Twisted obelisk
 | This article relates to content added by Anomaly (DLC). Please note that it will not be present without the DLC enabled. |
 | Spoiler warning: This page may contain details about the gameplay that might be considered spoilers. If you wish to enjoy the content first hand, you probably shouldn't continue reading beyond this point. |
Twisted obelisk
A large metallic pillar that emanates a putrid psychic energy. The pillar hums ominously and appears to be increasing in activity. It's not clear what will happen when it reaches its full capacity.
You can send colonists to suppress the obelisk to prevent it from activating. You can also mark the obelisk for study to try to learn its purpose and perhaps make use of it.
You can attack the obelisk to destroy it, but doing so may unleash unnatural and dangerous phenomena.
Base Stats
Building
- Size
- 3 × 3
- Passability
- impassable
- Cover Effectiveness
- 75%
- Destroy yield
1
Containment
- Knowledge Gain
- 2 Advanced
- Study Interval
- 120,000 ticks (2 in-game days)
- Min Monolith Level For Study
- 1
- defName
- WarpedObelisk_Mutator
The twisted obelisk is one of three Obelisks that can appear in the Anomaly DLC. It is able to give your pawns fleshmass mutations.
Occurrence
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The twisted obelisk can spawn in the map as a Major Threat.
Summary
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| This section is a stub. You can help RimWorld Wiki by expanding it. Reason: How are the chances of the results distributed for both the targeted option and the random one. e.g. is it equal between the 4/6 options? is getting a lung 2x as likely as a stomach? etc. See fleshmass stomach further discussion on community discord. Also check tags.. |
Like all Obelisks, the Twisted 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 an event or mutation. The chance of this event occurring is on average, once every 24 hours of either suppression or study.
There are 6 possible occurrences and one is selected randomly when the obelisk is triggered:
- Flesh whip (arm): Provides a 20.5 damage, 60% AP, DPS Cut attack and -1 Beauty, 30 HP
- Flesh tentacle (arm): 120% Part Efficiency, -1 Beauty, 30 HP
- Fleshmass lung (lung): +6% Pain, +30% Toxic Environment Resistance, Immunity to Lung Rot and Asthma.
- Fleshmass stomach (stomach) +8% Pain, 0% Food Poisoning chance Factor.
- Turn a nearby[Closest or radius?] tree into a Harbinger tree
- Turn a nearby[Closest or radius?] animal into a Fleshbeast
The mutations target the person studying or suppressing the obelisk and can replace missing limbs and organs. The new Flesh part cannot replace an artificial part. If an artificial part is chosen as the target the obelisk trigger will fail. The obelisk will still go on cooldown if it targeted an artificial part and failed.
Attempting to remove the new body part afterwards will cause the removed part to turn into a hostile fleshbeast.
After sufficient[Define sufficient] study, selecting the obelisk allows the player to select the "Mutate" gizmo, and choose a target[Targeting criteria] to mutate. This will cause one of first four options, although the mutation remains randomly chosen. The 'mutate' option has a cooldown of 5 days.
Reaching 100% severity through any means, causes the obelisk to explode, drop a Shard, and some wildlife in the area to turn into hostile fleshbeast. The amount of wildlife that turns into Fleshbeasts is based on Raid Points. At low raid points only a few animals may transform. If there are insufficient animals, fleshbeasts will emerge from the ground.
The obelisk will then explode.[Detail] Tamed and allied animals remain unaffected.
Analysis
In terms of effectiveness, Fleshmass limbs and organs are typically inferior to Bionic or Detoxifer
parts that can be crafted, the exception being the Flesh whip, which has a slightly better dps than the Elbow Blade. However, they are effectively free upgrades, requiring only to wait for the cooldown and patience with the RNG. For colonists with the masochist trait or a colony with the Idealized Pain Precept, the pain that comes from the Fleshmass Lungs and Stomach might even make them preferable to Detoxifier Lungs and Bionic Stomach, respectively.
In terms of wealth management, mutated body parts don't contribute to the colony wealth and will attract less severe incidents than their artificial counterparts.
You can damage the obelisk and continuously supress it to trigger a mutation by interaction. This doesn't affect the mutate ability cooldown and results in a body part mutation on average once per 90,000 ticks (25 mins) of interaction. For comparison, a pawn with 100% general labor speed and 2 tool cabinets takes 76,785 ticks (21.33 mins) of work to make a bionic arm from raw resources.
Like all obelisks, the pawn studying and suppressing the Twisted obelisk should be the pawn intended to receive its effect, not necessarily the main researcher. This is to take advantage of the random interaction effect when suppressing or studying.
Counterintuitively, nether the intellectual skill, the Entity study rate, or the Research speed affect on the speed of dark study due to the 2-day cooldown. The only things that affect this speed is the Study efficiency, how quickly you study after the cooldown expire, and the obelisk activity level. This means the best possible (but very risky) study speed for the obelisk is to study it at 99% activity level, suppress it down to 59%, and come back exactly 2 days later to study it again at 99%. This method gives 2 advanced/day research points (2.5 advanced/day with voidsight serum, scaled by difficulty level).
Brute-force Destruction
While obelisks generally have a positive effect on your colony, it is possible to destroy them by dealing enough damage before they take effect. You can do this with pawns wielding frag grenades. You'll need 4 pawns to destroy the Twisted obelisk without triggering adverse effects.
- Suppress the obelisk down to 0%.
- Melee attack the obelisk until its activity level increase (not the activity level itself) rises above +20%/day. The obelisk health should be at 80% or lower by this point
- Suppress the obelisk to 0% again.
- Melee attack the obelisk, this time until it almost reach 100%.
- Move all pawns to a safe distance and start throwing grenades at the obelisk at the same time.
- After 1 or 2 throws, the obelisk should have been destroyed.
Alternatively, you can use high-explosive shells or a diabolus to destroy the obelisk.
Trivia
- Possibly a reference to the Markers from dead space, slowly turning Pawns into Fleshbeasts, similar to how the Markers turn Humans into necromorphs
Version history
- Anomaly DLC Release - Added.