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Anomaly preview #4: Cubes, spheres, obelisks, soundtrack and languages

Hi folks!

Only 2 more days until RimWorld - Anomaly and free content update 1.5 are out! They both release on Thursday, April 11 at 10 AM Pacific time. (There’s also a timer counting down on the store page!)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2380740/RimWorld__Anomaly

The RimWorld - Anomaly original soundtrack will be available on April 11th as well! This OST comes with 11 tracks and nearly an hour of awesome tunes made by RimWorld composer Alistair Lindsay.

Also, Anomaly is launching with full support for 10 languages! On release day, you can play Anomaly in English, German, French, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Russian, Latin Spanish, Simplified Chinese or Traditional Chinese. (Huge thank you to our community translators for helping us out with these!) All of these translations will be editable via the translation GitHub pages to allow for changes and improvements.

[h3]🚨 SPOILER WARNING: Read at your own risk! These preview blogs WILL SPOIL some of the surprises in the expansion. 🚨[/h3]

Today’s preview blog talks about the less-obvious and more-insidious threats you’ll face in Anomaly. Terror comes in all shapes and sizes.

Also, check out our previous blog posts below:
[h2]THE CUBE[/h2]
Obviously, the golden cube is no threat. It’s no more than a beautiful gift sent by a good friend. This hand-sized cube shines like gold, but is impossible to scratch. As everyone knows, cubes make perfect companions.


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

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

[h2]THE NOCIOSPHERE[/h2]
The nociosphere is very much not as lovable as the cube. Even being near it hurts. It’s made of dark metal, covered with curved and jagged grooves, and emanates sensations of pain.

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


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

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

[h2]THE OBELISKS[/h2]
We’ve gone from squares to circles and now to triangles. There are three varieties of obelisk, each with a different horrific effect. They all arrive from space, and they all radiate the same putrid psychic energy, which gradually intensifies as it approaches some dangerous limit.

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


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

Love the cube.

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

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


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

[h2]THE ENDGAME[/h2]
The monolith is the source of everything. The monolith is the conduit. Its power must be defeated. It threatens to twist and destroy everything we know.


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

[h2]ANOMALY’S RELEASE DAY[/h2]
That’s all for now! RimWorld - Anomaly and free content update 1.5 release this Thursday, April 11, 2024.

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

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

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

- Tia
Worship the cube.

Anomaly preview #3: Cultists, hate chanters and rituals

[h3]🚨 SPOILER WARNING: Read at your own risk! These preview blogs WILL SPOIL some of the surprises in the expansion. 🚨[/h3]

We’re releasing RimWorld - Anomaly on April 11, 2024! (That’s 1 week away!) You can read the announcement here.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2380740/RimWorld__Anomaly/

Check out our previous blog posts below:
Today, we’re talking about the new rituals you can perform in Anomaly, as well as the followers of the void.

[h2]CULT RITUALS[/h2]
Rituals were introduced in the Ideology expansion, allowing followers of different ideologies and religions to gather for ceremonies that would have social effects. Rituals in Anomaly are similar but go further, drawing upon the psychic power of a dark archotech to twist the laws of physics.

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


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

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

[h2]BASIC RITUALS[/h2]
Players can use these same rituals, and many more. To perform them, you need a ritual spot. If you can surround it with hideous bioferrite sculptures of the void and archotech shard beacons, so much the better. And dress your worshippers in a ceremonial hood or cultist mask to fit the void aesthetic.


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

[h2]REGIONAL RITUALS[/h2]
These rituals are like listening to a motivational speaker, but even more soul-destroying. These are pleasure pulse, neurosis pulse, and blood rain.

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

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

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

[h2]INDIVIDUAL RITUALS[/h2]
Like skip abduction, many of the more horrible rituals require a living human target. These are imbue death refusal, psychophagy, chronophagy, philophagy and brainwipe.

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

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



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

[h2]TO COME[/h2]
It’s almost time… Anomaly and update 1.5 is only 1 week away! We have one more blog post before then - see you there!

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

Bye bye,
Tia

Anomaly preview #2: Containment facilities, creatures, and release date

[h3]🚨 SPOILER WARNING: Read ahead at your own risk! These preview blogs WILL SPOIL some of the surprises in the expansion. 🚨[/h3]

Hello, it’s Tia and I’m back with our next preview blog of RimWorld - Anomaly!

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

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2380740/RimWorld__Anomaly/

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

[h2]CAPTURE: SHAMBLERS [/h2]
The first step is to work out how to take down and capture these entities without killing them.

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

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


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

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

[h2]CAPTURE: REVENANTS[/h2]
More difficult to capture is the revenant, a psychically-invisible human hunter that alternates between hunting people and hiding in its lair.

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


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

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


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

[h2]CAPTURE: METALHORROR INFESTATIONS[/h2]
Someone is infested. Someone is not who they seem. But who?

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

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


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

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


[h2]CONTAINMENT PROTOCOLS[/h2]
So you’ve damaged an anomalous entity enough that it’s incapacitated? And some of your colonists are still alive? Well done! Now you can contain it and experiment on it! 🧪

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


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


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

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

[h2]RESEARCH & HARVEST[/h2]
Once an entity is restrained, colonists can study it. To do this, you’ll need to ensure a colonist is assigned to dark research.

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


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

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

[h2]DARK ARTS AND CRAFTS[/h2]
Now you have a regular supply of bioferrite, you can have fun with it - if your idea of fun is creating impossible monsters and strange machinery. (We know ours is.)

If you build a bioferrite shaper workbench, you can craft new gear and weapons from the organic metal. The weapons include:
  • Nerve spiker: A crossbow loaded with toxic spikes that stun organic creatures.
  • Incinerator: A terrifying flamethrower with an alternate-fire mode that produces a giant gout of flame (shared by the Hellcat assault rifle).
  • Deadlife IEDs, mortars and packs: Distribution packs that allow you to raise shamblers from nearby corpses.
  • Disruptor flares: Short-lived bioferrite beacons which stun psychic creatures and reveal invisible ones - useful for sightstealers and revenants.
Bioferrite can be used to make psychic weapons with various effects, from driving enemies into berserk rages, to sending them into psychic shock, to biomutating them into fleshbeasts. Other psychic pulsers can make every animal in the region either turn into a fleshbeast or go into a manhunting rage.

Bioferrite is also crucial for making serums at the new serum lab workbench. The serums include:
  • Voidsight serum: Increases dark research speed at the cost of mood.
  • Juggernaut serum: Increases strength, speed, and recovery time.
  • Metalblood serum: Makes a person resilient to damage, but vulnerable to fire.
  • Mind-numb serum: Deadens emotions, preventing mental breaks at the cost of stopping inspirations too.

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

[h2]TO COME[/h2]
We’ve still got more horrifying reveals to come for Anomaly, and April 11th is only 2 weeks away!

Let us know what you think on Reddit and please wishlist Anomaly so you’re notified when it’s out!

- Tia

Anomaly preview #1: Fleshbeasts, fleshmass heart, pit gate and dreadmeld

[h3]🚨 SPOILER WARNING: Reading these blogs will reveal some of the surprises in the expansion! Read at your own risk![/h3]

Hi everyone! Tia here with the first of our Anomaly feature blogs where we go over the expansion’s content in detail. We’ll be posting these blogs leading up to release - which is in 3 weeks!

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

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2380740/RimWorld__Anomaly/

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

[h2]THE FLESH BEASTS[/h2]
You intercept a distress signal from a nearby camp. The frantic voice begs you to save them from something horrible and offers everything at their camp in return, including shards of dark archotechnology.

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

[h2]THE FLESHMASS HEART[/h2]
If you’re unfortunate enough to encounter the fleshmass heart, it starts with a small circle of terrain that shifts and cracks apart, pulsating rhythmically as something digs upwards. Eventually, the fleshmass heart will emerge. It is a cancer-like creature that grows flesh across (and under) the surface.

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


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

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


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

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


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

…

…

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

[h2]THE PIT GATE [/h2]
Another time, the ground might shake with a different result. Now a larger piece of terrain has begun sinking into the depths, forming a deepening hole, much wider than before. Inhuman shrieks rise from the depths. It'd be wise to move your colonists, buildings and items away from the emergence point.


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

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


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

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

[h2]MORE TO COME![/h2]
So that’s the fleshmass, an amorphous, expanding cancerous blob from the dark-beyond. Whether it arrives as a distress call, bursts from the ground as a fleshmass heart, or lurks beneath in the twisted form of a dreadmeld, it just wishes to be loved - or rather, consume all life and turn it into more of itself. Who can’t empathize with that?

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

Gaze into this twisted, dark space for more information (not too closely, lest it gaze back into you.)
Be back with more blogs soon!
- Tia