Unnatural corpse

Unnatural corpse

Unnatural corpse

Base Stats

Type

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An Unnatural Corpse is an entity that appears in your colony via events. It looks like a copy of your still-living pawns. As soon as you get the corpse, its original copy will suffer from a mood penalty as well as the corpse sometimes teleports near to it.

Removal

There is no way to get rid of the corpse as it will reappear eventually. Once it "wakes" up, it will chase and hunt its original, where the victim will be hypnotized for several seconds before their brains get consumed. The unnatural corpse is challenging to kill, similar to a Ghoul's unnatural regeneration but faster. The only way to get rid of the corpse before it awakes is to study it which takes several days. After that, you'll get a notification that your colonist will be able to remove the shard implanted on the corpse, which will destroy it. You can still keep it around optionally to study as it gives "advanced research points" for the dark research tab.

Killing

The duplicates invincibility is limited and if you damage it enough you can break the extreme healing causing it to be killed easily. It is recommended to make sure the original colonist is far away to prevent them from being killed.^{[Needs more testing].}

Occurence

Unnatural Corpses can be obtained from Events or Quests. The primary way of obtaining a corpse is for it to spawn in an event, in which it will appear on your map near player owned buildings. It may also be obtained via the mysterious cargo quest as a piece of cargo. A pawn cannot have more than 1 unnatural corpse at a time.

When the corpse spawns the notification will state that "it looks exactly like (name of colonist)" and "the only difference is that it feels waxy and warm to the touch".

Summary

When the corpse first spawns a notification will appear stating that "it looks exactly like (colonist) in every way" And " the only difference is that it's waxy and warm to the touch ". the corpse will teleport towards the colonist it looks like should they get to far. It is also worth noting that the colonist will gain a permanent mood debuff until the corpse is destroyed, the corpse can only be destroyed if it has been studied for multiple days. ^{[needs confirmation]}soon after this notification will appear stating that "it appears to be creating some sort of consciousness" and " destroy the corpse before its too late". Soon after that message appears the corpse will start to move and will get up and chase down the colonist it's looks like, when it catches them the will paralyze them and kill them. Disappearing after. You also cannot use a Resurrector Mech Serum on it as it will fail and the serum will still be used.

Butchering the corpse provides human meat and leather as would a normal corpse, but it will respawn soon (reportedly three hours) shortly. Note that time until you can dark study the corpse again is reset when it respawns, and the progress made towards understanding it is not, meaning that repeatedly butchering it may be a faster and more profitable method of progressing the questline.^[downsides?]

The encounter bypasses many of the normal combat mechanics in Rimworld. First, the encounter is completely unbalanced. It does not have any parameters to account for the military level or wealth of the colony. Compare to a raid's point value parameter, which is based on wealth and controls how many raiders there are and how strong they are. Second, the unnatural corpse has one main attack, which immobilizes the target, and after a moment one-shot-kills their brain. This completely bypasses any armor, dodging, counterattack ability that the targeted colonist may have, and prevents the possibility of rescue. Third, the unnatural corpse is immune to most special weapons, like psychic shock lances. Although a psychic insanity lance can be used on it, it has no effect.

Analysis

To kill it, approximately ~1600 damage needs to be inflicted to the corpse. The exact amount varies, but the rapid regeneration energy has approximately ~270 hp, while the awoken unnatural corpse hediff has a 20% incoming damage multiplier, leading to ~1350 damage that needs to be done before you can damage it normally (although damage will still be decreased by 80%). With five or more colonists with high dps weapons this can be achieved reliably (e.g. high quality chain shotguns). By the time the corpse will outspeed your pawn it will be close to death.

Considering how much damage needs to be done, normal fighting strategies may not work. Even an orbital bombardment targeter or antigrain warhead are no match for its regeneration. Good counter strategies should likewise think outside the box.

• If you keep the target colonist near a drop pod launcher or cryptosleep casket all the time, and then load them in when the corpse activates, then the corpse will have to punch through the container before gaining access to the colonist. This gives you time to attack the corpse. You may even be able to repair the container faster than the corpse's weak punches damage it. It can't use its instakill psychic attack on drop pods or cryptosleep caskets.

• Anesthetizing the target colonist just as the unnatural corpse is activating will cause the unnatural corpse to rise as an anesthetized corpse. It seems to copy active buffs and debuffs of the target colonist at the time it activates, including anesthetic. Your melee fighter can finish it off in one hit.

• For a slightly less cheesey strategy using anesthetic, you can anesthetize the target colonist after the corpse is active and moving. The corpse won't get the anesthetic effect, but your target colonist will. Once downed, you can have the target colonist be carried by a different colonist (preferably one with low melee skill). The corpse won't use its one-hit-kill psychic attack on the carrier or anyone else. It will be limited to punching the carrier. At this point, you could just swarm the unnatural corpse, or you could play duck-duck-goose by forming a ring with your fighters, and have the carrier cheat by running across the ring, while the unnatural corpse is forced to go around.

• If you live within drop-podding range of an ice sheet, you could send the target colonist there when the corpse awakens. At temperatures of -60C or lower, with the target colonist equipped with Go-Juice and a good parka, they may very well be able to outrun the naked corpse until it collapses from severe hypothermia. Make sure to use the Go-Juice after the corpse has reappeared on the new map, so that the corpse doesn't copy the "high on go-juice" buff.

• Finally, you could send the target colonist into a caravan, or use a drop pod to put them in a caravan. The corpse will disappear, giving you time to prepare. However, this is only temporary, as the corpse will return to your colony shortly after your colonist does, with its regeneration refilled.

• If you happen to have a Creepjoiner with the Psychic Slaughter ability, the Psychic Slaughter works on the Unnatural Corpse. Having the Creepjoiner sleep and otherwise stay near your cloned pawn might be helpful for a sudden attack by the Unnatural Corpse.

Having the Royalty DLC makes it significantly easier to kill the corpse. A skip strategy could be used, teleporting the unnatural corpse or the pawn when the corpse get too close. The focus psycast could be used too to increase the moving speed of the pawn, or the pawn could be given a jump pack to buy time. Without Royalty, bionic or archotech legs can be used in conjunction with drugs. This enables the pawn to get a moving stat above 200%. The unnatural corpse's maximum speed is 300%, but it will take some time before it reaches that.

To kill it, approximately ~1600 damage needs to be inflicted to the corpse. The exact amount differs, but the rapid regeneration energy has approximately ~270 hp, while the awoken unnatural corpse hediff has a 20% incoming damage multiplier, leading to ~1350 damage that needs to be done before you can damage it normally (although damage will still be decreased by 80%). With five or more colonists with high dps weapons this can be achieved reliably (e.g. high quality chain shotguns). By the time the corpse will outspeed your pawn it will be close to death.

Lastly, the first appearance of an unnatural corpse will helpfully unlock the imbue death refusal psychic ritual as an advanced anomaly research. Rushing the research and giving death refusal to the targeted pawn is a good insurance policy in case the worst should occur.

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