Shambler

Shamblers are corpses which have been reanimated by archotechnology. They attack relentlessly and are immune to pain, but expire again after a short period of movement.

Occurrence[edit]

Missing vital body parts do not prevent a corpse from being raised. The raising process regenerates them instead.

Summary[edit]

Shamblers are creatures who are reanimated from death.

Any creature other than ghouls and mechanoids can be reanimated into a shambler, however most shamblers that spawn will be humanoid.

Spawned shamblers will be hostile to any living humanoids they encounter, while shamblers created by the player action, such as from deadlife shells will not be hostile to colonists.

In combat, they act and fight largely as though they are unarmed pawns of the type they were when alive, assuming they retain the relevant body parts for the attacks in question, however they feel no pain. Human shamblers still display the skills they had in life. Traits such as tough and nimble still apply their respective bonuses, as do non-ability genes that affect statistics and skills that shamblers are still capable of performing.

Boomalope, boomrat, and toxalope shamblers do not explode when killed. Chimeras do retain their Rage Speed ability, and shambler noctols keep their light exposure weakness.

Human shamblers benefit from any armor they are wearing.

Human shamblers can still crawl, but unlike raiders or colonists, they can still attack while crawling.

Shamblers can get heatstroke and hypothermia, and have heart attacks, but feel no pain. Human shamblers without 100% Toxic Environment Resistance suffer from tox gas but not toxic buildup or rot stink. All shamblers are psychically deaf, they can be teleported around with the skip psycast but are otherwise immune to psychic crowd control.

Upon dying, the shambler's corpse will be rotting regardless of whether it was fresh beforehand, and usually at low HP. Shamblers that are part of a raid have a chance to drop bioferrite or a shard upon death, with the chances for a shard increasing at higher raid points.

A dead shambler that is resurrected with a resurrector mech serum returns to life as a living creature, not as a shambler.

Containment[edit]

The bioferrite yield of a shambler is determined by the Body Size of the creature that was reanimated. For example, a normal pawn will yield 1 bioferrite while a reanimated Megasloth will yield 4. Reanimated entities ignore this calculation and will retain their original bioferrite yield before reanimation.

Using an Electroharvester on a shambler will generate 200 watts per body size (a megasloth produces 800 watts) however since shamblers do not regenerate health, using an electroharvester will eventually kill them.

Analysis[edit]

Shamblers will not attack unless a pawn enters sight range of them, unless sent as a raid. This means that they can be treated much as you would treat a mech cluster; you can safely ignore them if they're in a good location. They have significant defensive applications for this reason as well, attacking raiders and other invaders indiscriminately. The ritual to summon, a Creepjoiner with the shambler overlord ability, deadlife packs, deadlife shells, and IED deadlife traps in strategically positioned corpse stockpiles are potentially useful for this purpose.

Most Shamblers move at slower then the speed as a healthy equivalent - hence the name. They are only capable of melee attacks, but are fairly durable as they are not downed by pain or psychic-related effects. A group of humanoid Shamblers is a modest threat, roughly equivalent to the same number of tribals. Due to being limited to melee, Shamblers can be attacked from range or kited with little risk. Animal and Entity Shamblers can be much more dangerous than humanoids, inheriting the original combat abilities of the creature that was reanimated. In these cases, they are similar to Manhunters with enhanced toughness and immunity to pain.

Individual Shamblers and Shambler Swarms that are not contained will naturally die from metabolic exhaustion after a few hours or days, so simply waiting until they eventually die out is a viable strategy if the player cannot combat them directly.

Shambler Assaults, however, are a lot more dangerous then their roaming counterparts - instead of staying roughly in the same place and giving you the choice to interact with them, they come to you.

Each individual shambler has a rather low raid point value (meaning many are spawned at once) and some Shamblers have extremely high natural melee stats or melee/toughness boosting genomes with pain immunity and hoards can come from more then one direction AND Shamblers effectively ignore your typical raid defenses!

Even a fully kited mid-late game colony can find their base overwhelmed by 40+ breaching Shamblers of varying strength - not to mention the mood debuffs rotting corpses, injuries and rot stink you'll deal with before and after fighting them.

For massive groups of Shamblers, either call in your allies over the Comms console, ready your friendly mechs, or bring out your trusty bioferrite flame weaponry to sear the onslaught before they completely overwhelm you - don't be afraid to camp their makeshift entry point with groups of combatants to stop them from getting deeper into your base - waiting them out is NOT a viable option unless you have multi-thick layers of non-wooden walls.

However, their strength is yours to harness...

Using the associated psychic ritual - [Draw Shamblers] or deadlife dust, the hoard can be set out as a cheap yet crushing counter offense to the uncoordinated raids the storytellers might send you.

Large Shambler swarms can easily overwhelm pesky human and (activated) mechaniod siege raids, at least to the point where either the mortar is destroyed, or the raiders decide to attack directly, or are entirely wiped out.

Boss Mechanoids are also nearly entirely cheesed by their nature as ranged focused enemies - as you get the notification that the respectful boss has arrived, simply close off direct access to your colony and start the ritual (Mech bosses give you prep time before their attack).

With a bit of luck, you'll have the boss swarmed (or at the very least distracted) by 20 or so shamblers, enough for a colony to either decide to go out and pile on ranged attacks, or reopen access to the colony and pick off the injured mech boss.

You can even use the swarm to exhaust the battle hungry [Nociosphere]. While it may teleport around trying to kite the hoard, their immunity to its pain pulse allows them to creep onto it, locking it into a fury of melee attacks, often taking chunks of health of the Nociosphere or outright killing it.

An equally battle hungry colony might consider staking outside a particularly dangerous outpost or hostile faction base - using the ritual as a cultist-style assault!

As a cherry on top, shambler hoards often drop a highly sought-after Archotech shard - if defeated by combat and not expiration, making them useful even from a resource perspective.

As they say on the rim: Fear the dead, or Fear by the dead.

Containment and farming[edit]

Note: Shamblers mentioned are assumed to be base human shamblers unless stated otherwise

Shamblers that are contained in a holding spot or holding platform will not die from metabolic exhaustion, and thus can be held indefinitely.

That being said, capturing a significant number is challenging, as "downed" humanoid shamblers will not stay still to be captured at your convenience and will continue attacking as long as their movement remains above 1%, effectively allowing them to threaten your pawns as long as they live; unless you have a large colony or intricate set up, capturing more then a couple of shamblers per hoard is challenging.

Don't be deceived, Shamblers that are in the process reviving have a tiny window of them being on the ground are "capturable" but not yet active and hostile. Dont fall for their rotten trick - they tend to revive in the hands of the captor as they are being chained to a holding spot.^{[Verify Paragraph Content]}

On the flip side, non-humanoid Shamblers are usually found in smaller groups and do not continue fighting once downed, allowing them to be more easily captured and farmed. Additionally as bioferrite production scales to body size, they can provide increased amounts for their actual difficulty in downing and capturing.- that being said, a colony with any other option should consider farming shamblers bioferrite and research should consider it their last.

Human Shamblers are by far the worst anomaly to farm from in containment any from for any reason; They only provide a middling ~1 basic research every 2 days; only generate 1 bioferrite a day; (humans) Only produce 200wtts from a electroharvester; Dont recover from injuries - making them eventually succumb to burn damage dealt by the electroharvester or re-containment efforts.

As a rotten cherry on top - although not stated by the game and contrary to the mentioned hediff effects Human Shamblers Recover lost limbs soon after containment. Just like [ghouls] - so you cant even create a low mentainence system using crippled/legless shamblers!

Their only merit is their low containment requirement, and that Paralytic abasia is not cured when raised as a shambler. Therefore unaccepted crashlanded humans/animals who died and are reanimated with paralytic abasia can be captured and held (until the abasia is healed) with zero risk. Babies may also be raised, and are similarly incapable.^[Details]

That being said, avoid dealing with shamblers in the context of containment and focus on their offensive potential. Unless you are absolutely desperate for sweet sweet bioferrite or need research points for Disruptor flare pack to stop a stalking revernent.

Removing luciferium need[edit]

Turning a pawn into a shambler is the only way to remove luciferium need. See the relevant section of the luciferium article for more information.

Version history[edit]

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