Creepjoiner

Creepy joiners are an exclusive event for the Anomaly DLC. You can encounter creepy joiners 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 when they are asking to join your colony, they can either depart peacefully or attack you.

Not all combinations 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).

Creepy joiners cannot be studied, but some of their side effects such as entities can be.

Types

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

• Leathery stranger
• Dark scholar
• Deal maker
• Drifter
• Blind healer
• Timeless one
• Cult escapee
• Lone genius

Benefits

They can have one of the following benefits:

• Perfect human — Has the Perfect memory trait and a high value in all skills. The trait prevents their skills from degrading.
• Occultist — Research bonus
• Unnatural healing — Has a powerful healing ability with a 6 day cooldown. It applies the effect of a healer mech serum to a pawn, with a 25% chance to also replace one of the pawn's arms with a flesh tentacle. Cannot self-target.
• Shambler overlord — Has an ability to create create friendly shamblers
• 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 24 hour cooldown, which randomly converts one stack of steel into plasteel, uranium, gold, bioferrite, or twisted meat.
• Joybringer — Gives a passive +3 mood boost to all nearby pawns in your colony
• 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.

Drawbacks

They can come with a downside as well, which occurs on a delay after living with your colony for a while:

• Nothing
• Desertion — The colonist will suddenly depart.
• Traitor — The colonist will suddenly become hostile, accompanied by a message about their evil expression.
• Aggressive when rejected — The colonist will happily join but will become violent immediately if rejected.
• Metalhorror — The colonist is infected with a metalhorror.
• Crumbling mind — The colonist will experience a severe health effect that destroys their brain in a number of days. The crumbling can be healed with a healer mech serum or by another Blind Healer creepy joiner.
• Entity jailbreaker — The colonist will suddenly attempt to free all of your contained entities.
• Psychic agony — The colonist inflicts a psychic mood debuff on nearby colonists, psychic sensitivity applies to this effect
• Organ decay — The colonist will suddenly develop severe organ decay, requiring you to replace their heart, liver, kidneys, and lungs.
• Disturbing — The colonist mumbles and gives other colonists a negative mood debuff.

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.

Analysis

Creepy joiners 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.

If a creepy joiner is planning to become hostile somehow, they can be downed and recruited normally afterward. At this point, they are not planning anything further and become a "normal" colonist.

Performing a medical inspection surgery right after recruiting a creepy joiner can sometimes reveal their downside early.

Creepy joiners 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.