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Rimworld Anomaly: eight tips before you start
D
Diego Nicolás Argüello
Anomaly joins the lineup of existing expansions—Royalty, Ideology, and Biotech—and it's set on disrupting the pace you've grown used to in Rimworld. Starting with your crew investigating a strange monolith, a series of creatures and random events will begin to storm the planet.
The key is to become familiarized with these hauntings and learn from them to develop new research plans and gadgets. The closer you get, however, the bigger the consequences if you're not prepared. Don't fret, though—here are 8 things you should know before you interact with the monolith.
Here's how to start the Anomaly content
By default, once you've purchased the Anomaly expansion, its additions are automatically integrated into any scenario you choose. In short, regardless of the parameters you pick to create a new world, the monolith will be present somewhere out in the world. If you're picking up an existing save, you should get a quest that refers to a "strange signal," which will trigger the expansion.
In order to fully kick Anomaly off, you need to interact with the monolith. All you have to do is pick one of your colonists and task them with investigating the structure. The game will give you a few warnings first since, once you activate it, there's no turning back. This is important, as the expansion radically changes the experience of base Rimworld.
If you're an experienced player and you just want to quickly jump into the expansion, developer Ludeon Studios added a new scenario called Anomaly which spawns you right next to a monolith. You also get a few goodies from the start that are of huge help for the expansion's dangers. This includes a Ghoul, which is a new character type that's perfect for combat—even if it has some peculiarities.
Keep in mind that you might encounter a few events related to Anomaly even without interacting with the monolith. These are rare, however, and won't present that much of a threat compared to when you're fully participating in the new content. Lastly, if you can't find the monolith for any reason, you can use the in-game search function to manually look for its location.
But maybe don't activate the monolith right away
As tempting as it might be to create a new world and immediately activate the monolith, your current situation could turn dire if you aren't prepared for the randomized events that will unfold. Even if the Anomaly additions are fairly tame at first, their unpredictable nature can severely shake things up—especially if you're already dealing with other existing conditions and hazards unrelated to the expansion.
Most of the Anomaly-related resources won't manifest until things kick off, but that doesn't mean you can't prepare accordingly. As always, having a steady source of food and materials to build structures is a must, as well as colonists equipped with fire weapons. If you want to get ahead of things, build a few extra empty rooms, which will come in handy once you begin to build containment facilities.
If you opt for the Anomaly scenario, however, the monolith will activate itself after four in-game days. It should be plenty of time to at least make some preparations, but still, don't get too comfortable. Alternatively, you can pick a different scenario and take things slower.
You can tweak how much Anomaly content you want
Added in a post-release update, Rimworld now allows you to tweak just how many Anomaly tweaks you want to experience in your current world. You can head over to Menu - Options - Gameplay - Storyteller Settings - Custom and tweak the related sliders.
The Anomaly threats (inactive) slider refers to events that can occur while the monolith is inactive. As mentioned before, these are rare and fairly tame, but you can either increase or decrease them further. It might be a good test to see how you fare with Anomaly without fully disrupting your current playthrough.
Then, the Anomaly threats (active) slider involves events that take place after you've investigated the monolith. The developers decreased the values by default in an update, down to 30% as opposed to 45%, but you can go ahead and tweak this to your liking at any time. Both sliders can be changed in both new and existing worlds.
Containment facilities should be a priority
The bread and butter of Anomaly, containment facilities should be your main concern after you've interacted with the monolith.
The main recurring objective of the expansion is to encounter and interact with entities. After meeting a certain number of entities (five and then 12), the monolith can be attuned, further expanding the entities you encounter and what you can research, while also exposing you to greater threats in exchange.
As such, you'll need these containment facilities. These are holding spots and holding platforms, the latter being more costly in terms of materials and research required, but stronger overall. Different entities have different strengths to deal with. If you don't meet at least the minimum number, there's a chance for them to escape.
To prevent strange creatures from being let loose, you should create a proper space for either a spot or a platform. Create walls with the strongest material you have, and then add roof, flooring, and lighting. These elements are the basic foundation. You can then use electric inhibitors and shard inhibitors to increase the containment strength. Alternatively, a bioferrite harvester will produce bioferrite for you inside one of these rooms, while decreasing the containment strength, so you should mix and match accordingly.
If you're wondering whether it's best to create a single room for each entity or a large space for multiple of them, keep in mind that each additional holding spot or platform will decrease the overall containment strength. If you can afford it, it's best to create separate rooms, at least while you're still making progress in researching the monolith and gathering resources from contained entities.
Learn to work together with Ghouls
Ghouls can be a hard sell on paper, but they're quite handy in practice. By default, this new colonist type doesn't partake in labor tasks, nor can they be trained to become skillful in any of them. Instead, they offer an inhuman resilience, as well as an expertise on melee combat that can be trained over time to become stronger.
Here are the main pros and cons of having a Ghoul in your party. The unit is very strong and bound to survive for a long time. By default, Ghouls heal 100 HP per day, and can heal almost any wound in a short time. As such, yes, they can regrow limbs. The problem is that Ghouls need raw meat to function. The lower the hunger meter, the higher the chance of the unit becoming hostile toward your own colonists.
So, just remember that a well-fed Ghoul is a happy Ghoul. You can use raw meat from any source, the easiest method being hunting animals out in the wild.
What to research first in the new Anomaly tree
Interacting with the monolith will give you access to a new research tree. From the Research menu, switch over to the Anomaly tab to get started. There are quite a few options to pick from, and most advanced research paths won't be available until you've attuned the monolith. At least at first, here are a few suggestions to prioritize:
- Entity containment: Possibility the one research you'll want to start right away. You will not only get access to holding platforms, but also electric and shard inhibitors, two key structures for Anomaly.
- Void provocation: Once you're ready to start actively seeking new entities, void provocation will give you access to rituals that do just that. In general, rituals are quite useful, and will help you progress further into what the expansion offers.
- Void sculptures: These are of huge help in strengthening the quality of rituals. Rituals can often turn sour if the quality isn't at least over 50%. Thus, decreasing the chances of disaster makes for a good investment, so make sure to build some void sculptures.
- Proximity detector: Some entities are invisible, which isn't ideal, but this is where the proximity detector comes in handy. One of the first gadgets that you should have in your colony.
- Ghoul infusion: Once you've gotten used to Ghouls, you might want to have more than one. Or, if you're not starting off from the Anomaly scenario, this research project allows you to create them from scratch. Getting enhancements for the unit type, or even the ability to resurrect it, can take a while. As such, infusion gives you the chance to just make brand new Ghouls when needed in the meantime.
- Bioferrite weaponry: As you start accumulating bioferrite, you might want to put the resource to good use and build bioferrite weaponry. That being said, this shouldn't be a priority until you've tackled all of the above first.
Once you interact with the monolith, you'll start seeing the "gray pall" weather status quite often on screen. Aside from annoying your colonists and clouding the overall visibility of a planet, you don't have to worry about it too much—except for death pall, that is.
Death pall is a possible entity that can manifest itself at random. Basically, every corpse on the ground will be temporarily reanimated, which isn't ideal, especially if you just handled a group of powerful enemies or other entities from Anomaly.
There are a few ways to deal with this ahead of time. The first is to feed corpses to Harbinger trees, which is yet another expansion-specific addition. Then, make sure to have a large set of indoor spaces, preferably with an outer wall protecting it. If you're holding onto corpses for any reason, make sure they're indoors.
There might be a chance of a corpse or two being left outside, but don't fret. Once the death pall is gone, all reanimated corpses will decay, so you don't have to worry about your worst fears coming back to life indefinitely.
Don't ignore tomes
Books have been present in Rimworld for a while, but Anomaly also adds tomes to your collection. These can be purchased in faction bases or from trade caravans and other traders. While far more rare in nature, they provide a passive method to research Anomaly-related projects.
If you're trying to mitigate the time and effort demanded by containing entities, reading tomes will net you with research points. The drawbacks are that tomes will only advance the research of its related projects, so make sure to double check the project before you purchase one. The other is that, while low, there's a chance of the reader receiving a mental break, so keep this in mind before you assign somebody to a reading marathon.
This concludes our tips for succeeding in Rimworld Anomaly. Keep an eye out for that devastating death pall, and don't forget to feed your Ghouls. You won't like them when they're hungry.
Rimworld Anomaly is available on the Epic Games Store.