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RimWorld’s expansions have consistently added a huge pool of content, with each expansion giving players new and old a myriad of options to explore. This has allowed for a staggering number of gameplay opportunities and RimWorld - Anomaly is no different, with this newest expansion offering an interesting dynamic wherein the player must often take on significant risk in order to benefit from the expansion’s biggest rewards.
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Thankfully, there are ways to control the risk you take upon yourself, allowing a colony to benefit from the expansion’s early offerings without tooserious a risk of destruction. While preparation remains key and miscalculations can devastate, this expansion also offers some extremely unique opportunities for colonies who commit.
The Void Monolith
Initially, Anomaly is a “low impact” expansion, minimally changing how RimWorld plays.Through shops, quests, and some other sources, you might encounter some of the early rewards of the expansion (notably the Nerve Spiker crossbow), but gameplay won’t instantly be radically altered in the way seen insomething like Biotech or Ideology.
To truly begin Anomaly, you must first identify the location of a colony’s Fallen Monolith, a new structure that appears on all colony maps begun with the expansion active.
Colonies without a Fallen Monolith present (which can happen if you started a colony before getting the expansion and then activated the expansion at a later point) will quickly be given a quest which causes a Fallen Monolith to appear.
Once you’ve found your monolith, you must then have a colonist investigate the monolith and choose “Keep focusing” when prompted (which doesn’t put the chosen colonist at any unique risk).This investigation will cause your monolith to evolve, turning into a “Void Monolith” and opening up a colony to some of the more serious threats of the expansion.
In many ways, this monolith is meant to be a narrative focal point of the horror in this expansion, in ways similar to the markers inthe excellent Dead Space. It will also trigger the ominous “Gray Pall” weather condition for one or two days, which affects colonist mood but isn’t especially dangerous. However, therearethreats you now need to prepare for, discussed later. Activating your monolith effectively makes RimWorld a horror game (althoughnot a particularly scary one).
Dark Study
Once your Fallen Monolith has evolved into a Void Monolith, you will need to set one or more colonists to start prioritizing Dark Study, emphasizing the moreLovecraftian / Eldritch elementsof this expansion. This is an Intellectual task similar to Research but, rather than being performed at a dedicated bench, colonists instead study the colony’s monolith and any captured anomalous entities.
Dark Study allows you to start projects on the Anomaly tech tree (accessible through the Research menu), with one of the early projects on the tree most colonies will want to prioritize being Entity Containment.This project allows a colony to build Holding Platforms, which can better contain captured entities than holding spots, and Inhibitors, which further help contain captured entities. Bioferrite Harvesting and then Bioferrite Shaping are another two early projects you should strongly consider.
Initially, Dark Study can be a bottleneck, as your monolith and captured entities can only be researched so much in a given period of time before you must wait to continue researching them.This is where one of the earliest risk vs reward propositions of Anomaly is introduced: you can capture more entities to provide a colony with more study opportunities, but you then take on a greater risk of a serious containment breach.Also, note that some Anomaly research projects will be initially unavailable, requiring that you first encounter particular anomalous entities before they become available for research.
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Entity Capture
Once your Fallen Monolith has become a Void Monolith, a colony can begin to capture anomalous entities by constructing Holding Spots (and, once researched, Holding Platforms).If an entity is downed but not killed, you may capture it and assign it to be held at one of these structures. Be sure to address any bleeding wounds the entity might have received while fighting, as they will otherwise die and become useless for research purposes.
Captured entities don’t need food or suffer mental breaks, but they will be at constant risk of escape.All Holding Spots and Platforms will have a containment strength rating assigned to them based on their placement, with this rating affecting an entity’s escape risk.All entities also have a minimum containment strength rating needed to hold them; they can be contained briefly at spots below this rating, but their risk of escape is much higher if you fail to meet this threshold.
Containment strength is based on the health of the walls and door in the room where a captured entity is placed, with some machines improving containment strength (inhibitors) or lowering containment strength (bioferrite harvesters). An open door greatly decreases containment strength; ensure doors to entity cells are only open to allow a pawn to pass through and then immediately closed. A relatively easy way to achieve fairly high containment strength is to use tough stone walls, such as limestone or, ideally, granite.
Good early entities to capture, study, and otherwise use to a colony’s benefit include Fingerspike Fleshbeasts, Shamblers, and Sightstealers.While they can still pose a threat to isolated pawns, they’re all easy to down (although fingerspikes can be fragile), have a low containment strength requirement, and can be encountered early in Anomaly.
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Early Threats
Early into Anomaly, there are two notable threats a colony needs to stay aware of:
Even before a Fallen Monolith has evolved, cultists can sometimes besiege a colony.One cultist will begin performing a psychic ritual, starting a progress bar that, when completed, can summon entities beneath your colonists or abduct a random colonist, knocking them out and placing them near the siege group.The remaining cultists defend the ritual caster. After enough time or once the ritual is disrupted, the entire group will then attack the colony.
These cultists shouldn’t be underestimated; early cultists are typically unarmored melee combatants, but they may have mutations which make them more difficult than a typical pawn (such as a flesh whip replacing one of their arms). All cultists will have the Inhumanized health condition; among some skill debuffs irrelevant to combat, this grants them a permanent mood buff and resistance to pain. Inhumanized pawns also ignore any of the typical mood buffs or debuffs resulting from comfort, beauty, and social relationships.
Often it’s a good idea to disrupt psychic sieges from afar, using these two simple steps:
Sightstealers
While Sightstealers aren’t the only anomalous entities that can threaten a colony in the early game, they are uniquely dangerous compared to things like Shamblers or Fleshbeasts.They are also guaranteed to attack early on; a specific event where they appear is inevitable once a colony has caused their Fallen Monolith to first evolve.
Sightstealers are relatively weak melee combatants (although they have claws, which cause bleeding).The real danger is that they are invisible when not near a colonist (save for a few exceptions, such as if covered in fire foam), don’t trigger traps, and that they can easily predate on non-combatant colonists doing work away from a colony’s hard hitters.Once encountered, you will unlock the ability to research proximity detectors, which can then be used to identify when an invisible creature has passed nearby (including things besides Sightstealers, such as pawns using invisibility).
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