Shambler

Shambler

A creature who has been raised from the dead by corrupted nano-scale archites.

Base Stats

Type

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Shamblers are corpses which have been reanimated by archotechnology. They attack the living relentlessly and are immune to pain, but expire after a few days of movement.

Acquisition

Shamblers are immune to pain and thus are quite difficult to capture without killing them outright. Their tendency to appear in large groups means that there may be a specimen or two that ends up with damaged legs after you have neutralized the threat.^[Details]

Summary

Shamblers are creatures, typically humanoids, who are reanimated from death. They act as though they are unarmed humanoids, and will attack any living humanoids on sight. While this may sound nonthreatening, Shamblers are immune to pain and have more health than regular humanoids, making them harder to take down. When Shamblers are not humanoid, their abilities can vary greatly depending on what was reanimated.

Any creature other than mechanoids can be reanimated into a Shambler, and will be hostile to any living humanoids they encounter. Extracting the skull from a human body does not prevent it from raising (the head will respawn).

Human shamblers still display the skills they had in life.^[Effects?] Traits such as tough and nimble still apply their respective bonuses,^[Verify] as do non-ability genes that affect statistics and skills that shamblers are still capable of performing.^[Verify]

A dead shambler that is resurrected with a resurrector mech serum returns to life as a living creature, not as a shambler. Notably, at the time of writing, this can cure luciferium addictions and is the only way to do so.

Boomalope, boomrat, and toxalope shamblers do not explode when killed. Chimeras do retain their Rage Speed ability, and Shambler Noctols keep their light exposure weakness.

Human shamblers benefit from any armor they are wearing. Some utility items can be fired while equipped by a shambler if the specific utility item trigger is met: shield belts are always active, firefoam pop packs trigger near fire, tox packs trigger in melee, low-shield packs trigger when receiving ranged damage, and smokepop packs trigger when receiving turret damage.

Shamblers can get heatstroke and hypothermia, suffer from tox gas^[Details], and have heart attacks, but feel no pain.^{[What else?]} All shamblers are psychically deaf, they can be teleported around with the skip psycast but are otherwise immune to psychic crowd control.

Yield

The bioferrite yield of a shambler is determined by the Body Size of the creature that was reanimated. For example, a normal pawn will yield 1 bioferrite while a reanimated Megasloth will yield 4. Reanimated entities ignore this calculation and will retain their original bioferrite yield before reanimation.

Using an Electroharvester on a shambler will generate 200 watts per body size (a megasloth produces 800 watts) however since shamblers do not regenerate health, using an electroharvester will eventually kill them.

There is a small chance that a shambler will drop bioferrite or a shard upon death.

Analysis

Shamblers will not attack unless a pawn enters sight range of them, unless sent as a raid. This means that they can be treated much as you would treat a mech cluster; you can safely ignore them if they're in a good location. They have significant defensive applications for this reason as well, attacking raiders and other invaders indiscriminately. The ritual to summon them is potentially useful for this purpose.

Despite the name, most Shamblers move at nearly the same speed as a healthy pawn. They are only capable of melee attacks, and they are fairly durable. A group of humanoid Shamblers is a modest threat, roughly equivalent to the same number of tribals. Due to being limited to melee, Shamblers can be attacked from range or kited with little risk.

Animal Shamblers can be much more dangerous than humanoids, inheriting the original combat abilities of the creature that was reanimated. In these cases, they are similar to Manhunters with enhanced toughness and immunity to pain.

Shamblers that are not contained will naturally die from metabolic exhaustion after a few hours or days, so simply waiting until they eventually die out is a viable strategy if the player cannot combat them directly. Shamblers that are contained in a holding spot or holding platform will not die from metabolic exhaustion, and thus can be held indefinitely.

Paralytic abasia is not cured when raised as a shambler. Therefore unaccepted crashlanded who died with paralytic abasia can be captured and held (until the abasia is healed) with zero risk. Babies may also be raised, and are similarly incapable.^[Details]

Version history

• Anomaly DLC Release - Added.