Imbue death refusal
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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. |
Imbue death refusal
Link a target with a distant archotechnological engine that can bring them back from the dead in seconds. This process is not without side-effects.
Base Stats
- Type
- Psychic ritual
Creation
- Required Research
- Death refusal
- Ritual Duration
- 15,000 ticks (4.17 mins)
- Ritual Cooldown
- 950,000 ticks (263.89 mins)
- Resources to make
1
Imbue death refusal is a psychic ritual that grants the target charges of the death refusal ability, allowing them to resurrect from death.
Acquisition[edit]
Death refusal can be applied to a pawn after researching the death refusal research project through the imbue death refusal ritual after discovering an unnatural corpse.
The imbue death refusal psychic ritual can be performed once every 950,000 ticks (15.83 in-game days) at a psychic ritual spot at the cost of 1 Shard, once the Death refusal research project has been completed. Note that this research requires dark study to unlock. The ritual takes 15,000 ticks (6 in-game hours) to complete. At least two ritual roles must be filled: the Invoker and the Target to be imbued. Optionally up to 6 Chanters can participate to increase the ritual quality.
Horax cult gunners and highthralls have 1 death refusal on them. Grunts have no death refusals.
A pawn can have a maximum of 2 death refusal stacks, with two exceptions: When choosing the embrace the void ending, the pawn you send gains 4 charges of death refusal. Creepjoiners with the Death refusal benefit have a modified Hediff that also starts at 4 charges with maximum stacks increased to 4 until they run out of charges.
Summary[edit]
- Adds 1 charge of death refusal to the target, allowing them to self-resurrect one time after they died.
- Reduce the total XP of every of their skills by a percentage, dependent on the ritual's quality - the higher the quality the lower the percentage is.
- At 100% quality, the amount of XPs reduced will only be 1%.
| Percentage of XP reduced |
|---|
Death refusal ability[edit]
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This section is a stub. You can help RimWorld Wiki by expanding it. Reason: Exactly which hediffs are removed on resurrection. |
When death refusal is activated the pawn shakes for a few seconds, and they are revived. Any lethal condition and missing body part is restored, although permanent injuries, chronic ailments and non-lethal diseases will remain. Resurrection also has the occasional side effect of leaving some fresh wounds as scars.
Much like the resurrector mech serum, negative mood thoughts from losing a relative or friend are cleared when the pawn revives and worn tainted apparel becomes untainted. An available charge of death refusal prevents the dead pawn from being risen as a shambler. Ghouls will use death refusal automatically on death, but cannot be given any charges.
For player controlled pawns, resurrection can be activated at any time by selecting the corpse and clicking the gizmo, regardless of its state. Non-player controlled pawns with at least one death refusal will revive after a few seconds and the message "NAME is using death refusal to self-resurrect" appears. Cultists killed while in trance will wait until moving to attack to resurrect.
Death refusal sickness[edit]
After using death refusal, a pawn gains the Death refusal sickness as a temporary penalty.
| Name | Description | Details | Stages | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Death refusal sickness
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After-effects of death refusal. This person has returned from the dead. |
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They will also gain a −8 mood penalty for the same duration.
Analysis[edit]
Death refusal is one of the prime ways of dealing with the death of colonists. It acts as an extra life for the imbued pawn, akin to having a resurrector mech serum immediately available in case of death. Thus, the related ritual should be of top priority for anomaly research. The fastest way to gain access to the Death refusal research project is to do void provocation as often as possible to eventually get an unnatural corpse. However this can be dangerous for an unprepared colony, both due to rushing the threats and the corpse itself. The Mysterious cargo quest can potentially bring the corpse earlier, but it's a 1/3 chance and the quest has a long cool-down to fire again, rendering it unreliable. Since advanced study is needed to unlock the ritual and its prerequisites, it's advisable to capture other advanced anomalies in the process.
Shards can be hard to come by early game, but by the point death refusal can be researched they should be easily obtainable on demand (for more details on how to obtain them, refer to the Shard article). Spending 4 shards on
shard beacons may be worth it if preserving the recipient's XP is a priority. On pawns whose value is not on their current skills (e.g children
) the beacons can be skipped, but their bonus to quality is usable on other psychic rituals as well so it's still a good investment.
When starting out with death refusal on your colonists, or if Shards are a limiting factor, pawns that are both critical to the colony and exposed to combat should be prioritized. Generally that would be doctors, psycasters
, mechanitors, melee fighters or pawns with a good combination of traits and skills or a powerful ability. Note however that since two pawns are required for the ritual (an Tnvoker and a Target) the usual Invoker must be imbued by another pawn. For solo colonists this means the Void ending is the only way to receive any charges. In addition, psychically deaf pawns need a psychic sensitivity positive offset in order to participate in the ritual.
Comparisons to other death treatments[edit]
Resurrector mech serum[edit]
Death refusal can be accessed much more reliably and in greater numbers, doesn't require another pawn to bring an item to the corpse and the revived pawn will immediately be ready to keep fighting if needed, with only a relatively minor mood and consciousness penalty. However death refusal must be applied preemptively, as the ritual can only performed on living colonists, leaving the resurrector serum as the only treatment for already dead pawns.
Deathless[edit]
Access to death refusal is again less dependent on getting lucky with either quest loot, rewards or traders, although the difference is not as stark as with the mech serum. Given enough time, players should be able encounter both tools in a run. In this case the main differences are in cost and function: Shards can be easily farmed through anomaly events (both natural and summoned through rituals) and distress signal quests. On the other hand, archite capsules come from the same inconsistent sources as the gene. However assembling a deathless xenogerm on its own only costs 1 capsule and the effect can be triggered infinitely after implantation, only needing more capsules if a new xenogerm is assembled. Sanguophages (or any pawn with Gene implanter) can also potentially save some capsules on the long run. Acquiring deathless does not require engaging with entity threats either.
In terms of function, death refusal lets the pawn be active again with little to no delay. The pawn will not be a target for enemies kidnapping and revival can be activated as long as the corpse is not completely destroyed, which covers the brain destruction that deathless doesn't protect against. However, other than the mood penalties detailed above, death refusal does not prevent any consequences stemming from the pawn's death and revival, such as those on animal and psychic bonds, title inheritance, work assignments and some insidious threats. Since death applies a hefty hit point penalty to equipped apparel, a pawn going through refusals in quick succession may end up losing their armor and/or utility item.
That being said, there's no restriction on using deathless and death refusal together, and both tools can be researched and acquired in parallel. Deciding on using one or the other, or both at the same time will come down to the specific needs and preference of the player. If choosing to use both, it's advisable to plan mainly around deathless as it will come into play first most of the time while death refusal will only be needed when direct brain death occurs. There are specific situations where the combination can be detrimental and death refusal alone would be the better option, such as having only one colonist on the map.
Treating conditions[edit]
Similarly to resurrector mech serum, death refusal can be used to treat otherwise hard or impossible to treat conditions, such as resurrection psychosis or crumbled mind. The part to be treated must be removed before revival, either in life or in death.
Farming body parts[edit]
Since death refusal restores any missing body part on activation, it can be used to extract more organs from a pawn. This, however, is a very inefficient use of a shard that would see better use in preventing an undesired death, unless there's no other use for them or the process doesn't involve spending any shard, when using an unwanted creepjoiner with the Death refusal benefit or a cultist prisoner.
On enemies[edit]
Cultists with death refusal are effectively twice as durable as a regular raider. Combined with the pain resistance from Inhumanized, it makes cultists a very resilient threat. Highthralls will lose their Metalblood on death however, making them relatively easier to kill on their second life.
Cultist are also an alternative source of death refusal if they are captured and recruited without spending their charge, but the actual quality of the pawn is hard to control, and they may require a brainwipe if inhumanization is not desired.
Gallery[edit]
Version history[edit]
- Anomaly DLC Release - Added.