Corrupted obelisk

The Corrupted obelisk is one of three Obelisks that can appear in the Anomaly DLC. It is able to clone your colonists.

Occurrence

The corrupted obelisk can spawn in the map as a Major Threat.

Summary

Like all Obelisks, the Corrupted Obelisk can be studied for advanced anomaly research, and must be regularly suppressed to prevent its full activation. While being studied or suppressed, there is a chance the Obelisk triggers a cloning event. The chance of this event occurring is on average, once every 24 hours of either suppression or study.

There are 4 possible occurrences and one is selected randomly when the obelisk is triggered:

Hostile Duplicate: The duplicate is hostile and will immediately attack. The stronger your colonist the stronger your foe. Can be captured and recruited!

Cloned colonist with Multiple Organ Decay: Several of the duplicate's vital organs have "Organ decay", which causes increasing pain and reduced efficiency and will eventually kill the pawn. Known cure: Replace the decaying organs.

Cloned colonist with Duplication Sickness: Both the original and the duplicate suffer from lowered consciousness, gets worse over the course of a few days, with the final stage being max 10% consciousness while both are alive. Known cures: Terminate one of the two, Unnatural Healing from creepjoiners and Healer Mech Serum.

Cloned colonist with Crumbling Mind: The duplicate will begin losing all their skills and have a locked consciousness of 60%, After 2-3 days the condition becomes permanent and incurable. Colonists that reach the final stage will be unable to do Skilled Labor, Dumb Labor, Caring or Intellectual Jobs. Known cures for Crumbling Mind: healer mech serum; Unnatural Healing from creepjoiners; killing them, removing their skull, and reviving with resurrector mech serum or death refusal. The bioregeneration cycle from biosculpting pods is not a cure; however, pawns can be placed in cryptosleep caskets to prevent the crumbling mind from progressing until a cure can be found. Once the condition progresses to Crumbled Mind, it cannot be cured.

The duplicated colonist will have identical mood thoughts, Ideoligion, injuries, and any ongoing illnesses or drug effects (including pregnancy), but will have no equipment and no artificial body parts except for psylinks and fleshmass organs. Any artificial body parts will be replaced with the healthy, natural form, including all subparts that may be removed by the artificial part (e.g. a prosthetic arm will be replaced with an organic arm, including the hand and fingers).

Notably, no social opinions are copied to the duplicate, not even familial relationships. There is also no special relationship between the original and duplicate.

If the Activity Level of the Corrupted Obelisk reaches 100% it will explode dropping a Shard and spawn hostile duplicates to spawn all around your colonists. These duplicates will spawn with the same traits, backstories, skills, and health conditions of your own colonists, but without any gear or bionics. Duplicate spawn randomly in proximity to any colonist. The amount of duplicates that spawn is based on raid points.

After 10 Anomaly research at the obelisk a duplication button will appear (30 day cooldown). After 30 Anomaly research at the obelisk, a deactivation button will appear. The obelisk costs 2 Shards to deactivate. A deactivated obelisk will not need to be suppressed, but can no longer duplicate pawns.

Creepjoiners cannot be duplicated, and will instead show a message to that effect.

Analysis

With a little luck, the corrupted Obelisks can be used to duplicate your most valuable colonists, especially those who have a psylink, as both level and psychic powers are duplicated. Have organs or a prisoner ready in case of Organ Decay, and a Psychic shock lance or Shard shock lance if the duplicate pawn starts off hostile to maximize your chance of taking them prisoner. a Cryptosleep casket can be used to preserve a pawn with Crumbling Mind if you lack a Healer mech serum. That leaves only cases where the duplicate pawn begins to negatively affect the original as the outcome that prevents you from eventually gaining a pawn.

One way to reliably get a hostile duplicate captured is to do this: 1. Make the colonist you are duplicating take go juice. 2. wait 10~ hours until only around 6 hours of go juice is left. 3. duplicate colonist. 4. have you pawns punch the duplicate until it reaches more than 10% pain(you probably want a few percent more) 5. have your colonists run around in circles for a few hours until go-juice expires. 6. duplicate will be downed, but death on down doesn't apply. 7. capture duplicate.

Alternatively, you can use the new Death Refusal ritual to cure Crumbling Mind, Duplication sickness and Organ Decay. Simply put Death Refusal on the new pawn, kill them (destory their brain in case of Crumbling Mind via rip scanner or extract skull) and resurrect them. They will come back healthy.

If you attacked the obelisk, it's activity level will rise. When it reaches full, it will duplicate up to 30 of you colonists depending on raid points, all of them being hostile to you. However this can be abused to mass cloning god pawns by following the method below:

Have your god pawn anesthetized
Send all other pawn (except ghouls) on a caravan resting right outside your colony
Have ghoul attack obelisk to trigger the duplication
Since your god pawn is the only pawn on the map, it will be duplicated 30 times
However your god pawn's "anesthetized" status will also be duplicated, meaning all duplicated pawns are harmless
Have your caravan come back and capture all the helpless duplicates
Profit

When duplicated, the effect of "Touching the Void", psionic abilities, and xenogens are preserved. Therefore, it may be worth waiting for the full passage of the Anomaly DLC and gaining all psi abilities, before massively duplicating one colonist through anesthesia and bringing activity to 100%. In this way, you can get a lot of incredibly powerful colonists.