Ghoul

Ghouls are humans that have been warped into powerful, twisted combat entities with very few needs. Ghouls can appear as both enemy units and become a part of your colony. Ghouls that are part of your colony can only eat raw meat and fresh corpses. Captured Ghouls do not require food.

Acquisition

Ghouls cannot be recruited. Enemy ghouls can only be killed or captured as part of operating a holding platform.

To create a friendly ghoul, you must research Ghoul Infusion in the Anomaly tech tree. A medical operation becomes available that irreversibly converts a colonist or prisoner into a ghoul at the cost of 30 bioferrite and 1 shard. This will damage relations with the faction of the patient, should they belong to one. Prisoners turned into Ghouls become friendly player controlled Ghouls.

The Anomaly starting scenario begins with a ghoul colonist.

Summary

A ghoul is effectively a colonist that is limited to only melee attacks. Ghouls cannot wield weapons or apparel. Backstories, traits, and genes that disable violence become inactive. All Ghouls are capable of violence and have a Melee and Shooting (even though ghouls can't shoot) skill. All of the ghoul's other skills are disabled. If a ghoul had a passion for Melee and/or Shooting in life, it retains it as a ghoul.

Ghouls can't do any work. Ghouls retain the natural attacks of a human, but also gain a left and right claw attack and an additional bite attack.

All ghouls are given two hediffs that implement the majority of the stat changes experienced by ghouls. These hediffs are "Ghoul" and "Regeneration".

Ghoul:

Pain: ×0%
Max Nutrition: 2
Psychic sensitivity: ×0%
Minimum Comfortable Temperature: −40
Maximum Comfortable Temperature: +40
Minimum Containment Strength: +35
Talking: ×0%

Regeneration:

Regenerate 100HP/day^{[Detail needed]}
- Seems to focus on a single injury at a time, healing it completely before moving on to the next until all injuries are removed
- Selection mechanism for the next injury to heal is currently unknown^{[Detail needed]}

Ghouls can only eat raw meat and fresh corpses. They will automatically try to eat available food in their assigned zone. Friendly ghouls that are not fed have an increasing chance to become hostile. Ghouls will happily eat insect meat, human meat, and twisted meat.

Ghouls require no sleep, no recreation, no comfort, and have no item needs besides food. They regenerate 100 health per day, automatically regrow lost limbs, and rapidly cure negative health effects. Ghouls can't have any relationships and don't have mood.

Ghouls do not age at all, even if not yet at maturity. Note that this means that ghouls created from younger pawns will never have the full body size and body part health of an adult. Ghouls can have age related heart attacks.

Ghouls can be restricted to zones and drafted as normal. In combat, they can be directly commanded to melee attack. Ghouls have their pain set to x0%, allowing them to fight until their health is fully depleted or they are incapacitated due to damage to their body. As mentioned however, damaged limbs and organs will regenerate even if downed, unless they are dead.

Ghouls will fight adjacent fires, but do not seek out fires to extinguish. Ghoul pyromaniacs and Ghouls Incapable of Firefighting retain their incapability to fight fires.

Ghouls retain the traits they had in life. While most won't be relevant to a ghoul, they can benefit from traits like Jogger and Brawler. A Tough ghoul with Ghoul plating takes only 25% damage (19% with Robust gene). Such a ghoul can freely walk in unnatural darkness and solo kill all spiked monoliths, kill Megasloth 1-on-1, and tank a Thrumbo under friendly fire.

Once converted, the pawn is no longer counted as a full colonist for things like the recluse trait.

Ghouls will also retain their genes, though not all will remain effective. Genes that affect stats, traits, and aptitudes will remain active. Hemogenic genes, chemical dependencies, ability-granting genes, and violence disabled will become inactive. Cosmetic genes that add body parts will remain visible, while genes that change skin/hair color, hair type, head shape, or fur will not.

Additionally, a large number of still-active genes will become either redundant or ineffective due to the inherit qualities of ghouls, like reduced pain, aggressiveness, any non-violent aptitude, and any degree of psy-sensitivity.

Entirely new xenogerms can be implanted into ghouls.

Alternatively, the ability for ghouls to undergo gene extraction combined with the low cost of ghoul resurrection serums allows ghouls to be used in the efficient purification of genes from multi-gene genepacks.

Ghouls can be assigned to travel as part of a caravan.

Despite the in-game description, colonists do not gain negative mood for being near a friendly ghoul, however they will experience a negative mood if a loved one becomes a ghoul or spawns as a ghoul.^[Detail]

Upgrading ghouls

Ghouls can have standard prosthetics such as bionic legs and Archotech arms installed via medical operations. In particular, their sole need being nutrition coupled with immunity to carcinoma makes a nuclear stomach an extremely cost-effective upgrade.

By researching the Ghoul enhancements technology in the Anomaly tech tree, you can add special bioferrite prosthetics to a ghoul:

Adrenal heart — Passively increases hunger, grants an ability with a 0.7 hour cooldown which provides a short burst of x0.7 attack cooldown and +4.00 movement speed
Corrosive heart — Allows the ghoul to spew acid on a 2 hour cooldown, but only has 85% part efficiency
Ghoul barbs — Increases melee damage by 50% at the cost of -0.25 speed
Ghoul plating — Incoming damage x0.5 at the cost of -0.75 speed.
Metalblood heart — On a 6 hour cooldown, gain 50% damage resistance and 400% fire and burn vulnerability for a short time

Ghouls cannot use drugs but can use serums. As ghouls aren't affected by mood, this can make juggernaut serum especially effective for them.

Analysis

Ghouls are very powerful guard dogs and melee attackers. They require nothing besides meat. Converting a colonist into a ghoul is a good way to make use of an otherwise terrible pawn or a colonist you can't save from death. The converted ghoul will quickly regrow lost limbs and self-cure detrimental health conditions.

A ghoul makes excellent bait to lure revenants and sightstealers, as they can remain patrolling outside forever.

While requiring direct control, Ghouls can still help with some work in colony. While drafted they can be used to hunt animals (though they will not carry the corpses back). They can also be used to fight fires. In Anomaly starting scenario the Ghoul allows you to skip early defences, indirectly reducing amount of work that needs to be done.

Be especially careful when engaging enemy ghouls in melee combat. They will not be forced down due to pain, so they will fight much longer than regular human raiders.

Body part weapons

Ghouls can also make effective use of body part weapons like the power claw. As they cannot hold conventional weapons, ghouls can only make unarmed attacks. Implanted weaponry offers them a powerful upgrade, making their already powerful strikes terrifyingly effective in combat.

Combing Ghoul barbs and the strong melee damage gene stack with the increased dps of the implants and offer dps comparable to high tier melee options.

The power claw features the highest damage, albeit with a small movement speed penalty.

Genetics

To this end, one should consider the xenotype of the pawn they're converting: Certain xenotypes make much better ghouls than others. A hussar loses its main downside, but keeps all of its upsides, while a genie would be much weaker than average.

Mobility genes are very important on ghouls - try squeezing in Very fast runner, but for starters Naked speed is a free +0.10c/s. As you progress towards late-game, make sure to pick up Unstoppable to break enemy lines with ease. Genes that are made redundant, or are effectively disabled by ghoulification retain their metabolism effects, and can be freely used to reduce ghoul hunger.

Hunger management

Ghouls don't get cancer, so the nuclear stomach is an ideal way to keep them from berserking from hunger.

The Robust digestion gene synergizes very well with the Ghouls natural diet of raw meat, but don't work with corpses^[Verify]

Ghoul made from body-mastery creepjoiner don't need to eat at all, but removing of sleep and comfort needs became redundant.

Medical quirks

Because ghouls rapidly regenerate their organs, you can harvest a spare lung and kidney from a pawn before turning them into a ghoul. You can harvest all six organs from a sanguophage before converting them into a ghoul.

Becoming a ghoul does not remove duplication sickness, paralytic abasia or cirrhosis. However, if you then euthanize the ghoul and revive them with a ghoul resurrection serum, it does remove the sickness but won't cure the paralytic abasia.

Version history

Anomaly DLC Release - Added.

Entities

Basic: Void monolith • Harbinger tree • Fleshbeast (Fingerspike, Trispike, Toughspike, Bulbfreak) • Sightstealer • Shambler • Ghoul • Gorehulk • Death pall

Advanced: Pit gate • Dreadmeld • Fleshmass heart • Fleshmass nucleus • Chimera • Devourer • Noctolith • Noctol • Revenant • Metalhorror • Nociosphere • Blood rain • Twisted obelisk • Corrupted obelisk • Warped obelisk • Golden cube • Unnatural corpse

Ultimate: Void structure • Void node