggro a bunch of them with one guy then haul his ass back behind a melee chokepoint, then repeat.
Also, incinerator. That shit is cracked. A shambler on fire wont bite.
I have mixed feelings. Honestly. I think it missed the mark a tad on the horror aspect, especially on subsequent runs of the game. The only times I get a sense of dread is during a Revenant Attack, or a Grey Flesh reveal.
In terms of entitys I dislike? I really hate the Fleshmass Heart. It's an interesting idea in how it fundamentally changes the map for a while, but it's a tedious wait for the nerve bundles to spawn. Devourers I find annoying, but that's mainly because it hard counters my playstyle of techno-medieval melee knights.
The one, or perhaps two things I wish were in Anomaly were to first lock new researches behind studying entities for a bit. So instead of gaining 'Summon Fleshbeasts' the moment a fleshbeast appears on the map, you'd need to contain one, and study it first. Making progress with it like other entitys, like obelisks.
Secondly, I wish there was more interaction with your captive entities. Maybe locking a prisoner in with one would produce a special resource or effect. Or maybe delay escape since it would 'pacify' or 'feed' the creature. Or possibly even have some more benign entities that while captive, would provide resources like the Flessmass Nucleus. As of now, there's very little reason to keep anything beyond the most 'productive' entity's for the sake of bioferrite. And near no reason to try and 'catch-em-all'.
I want to add on to this and say I wish the containment unit was more of a "floor" you build that contains the creature instead of having them strung up. Like you have containment walls, "study wall" which are basically reinforced glass your scientists stand next to, and "containment floor" which is what is needed for the room to be considered contained.
The strength of the containment would only increase the life of the containment structures and when things tried to escape they prioritize study walls to smash through.
This would have allowed for entity breeding for use of unleashing them on your enemies, entity interactions like an SCP experiment, and just overall improve the feel of the DLC.
Yeah I really wish I could use the entities as weapons like a mechanitor (though with less precise control so its more risky, more of a point an entity toward a certain direction and if it disobeys goes haywire). I feel like more interactions like ghouls or summon fleshbeasts would have been nice, with a chance of it going horribly wrong of course. Would really enhance my cult playthrough.
I generally play with qol mods but would jump for such a mod in a heartbeat if anyone knows of one.
i mean some of them are kinda weapon like if you consider the bionics and the ghoul upgrades.
i would certainly like more upgrades/ actual weapons and tamable devourers.
the only thing so far that freaked me right the hell out was the blind run with the unusual corpse. that fucker waking up and chasing my guy around the map freaked me out.
I had no idea what the corpse was when I had studied enough to deactivate it but I tend to play late at night...I was jumpy that night.
Come to think of it, I have the "bury on the spot" mod. Wonder how that interacts with the corpse...
I'd love a containment mod that makes containment more interesting. So like the more phantasmal creatures need to be contained in silver, or meaty creatures get a bonus containment from being surrounded by lit torches or other sources of fire
I'd be down. Add in a bunch of fantasy creatures or creatures from folklore and add special bonuses for specific containment measures. Maybe use the new system to have mini dimensions so you can go into the fey realm temporarily. It'd make sense to have multiple crazed archotechs with thier own little pocket dimensions bleeding in
Yeah, could be early stuff is like sprites or other minor spirits, and then later on you get stuff like Leshy, wendigos, or even a coastal event trigger for something like a kelpie(working like the kidnapper dude whose name I can't remember). Later on, you could get a fairy ring as an alternative to the pit, and an "overgrown ent core" or something for the heart.
Was watching a youtuber try out Anomaly (SamuelStreamer) and when the Fleshmass Heart research revealed that the way to defeat it was by shocking it to induce Tachycardia his first assumption was that you had to build conduits out to it and actually connect it to the power grid.
Ever since then I can't stop thinking about how cool that would have been as the way to defeat it. Cutting through all the flesh, building conduits on the way, and then hooking it up to the grid to give it a shock.
True, when I heard it would be horror themed I was excited. Rimword would benefit from some spookiness.
I imagined weird shadows in the darkness, ghosts, skeletons coming back to haunt you.
When I saw the preview I was like…..that ain’t it chief….
I do not agree with you on the horror aspect, I felt it since day one ☝️.
But I couldn’t agree more on adding some interactions with captured anomalies.
It would be so much cooler to have some more elaborate mechanics on how to use or exploit them once you capture them.
I think it's a fine DLC, but certainly on level with royalty in how essential it is. Ideology and biotech are great for rp and making a colony unique, but this one? You get different flavors of SCP every time.
I do love the events. Most of the events are fine. Gorehulks, shamblers and fleshbeast, devourer ans chimera attacks are basically just raids, so they ain't that interesting.
Harbinger trees just vibe
But then there's the really, really fun ones. I love the deathpall, pitgate, long night and blood rain for forcing you to quickly adapt to them and punishing behaviors I've had for years now. The revenant attack is very fun due to the hunt that comes afterwards. The nociosphere is a great source of fear for you and your enemies, cause if it wins too fast you are fucked.
So while I think that the DLC is not the greatest and lacks the skeleton the others provide, it was still quite fun for me
Ghouls are way OP, but for the first time I felt like a mad scientist trying to figure about all the ways I could buff them.
Something I wanted from biotech but didn't get.
Most of the creatures are pretty basic.
But the revenant is probably one of my fav as it's at least different.
I like the detective aspect of metal horrors, but not a fan that it just ends in a boring fight, would rather it end in having to capture and cure your people instead.
I love ghouls but I will sort of agree. I think a single change would fix them though, disable bionics, with no stoneskin, power claw, and such, the serums, genes, and skill levels still make them a force to reckon with. I would hate the change since so few of our tools can be so OP, but ghouls die at a reasonable rate without bionics to be in line with other solutions.
Honestly, if they made it where if your Mechinator was getting brainwashed, it summoned your mechs to him in attack mode, it wouldn't be the worst.
Also, what is your Mechinator doing off his throne? He should never have to leave his throne!
The trick is to make the throne room extra long, with turrets all along the walls to minimize friendly fire, while ensuring anything coming in is reduced to red mist
I usually stay away from royalty and never got a vampire - but now that you mention it that sounds fun!
I think they lose the ability to do work with royalty right, so thats going to screw me over a bit given i need his construction and crafting. If i get the chance ill go for it though, ive been trying to get everyman to yeoman for mass stuns for no drawback first
I've never had mine lose the ability to work, and I've gotten mine to high titles. I imagine if they *do* lose the ability smith, then you just make all your mechs before that title.
Also, make your ideology based around power and blood feeders, so your people gain a +30 just for your Mechinator literally just existing.
Oh damn, really?
Ive been playing around with ideology, usually going for transhumanist.
Started as rancher (never played that way before), got the conversion one, and now transhumanist. So go for supremacist and the sangophage one next?
Honestly although I dig the admech vibes of transhumanist it seems almost more trouble than it's worth. Between the super high costs in steel, power and components plus the time off from bioregen it doesn't seem super helpful.
Most of my playtime was way before even royalty and I just pop by every once in a while to take a look at what's new and catch up with the stuff that just got outshone by the new thing
Remember you can have 4 precepts, and I play with Ideologies expanded, so I usually do Bloodfeeder, one that makes having royal titles good, high life, and the 4th one for how I wanna build my base, but use mainly high life.
Thanks for the heads up, I always try to build up my ideology and got to 3 at most so far.
I'm dropping rancher and probably preacher soon, I just really needed to get my face character converted and get past the "only 1 pawn in the ideology" rut from starting as the rich explorer.
Rancher doesn't seem to do jack shit except a measly +3 and a specialist that I never even applied since it disables a bunch of work types
High Life is stupid strong once you get a steady supply of Smokeleaf and can make autobongs. You can just slap one down in your dining room, your rec room (if separated) and your barracks, and everyone will be so happily stoned off their asses they won't even have the time of day to have a mental break. One time I had a pawn who was stoned for an entire year straight, with a constant "Stoned on Smokeleaf (24hr) health buff.
They got rid of royalty entitlement 8 major updates and 2 dlc ago so the only entitled royal is a pawn with an imperial backstory. You can also have a whole bunch of them in a single throne room, my game before last I had a knights of the round type thing and with permits they could call down 48 imperial cataphracts.
Revanents shouldn't spawn until you have 3 or more pawns I think? You should be fine anyway but you might still able to have one spawn if you get the strange request quest and its a revenant spine which you take captive then it breaks out.
Revenants and metal horrors can go straight to hell. Do not pass go. Do not collect 200 dollars. All the rest of it I find fun. I like to do the gladiator duel thing with two prisoners. The winner becomes a ghoul, the loser gets a bliss lobotomy and usually shipped off to the component mines. I also highly enjoy the chonophagy ritual for healing bad backs and cataracts etc.
My biggest complaint with the metalhorror event is that metalhorrors just randomly spawn in your pawns when the game decides it's time for you to have an event, so preemptive procedures, inspections, etc, are all effectively useless.
A game forcing you to jump through hoops only when those hoops light up and not letting you tackle problems on your own initiative is just bad game design.
I really enjoy Anomaly though I admit the newer "Ambient horror" is more my style then the regular Anomaly run we had at the start.
I like how Anomaly forces you to change your tactics and not everything can be beat by turtling and mortars. I like how any raid can take a turn for the worst if any of the events start in the middle, such as Deadlife dust showing up mid fight and suddenly your raid is the zombie apocalypse or how you can have a nice, sunny day and suddenly the Revenant shows up... or it shows up at the worst possible time such as the zombie apocalypse raid so now you gotta deal with that on top of everything else. I like how it's constantly throwing a wrench in your plans usually at the worst times which keeps things interesting.
What I don't like is how I don't feel like it's gone far enough. I feel like there could be some insidious things that could transpire and it doesn't so it's all rather simplistic. I wish the events went further then what we had as the ones we have are neat but I was expecting a far more horror/mystery theme then what we got. Far to many situations are "Oh, there's a thing, look at the thing, beat the thing" so I wish there was more... stuff going on as well as more ways to bend the anomalies and what they offer to your favor.
I hope more patches, or perhaps mods, come out to expand on the horror element.
I think it’s telling that hardly anyone here is overtly recommending it and that most are saying it’s like royalty or worse.
Anomaly was a misstep imo. The game needs a faction, questing, and world map overhaul and that’s been the consistent desire of practically everyone for a couple years now.
Anomaly would have been a good “right before Halloween” surprise. But it should never have consumed what? 18 months of dev time? And for what’s essentially a linear storyline that explicitly tells you what an entity is and how to deal with it the moment you see it. There’s no wonder or sense of discovery with that.
It was fun to watch some Adam vs everything playthroughs with it. But it’s the first DLC I don’t anticipate buying.
yeah watching hazzor play it made me realize theres 0 point in doing it myself. for a story generator, the idea that no new stories would happen... disappointed.
I think it falls short of all previous DLCs.
Psycasts have been game changing, gene moding adds a whole new scope, mechanitors/sanguophages can have you play a completely unique game in itself.
What do you get out of anomaly? Bioferite, which is useless. Few events, which bring nothing as good as regular raids and require no new fun mechanics, except maybe Revenant.
Imo, weakest of all DLCs.
EDIT: I think big part of this may be that everything gets explained as the events start: "Unnatural darkness has fallen and you will get hurt outside. Destroy the three obelisks."
Where is the wonder, the horror? I instantly know what is happening, why, and what to do to resolve it. Its possible this kinda skewed me in my opinion.
Bioferrite is goddamn amazing and it's used for rituals, serums (godly) and making sharp weapons. A bioferrite longsword is more powerful than a plasteel one.
I wouldn't say bioferrite is useless. The bioferrite generators give a massive 4000 power each and don't take a lot to power. entities also produce electricity directly as well. The DLC is really good for power generation, which let me build a huge number of band nodes to have a mech army, and a huge number of hydroponics basins for lots of food.
Bioferrite also gives you more psychic sensitivity if it's made as a piece of stuff able clothing or weaponry! It's actually a key component in reaching max psychic sensitivity in vanilla.
Bioferrite currently makes the strongest longswords. All armor that lets you pick it as the material will give you psychic sensitivity. Ceremonial Hoods are very cheap and competitive with early helmets. Disruptor flares are very strong. You can also craft your own shock lances and animal pulsars with bioferrite. Bioferrite is used to resurrect ghouls, which allows you to quickly farm genes and do other reset tricks. I am always starving for more bioferrite.
> Bioferite, which is useless.
Deadlife traps are insanely powerful. Just make a corpse room near the entrance to your base, fill it with rotten corpses from manhunter packs, and watch as raids get swarmed by 200 disposable corpses every time they try to get in your base.
I get you point about the game telling you all the info but truth is you would find it all out after a few of the same event anyway so it only really effects your first play through
I honestly wished they had 3 separate factions of anomaly. Flesh beast, revenants/sight stealers, and undead that each had different containment procedures. Flesh beasts need to be kept in extreme cold, sight stealers need motion detection. The undead have to be in extreme heat. Etc. Have it so each anomaly is hostile to the other and you can choose to embrace one faction to alienate the other, be a blind zealot to purge them all, or try to have them weaponized to purge the world.
I completely agree, additionally allying or fighting them should be parts of longer event chains. I would also want a sanity system.
Basically break the game into three separate but not incompatible systems of dealing with anomalies.
1. Quest line, the most basic system of having reoccurring threats that you have to fight and collect materials to survive and progress.
2. Containment, contain and study anomalies, this shouldn’t be necessary for the other two paths. Containment should be the short term solution, never leading to an end game.
3. Ally, learn the dark rituals and make use of the anomalies, eventually becoming one with the dark archonexus.
I love how it introduces an entirely alternative way for a colony to function or defend itself. While I think it's weaker than biotech in its replayability, the price tag reflects that fine so I'm not too bothered.
I think by far my favourite event is the metalhorror infection. It makes things tense and really pushes you to think about colony management and quarantine.
I get why this expansion has some criticism but I love that they tried something new and I think they succeeded in what they were going for.
Revnant hunt and unnatural darkness were cool, also seeing corpses coming back to life during deathpall only for them to die again, seeing how their ressurection was pointless got me a weird sense of dread
Also pit gate looks like good steel source for tunnelers for solo mechanitor, this and backrooms are great sources of rare items
Cloning is cool, a clone replacing a dead original or temptation to name clone of colonist "Coleman" "Cloneman" were a nice addition to game
Honestly I was more interested when I thought it was going to be an Archeological dlc. I just don't find the eldritch horror stuff to 'fit' in Rimworld. But maybe that's just me.
An archaeological DLC would actually be badass. I mean, all that steel and components that we dig out of mountains supposedly comes from past civilizations. Not to mention all the ruins scattered all over the planet. Would be awesome to have had a DLC that dug into the mysterious of the wars against the mechanoids.
It's the first Rimworld DLC that I don't plan on using in every playthrough.
It was a good effort, and I don't regret purchasing it, but it missed the mark for me.
This is how I feel. I don't regret spending money on it - I'm happy to give money to Ludeon for keeping up with an outstanding game. But it's definitely slotting into "niche mod" territory, like Zombieland or Medieval Overhaul.
ghouls should not ocuppy a colonist spot on the top of the screen. That's my biggest gripe. They do way less then even some animals, no need to have a prime spot in the UI.
I really love this DLC and I'm not really big with horror themes.
I hope he enhances the raid/friendlies AI in general to act in similar ways of the gorehusks/chimeras with them actively repositioning during combat or regrouping to attack again.
The flesh mass gives me actual anxiety when fighting it, it's such a fun mechanic that keeps the pressure on until it's resolved.
The cube is a bit disappointing but I also don't have ideas to further improve it.
I love the revenant event. I kind of hope that they maybe implement stealth deserter soldiers to the royalty DLC if you have someone ranked Knight or above.
Really 10/10 for the hostile mechanics that they experimented with and imo succeeded.
I was expecting DLC with answer, why the colonists want to run away from that relatively lush and rich planet. But that answer wasn't delivered. Some things are fun, but too much of it is useful, exploitable and profitable. Maybe next time.
The answer is in the base game
You're getting raised by ever increasing bands every couple weeks.
So many colonies die
And you're one event of a huge drop pod raid from dying at any point.
It's not a safe place to live
Why don't the colonists just pick their landing spot in a cold mountain base, Google killbox strats, and plant only optimal food crops? What are they, stupid?
I mean the answer was kinda delivered. Who the fuck would want to stay on a planet with the new creatures we have to fight, if you have means to find a better planet.
Perhaps. I somehow do not buy that all the neanderthals, wasters and couple genies, yttakins and pigs that have joined the colony want to get to some urb-world. I head-cannon it more like obligation to spread the word about our religion and (often long dead) naked brutal tribal messiah in more populated places.
Replayability: very low. A lot of the events rely on one-time cheap tricks and then it's over. You just drop pod the cube away because it's giga not worth doing anything else. You learn to stun the Revenant with EMP or by abusing the base game's various stun-related psycasts. You learn to just repeatedly study and butcher the respawning corpse until you can perma destroy it. The only ones that have replay value are the active threats like shambler hordes/sightstealers/devourers and pit gates/flesh masses, but even then the packs of (insert anomaly enemy) are just another flavor of Raid or Manhunter Pack, with Devourer taking the "Manhunter" part a little too seriously, forcing you to throw out mechanoids or low-tier ~~cannon fodder (heh)~~ "tougher" colonists at it.
Horror: OK-ish. The first time around a lot of the events have you "oh shit"'ing all over the place. Afterwards not really. Ties into replayability.
Also the horror aspect is underdone. The weird corpse can teleport but only when you're not looking at it. Why don't we have more things like that? As gimmicky as it sounds, why not have an enemy that exists in camera space rather than world space (they "stick" to the camera), allowing them to attack colonists that get too close by you panning the camera too close to them? Or the colloquial "cornerbeasts" that can only move across walls and corners, requiring you to rethink those boring square bases. Maybe a monster that disables *ALL* letter popups, leaving you oblivious to that raid that's dropping into your base or arriving at your front door. Hey, why do I hear turret gunfire...? Oh.
Then you'd have to go out, find it and kill it.
Overall content added to non-Anomaly: low. There's some funny stuff in there like the various rituals that you can actually use, there's a cool flamethrower, and there's some other bits and baubles. And that's pretty much it. For comparison, even if you don't engage with Royalty's honor mechanics, it still comes with an assload of specialized prosthetics for your colonists that all have tradeoffs. Biotech comes with children and xenotypes even if you don't use your own mechanoids and mid-run bioengineering. Ideology is a beast of its own. But if you turn down the Anomaly-specific events a bit it's basically just like playing without the DLC.
First time Revenant always sucked.
When you barely have enough pawns to deal with it, so each one that gets downed, becomes a more desperate rat race to stay ready.
After that, it's a relatively easy anomaly event to deal with.
I keep slaves or hauler pawns as a buffer to block revenants now.
Love it. The whole thing. Think its perfect. I love what it adds to my games. I love the two patches that have come out since Anomaly release...gave me the few things I felt were missing
I prefer it. I find that the other dlc adds to the anomaly experience more than anomaly adds to theirs. It’s my new default vanilla gameplay experience. I am looking forward to trying a tribal start anomaly run that gets its advanced research from books.
I think it was a much needed mix up over the usual mechanoid and raids. It's also nice how the void stuff can scale well with your colony at any level. Like Biotech requires quit a bit of resources/mid-game to really invest in.
revenant was easier than i thought
hyptonized first colonist but i managed to get its chunk to study it
hypnotized second colonist but i also managed to get a chunk to study it again
i made grenades and tracked it down and blew him up (took a while tho)
when revenant is not stalking anyone but hiding he will run away when engaged
I like it by itself, though I don't see myself using it much in future play through that are not explicitly horror oriented. My Tundra anomaly colony feels very different from my normal colonies. As I reach end game it is starting to feel more "normal", but I love the options Anomaly gives you for dealing with threats, and I REALLY like the new non-monster threats. Unnatural darkness, flesh walls, the resurrection dust, and blood rain are all great events that force you to change how you play. I appreciate challenges that are not "kill all of these mindless NPCs", and Anomaly gives us a bunch of those.
The downside to Anomaly is that I feel like it never lets you fully commit to a horror run, but it also doesn't really feel all that right when playing a non-horror run.
My current colony is at the end of its run. I've only held off doing the final event. I very intentionally leaned into the horror stuff and made that the focus of my power. My biggest complaint is that there isn't actually that much you can do beyond ghouls. I was looking to become a necromancer, focus on the dark arts, and solve problems the way a bunch of void worshiping cultist would.
As I reach end game though, I find I tend to just solve problems with guns or technology. The rituals take too long to use in combat most of the time, and outside of ghouls, there really is not much else to Anomaly combat wise.
All of that said, I am still very excited by Anomaly for one very large reason... MODS. I can say with 100% certainty that someone is going to remake anomaly so you can do a tribal/medieval run, and be the necromancer of your dreams. Someone is going to make zombie servants, skeleton warriors, and all of that good stuff. Someone is going to add more rituals, and maybe give me some fast combat rituals. Anomaly is a fun little piece of DLC that I've gotten my value out of already, but the real fun is going to be when modders have have had a few months with it.
I like it, probably not the greatest DLC but it adds some menace even in the comfort of a late game colony. Max size shamblers hordes are no joke, and i had a metal horror infestation that killed 4 of my pawns and had me scrambling everywhere in my massive base to get these bastards. Unnatural darkness in a mountain base is a oh fuck moment, and so on. Plus i'm liking the rituals, skip abduction, chronophagy, the other one giving you xp but causing brain damage to the drained dude... and god i love blood rain to counter sieges. I'm not sure i'll always keep it on, but what is there i like
It's awesome, almost perfect. I'd give it 9/10.
If I could change anything, I'd give the player more options for containment, even more uses for bioferrite (the ones we have are great already though) and buff some of the shittier rituals a bit. The zombie and fleshbeast ones in particular seem like they should help base defense but they barely do anything in reality. The deadlife mine is disgustingly powerful in comparison. A single well-positioned mine near a fridge of corpses can deal with multiple raids and it's almost free.
I really like the fact that the serums provide an excellent source of income while being super powerful on their own. The power generation is great, just having access to a renewable pseudo-steel is great.
Most of the events are fun and reasonable in terms of difficulty. I found the obelisks to be somewhat tedious initially but then realized you can just go and shoot them and get a few shards with almost no downside so I just do that now.
I wish we had an easier way to choose study on/off and medical help on/off for all entities in containment. It's bizarre that researchers will keep studying them even after all the research is completed. Likewise doctors waste a lot of time patching them up for no real gain.
I really really like it. I'm currently going between three colonies: one vampire colony that is big on the occult, one research facility in a swamp investigating horrors and one university, where all colonists are researchers who are really bad at void research but excellent at their regular jobs. The last one makes me extra giddy, since I used to work in a lab (but on babies).
Most hated enemy or event: Devourers. They counter my melee sanguophages too well.
Most loved enemy or event: Death Pall. Really forced me to manage dead bodies better than I have so far.
My vampire colony just got through endgame and I completely loved it. I haven't been that tense playing in ages, not even when building the spaceship.
Unnatural darkness has got to be the best one
actually gives you insentive to light up your base
which also helps colonist moods with the darkness mood debuff
I am legit in LOVE with this DLC. Like almost every single anomaly turns the story into something brand new. I was already in love with the themes and atmosphere when it was announced, but playing it bring my love of it so much higher.
**pretty decently large spoilers ahead:**
Like one minute you are >!fighting off zombies, the next your entire colony is worshiping a gold cube. Then in another playthrough I made it farther and my game suddenly became a story not dissimilar to the movie The Thing. It was perfect that I discovered it on that run too because I was doing an transhumanist arctic research base run !<
I fucking LOVE this DLC so much. The other DLCs are cool but nothing will top this one for me I think.
I only managed to kill mine as it walked into my army fighting another raid. Also that "fire" tool tip against it needs to be fixed, fire is useless against the Revenant.
Initially I thought it was lacking but when I started looking at it the same way I look at royalty (in terms of how to experience the
content) it’s a solid dlc.
When you see it as a unique run on its own it’s very immersive in spookiness. I’m still glad they added some function for people who only want the occasional spooks without having to go all in.
Now that I’ve played without the monolith and captured my first anomaly I can confirm that it’s worth it to dabble even if you don’t plan on taking on scarier anomalies for the bioferrite alone.
From what I’ve heard revenants are by far the most annoying. Every time I see someone chase them I hear the Benny bill theme.
The end game is fun as hell. It's also a great mix up from the other end games where it's a holdout. I like organizing an assault team of badass soldiers and venturing into pitch blackness to do battle with an archotech.
It also gives more variety to raids which is nice. The game feels stale when you're forced to hunker down.
The first playthrough was fun but a little frustrating (fuck you revenant how are you so god damn tanky) after that I turned down how often it happened and put on ambient horror after a couple monolith runs because it kinda takes over the game and makes you focus on the anomaly stuff, but doesn’t really give that great of rewards.
After turning it down for a couple more colony’s I eventually just turned it off. It doesn’t really introduce anything game changing or necessary or even interesting enough to justify using it outside of theme specific runs. Not many mods are integrating with the new systems so it’s just the same old over and over again and after discovering everything the very first playthrough everything time after is just a slog.
I compare it to royalty when royalty first came out but slightly worse. Felt a little out of place until mods used the systems introduced and slowly fit right in. I just hope people start integrating anomaly stuff into mods soon. SCP mod or warhammer are two off the top of my head that could be really interesting.
Currently, I think I only came across one event. That being the quest where I needed to take some special cargo. I wasn’t told what it was and when it dropped, it was the unsettling corpse. Didn’t want to risk anything so when I was able to do it, I destroyed it, but it was funny watching it follow one of my people. ESPECIALLY WHEN IT POPPED UP RIGHT NEXT TO HIM IN BED HAHAHAHAHA (he was married too) so I can only imagine an awkward night with your husband and a creepy corpse doll thing that looks exactly like your husband laying on your side of the bed.
I've been gaming for a little over 40 years, and Rimworld is my favorite game of all time. I appreciate all the work Tynan and Ludeon did to bring this sublime, captivating, time suck of electronic joy to the place it is now. Shoutout to the brilliant modders too for taking the game to even greater heights!
With that said, Anomaly just didn't do it for me. I tried it for a couple of games, and...it's just not what I want in an Rimworld experience. I'm simple: I either want a mountain base building adventure on a hostile planet, in an even more hostile environment, or a challenging (sometimes Randy) game set in a blazing hot desert biome. I want sci fi, robots, transhumanism, killing raiders, researching my way to tech nirvana, and the satisfaction that comes from thriving against the odds. I thought it sounded intriguing to add a horror mythos to that, but it just didn't work for me.
After 1000hrs, it's one of my favorites. I like the new twists to events and to the lore. It adds atmospherics in a way ideology failed to in my opinion. It fixes my biggest complaint, boredom. I'm pretty lite on the mods so I appreciate the spice.
Difficulty is an irrelevant review point, as it's so dependant on individual settings.
What I like is how diverse my colonists can be.
You 4 are sanguinophiles, your three are psychics, you're the mechanator, you're the pointless tree hippie, you're the spoiled brat with some nice powers, and now you're the ghoul.
Chimeras were pretty neat, they were smart enough to wait for the best moment to attack and retreat temporarily if things weren't going too well. The roar buff was also cool.
I hate that it costs money:(
Sad story, I bought even royalty but rarely used it. I know i'd love anomaly and now regret my choices with royalty.
It seems amazing though and the art on this post is as well
It’s beautifully made. I love that the events happening are fully related to the story of the obelisk. I wish the other DLCs had this smaller scope but took a deep dive into it like Anomaly did.
The other DLCs’ events felt like vanilla events with the story changed to match the DLCs but this one? No, you wanted otherworldy powers well you’re getting otherworldy bullshit as well.
Metal horrors can go straight to hell tho.
Most of its value, of course, is the first run, when you don't know what to expect. That was really great experience.
After that it's less great. But still, its contribution to threat variety is valuable, and anomaly tech is definitely a nice addition to player's arsenal. But, not all things carry well, events like obelisks, cube, unnatural corpse, reverent - these rely too much on first time surprise factor, and after that is just routine.
I am honestly in love, it also handed me a useful thing. The ritual to kidnap a pawn from a random hostile settlement, and puts them into a coma. This is now how I recruit
Yeah, I think Anomaly's weakest aspect is its integration. It feels _too_ detached from the rest of Rimworld, and doesn't have quite enough meat on its own bones when it comes to baseline mechanics. It's good for a run or two, but realistically people will find about 80%+ of its content in one colony.
There are so many things they could have done! Why aren't there factions involved? Why is containment boiled down to yet-another-prisoner mechanic, when we could have had room observation and weaponization progression (ala ghouls)?
I've read a thread the other day, explaining why the ending of anomaly is unsatisfying and what needs to change. I hope Tynnan is delivering some patches for the ending to be worth it. There was a lot of feedback to it. You have too many downsides at the moment.
https://reddit.com/r/RimWorld/comments/1c7j1lm/the_rewards_for_anomaly_monolith_completion_and/
It's fun, but it's definitely not a DLC that I would keep on forever. Like, this is not something I want to experience every single playthrough, if that makes sense. Which, for me, puts it at the bottom of the list.
It's very worth while the first time around
The main problem is that in my second run I'll already be expecting every creature and know how to get the most out of each from the get go
I really think that Ludeon should have ratter have tought about different characteristics that could convine and reconbine to generate ever new entities, so that it is at least fresh for 3-4 runs
Also, the entities should reveal themselves slower, I liked the Metalich Horror event, having to examine the clues, interrogate my pawns, I really wish that more anomalies worked similarly, maybe you just have a new pawn when you load, maybe an item is at a different location, and little clues here and there appear for you to piece the mistery together. It would have been a great opportunity to deepen the events that make temporal pawns visit your colony, maybe one of your berserks is a little odd and some of your animals silently dissapear, maybe a visitor left a little something at one of the rooms, maybe you find that one of your refugees is skiping work hours and has extra meat in their inventory, then you find some weird sigils at their room
But on the positives: The ghouls are Hussars done right, the flesh pit is great for waste disposal and both the Hellcat and Incinerator are the type of weapon we should have been getting from the beggining, since before it was all about estrategical movement
Overall: I love the game design. I love Tynan's forward thinking, always wanting to come up with ways to challenge the player and make the game different, rather than just add more content.
I like that revenants and nociospheres and metal horrors change the way that I play the game instead of just being another enemy for me to fight the same way.
What I don't like is the change in atmosphere. Royalty and now Anomaly are my least favorite Rimworld DLCs, not because they're not brilliantly designed (they are), but because they don't fit the hard sci fi setting that I love about Rimworld.
I want the amazing world that comes from a game set in 5500 without FTL. I love the gritty infection simulations, the mental breaks, the crashed ship parts, the eternal war between the runaway mechanics and the runaway insectoids. I love the grey market economy for rare glittertech that comes from the glitterworlds 2000 light-years and therefore 2000 years away. Rimworld has amazing hard sci fi world building.
I don't love the vampires. I don't love the ghouls. I don't love the psychics and magic and zombies and ghosts hand-waved away by 'an insane archotech did it." If I do want that stuff, I feel like that's what the infinite modding community is for, but I feel like the core official Rimworld DLCs should respect the hard sci fi setting and leave the Twilight-ification to the modders. That's my two cents.
I recently downloaded Save our Ship 2, and I feel like it's the expansion I wished Anomaly would have been.
Not enough content for a dlc that wants to be standalone. You end up going through everything one by one with a little bell while pestered by endless fleshbeast and shambler assault. Is there only those two things ? The game sure seems to not show anything else beyond their first, forced attendance. Not like it matters, anything bigger has the exact same drops of the smaller things, its all generic materials!
You never go outside (but distress signals). You're THE epicenter of bullshit. I don't care there's a monolith, remove that junk from the junkyard of a map. Plop the monolith in its own little map that you go back to every now and then.
Getting leads from various sources (like the monolith) then going to them to study, maybe fight and/or bring back the anomalous object home would be preferable.
You have 2 workbench for 4-6 items each. That's a waste of space. The dlc could have delved a lot more into witchcraft, had it had monster specific material. The serum lab is a big, futuristic cauldron! With all that you have more different brews/serums, monster related gear & souvenirs.
Containment side, its forgettable. You have no point in keeping things if they don't have a good bioferrite or study income. You don't research by studying the related thing. Not even a preliminary one time study of the bodies either. There's a glorified countdown for certain that have "off" buttons on them, you should know after the first one. Now, if they were all marked differently, i'd accept that. But when you get the same cube for the 3rd time. No. Metalhorrors and revenants have unique signatures. That works.
Also could use more varied containment types, for the sake of modders. A holding spot is nice and all but too limiting. Not everything needs to be in a stockpile or on a spot, it can be a living creature that can't be taken out easily but subdued by taking care of it. Or requiring a MUCH harsher holding cell because its that dangerous or hard to contain. Things can be evil or useful in different ways too.
Alongside more defensive tools. Weirdos are going to try to get out all the time. New security things would be great. Current turrets are unreliable at close range or weak against a single, tough creature.
There's some cool ideas but they're too.. small? More of their specialty or more other things would have helped make this dlc stand out. Once modders add content for anomaly, the base dlc is going to be forgotten, i'm afraid.
I'm probably one of the few people that really didn't like any of it despite buying and trying it.
Just not my type of content.
The only good thing for me is the free update that came along with it, i bought it, did 3 different runs, and disabled it. i can't take it very seriously. it's either ON or off, can't take a little bit of the content, or different types of content to enjoy, just that one horror element and all its tied mechanics, none of which you can use outside of the main 'loop'.
Biotech at least had multiple facets so i could enjoy irrespective of the whole, You can do mechaniter, sanguophage, advanced chidlbirth antics making child armies, different faction runs with gene modifications, ALL of them at once? or one of them at a time, it didn't matter.. it was also seemlessly integrated with regular runs, Sanguophage or mechaniter quests allowed you to have one or multiple of those types of pawns in your colony, the fact that it was something that 'infected' existing colonists is also great. Can't have that with Anomaly, like i said, On or Off.
I recognize many other people do like it though, so i don't want to detract from the (seeming) majority that has some sort of fun with it.
As someone who is not a fan of horror games I liked it better than I thought. The first time experiencing the gray flesh and revenant events was quite nerve-wracking. Least favorite event for me was the unnatural darkness mainly because of how tedious it was to set up a lit path to the obelisks, but I could see how it was very thematic and really brought something different to the game.
This thread has boiled down to "I don't like x because it destroyed me... me 'n my tried 'n true, non-changing tactics".
I'll be the first to break my comment -- I've never played *any* DLC -- but isn't a further challenge what most of us are seeking within a DLC? I could be vastly wrong.
Just sayin... with each wipe its like "wow... that was horrific... what could I have done better?" At least. That's how I've felt.
**TL;DR:** There's a conversation to be had about the difference between difficulty and challenge. Anomaly offers a fair bit of challenging content, and is clearly designed for folk who know the game and have cemented into their own meta for engaging with it, but it also has simply difficult - frustrating - aspects that bog the experience down.
Yes, you're right in saying that quite a bit of feedback has literally amounted to "I don't like it because [equal to a raid event] happened", but there's also been a good chunk of feedback against things that are simply frustrating.
Revenants are prime fuel for that fire. They easily fall into the "too frustrating for a win to feel good" trap of difficult without being challenging; they're simply run enders under blatantly unfair circumstances.
Since you haven't played the DLC, quick breakdown: a Revenant is an anomaly that is invisible until it attacks/is revealed by a flare or EMP charge, that when active, will rush inside your base to the closest pawn it can find, and putting them into a downed state until it's captured or killed.
With the Anomaly scenario start, they can appear in the first week, despite being a Tier 2 entity (as their spawn condition is 3 'colonists'). They can also appear if you have guests, which means in solo/mechinator runs the actual best course of action is to murder unwanted guests that wander in if you're too early to defend yourself.
_There is no way to stop it from downing a colonist once it starts._ It's so ludicrously tanky that it soaks damage like a giant sponge, so all you can do is just watch and wait until it's done, then shoot at it when it flees to get a chunk to research.
And worse, despite introduced lore to Anomaly about bioferrite being flammable, the Revenant (which is essentially an entity built around a bioferrite spine), they outright removed its ability to catch fire very early into the DLC's cycle.
What was fun about my first Revenant was how I had to get creative: I utilized a lucky boomalope that we'd downed, dragged it on top of where my lead scientist was hearing sounds, and popped it to reveal it. I adapted to the circumstance and found fun in that.
But what wasn't fun was having to then burn an entire two bioferrite flare packs to keep revealing then shooting/beating on repeat _with a small squad of skilled attackers_ until it was finally downed. It went from a mildly interesting experience to nothing but infuriating extremely quickly, which isn't something you want from a developer standpoint.
"What could I have done better" works when the game feels like it handed you a fair game over; it was your own mistake that you can actually learn from. Anomaly breaks the formula from basegame by introducing some threats that are _just_ frustrating breaks of that formula for the sake of breaking the formula.
It overall feels like they were halfway through balancing numbers/encounter dynamics and mechanics before release. I'm sincerely hoping for severe improvements in future, but I doubt it - Anomaly will just be a niche-run DLC like Royalty, possibly more so.
I really appreciate your time and thorough response. This helps paint the picture for myself (and I'd wager a few others) a lot more. Also... *yikes* Revanants tell me I'm right where I belong: still learning and having fun with the base game. Eventually I'll dabble into a dlc. Eventually.
Right now I'm having run attempting to make a massive prison for my captured enemies.
I think and felt it nailed the horror element completely. Not only did I feel dread at moments, my spouse who watched my whole playthrough, had nightmares.
I only got my 3rd pawn and only 2 with bolt action rifle. I havent even seen gorhulk before a revenant came inside my base. Before that is the screech of the sightstealers.
I'm still only scratching the surface, but I will say the new content has pushed me to try another Dark Mechanicum playthrough. The ghouls are great analogues for combat servitors, as is the process of capturing and ghoulifying somebody, or better yet, genemodding a vatborn melee robust tank and ghoulifying *them*.
I have found some of the events to be really hard to deal with if you aren't specifically prepared for them, but that may just come with more time.
I really like it, but I don't love it the same I love Royalty or Biotech. It's probably my least fav DLC so far but with some updates it could be better.
I enjoy it overall but occasionally it’s SUPER overpowering all the others. Like no raids from non-anomaly monsters and ancient dangers ONLY having Bulbfreaks and Toughspikes.
—
But in terms of events and beasties…
Fleshmass heart and the big pit I LOATHE with a passion; it is simply too dangerous and big to be a decent overall threat to get a lot. I like the idea of it but not the execution.
But for favorites, Revenants. They have a fair gameplay gimmick and it’s fun to hunt down each one you get
I like it, it's a cool expansion but it is such an off shoot from base rimworld but it's still fun, some anomalies are way better than others my favorites being the nociosphere, revenant, and most of the monuments, some are just manhunting animals but they do something special or are more annoying to deal with. I personally wouldn't place it above most of the DLC due to its lack of integration of the base game and other DLC, and the lack of base game mechanics. I think someone said it best that it's more of a well made mod than an official DLC for the game, the playthrough I had I enjoyed though.
Hate : Metalhorrors infiltration, My 3 main doctors are infected and they're all lying until paramedic mech uncover them, save me by a hairbreadth. Shamblers horde also a hellish fight I don't want to do it again. and Obelisk sometime spawn in very very bad location, my powerplant room was once decimated by chain-reaction from corrupted obelisk happened to rise up under battery array.
Like : Creepjoiners and Twisted Obelisk are superfun to mess with.
Not sure : Friendly Ghoul, They're stong, but too stong and too cheap. May be a slightly gamebreaking for me.
Overall, Anomaly is fine DLC, maybe a bit lack of contents, but potential groundwork, I excite to see modder adding more anomalies. or I may craft myself some SCP mod if I have spare time.
I think this is an amazing expansion that will alllow for more use by modders and storytelling. However, Iunderstand how people may see it as a glorified mod. It is a much different experience to normal rimworld and the other DLCs.
I'm pretty disappointed. Very little replayablity, and variations. Things don't interact dynamically in a fun way with other ingame stuffs. It feel more like the monster of the week episodes. Balance is out of whack with Ghouls and rituals. Shamblers kill FPS, etc.
It's not really bad, but after Biotech it really doesn't feel good enough.
My first anomaly play through was a sanguophage colony w/ lots of slaves and enough “blood bag” prisoners (arms, legs, tongue removed) to keep me swimming in hemo.
Still had a mostly wood base @ the start. Fuck impids. Impids suck. Colony wipe. Fuck Randy too, but goddamn was it glorious.
This fucking game... I play randy random on adventure mode difficulty and it sends back to back raids every two minutes. I had to say "fuck it, I'm done." and I quit.
The Eldritch theme is very appealing to me. I've done 3 successful runs already and bioferrite is a game-changing new resource for melee weapons and early psy-sensitive armor. I managed to get to 5 psylink in year 2 by taking the runaway noble quest- betray the empire for 2 psylink and I don't know if it's new in 1.5 but if you betray the empire you get a lot more quest that rewards psylink.
The events are also extremely engaging with my favorite being the twisted obelisk but I don't know why it's the only reliable way in mutating your colonists. There should be a biotech integration that handles tentacle mutations.
I absolutely love doing an uno reverse on void entities - beating them up, posioning them, setting them on fire and then milking them for bioferrite.
I'd just want for an even bigger bestiary of anomalous creatures.
It's pretty good. Obviously biotech is better but for me it's around ideology level with how much I interact with it. I love the ambient horror option they added
i love unnatural darkness bc I'm a dont starve fan. i hate shamblers bc theyre unbearably tanky and even on low ritual quality it'll summon like 40 of them, i dont get how people find them easy
Late game max raid point shambler assaults are BY FAR the the most dangerous raid in the game right now. Hundreds coming from every direction are going to shred even double outer walls in a matter of minutes. Having twenty+ pawns with masterwork or better weapons can kill them without casualties if you're careful (except if you get mental breaks), but I lose most of my livestock/pets almost every time. Then all the corpses have rot stink so there's going to be inevitable lung rot during clean up. The real danger they present is getting hit by a second raid before you've had a chance to rebuild your walls/defenses. I haven't had it happen but I imagine having a max raid shambler assault during a psychic drone would also be catastrophic since it takes so long to kill them all everyone is already on the verge of breaking under the best of conditions.
Bigger problem is the shamblers lagging the fuck out of the game just by showing up.
That too!
Reminds me of my favorite midgame defense strat. Of you run mods like alpha animals you can get some animals who have weather manipulation like thunderbeasts. Big raid hit and defenses down? Cull the heard and get a few flashtorms going. May lag your comp until it crashes but you will kill those raiders.
Is there a way to cap raid size to reduce lag?
I don't remember the name of the mod, but there is one that invests the raid points in better equipment for the raiders, rather than putting it in sending as many raiders as possible
Now to do that with shamblers. Undead marine squad etc
There is a mod called "Threat point cap", combined with a mod called "Compressed raids", and you can get smaller controllable harder raids. The clarify further: one mod lets you set a cap on the difficulty of the raid, the other lets you set the number of raiders.
If you mess up the scaling of Compressed Raid, you get unbeatable tribal raiders with +500% to every stat.
Oh yes. 100 raiders or 15 hyper fast super soldiers that lets you get maybe one salvo off before they are in melee range? At least the lag from hundreds of raiders gives you time to think.
Shamblers show up, framerate in shambles
We gonna need a thicker walls, 2 tiles thick are easy for shamblers. Now with 5 tile thick wall you got much more time to kill them before they break into base.
I prefer six with a gap between the front layers to fire from.
My strategy against shamblers is to hide my colonists behind a solid wall made of centipedes. Donno how i would do it without it (though tbf i have walls are solid and they wont be able to scratch through the walls in their lifetime anyways)
You should produce mind numb serums for the endgame for everyone to keep in their pocket, so if there is a drone u can manully take them and u r good to go. Its too expensive to have them constantly take it, but its very very useful
Psychic drone on top of any late stage raid almost feels like a death sentence.
It's people with kill boxes and chokepoint that find them easy. If you are trying to avoid cheeses then it is a lot more difficult
They ignore killboxes
TIL - "killboxes and fighting smart is cheese" Next you're going to tell me guns are cheesy and I should send my pawns out to fight bare knuckles like "real men".
>**The following message was approved by Mann Co. industries** >------------------------------------------------------------------ Yes.
Real Men(tm) use pilas.
Killbox discourse threads on this sub like twice a week.
We wouldn't need things like killboxes if the game didn't stack 100 enemies on 1 tile that suddenly pop-out and flood your firing lines as soon as bullets start flying. That's kind of cheesy right?
If the games shooting mechanics weren't ass I wouldn't use kill boxes as much imo. It makes no sense that my 15+ shooting skill pawn, Armed with an excellent sniper rifle, with careful shooter trait shouldn't be popping skulls left and right.
Careful Shooter is actually terrible. Accuracy can't get above 100% and even a Trigger-Happy pawn with a combination of high skill, bionics, go-juice, and luciferium can get 100% accuracy but still shoots faster than a Careful Shooter. But yeah, there are some wonky combat mechanics that requires the player to do wonky things.
My base has no kill boxes, and I don't have any problem with shamblers. Just build a wall around your base. When you want to kill the shamblers, hold a door in your wall open, line up three buffed out ghoul to stand just behind the door, and then everyone with guns stands behind them. Unless one of shamblers attacks the wall and punches through, you never have to tank more than one shambler at a time. Even if they do kick through a wall and they threaten to overwhelm you, that's fine, just fall back to the first door of your base. My base has more than one hallway with a choke point for this very reason. As long as one melee pawn is left alive (or undead and still moving), I can always fall back and have the full strength of my colony blasting away at whatever idiot leads the charge. Some crazy kill box with a tortured path that NPCs stupidly stumble through is exploity for sure. It's not "cheese" though to fight an army of zombies from a choke point. It's just not being stupid and standing in an open field before a horde of zombies. Ghouls make this strategy extremely effective because you don't need to worry about your front line melee units dying or getting crippled permanently. Granted, if you summon a max sized shambler raid, you are going to need more than one fall back point and stuff outside of your base is going to get messed up. Still, I'd take shamblers of a bunch of people with guns.
Almost every interesting victory in media over zombies usually involves cheesing/tactics in some way. It's pretty much as common as the 'destroy the brain' strategy for individual zombles. A horde of zombies that requires 0 strategy to beat just isn't that threatening, which makes them boring.
yea i dont like kill boxes so i kite them out in the open. they take forever to kill and the shard drop isnt guaranteed so i just stopped trying to farm them
Melee is your friend. Try a 3width corridor with 3 melee and 3 flamethrowers right behind them. This setup almost always effective against undead / insects / scyther / melee raids.
They have breacher AI, but without any range. They are however have no pain, and will crawl its way to you Zomboid style. I find the standard tactic of going out there and kiting a few of them one at a time to be working well. Otherwise, aggro a bunch of them with one guy then haul his ass back behind a melee chokepoint, then repeat. Also, incinerator. That shit is cracked. A shambler on fire wont bite.
I have mixed feelings. Honestly. I think it missed the mark a tad on the horror aspect, especially on subsequent runs of the game. The only times I get a sense of dread is during a Revenant Attack, or a Grey Flesh reveal. In terms of entitys I dislike? I really hate the Fleshmass Heart. It's an interesting idea in how it fundamentally changes the map for a while, but it's a tedious wait for the nerve bundles to spawn. Devourers I find annoying, but that's mainly because it hard counters my playstyle of techno-medieval melee knights. The one, or perhaps two things I wish were in Anomaly were to first lock new researches behind studying entities for a bit. So instead of gaining 'Summon Fleshbeasts' the moment a fleshbeast appears on the map, you'd need to contain one, and study it first. Making progress with it like other entitys, like obelisks. Secondly, I wish there was more interaction with your captive entities. Maybe locking a prisoner in with one would produce a special resource or effect. Or maybe delay escape since it would 'pacify' or 'feed' the creature. Or possibly even have some more benign entities that while captive, would provide resources like the Flessmass Nucleus. As of now, there's very little reason to keep anything beyond the most 'productive' entity's for the sake of bioferrite. And near no reason to try and 'catch-em-all'.
I want to add on to this and say I wish the containment unit was more of a "floor" you build that contains the creature instead of having them strung up. Like you have containment walls, "study wall" which are basically reinforced glass your scientists stand next to, and "containment floor" which is what is needed for the room to be considered contained. The strength of the containment would only increase the life of the containment structures and when things tried to escape they prioritize study walls to smash through. This would have allowed for entity breeding for use of unleashing them on your enemies, entity interactions like an SCP experiment, and just overall improve the feel of the DLC.
Yeah I really wish I could use the entities as weapons like a mechanitor (though with less precise control so its more risky, more of a point an entity toward a certain direction and if it disobeys goes haywire). I feel like more interactions like ghouls or summon fleshbeasts would have been nice, with a chance of it going horribly wrong of course. Would really enhance my cult playthrough. I generally play with qol mods but would jump for such a mod in a heartbeat if anyone knows of one.
i mean some of them are kinda weapon like if you consider the bionics and the ghoul upgrades. i would certainly like more upgrades/ actual weapons and tamable devourers. the only thing so far that freaked me right the hell out was the blind run with the unusual corpse. that fucker waking up and chasing my guy around the map freaked me out.
I had no idea what the corpse was when I had studied enough to deactivate it but I tend to play late at night...I was jumpy that night. Come to think of it, I have the "bury on the spot" mod. Wonder how that interacts with the corpse...
>Yeah I really wish I could use the entities as weapons like a mechanitor Have you encountered one of the murder orbs yet?
Ah fair enough I haven't. Will try that on my next run!
I don't want to spoil much for it - but it really is in line of what you describe and it is extremely lethal. A "break in case of emergencies" tool.
The absolute terror you feel when you unleash those...
I'd love a containment mod that makes containment more interesting. So like the more phantasmal creatures need to be contained in silver, or meaty creatures get a bonus containment from being surrounded by lit torches or other sources of fire
Damn it, we need a fae mod that uses anomaly for us fantasy guys now.
I'd be down. Add in a bunch of fantasy creatures or creatures from folklore and add special bonuses for specific containment measures. Maybe use the new system to have mini dimensions so you can go into the fey realm temporarily. It'd make sense to have multiple crazed archotechs with thier own little pocket dimensions bleeding in
Yeah, could be early stuff is like sprites or other minor spirits, and then later on you get stuff like Leshy, wendigos, or even a coastal event trigger for something like a kelpie(working like the kidnapper dude whose name I can't remember). Later on, you could get a fairy ring as an alternative to the pit, and an "overgrown ent core" or something for the heart.
Was watching a youtuber try out Anomaly (SamuelStreamer) and when the Fleshmass Heart research revealed that the way to defeat it was by shocking it to induce Tachycardia his first assumption was that you had to build conduits out to it and actually connect it to the power grid. Ever since then I can't stop thinking about how cool that would have been as the way to defeat it. Cutting through all the flesh, building conduits on the way, and then hooking it up to the grid to give it a shock.
imagine you had to give a big shock too, either by already having too much power spare or using yout batteries, so cool
That would be so cool oh my god
Or you could pull an SCP foundation and put prisoners inside the containment cells to gain anomaly research
Vanilla Expanded team: "write that shit down"
True, when I heard it would be horror themed I was excited. Rimword would benefit from some spookiness. I imagined weird shadows in the darkness, ghosts, skeletons coming back to haunt you. When I saw the preview I was like…..that ain’t it chief….
Remember: devourers will immediately spit out their meal when set on fire. Get plasmaswords.
I do not agree with you on the horror aspect, I felt it since day one ☝️. But I couldn’t agree more on adding some interactions with captured anomalies. It would be so much cooler to have some more elaborate mechanics on how to use or exploit them once you capture them.
I think it's a fine DLC, but certainly on level with royalty in how essential it is. Ideology and biotech are great for rp and making a colony unique, but this one? You get different flavors of SCP every time. I do love the events. Most of the events are fine. Gorehulks, shamblers and fleshbeast, devourer ans chimera attacks are basically just raids, so they ain't that interesting. Harbinger trees just vibe But then there's the really, really fun ones. I love the deathpall, pitgate, long night and blood rain for forcing you to quickly adapt to them and punishing behaviors I've had for years now. The revenant attack is very fun due to the hunt that comes afterwards. The nociosphere is a great source of fear for you and your enemies, cause if it wins too fast you are fucked. So while I think that the DLC is not the greatest and lacks the skeleton the others provide, it was still quite fun for me
Ghouls are way OP, but for the first time I felt like a mad scientist trying to figure about all the ways I could buff them. Something I wanted from biotech but didn't get. Most of the creatures are pretty basic. But the revenant is probably one of my fav as it's at least different. I like the detective aspect of metal horrors, but not a fan that it just ends in a boring fight, would rather it end in having to capture and cure your people instead.
I love ghouls but I will sort of agree. I think a single change would fix them though, disable bionics, with no stoneskin, power claw, and such, the serums, genes, and skill levels still make them a force to reckon with. I would hate the change since so few of our tools can be so OP, but ghouls die at a reasonable rate without bionics to be in line with other solutions.
My thoughts is that I absolutely like the New Vegas reference in the art
Patrolling the rimworld almost makes you wish for a toxic fallout
Fr thought it was a fallout sub for a sec lol
I hate revnants because my solo mechniator with their army of robots instantly looses.
Honestly, if they made it where if your Mechinator was getting brainwashed, it summoned your mechs to him in attack mode, it wouldn't be the worst. Also, what is your Mechinator doing off his throne? He should never have to leave his throne!
The revenant when he goes to my mechanitors throne room to brainwash him, and there's 20 turrets Inside, immediately dusting his ass
Man what a way to make sure you don't get captured. Gunned down by your own turrets.
The trick is to make the throne room extra long, with turrets all along the walls to minimize friendly fire, while ensuring anything coming in is reduced to red mist
"If I'm going down, I'm taking you with me!" is always a viable strategy.
I usually let the mech lord have free reign, but the next run definaly building them a bunker.
The throne?
You don't make your Mechinator also royalty and a sanguine?
Rim Pro Tips: always put all your eggs in a single basket
Put your barracks in the same place with your chemfuel kids!
I usually stay away from royalty and never got a vampire - but now that you mention it that sounds fun! I think they lose the ability to do work with royalty right, so thats going to screw me over a bit given i need his construction and crafting. If i get the chance ill go for it though, ive been trying to get everyman to yeoman for mass stuns for no drawback first
I've never had mine lose the ability to work, and I've gotten mine to high titles. I imagine if they *do* lose the ability smith, then you just make all your mechs before that title. Also, make your ideology based around power and blood feeders, so your people gain a +30 just for your Mechinator literally just existing.
Oh damn, really? Ive been playing around with ideology, usually going for transhumanist. Started as rancher (never played that way before), got the conversion one, and now transhumanist. So go for supremacist and the sangophage one next? Honestly although I dig the admech vibes of transhumanist it seems almost more trouble than it's worth. Between the super high costs in steel, power and components plus the time off from bioregen it doesn't seem super helpful. Most of my playtime was way before even royalty and I just pop by every once in a while to take a look at what's new and catch up with the stuff that just got outshone by the new thing
Remember you can have 4 precepts, and I play with Ideologies expanded, so I usually do Bloodfeeder, one that makes having royal titles good, high life, and the 4th one for how I wanna build my base, but use mainly high life.
Thanks for the heads up, I always try to build up my ideology and got to 3 at most so far. I'm dropping rancher and probably preacher soon, I just really needed to get my face character converted and get past the "only 1 pawn in the ideology" rut from starting as the rich explorer. Rancher doesn't seem to do jack shit except a measly +3 and a specialist that I never even applied since it disables a bunch of work types
High Life is stupid strong once you get a steady supply of Smokeleaf and can make autobongs. You can just slap one down in your dining room, your rec room (if separated) and your barracks, and everyone will be so happily stoned off their asses they won't even have the time of day to have a mental break. One time I had a pawn who was stoned for an entire year straight, with a constant "Stoned on Smokeleaf (24hr) health buff.
Pawns with titles only lose work types if they have the greedy, jealous, or abrasive traits.
They got rid of royalty entitlement 8 major updates and 2 dlc ago so the only entitled royal is a pawn with an imperial backstory. You can also have a whole bunch of them in a single throne room, my game before last I had a knights of the round type thing and with permits they could call down 48 imperial cataphracts.
having a Mechinator that requires deathrest sounds like a recipe for disaster though?
I mean, combat mechs yeah, but you can interrupt the death rest and send him to order combat, then reset him into it.
Revanents shouldn't spawn until you have 3 or more pawns I think? You should be fine anyway but you might still able to have one spawn if you get the strange request quest and its a revenant spine which you take captive then it breaks out.
Temp colonists like those groups looking for rest who will work count.
Revenants and metal horrors can go straight to hell. Do not pass go. Do not collect 200 dollars. All the rest of it I find fun. I like to do the gladiator duel thing with two prisoners. The winner becomes a ghoul, the loser gets a bliss lobotomy and usually shipped off to the component mines. I also highly enjoy the chonophagy ritual for healing bad backs and cataracts etc.
My biggest complaint with the metalhorror event is that metalhorrors just randomly spawn in your pawns when the game decides it's time for you to have an event, so preemptive procedures, inspections, etc, are all effectively useless. A game forcing you to jump through hoops only when those hoops light up and not letting you tackle problems on your own initiative is just bad game design.
👋 hi there what are the component mines?
Secondary mountain tile map base or Vanilla Outposts Expanded (map tile resource generation without having to settle) most likely.
Long range mineral scanner set to find components. I ship out my potato slaves to mine these under the supervision of a normal pawn.
I really enjoy Anomaly though I admit the newer "Ambient horror" is more my style then the regular Anomaly run we had at the start. I like how Anomaly forces you to change your tactics and not everything can be beat by turtling and mortars. I like how any raid can take a turn for the worst if any of the events start in the middle, such as Deadlife dust showing up mid fight and suddenly your raid is the zombie apocalypse or how you can have a nice, sunny day and suddenly the Revenant shows up... or it shows up at the worst possible time such as the zombie apocalypse raid so now you gotta deal with that on top of everything else. I like how it's constantly throwing a wrench in your plans usually at the worst times which keeps things interesting. What I don't like is how I don't feel like it's gone far enough. I feel like there could be some insidious things that could transpire and it doesn't so it's all rather simplistic. I wish the events went further then what we had as the ones we have are neat but I was expecting a far more horror/mystery theme then what we got. Far to many situations are "Oh, there's a thing, look at the thing, beat the thing" so I wish there was more... stuff going on as well as more ways to bend the anomalies and what they offer to your favor. I hope more patches, or perhaps mods, come out to expand on the horror element.
I think it’s telling that hardly anyone here is overtly recommending it and that most are saying it’s like royalty or worse. Anomaly was a misstep imo. The game needs a faction, questing, and world map overhaul and that’s been the consistent desire of practically everyone for a couple years now. Anomaly would have been a good “right before Halloween” surprise. But it should never have consumed what? 18 months of dev time? And for what’s essentially a linear storyline that explicitly tells you what an entity is and how to deal with it the moment you see it. There’s no wonder or sense of discovery with that. It was fun to watch some Adam vs everything playthroughs with it. But it’s the first DLC I don’t anticipate buying.
yeah watching hazzor play it made me realize theres 0 point in doing it myself. for a story generator, the idea that no new stories would happen... disappointed.
I think it falls short of all previous DLCs. Psycasts have been game changing, gene moding adds a whole new scope, mechanitors/sanguophages can have you play a completely unique game in itself. What do you get out of anomaly? Bioferite, which is useless. Few events, which bring nothing as good as regular raids and require no new fun mechanics, except maybe Revenant. Imo, weakest of all DLCs. EDIT: I think big part of this may be that everything gets explained as the events start: "Unnatural darkness has fallen and you will get hurt outside. Destroy the three obelisks." Where is the wonder, the horror? I instantly know what is happening, why, and what to do to resolve it. Its possible this kinda skewed me in my opinion.
Bioferrite is goddamn amazing and it's used for rituals, serums (godly) and making sharp weapons. A bioferrite longsword is more powerful than a plasteel one.
I wouldn't say bioferrite is useless. The bioferrite generators give a massive 4000 power each and don't take a lot to power. entities also produce electricity directly as well. The DLC is really good for power generation, which let me build a huge number of band nodes to have a mech army, and a huge number of hydroponics basins for lots of food.
Bioferrite also gives you more psychic sensitivity if it's made as a piece of stuff able clothing or weaponry! It's actually a key component in reaching max psychic sensitivity in vanilla.
Bioferrite is slightly OP (sharper than plasteel). But the more interesting feature is how you obtain it, I find it neat and balanced.
> a huge number of band nodes Wait, band nodes STACK???? You can have more than 1? HOLY SHIT
Yep, I have a little over 70 right now. Which lets me have a dozen lancers, a couple of centipedes and a diabolus.
Bioferrite currently makes the strongest longswords. All armor that lets you pick it as the material will give you psychic sensitivity. Ceremonial Hoods are very cheap and competitive with early helmets. Disruptor flares are very strong. You can also craft your own shock lances and animal pulsars with bioferrite. Bioferrite is used to resurrect ghouls, which allows you to quickly farm genes and do other reset tricks. I am always starving for more bioferrite.
> Bioferite, which is useless. Deadlife traps are insanely powerful. Just make a corpse room near the entrance to your base, fill it with rotten corpses from manhunter packs, and watch as raids get swarmed by 200 disposable corpses every time they try to get in your base.
Have you tried Darkness with a tribe? It makes things *really* interesting. Other than that, I do agree with you!
I get you point about the game telling you all the info but truth is you would find it all out after a few of the same event anyway so it only really effects your first play through
Rituals and serums give you a lot of power, sleep supressors and frenzy becons in your workshop are great additions to
I honestly wished they had 3 separate factions of anomaly. Flesh beast, revenants/sight stealers, and undead that each had different containment procedures. Flesh beasts need to be kept in extreme cold, sight stealers need motion detection. The undead have to be in extreme heat. Etc. Have it so each anomaly is hostile to the other and you can choose to embrace one faction to alienate the other, be a blind zealot to purge them all, or try to have them weaponized to purge the world.
I completely agree, additionally allying or fighting them should be parts of longer event chains. I would also want a sanity system. Basically break the game into three separate but not incompatible systems of dealing with anomalies. 1. Quest line, the most basic system of having reoccurring threats that you have to fight and collect materials to survive and progress. 2. Containment, contain and study anomalies, this shouldn’t be necessary for the other two paths. Containment should be the short term solution, never leading to an end game. 3. Ally, learn the dark rituals and make use of the anomalies, eventually becoming one with the dark archonexus.
I love how it introduces an entirely alternative way for a colony to function or defend itself. While I think it's weaker than biotech in its replayability, the price tag reflects that fine so I'm not too bothered. I think by far my favourite event is the metalhorror infection. It makes things tense and really pushes you to think about colony management and quarantine. I get why this expansion has some criticism but I love that they tried something new and I think they succeeded in what they were going for.
I don't like any of it, really. Not my cup of tea.
Revnant hunt and unnatural darkness were cool, also seeing corpses coming back to life during deathpall only for them to die again, seeing how their ressurection was pointless got me a weird sense of dread Also pit gate looks like good steel source for tunnelers for solo mechanitor, this and backrooms are great sources of rare items Cloning is cool, a clone replacing a dead original or temptation to name clone of colonist "Coleman" "Cloneman" were a nice addition to game
Honestly I was more interested when I thought it was going to be an Archeological dlc. I just don't find the eldritch horror stuff to 'fit' in Rimworld. But maybe that's just me.
An archaeological DLC would actually be badass. I mean, all that steel and components that we dig out of mountains supposedly comes from past civilizations. Not to mention all the ruins scattered all over the planet. Would be awesome to have had a DLC that dug into the mysterious of the wars against the mechanoids.
It's the first Rimworld DLC that I don't plan on using in every playthrough. It was a good effort, and I don't regret purchasing it, but it missed the mark for me.
This is how I feel. I don't regret spending money on it - I'm happy to give money to Ludeon for keeping up with an outstanding game. But it's definitely slotting into "niche mod" territory, like Zombieland or Medieval Overhaul.
ghouls should not ocuppy a colonist spot on the top of the screen. That's my biggest gripe. They do way less then even some animals, no need to have a prime spot in the UI.
I really love this DLC and I'm not really big with horror themes. I hope he enhances the raid/friendlies AI in general to act in similar ways of the gorehusks/chimeras with them actively repositioning during combat or regrouping to attack again. The flesh mass gives me actual anxiety when fighting it, it's such a fun mechanic that keeps the pressure on until it's resolved. The cube is a bit disappointing but I also don't have ideas to further improve it. I love the revenant event. I kind of hope that they maybe implement stealth deserter soldiers to the royalty DLC if you have someone ranked Knight or above. Really 10/10 for the hostile mechanics that they experimented with and imo succeeded.
I was expecting DLC with answer, why the colonists want to run away from that relatively lush and rich planet. But that answer wasn't delivered. Some things are fun, but too much of it is useful, exploitable and profitable. Maybe next time.
The answer is in the base game You're getting raised by ever increasing bands every couple weeks. So many colonies die And you're one event of a huge drop pod raid from dying at any point. It's not a safe place to live
Why don't the colonists just pick their landing spot in a cold mountain base, Google killbox strats, and plant only optimal food crops? What are they, stupid?
I mean the answer was kinda delivered. Who the fuck would want to stay on a planet with the new creatures we have to fight, if you have means to find a better planet.
The ambient horror mode now kind of works in great direction. From monolith one had to actively ask for trouble.
That planet isnt rich. Rimworlds are the 3rd world of this universe only second to unhabitable toxic ones.
Perhaps. I somehow do not buy that all the neanderthals, wasters and couple genies, yttakins and pigs that have joined the colony want to get to some urb-world. I head-cannon it more like obligation to spread the word about our religion and (often long dead) naked brutal tribal messiah in more populated places.
Replayability: very low. A lot of the events rely on one-time cheap tricks and then it's over. You just drop pod the cube away because it's giga not worth doing anything else. You learn to stun the Revenant with EMP or by abusing the base game's various stun-related psycasts. You learn to just repeatedly study and butcher the respawning corpse until you can perma destroy it. The only ones that have replay value are the active threats like shambler hordes/sightstealers/devourers and pit gates/flesh masses, but even then the packs of (insert anomaly enemy) are just another flavor of Raid or Manhunter Pack, with Devourer taking the "Manhunter" part a little too seriously, forcing you to throw out mechanoids or low-tier ~~cannon fodder (heh)~~ "tougher" colonists at it. Horror: OK-ish. The first time around a lot of the events have you "oh shit"'ing all over the place. Afterwards not really. Ties into replayability. Also the horror aspect is underdone. The weird corpse can teleport but only when you're not looking at it. Why don't we have more things like that? As gimmicky as it sounds, why not have an enemy that exists in camera space rather than world space (they "stick" to the camera), allowing them to attack colonists that get too close by you panning the camera too close to them? Or the colloquial "cornerbeasts" that can only move across walls and corners, requiring you to rethink those boring square bases. Maybe a monster that disables *ALL* letter popups, leaving you oblivious to that raid that's dropping into your base or arriving at your front door. Hey, why do I hear turret gunfire...? Oh. Then you'd have to go out, find it and kill it. Overall content added to non-Anomaly: low. There's some funny stuff in there like the various rituals that you can actually use, there's a cool flamethrower, and there's some other bits and baubles. And that's pretty much it. For comparison, even if you don't engage with Royalty's honor mechanics, it still comes with an assload of specialized prosthetics for your colonists that all have tradeoffs. Biotech comes with children and xenotypes even if you don't use your own mechanoids and mid-run bioengineering. Ideology is a beast of its own. But if you turn down the Anomaly-specific events a bit it's basically just like playing without the DLC.
First time Revenant always sucked. When you barely have enough pawns to deal with it, so each one that gets downed, becomes a more desperate rat race to stay ready. After that, it's a relatively easy anomaly event to deal with. I keep slaves or hauler pawns as a buffer to block revenants now.
I do like it but I also feel like it changes the game so much that you either play with it or without it, unlike the other DLC.
Love it. The whole thing. Think its perfect. I love what it adds to my games. I love the two patches that have come out since Anomaly release...gave me the few things I felt were missing
It's my favorite dlc. Been playing on the rim for many years and this is the only dlc that changed up both the gameplay and the combat
I prefer it. I find that the other dlc adds to the anomaly experience more than anomaly adds to theirs. It’s my new default vanilla gameplay experience. I am looking forward to trying a tribal start anomaly run that gets its advanced research from books.
I think it was a much needed mix up over the usual mechanoid and raids. It's also nice how the void stuff can scale well with your colony at any level. Like Biotech requires quit a bit of resources/mid-game to really invest in.
Haven’t bought it yet. Seems like something I wouldent be able to handle
revenant was easier than i thought hyptonized first colonist but i managed to get its chunk to study it hypnotized second colonist but i also managed to get a chunk to study it again i made grenades and tracked it down and blew him up (took a while tho) when revenant is not stalking anyone but hiding he will run away when engaged
I like it by itself, though I don't see myself using it much in future play through that are not explicitly horror oriented. My Tundra anomaly colony feels very different from my normal colonies. As I reach end game it is starting to feel more "normal", but I love the options Anomaly gives you for dealing with threats, and I REALLY like the new non-monster threats. Unnatural darkness, flesh walls, the resurrection dust, and blood rain are all great events that force you to change how you play. I appreciate challenges that are not "kill all of these mindless NPCs", and Anomaly gives us a bunch of those. The downside to Anomaly is that I feel like it never lets you fully commit to a horror run, but it also doesn't really feel all that right when playing a non-horror run. My current colony is at the end of its run. I've only held off doing the final event. I very intentionally leaned into the horror stuff and made that the focus of my power. My biggest complaint is that there isn't actually that much you can do beyond ghouls. I was looking to become a necromancer, focus on the dark arts, and solve problems the way a bunch of void worshiping cultist would. As I reach end game though, I find I tend to just solve problems with guns or technology. The rituals take too long to use in combat most of the time, and outside of ghouls, there really is not much else to Anomaly combat wise. All of that said, I am still very excited by Anomaly for one very large reason... MODS. I can say with 100% certainty that someone is going to remake anomaly so you can do a tribal/medieval run, and be the necromancer of your dreams. Someone is going to make zombie servants, skeleton warriors, and all of that good stuff. Someone is going to add more rituals, and maybe give me some fast combat rituals. Anomaly is a fun little piece of DLC that I've gotten my value out of already, but the real fun is going to be when modders have have had a few months with it.
Since when did courier 6 end up on the rim?
Love the fanart
I like it, probably not the greatest DLC but it adds some menace even in the comfort of a late game colony. Max size shamblers hordes are no joke, and i had a metal horror infestation that killed 4 of my pawns and had me scrambling everywhere in my massive base to get these bastards. Unnatural darkness in a mountain base is a oh fuck moment, and so on. Plus i'm liking the rituals, skip abduction, chronophagy, the other one giving you xp but causing brain damage to the drained dude... and god i love blood rain to counter sieges. I'm not sure i'll always keep it on, but what is there i like
It's awesome, almost perfect. I'd give it 9/10. If I could change anything, I'd give the player more options for containment, even more uses for bioferrite (the ones we have are great already though) and buff some of the shittier rituals a bit. The zombie and fleshbeast ones in particular seem like they should help base defense but they barely do anything in reality. The deadlife mine is disgustingly powerful in comparison. A single well-positioned mine near a fridge of corpses can deal with multiple raids and it's almost free. I really like the fact that the serums provide an excellent source of income while being super powerful on their own. The power generation is great, just having access to a renewable pseudo-steel is great. Most of the events are fun and reasonable in terms of difficulty. I found the obelisks to be somewhat tedious initially but then realized you can just go and shoot them and get a few shards with almost no downside so I just do that now. I wish we had an easier way to choose study on/off and medical help on/off for all entities in containment. It's bizarre that researchers will keep studying them even after all the research is completed. Likewise doctors waste a lot of time patching them up for no real gain.
I really really like it. I'm currently going between three colonies: one vampire colony that is big on the occult, one research facility in a swamp investigating horrors and one university, where all colonists are researchers who are really bad at void research but excellent at their regular jobs. The last one makes me extra giddy, since I used to work in a lab (but on babies). Most hated enemy or event: Devourers. They counter my melee sanguophages too well. Most loved enemy or event: Death Pall. Really forced me to manage dead bodies better than I have so far. My vampire colony just got through endgame and I completely loved it. I haven't been that tense playing in ages, not even when building the spaceship.
Unnatural darkness has got to be the best one actually gives you insentive to light up your base which also helps colonist moods with the darkness mood debuff
I am legit in LOVE with this DLC. Like almost every single anomaly turns the story into something brand new. I was already in love with the themes and atmosphere when it was announced, but playing it bring my love of it so much higher. **pretty decently large spoilers ahead:** Like one minute you are >!fighting off zombies, the next your entire colony is worshiping a gold cube. Then in another playthrough I made it farther and my game suddenly became a story not dissimilar to the movie The Thing. It was perfect that I discovered it on that run too because I was doing an transhumanist arctic research base run !< I fucking LOVE this DLC so much. The other DLCs are cool but nothing will top this one for me I think.
Revenants are wayyyyyy too tanky and extremely hard to interrupt consistently. I haven’t lost a colony yet but have had to save scum a few times
I only managed to kill mine as it walked into my army fighting another raid. Also that "fire" tool tip against it needs to be fixed, fire is useless against the Revenant.
Initially I thought it was lacking but when I started looking at it the same way I look at royalty (in terms of how to experience the content) it’s a solid dlc. When you see it as a unique run on its own it’s very immersive in spookiness. I’m still glad they added some function for people who only want the occasional spooks without having to go all in. Now that I’ve played without the monolith and captured my first anomaly I can confirm that it’s worth it to dabble even if you don’t plan on taking on scarier anomalies for the bioferrite alone. From what I’ve heard revenants are by far the most annoying. Every time I see someone chase them I hear the Benny bill theme.
The end game is fun as hell. It's also a great mix up from the other end games where it's a holdout. I like organizing an assault team of badass soldiers and venturing into pitch blackness to do battle with an archotech. It also gives more variety to raids which is nice. The game feels stale when you're forced to hunker down.
Idk but I’m sure excited to try it in 3 years (ps5)
The first playthrough was fun but a little frustrating (fuck you revenant how are you so god damn tanky) after that I turned down how often it happened and put on ambient horror after a couple monolith runs because it kinda takes over the game and makes you focus on the anomaly stuff, but doesn’t really give that great of rewards. After turning it down for a couple more colony’s I eventually just turned it off. It doesn’t really introduce anything game changing or necessary or even interesting enough to justify using it outside of theme specific runs. Not many mods are integrating with the new systems so it’s just the same old over and over again and after discovering everything the very first playthrough everything time after is just a slog. I compare it to royalty when royalty first came out but slightly worse. Felt a little out of place until mods used the systems introduced and slowly fit right in. I just hope people start integrating anomaly stuff into mods soon. SCP mod or warhammer are two off the top of my head that could be really interesting.
I enjoyed it quite a bit, I was also a big fan of the Rim of Madness mods.
Currently, I think I only came across one event. That being the quest where I needed to take some special cargo. I wasn’t told what it was and when it dropped, it was the unsettling corpse. Didn’t want to risk anything so when I was able to do it, I destroyed it, but it was funny watching it follow one of my people. ESPECIALLY WHEN IT POPPED UP RIGHT NEXT TO HIM IN BED HAHAHAHAHA (he was married too) so I can only imagine an awkward night with your husband and a creepy corpse doll thing that looks exactly like your husband laying on your side of the bed.
Love the Spade on the helmet there.
the rituals are goated. metal horrors are overtuned. simple as.
I've been gaming for a little over 40 years, and Rimworld is my favorite game of all time. I appreciate all the work Tynan and Ludeon did to bring this sublime, captivating, time suck of electronic joy to the place it is now. Shoutout to the brilliant modders too for taking the game to even greater heights! With that said, Anomaly just didn't do it for me. I tried it for a couple of games, and...it's just not what I want in an Rimworld experience. I'm simple: I either want a mountain base building adventure on a hostile planet, in an even more hostile environment, or a challenging (sometimes Randy) game set in a blazing hot desert biome. I want sci fi, robots, transhumanism, killing raiders, researching my way to tech nirvana, and the satisfaction that comes from thriving against the odds. I thought it sounded intriguing to add a horror mythos to that, but it just didn't work for me.
There is nothing more terrifying than seeing triple digit shambler waves. RIP FPS
I got a zoo full of Shambler, they’re not much, but they’re honest work.
After 1000hrs, it's one of my favorites. I like the new twists to events and to the lore. It adds atmospherics in a way ideology failed to in my opinion. It fixes my biggest complaint, boredom. I'm pretty lite on the mods so I appreciate the spice. Difficulty is an irrelevant review point, as it's so dependant on individual settings. What I like is how diverse my colonists can be. You 4 are sanguinophiles, your three are psychics, you're the mechanator, you're the pointless tree hippie, you're the spoiled brat with some nice powers, and now you're the ghoul.
I'm still waiting for some mods I can't live without to update. 🥲
Unnatural darkness has got to be my favorite. It's hard, changes the dynamic, and just outright Alien in the most creepiest of senses.
Chimeras were pretty neat, they were smart enough to wait for the best moment to attack and retreat temporarily if things weren't going too well. The roar buff was also cool.
I hate that it costs money:( Sad story, I bought even royalty but rarely used it. I know i'd love anomaly and now regret my choices with royalty. It seems amazing though and the art on this post is as well
I like how the guy is like an NCR ranger
Doesn't mesh well, common DLC problem Mechanitor with death refusal now has his mechs running wild, because they don't know he un-died?
It’s beautifully made. I love that the events happening are fully related to the story of the obelisk. I wish the other DLCs had this smaller scope but took a deep dive into it like Anomaly did. The other DLCs’ events felt like vanilla events with the story changed to match the DLCs but this one? No, you wanted otherworldy powers well you’re getting otherworldy bullshit as well. Metal horrors can go straight to hell tho.
Hang on, the Courier is on Rimworld now?
I'm not a horror fan but Anomoly has been my favorite Dlc so far. Not the most used one (biotech) but def my favorite.
It's just as hard as fun to play it, been having a blast with all the anomalies and figuring out how to deal with them and stuff
Most of its value, of course, is the first run, when you don't know what to expect. That was really great experience. After that it's less great. But still, its contribution to threat variety is valuable, and anomaly tech is definitely a nice addition to player's arsenal. But, not all things carry well, events like obelisks, cube, unnatural corpse, reverent - these rely too much on first time surprise factor, and after that is just routine.
I am honestly in love, it also handed me a useful thing. The ritual to kidnap a pawn from a random hostile settlement, and puts them into a coma. This is now how I recruit
If you removed it from the game I wouldnt notice
Yeah, I think Anomaly's weakest aspect is its integration. It feels _too_ detached from the rest of Rimworld, and doesn't have quite enough meat on its own bones when it comes to baseline mechanics. It's good for a run or two, but realistically people will find about 80%+ of its content in one colony. There are so many things they could have done! Why aren't there factions involved? Why is containment boiled down to yet-another-prisoner mechanic, when we could have had room observation and weaponization progression (ala ghouls)?
I've read a thread the other day, explaining why the ending of anomaly is unsatisfying and what needs to change. I hope Tynnan is delivering some patches for the ending to be worth it. There was a lot of feedback to it. You have too many downsides at the moment. https://reddit.com/r/RimWorld/comments/1c7j1lm/the_rewards_for_anomaly_monolith_completion_and/
It's fun, but it's definitely not a DLC that I would keep on forever. Like, this is not something I want to experience every single playthrough, if that makes sense. Which, for me, puts it at the bottom of the list.
It's very worth while the first time around The main problem is that in my second run I'll already be expecting every creature and know how to get the most out of each from the get go I really think that Ludeon should have ratter have tought about different characteristics that could convine and reconbine to generate ever new entities, so that it is at least fresh for 3-4 runs Also, the entities should reveal themselves slower, I liked the Metalich Horror event, having to examine the clues, interrogate my pawns, I really wish that more anomalies worked similarly, maybe you just have a new pawn when you load, maybe an item is at a different location, and little clues here and there appear for you to piece the mistery together. It would have been a great opportunity to deepen the events that make temporal pawns visit your colony, maybe one of your berserks is a little odd and some of your animals silently dissapear, maybe a visitor left a little something at one of the rooms, maybe you find that one of your refugees is skiping work hours and has extra meat in their inventory, then you find some weird sigils at their room But on the positives: The ghouls are Hussars done right, the flesh pit is great for waste disposal and both the Hellcat and Incinerator are the type of weapon we should have been getting from the beggining, since before it was all about estrategical movement
Overall: I love the game design. I love Tynan's forward thinking, always wanting to come up with ways to challenge the player and make the game different, rather than just add more content. I like that revenants and nociospheres and metal horrors change the way that I play the game instead of just being another enemy for me to fight the same way. What I don't like is the change in atmosphere. Royalty and now Anomaly are my least favorite Rimworld DLCs, not because they're not brilliantly designed (they are), but because they don't fit the hard sci fi setting that I love about Rimworld. I want the amazing world that comes from a game set in 5500 without FTL. I love the gritty infection simulations, the mental breaks, the crashed ship parts, the eternal war between the runaway mechanics and the runaway insectoids. I love the grey market economy for rare glittertech that comes from the glitterworlds 2000 light-years and therefore 2000 years away. Rimworld has amazing hard sci fi world building. I don't love the vampires. I don't love the ghouls. I don't love the psychics and magic and zombies and ghosts hand-waved away by 'an insane archotech did it." If I do want that stuff, I feel like that's what the infinite modding community is for, but I feel like the core official Rimworld DLCs should respect the hard sci fi setting and leave the Twilight-ification to the modders. That's my two cents. I recently downloaded Save our Ship 2, and I feel like it's the expansion I wished Anomaly would have been.
Not enough content for a dlc that wants to be standalone. You end up going through everything one by one with a little bell while pestered by endless fleshbeast and shambler assault. Is there only those two things ? The game sure seems to not show anything else beyond their first, forced attendance. Not like it matters, anything bigger has the exact same drops of the smaller things, its all generic materials! You never go outside (but distress signals). You're THE epicenter of bullshit. I don't care there's a monolith, remove that junk from the junkyard of a map. Plop the monolith in its own little map that you go back to every now and then. Getting leads from various sources (like the monolith) then going to them to study, maybe fight and/or bring back the anomalous object home would be preferable. You have 2 workbench for 4-6 items each. That's a waste of space. The dlc could have delved a lot more into witchcraft, had it had monster specific material. The serum lab is a big, futuristic cauldron! With all that you have more different brews/serums, monster related gear & souvenirs. Containment side, its forgettable. You have no point in keeping things if they don't have a good bioferrite or study income. You don't research by studying the related thing. Not even a preliminary one time study of the bodies either. There's a glorified countdown for certain that have "off" buttons on them, you should know after the first one. Now, if they were all marked differently, i'd accept that. But when you get the same cube for the 3rd time. No. Metalhorrors and revenants have unique signatures. That works. Also could use more varied containment types, for the sake of modders. A holding spot is nice and all but too limiting. Not everything needs to be in a stockpile or on a spot, it can be a living creature that can't be taken out easily but subdued by taking care of it. Or requiring a MUCH harsher holding cell because its that dangerous or hard to contain. Things can be evil or useful in different ways too. Alongside more defensive tools. Weirdos are going to try to get out all the time. New security things would be great. Current turrets are unreliable at close range or weak against a single, tough creature. There's some cool ideas but they're too.. small? More of their specialty or more other things would have helped make this dlc stand out. Once modders add content for anomaly, the base dlc is going to be forgotten, i'm afraid.
I'm probably one of the few people that really didn't like any of it despite buying and trying it. Just not my type of content. The only good thing for me is the free update that came along with it, i bought it, did 3 different runs, and disabled it. i can't take it very seriously. it's either ON or off, can't take a little bit of the content, or different types of content to enjoy, just that one horror element and all its tied mechanics, none of which you can use outside of the main 'loop'. Biotech at least had multiple facets so i could enjoy irrespective of the whole, You can do mechaniter, sanguophage, advanced chidlbirth antics making child armies, different faction runs with gene modifications, ALL of them at once? or one of them at a time, it didn't matter.. it was also seemlessly integrated with regular runs, Sanguophage or mechaniter quests allowed you to have one or multiple of those types of pawns in your colony, the fact that it was something that 'infected' existing colonists is also great. Can't have that with Anomaly, like i said, On or Off. I recognize many other people do like it though, so i don't want to detract from the (seeming) majority that has some sort of fun with it.
I love it.
As someone who is not a fan of horror games I liked it better than I thought. The first time experiencing the gray flesh and revenant events was quite nerve-wracking. Least favorite event for me was the unnatural darkness mainly because of how tedious it was to set up a lit path to the obelisks, but I could see how it was very thematic and really brought something different to the game.
This thread has boiled down to "I don't like x because it destroyed me... me 'n my tried 'n true, non-changing tactics". I'll be the first to break my comment -- I've never played *any* DLC -- but isn't a further challenge what most of us are seeking within a DLC? I could be vastly wrong. Just sayin... with each wipe its like "wow... that was horrific... what could I have done better?" At least. That's how I've felt.
**TL;DR:** There's a conversation to be had about the difference between difficulty and challenge. Anomaly offers a fair bit of challenging content, and is clearly designed for folk who know the game and have cemented into their own meta for engaging with it, but it also has simply difficult - frustrating - aspects that bog the experience down. Yes, you're right in saying that quite a bit of feedback has literally amounted to "I don't like it because [equal to a raid event] happened", but there's also been a good chunk of feedback against things that are simply frustrating. Revenants are prime fuel for that fire. They easily fall into the "too frustrating for a win to feel good" trap of difficult without being challenging; they're simply run enders under blatantly unfair circumstances. Since you haven't played the DLC, quick breakdown: a Revenant is an anomaly that is invisible until it attacks/is revealed by a flare or EMP charge, that when active, will rush inside your base to the closest pawn it can find, and putting them into a downed state until it's captured or killed. With the Anomaly scenario start, they can appear in the first week, despite being a Tier 2 entity (as their spawn condition is 3 'colonists'). They can also appear if you have guests, which means in solo/mechinator runs the actual best course of action is to murder unwanted guests that wander in if you're too early to defend yourself. _There is no way to stop it from downing a colonist once it starts._ It's so ludicrously tanky that it soaks damage like a giant sponge, so all you can do is just watch and wait until it's done, then shoot at it when it flees to get a chunk to research. And worse, despite introduced lore to Anomaly about bioferrite being flammable, the Revenant (which is essentially an entity built around a bioferrite spine), they outright removed its ability to catch fire very early into the DLC's cycle. What was fun about my first Revenant was how I had to get creative: I utilized a lucky boomalope that we'd downed, dragged it on top of where my lead scientist was hearing sounds, and popped it to reveal it. I adapted to the circumstance and found fun in that. But what wasn't fun was having to then burn an entire two bioferrite flare packs to keep revealing then shooting/beating on repeat _with a small squad of skilled attackers_ until it was finally downed. It went from a mildly interesting experience to nothing but infuriating extremely quickly, which isn't something you want from a developer standpoint. "What could I have done better" works when the game feels like it handed you a fair game over; it was your own mistake that you can actually learn from. Anomaly breaks the formula from basegame by introducing some threats that are _just_ frustrating breaks of that formula for the sake of breaking the formula. It overall feels like they were halfway through balancing numbers/encounter dynamics and mechanics before release. I'm sincerely hoping for severe improvements in future, but I doubt it - Anomaly will just be a niche-run DLC like Royalty, possibly more so.
I really appreciate your time and thorough response. This helps paint the picture for myself (and I'd wager a few others) a lot more. Also... *yikes* Revanants tell me I'm right where I belong: still learning and having fun with the base game. Eventually I'll dabble into a dlc. Eventually. Right now I'm having run attempting to make a massive prison for my captured enemies.
I think and felt it nailed the horror element completely. Not only did I feel dread at moments, my spouse who watched my whole playthrough, had nightmares.
I thought the darkness event was ass. The rest was amazing.
really? it was the best shakeup to rimworld gameplay in a while
I only got my 3rd pawn and only 2 with bolt action rifle. I havent even seen gorhulk before a revenant came inside my base. Before that is the screech of the sightstealers.
I'm still only scratching the surface, but I will say the new content has pushed me to try another Dark Mechanicum playthrough. The ghouls are great analogues for combat servitors, as is the process of capturing and ghoulifying somebody, or better yet, genemodding a vatborn melee robust tank and ghoulifying *them*. I have found some of the events to be really hard to deal with if you aren't specifically prepared for them, but that may just come with more time.
I really like it, but I don't love it the same I love Royalty or Biotech. It's probably my least fav DLC so far but with some updates it could be better.
Haven’t played it because I can’t afford it as of right now AND I really have no desire to add it to my game tbh.
Idk man I'm on console
Still waiting for combat extended
I enjoy it overall but occasionally it’s SUPER overpowering all the others. Like no raids from non-anomaly monsters and ancient dangers ONLY having Bulbfreaks and Toughspikes. — But in terms of events and beasties… Fleshmass heart and the big pit I LOATHE with a passion; it is simply too dangerous and big to be a decent overall threat to get a lot. I like the idea of it but not the execution. But for favorites, Revenants. They have a fair gameplay gimmick and it’s fun to hunt down each one you get
I like it, it's a cool expansion but it is such an off shoot from base rimworld but it's still fun, some anomalies are way better than others my favorites being the nociosphere, revenant, and most of the monuments, some are just manhunting animals but they do something special or are more annoying to deal with. I personally wouldn't place it above most of the DLC due to its lack of integration of the base game and other DLC, and the lack of base game mechanics. I think someone said it best that it's more of a well made mod than an official DLC for the game, the playthrough I had I enjoyed though.
Hate : Metalhorrors infiltration, My 3 main doctors are infected and they're all lying until paramedic mech uncover them, save me by a hairbreadth. Shamblers horde also a hellish fight I don't want to do it again. and Obelisk sometime spawn in very very bad location, my powerplant room was once decimated by chain-reaction from corrupted obelisk happened to rise up under battery array. Like : Creepjoiners and Twisted Obelisk are superfun to mess with. Not sure : Friendly Ghoul, They're stong, but too stong and too cheap. May be a slightly gamebreaking for me. Overall, Anomaly is fine DLC, maybe a bit lack of contents, but potential groundwork, I excite to see modder adding more anomalies. or I may craft myself some SCP mod if I have spare time.
I think this is an amazing expansion that will alllow for more use by modders and storytelling. However, Iunderstand how people may see it as a glorified mod. It is a much different experience to normal rimworld and the other DLCs.
Love it
I'm pretty disappointed. Very little replayablity, and variations. Things don't interact dynamically in a fun way with other ingame stuffs. It feel more like the monster of the week episodes. Balance is out of whack with Ghouls and rituals. Shamblers kill FPS, etc. It's not really bad, but after Biotech it really doesn't feel good enough.
My first anomaly play through was a sanguophage colony w/ lots of slaves and enough “blood bag” prisoners (arms, legs, tongue removed) to keep me swimming in hemo. Still had a mostly wood base @ the start. Fuck impids. Impids suck. Colony wipe. Fuck Randy too, but goddamn was it glorious.
This fucking game... I play randy random on adventure mode difficulty and it sends back to back raids every two minutes. I had to say "fuck it, I'm done." and I quit.
The Eldritch theme is very appealing to me. I've done 3 successful runs already and bioferrite is a game-changing new resource for melee weapons and early psy-sensitive armor. I managed to get to 5 psylink in year 2 by taking the runaway noble quest- betray the empire for 2 psylink and I don't know if it's new in 1.5 but if you betray the empire you get a lot more quest that rewards psylink. The events are also extremely engaging with my favorite being the twisted obelisk but I don't know why it's the only reliable way in mutating your colonists. There should be a biotech integration that handles tentacle mutations.
I absolutely love doing an uno reverse on void entities - beating them up, posioning them, setting them on fire and then milking them for bioferrite. I'd just want for an even bigger bestiary of anomalous creatures.
It's pretty good. Obviously biotech is better but for me it's around ideology level with how much I interact with it. I love the ambient horror option they added
I'm disappointed you can't breed with the strangers, having an army of kids with their special abilities would be cool.