Ghoul

Ghoul

Ghouls are engineered murder machines, twisted by dark psychic influences.
Ghouls are very dangerous in melee combat. However, the process of their creation leaves them incapable of higher levels of thought, preventing them from holding weapons or tools. They cannot work and outside combat they wander in a half-conscious stupor.
Many people find the constant twitching of ghouls disturbing. More disturbing is their dependence on raw meat. If they go hungry they will turn hostile, even attacking their creators to sate their hunger.

Base Stats

Type

Entity

Market Value

275 

Flammability

70%

Pawn Stats

Move Speed

4.6 c/s

Health Scale

100% HP

Body Size

1

Mass

60 kg

Filth Rate

1

Hunger Rate

1.6 Nutrition/Day

Diet

raw meat and corpses

Life Expectancy

80 years

Comfortable Temp Range

-24 °C – 56 °C (-11.2 °F – 132.8 °F)

Production

Leather Yield

75 human leather

Melee Combat

Attack 1

Left fist
8.2 dmg (Blunt)
12 % AP
2 second cooldown
Stun for 280 ticks (4.67 secs) on first strike

Attack 2

Right fist
8.2 dmg (Blunt)
12 % AP
2 second cooldown
Stun for 280 ticks (4.67 secs) on first strike

Attack 3

Head
5 dmg (Blunt)
7 % AP
2 second cooldown
0.2 chance factor

Attack 4

Teeth
8.2 dmg (Bite)
12 % AP
2 second cooldown
0.5 chance factor

Attack 5

Left claw
7.0 dmg (Scratch)
10 % AP
2 second cooldown
1.5 chance factor

Attack 6

Right claw
7.0 dmg (Scratch)
10 % AP
2 second cooldown
1.5 chance factor

Attack 7

Teeth
8.2 dmg (Bite)
12 % AP
2 second cooldown
0.07 chance factor

Average DPS

2.25

Ghouls are humans that have been warped into powerful, twisted combat entities with very few needs. Ghouls can appear as both enemy units and become a part of your colony. Ghouls that are part of your colony can only eat raw meat and fresh corpses. Captured Ghouls do not require food.

Acquisition

Ghouls cannot be recruited. Enemy ghouls can only be killed or captured as part of operating a holding platform.

To create a friendly ghoul, you must research Ghoul Infusion in the Anomaly tech tree. A medical operation becomes available that irreversibly converts a colonist or prisoner into a ghoul at the cost of 30 bioferrite and 1 shard. This will damage relations with the faction of the patient, should they belong to one. Prisoners turned into Ghouls become friendly player controlled Ghouls.

The Anomaly starting scenario begins with a ghoul colonist.

Summary

A ghoul is effectively a colonist that is limited to only melee attacks. Ghouls cannot wield weapons or apparel. All of the ghoul's skills are set to 0 except for Melee and Shooting (even though ghouls can't shoot). If a ghoul had a passion for Melee and Shooting in life, it retains it as a ghoul. Ghouls can't do any work. Ghouls retain the natural attacks of a human, but also gain a left and right claw attack and an additional bite attack.

All ghouls are given two hediffs that implement the majority of the stat changes experienced by ghouls. These hediffs are "Ghoul" and "Regeneration".

Ghoul:

• Pain: ×0%
• Max Nutrition: 2
• Psychic sensitivity: ×0%
• Minimum Comfortable Temperature: −40
• Maximum Comfortable Temperature: +40
• Minimum Containment Strength: +35
• Talking: ×0%

Regeneration:

• Regenerate 100HP/day^{[Detail needed]}
  • Seems to focus on a single injury at a time, healing it completely before moving on to the next until all injuries are removed
  • Selection mechanism for the next injury to heal is currently unknown^{[Detail needed]}

Ghouls can only eat raw meat and fresh corpses. They will automatically try to eat available food in their assigned zone. Friendly ghouls that are not fed have an increasing chance to become hostile. Ghouls will happily eat insect meat, human meat, and twisted meat.

Ghouls require no sleep, no recreation, no comfort, and have no item needs besides food. They regenerate 100 health per day, automatically regrow lost limbs, and rapidly cure negative health effects. Ghouls can't have any relationships and don't have mood.

Ghouls do not age at all, even if not yet at maturity.

Ghouls can be restricted to zones and also drafted. In combat, they can be directly commanded to melee attack. Ghouls have their pain set to x0%, allowing them to fight until their health is fully depleted or they are incapacitated due to damage to their body. As mentioned however, damaged limbs and organs will regenerate even if downed, unless they are dead. Drafted Ghouls will also fight fires, though Ghoul pyromaniacs retain their incapability to do so.

Ghouls retain the traits they had in life. While most won't be relevant to a ghoul, they can benefit from traits like Jogger and Brawler. A Tough ghoul with Ghoul plating takes only 25% damage(19% with Robust gene). Such a ghoul can freely walk in unnatural darkness and solo kill all spiked monoliths, kill Megasloth 1-on-1, and tank a Thrumbo under friendly fire.

Ghouls will also retain their genes, though not all will remain effective. Genes that affect stats, traits, and aptitudes will remain active. Hemogenic genes, chemical dependencies, ability-granting genes, and violence disabled will become inactive. Cosmetic genes that add body parts will remain visible, while genes that change skin/hair color, hair type, head shape, or fur will not.

Additionally, a large number of still-active genes will become either redundant or ineffective due to the inherit qualities of ghouls, like reduced pain, aggressiveness, any non-violent aptitude, and any degree of psy-sensitivity. To this end, one should consider the xenotype of the pawn they're converting: Certain xenotypes make much better ghouls than others. A hussar loses its main downside, but keeps all of its upsides, while a genie would be much weaker than average.

Entirely new xenogerms can be implanted into ghouls. Mobility genes are very important on ghouls - try squeezing in Very fast runner, but for starters Naked speed is a free +0.10c/s. As you progress towards late-game, make sure to pick up Unstoppable to break enemy lines with ease. Genes that are made redundant, or are effectively disabled by ghoulification retain their metabolism effects, and can be freely used to reduce ghoul hunger.

Alternatively, the ability for ghouls to undergo gene extraction combined with the low cost of ghoul resurrection serums allows ghouls to be used in the efficient purification of genes from multi-gene genepacks.

Ghouls can be assigned to travel as part of a caravan.

Despite the in-game description, colonists do not gain negative mood for being near a friendly ghoul, however they will experience a negative mood if a loved one becomes a ghoul or spawns as a ghoul.^[Detail]

Upgrading ghouls

Ghouls can have standard prosthetics such as bionic legs and Archotech arms installed via medical operations. In particular, their sole need being nutrition coupled with immunity to carcinoma makes a nuclear stomach an extremely cost-effective upgrade.

By researching the Ghoul enhancements technology in the Anomaly tech tree, you can add special bioferrite prosthetics to a ghoul:

• Adrenal heart — Passively increases hunger, grants an ability with a 0.7 hour cooldown which provides a short burst of x0.7 attack cooldown and +4.00 movement speed
• Corrosive heart — Allows the ghoul to spew acid on a 2 hour cooldown, but only has 85% part efficiency
• Ghoul barbs — Increases melee damage by 50% at the cost of -0.25 speed
• Ghoul plating — Incoming damage x0.5 at the cost of -0.75 speed.
• Metalblood heart — On a 6 hour cooldown, gain 50% damage resistance and 400% fire and burn vulnerability for a short time

Ghouls can also use serums. As ghouls aren't affected by mood, this can make juggernaut serum especially effective for them.

Analysis

Ghouls are very powerful guard dogs and melee attackers. They require nothing besides meat. Converting a colonist into a ghoul is a good way to make use of an otherwise terrible pawn or a colonist you can't save from death. The converted ghoul will quickly regrow lost limbs and self-cure detrimental health conditions.

A ghoul makes excellent bait to lure revenants and sightstealers, as they can remain patrolling outside forever.

While requiring direct control, Ghouls can still help with some work in colony. While drafted they can be used to hunt animals (though they will not carry the corpses back). They can also be used to fight fires. In Anomaly starting scenario the Ghoul allows you to skip early defences, indirectly reducing amount of work that needs to be done.

Be especially careful when engaging enemy ghouls in melee combat. They will not be forced down due to pain, so they will fight much longer than regular human raiders.

Ghouls can also make effective use of weapon implants like the elbow blade or the knee spike: as they cannot hold conventional weapons, ghouls can only make unarmed attacks. Implanted weaponry offers them a powerful upgrade, making their already powerful strikes terrifyingly effective in combat.

Hunger management

Ghouls don't get cancer, so the nuclear stomach is an ideal way to keep them from berserking from hunger.

The Robust digestion gene synergizes very well with the Ghouls natural diet of raw meat, but don't work with corpses^[Verify]

Ghoul made from body-mastery creepjoiner don't need to eat at all, but removing of sleep and comfort needs became redundant.

Medical quirks

Because ghouls rapidly regenerate their organs, you can harvest a spare lung and kidney from a pawn before turning them into a ghoul. You can harvest all six organs from a sanguophage before converting them into a ghoul.

Becoming a ghoul does not remove duplication sickness, paralytic abasia or cirrhosis. However, if you then euthanize the ghoul and revive them with a ghoul resurrection serum, it does remove the sickness but won't cure the paralytic abasia.

Version history

• Anomaly DLC Release - Added.