Unnatural corpse

Unnatural corpse

Base Stats

Type

Entity

An Unnatural Corpse is an entity that can threaten your colony. It will haunt one of your colonists until it is ready to strike.

Acquisition

The unnatural corpse will appear without warning, instantly and silently transporting itself into your colony. It also can be obtained via a Mysterious Cargo quest. In either case, the haunting has begun. It cannot be placed into a holding cell, but will be hauled to corpse storage zones as normal and can be studied every so often for advanced anomaly knowledge. A pawn cannot have more than one unnatural corpse at a time. When the corpse spawns the notification will state that "it looks exactly like (name of colonist)" and "the only difference is that it feels waxy and warm to the touch". Encountering it unlocks the death refusal anomaly project.

Summary

The unnatural corpse is a dead, identical copy of one of your colonists. While harmless at first glance, it will haunt that colonist until either destroyed or until it disappears. It is highly recommended you research and destroy the corpse as fast as possible, as it is nearly impossible to stop when it is activated.

The corpse's existence causes a -6 mood penalty on the original colonist, and its presence can cause random mental breaks, such as corpse obsession and insane ramblings.

The corpse will silently teleport itself to being near the original, which is uniquely affected by the camera of the game: the corpse will attempt to teleport only if it is out of camera shot, and it can only lands at a point out of camera shot. Thus the teleporting of the corpse is completely avoidable by keep the corpse in the camera, or just zoom out to maximum scale to keep the entire colony in view. If you do have something need have a close look, pause the game allows you move camera from it, and then move the camera back before unpausing the game.

The corpse also does not inherit any of the original's body modifications, such as bionics. It inherits psycasts, but cannot use them. It also inherits the genes of the original pawn. It cannot be resurrected by any means, such as resurrector mech serum and dead-life dust from any source, including death palls.

The corpse can not be permanently destroyed without proper study. Injuries that the corpse sustains such as skull removal will be healed if the corpse ever awakens. The corpse can be butchered as normal, but it will respawn after some time. Additionally, the original pawn will suffer a "Corpse Torment" debuff, knocking them unconscious for 24 hours and inflicting 20% pain. Butchering the corpse does reset the cooldown to study the corpse, so this may prove to be beneficial if rapid study is needed at the expense of a colonist. Fully studying the corpse gives an option to destroy it, yielding one shard.

If the corpse's original pawn is no longer available (i.e. it has targeted a guest who leaves before it can awaken) then it will disappear after seven days.

All of these factors make the unnatural corpse a present, if relatively minor, threat to your colony. This will change if the corpse is ever given the opportunity to awaken.

Awakening

After several days, you will receive a warning letter stating the corpse is growing stronger and is beginning to awaken. You are advised to destroy the corpse before it is too late. Roughly a day after your warning, the corpse will begin to awaken and you will have mere moments to destroy the corpse before it stands up. There is no way to delay the awakening.

When it has awoken, the corpse has only one goal: to find and grab the original pawn. If it succeeds, it will hypnotize the pawn and hold them in place for several seconds. If uninterrupted, the corpse will instantly kill the original pawn by psychically incinerating the target's brain. This means it will instantly kill even deathless pawns, and this attack is unavoidable. It bypasses armor, dodge chance, and has no interaction with psychic sensitivity. The hypnosis can be interrupted by certain outside sources: Skipping either the pawn or the corpse away from each other will break the trance, as well as forcing the corpse to vomit with Vertigo Pulse. Although the hypnosis is broken and the pawn is no longer at risk of dying, they are still rendered immobile for some time after. If attempting to escape from it, Burden and Stun can be used, though one must remember the corpse will inherit the psychic sensitivity of the original pawn.

The corpse cannot be trapped by any means. It can chase and hypnotize the target even if the target is invisible. If unable to path to its target, it will teleport even through solid walls. However, if the target is in a 1x1 room without a door, teleportation is not possible. It will chase the original pawn until either the original or the corpse itself is destroyed. After the destruction of its target, the corpse will wander momentarily before disappearing. If the target is carried by another pawn, it will attack the pawn with melee attack; if the target is inside of something like a cryptosleep casket, it will rip open the casket to attack, though this does slow the corpse down.

Destroying the unnatural corpse after it has awoken is exceptionally difficult. The corpse has an incoming damage multiplier of 20%, meaning it takes only a fifth of the damage a normal pawn would. It has a regeneration ability similar to Ghouls, but far more powerful: a ridiculously high 30000 HP/day regeneration, nigh-instantly regenerate any damage done to it until its regeneration capacity has been depleted; additionally it cannot die if the regeneration capacity is not depleted, which made sheer damage attacks like hellsphere cannon cannot one shot it even if the damage destroyed vital parts, nor an 100% severity Heatstroke or Hypothermia can. It also have +1000% pain shock resistance. The corpse starts with a move speed modifier of 50%, but that modifier will quickly rise over the next few hours to a terrifying 300% movement speed modifier. Combined with the absurd regeneration that can regenerate anywhere from 200 to 400 hp and any gene bonuses the corpse may have inherited, an awoken corpse is nearly unstoppable and all but guarantees the irrecoverable loss of the target pawn. For reference, a direct hit with a hellsphere cannon may only take 200 hp off the regeneration total. It will hopelessly shrug off antigrain warheads and orbital bombardments alike.

Destroying the corpse after it has awoken yields one shard as normal. If the corpse loses its regeneration and cannot move, it will be destroyed.

Strategy

Given how hard it is to stop an awoken corpse, the fact it provides no benefit to the colony, and the rewards for destroying it never change, it is highly recommended to destroy the unnatural corpse as soon as you are done studying it. Letting it awaken is a poor decision and should be avoided at all costs. There is no reason the keep the corpse around other than its meager amount of advanced research potential, which other entities are better suited for.

However, if for whatever the reason you must fight an awoken corpse, there are ways to make the fight significantly easier.

The target can be walled into a 1x1 room without any doors. This prevents the corpse from teleporting to the target and allows the rest of the colony to concentrate on the fight.

If your targeted colonist is downed, they can be relocated mid-trance by rescuing them. Trapping the awoken corpse in a confined space with colonists or animals, and blocking off most avenues of teleportation for the corpse, can allow you to quickly overpower and then kill it.

First, items like the psychic shock lance will have no effect on the corpse. Biomutation lances do work, however they will only delay the corpse's assault; it will reappear after some time. Similarly, sending the target away such as on a caravan will cause the awoken corpse to vanish as well, with a message stating it will return. These stalling tactics can be useful, but they will reset the corpse's regeneration capacity and its movement speed bonus, effectively restarting the fight.

Second, a hidden feature of the corpse is that is will copy certain hediffs when it awakens. The awoken corpse will copy the original pawn's:

- Injuries, including scars. These will be healed nearly instantly at the cost of some regeneration.

- Drug effects, such as go-juice and flake. This includes addictions.

- Buffs, such as Combat Command.

- Age-based illnesses, such as bad back and dementia. These are not healed.

- Certain specialty hediffs, such as void-touched and inhumanization.

- Changes in genes.

The corpse does not copy:

- Diseases, like malaria, food poisoning, or flu

- Pregnancy.

Notably, anesthetic is copied. This means you can anesthetize the original pawn before the corpse awakens, making the corpse anesthetized as well, allowing for an easy takedown. If you anesthetize the original too late, that can still be helpful. Carrying the targeted pawn prevents the psychic attack from being used, forcing the corpse to melee the carrier until the targeted pawn is dropped. This can buy you significant time.

Third, the awoken corpse is unable to regenerate from certain effects, namely temperature and poison. Extreme temperatures can inflict heatstroke and hypothermia into the corpse as normal, which will cripple it just like a normal pawn. Toxic build-up from venom fangs and venom talons cannot be regenerated from either. The only problem to this is the corpse's speed and teleportation making it difficult to hit.

Fourth, the Psychic Slaughter ability that some Creepjoiners have can be used to instantly destroy the corpse. This means you lose the shard in the process, however.

Finally, the unnatural corpse's appearance unlocks the death refusal research. Unlocking the ritual and using it on the original pawn gives them the ability to revive even if the corpse manages to attack them. However, this is unlikely as you will probably finish studying the corpse long before the ritual is available.

Trivia

• You can instantly kill the unnatural corpse once it has awoken by using a creepjoiner with psychic slaughter.
• A unique music track plays when an unnatural corpse has been awoken.

Version history

• Anomaly DLC Release - Added.

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