Creepjoiner

Creepjoiners are an exclusive event for the Anomaly DLC. They are pawns who will randomly arrive at your colony offering to join, often providing great benefits however potentially bringing a hidden downside. You can encounter creepjoiners even if you have not yet activated the monolith.

Summary

A random pawn appears that wants to join your colony. The pawn waits on the edge of your map for someone to be sent to talk to them. They usually have some great benefit, but come with large risks too.

If rejected, they can either depart peacefully or become hostile.

Joiners have a specific list of upsides and possible downsides. Not all combinations below are possible. For some options there is a minimum raid point requirement (e.g. metalhorror or fleshbeast emergence), and some types will be limited in their downsides and benefits (e.g., blind healer will always have unnatural healing, or someone with joybringer cannot have disturbing).

Creepjoiners can be studied for if taken prisoner, as can some of their side effects such as entities. Creepjoiners are studied for Advanced Anomaly Research and give 2 Advanced Research with a cooldown of 2 days. The Creep joiner must be walking to be possible to be studied.

The monolith does not need to be active for creepjoiners to appear.

Types

Main creepjoiner types (each has its unique backstory and equipment):

• Leathery stranger
• Dark scholar
• Deal maker — Has the Beautiful trait in addition to their other benefit
• Drifter
• Blind healer — Usually missing both eyes, which can be replaced with surgery
• Timeless one — Usually a very young adult
• Cult escapee - Usually has many surgical scars and/or removed body parts
• Lone genius - Always has the Too smart and Abrasive traits.

Benefits

They can have one of the following benefits:

• Perfect human — Has the perfect memory and industrious trait and 14 to 18 in all skills. The perfect memory trait prevents their skills from degrading.
• Occultist — Has a bonus to research
• Shambler overlord — Has an ability to create create friendly shamblers through a release deadlife dust cloud power.
• Fleshcrafter — Has a Shape Flesh ability with a 1 hour cooldown, which converts a corpse into a fleshbeast that is hostile to all humans. The Fleshbeast created depends on the size of the corpse.
• Alchemist — Has a Transmute Steel ability with a 20 hour cooldown, which randomly converts one stack of steel or a steel slag chunk into plasteel, uranium, gold, bioferrite, or twisted meat; or a stuffable item or building made from steel into plasteel, uranium, gold, or bioferrite.
• Joybringer — Has the Joyous trait, which provides a passive +3 joyous presence mood buff to all pawns in your colony anywhere within the same map
• Death refusal — Has the ability to self-resurrect themselves up to 4 times, healing lost limbs and organs each time. Scarring and resurrection sickness are possible.
• Body master — Has the body mastery trait, which completely removes the pawn's need for food, sleep, and comfort.
• Psychic butcher — Has an ability that can instantly kill and butcher pawns/animals/entities, turning them into twisted flesh.

Name	Description	Effects	Target	Range	Warmup Time	Cooldown	Charges
Unnatural healing	Use dark psychic influence to heal someone. The process will stop bleeding, restore blood loss, and can even heal significant injuries. However, it may also have unexpected side effects. Has ability: Unnatural healing	Replicates the effect of a healer mech serum.[Verify] 25% chance to also replace one of the pawn's arms with a flesh tentacle.	Single non-mechanoid pawn. Cannot target self.	Touch	270 ticks (4.5 secs)	360,000 ticks (6 in-game days)	1
Psychic slaughter	Use dark psychic power to induce chaotic reconfiguration of flesh. This kills a flesh creature in seconds and converts its body into a pile of twisted flesh. Has ability: Psychic slaughter	On cast, instantly kills target. Generates Twisted meat where target once stood.	Single non-mechanoid pawn in LoS.	4.9 tiles	120 ticks (2 secs)	60,000 ticks (24 in-game hours)	1

Drawbacks

They can come with multiple downsides as well, which occurs after a 3-30 day delay while living with your colony:

• Nothing
• Desertion — The colonist will suddenly depart. Capturing and re-recruiting may only delay the desertion again.
• Traitor — The colonist will suddenly become hostile, accompanied by a message about their evil expression.
• Metalhorror — The colonist is infected with a metalhorror (requires level 2 Monolith).
• Crumbling mind — The colonist will experience a severe health effect that renders them incapable of most tasks within a few days. The crumbling can be healed with a healer mech serum or by having another joiner use Unnatural Healing.
• Entity jailbreaker — The colonist will suddenly attempt to free all of your contained entities.
• Psychic agony — The colonist emits a psychic pulse, on average once every 30 days, inflicting a large amount of psychic pain on nearby pawns. The pain is often enough to down your other colonists temporarily, and then lingers for multiple days at lower levels. Psychic sensitivity applies to this effect.
  • If a surgical inspection is made on a Human who does this, this will be the results: "(human) detected a faint but painful psychic presence emanating from (human) but failed to understand what was causing it"
  • This Event is very rare, and seems to only trigger when humans are grouped up, though it could be random. When it happens, all nearby humans will gain 100% pain for a little bit ^{[Seconds? Hours?]}, reduced to 25% soon after, which last between 2-5 days. This can be sufficient to kill pawns.
• Organ decay — The colonist will suddenly develop severe organ decay, requiring you to replace their heart, liver, kidneys, and/or lungs.
• Disturbing — The colonist upsets other colonists, giving them a −2 [name] rambling moodlet when interacting with them, which can stack up to −12 mood.

Separate from the downsides listed above, Creep joiners will become hostile if they receive friendly fire damage. This aggressive state on friendly fire damage can only occur once. If a Creep Joiner receives friendly fire, becomes captured, and then joins the colony, they will not respond to friendly fire with aggression.

If they become aggressive, they can react in various ways:

• Basic assault
• Fleshbeast emergence — A fleshbeast emerges from the joiner, killing them in the process.
• Sightstealer attack — The joiner will scream and summon sightstealers.

Also they are not able to romance ordinary pawns, but they can romance another creepjoiner, or form relationships to pawns with the psychic bond gene (such as Highmates). ^[verify].

Creep joiners initially start as Unwaveringly Loyal. If they are allowed to join your colony, the Unwaveringly Loyal aspect is removed permanently.

Analysis

Creepjoiners often have many powerful, colony-changing abilities. Evaluate the possible tradeoffs above, and be prepared to deal with sudden turncoat behavior. Inspect the pawn's entire bio and health tab carefully before recruiting them. Some creepjoiners such as the perfect human can be incredible and frankly game-changing if acquired, however one must decide whether the potential risks they may bring are worth it. Additionally, you may also want to consider the potential downsides of not recruiting the creepjoiner (such as a potential aggressive response).

Performing a medical inspection surgery right after recruiting a creepjoiner can sometimes reveal their downside early. However, not all downsides can be revealed with a medical inspection, so even if a medical inspection has no results then it is still necessary to stay vigilant.

Creepjoiners with crumbling minds or organ decay can be paused until you're able to deal with the issue by placing the colonist inside a cryptosleep casket. You will want to be prepared to potentially lose the creepjoiner for a very long time however (especially if they suffer from crumbling mind, which may require something as rare as a healer mech serum to cure), so be prepared if they carry out essential jobs such as cooking or farming.

If a creepjoiner's downsides cannot immediately be determined then it may be useful to keep them isolated from other colonists (such as utilising areas to restrict their movement or using a schedule that isolates them) until the downside either is discovered or reveals itself. This can be beneficial if the downside turns out to be one that can potentially affect other colonists, such as a Metalhorror.

Due to the risk of a recruited creepjoiner suddenly deserting the colony after a few days, you may want to consider whether or not it is worth giving them expensive or rare items (such as high-quality armor, weapons or bionic parts). While this equipment can be recovered if the deserting creepjoiner is arrested, there is always the risk that your colonists will not be able to catch up to them and you will consequently lose the equipment.