Unnatural corpse
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Unnatural human corpse
An Unnatural Corpse is an advanced entity that can threaten your colony. It will haunt one of your colonists until it is ready to strike. Its arrival unlocks Death refusal as an anomaly research option.
Acquisition[edit]
There are two ways to acquire the Unnatural Corpse:
- The Mysterious cargo quest involves either a friendly planetary faction[Which factions?] or an anonymous AI asking you to take an unspecified item off their hands, along with a sizable payment. One of the randomly selected options for the cargo is the Unnatural Corpse. For further information about the quest, see that page. The Unnatural Corpse appears with a blue "Mysterious Cargo" letter when it lands on your map.
- Performing the void provocation ritual can result in the appearance of a Unnatural Corpse on your map. The monolith must be at least at Level 2 for the Unnatural Corpse to appear after a Void Provocation. The Unnatural Corpse appears with an orange "Strange Corpse" letter when it appears on your map via void provocation.
Summary[edit]
The unnatural corpse is a dead, identical copy of one of your colonists or guests. While harmless at first glance, it will haunt their target until either it is destroyed or until it disappears. It is highly recommended you research and destroy the corpse as fast as possible, as it is nearly impossible to stop when it is activated.
The corpse's existence causes a −6 mood penalty on the chosen target, and its presence can cause random mental breaks in them, such as corpse obsession and insane ramblings.
The corpse will sometimes silently teleport itself near the original, which is uniquely affected by the camera of the game: the corpse will attempt to teleport only if it is out of camera shot, and it can only land at a point out of camera shot. Thus the teleporting of the corpse is completely avoidable by keeping the corpse in the camera, or just zooming out to maximum scale to keep the entire colony in view. If you do have something needing a close look, pause the game, which allows you to move the camera from it, and then move the camera back before unpausing the game. If the corpse was buried in a grave or sarcophagus, it will teleport out leaving an open burial site. The same limitation to teleporting off-screen applies.
The corpse also does not inherit any of the original's body modifications, such as bionics. It inherits psycasts
, but cannot use them. It also inherits the genes
of the original pawn. It cannot be resurrected by any means, such as resurrector mech serum and deadlife dust from any source, including death palls. Using the serum on an unnatural corpse will consume the serum but it fail, displaying a message stating "Failed to resurrect <PAWNNAME>. It simply does not respond."
The corpse can not be permanently destroyed without proper study. The corpse can be temporarily destroyed by other means, including butchery which will yield human resources, but it will respawn after around one day.[Specific time?] Additionally, the original pawn will suffer a "Corpse Torment" hediff every time the corpse is destroyed, knocking them unconscious for 24 hours and inflicting +20% pain. Destroying the corpse does reset the cooldown to study it, so this may prove to be beneficial if rapid study is needed at the expense of the victim. Animals may also eat the corpse, unintentionally knocking out the pawn. Injuries that the corpse sustains such as skull removal will be healed if the corpse ever awakens. Studying the Unnatural Corpse and gaining 8 to 12 advanced anomaly research from it will unlock the ability to destroy the Unnatural Corpse, yielding one shard.
If the corpse's original pawn is no longer available (i.e. it has targeted a guest who leaves before it can awaken) then it will disappear after seven days.
All of these factors make an unawakened unnatural corpse a present, if relatively minor, threat to your colony. This will change if the corpse is ever given the opportunity to awaken.
Awakening[edit]
11 to 13 days after arrival on the map, you will receive a warning letter stating the corpse is growing stronger and is beginning to awaken. You are advised to destroy the corpse before it is too late. 1 to 3 days later after this warning, the corpse will begin to awaken and you will have mere moments to destroy the corpse before it fully activates. There is no way to delay the awakening.
When it has awoken, the corpse has only one goal: to find and grab the original pawn. The corpse will chase the original pawn until either the original or the corpse itself is destroyed. If it succeeds, it will hypnotize the pawn and hold them in place for several seconds. If uninterrupted, the corpse will instantly kill the original pawn by psychically incinerating the target's brain. This means it will instantly kill even deathless pawns, and this attack is unavoidable. It bypasses armor, dodge chance, and has no interaction with psychic sensitivity. The hypnosis can be interrupted by certain outside sources: Skipping (via Skip, Chaos skip, or Mass chaos skip) either the pawn or the corpse away from each other will break the trance, as well as disorientating the corpse with Vertigo pulse. Although the hypnosis is broken and the pawn is no longer at immediate risk of dying, they are still rendered immobile for some time after. If attempting to escape from it, Burden and Stun can be used, though one must remember the corpse will inherit the psychic sensitivity of the original pawn. The Beckon psychic power can temporarily disrupt the hypnosis.
The corpse cannot be trapped by any means. It can freely open doors and if unable to path to its target, it will teleport even through solid walls. It can chase and hypnotize its victim even if the target gains invisibility. However, if the target is held in a 1x1 room without a door, teleportation is not possible and the corpse will endlessly pace around their cell. This can keep the target isolated by, for example, putting the target within a 1x1 niche, and blocking off the niche with 3 defensive pawns (who can attack and be attacked by the corpse). After the destruction of its target, the corpse will wander momentarily before disappearing. If the target is carried by another pawn, it will attack the pawn with its melee attack; if the target is inside of something like a cryptosleep casket, it will begin ripping open the casket to attack. This does slow the corpse down as outside of its psychic death glare, it performs as a normal unarmed melee fighter.
The uunnatural corpse will attempt to copy the original pawn again once it awakens. An awoken corpse will copy:
- Injuries, including scars. These will be healed nearly instantly at the cost of some of its stored regeneration.
- Drug effects, such as go-juice and flake. This includes addictions and anesthetics.
- Buffs, such as combat command
- Age-based illnesses, such as bad back and dementia. These are not healed.
- Certain specialty hediffs, such as void touched and inhumanization.
- Changes in genes.
The corpse does not copy:
- Diseases, like malaria, food poisoning, or flu
- Pregnancy
- New artificial body parts
Destroying the unnatural corpse after it has awoken is exceptionally difficult. The corpse has an incoming damage multiplier of 20%, receiving only a fifth of incoming damage. The corpse has +1000% pain shock resistance and a regeneration ability similar to Ghouls, but far more powerful: 30000 HP/day regeneration for up to 800 hp of damage taken, reversing damage done to it until its regeneration capacity has been depleted. Additionally it cannot die if the regeneration capacity is not depleted, making sheer damage attacks like a Diabolus hellsphere cannon unable to one shot it even if the damage destroys vital body parts. This means it will easily survive antigrain warheads and orbital bombardments. For reference, a direct hit with a hellsphere cannon may only take 200 hp off the regeneration total. The rapid regeneration can only be depleted through dealing damage, 100% severity ailments like Heatstroke nor Hypothermia will be unable to destroy the corpse.
Items like the psychic shock lance will have no effect on the corpse. Biomutation lances do work, however they will only delay the corpse's assault; it will reappear after some time.
The corpse starts with a move speed modifier of x50%, which increases over the next few hours to a 300% movement speed modifier. Movement increases will be notified with a message at the top of the screen. Combined with the regeneration that can regenerate between 200 to 400 hp and any trait / gene bonuses the corpse may have inherited and the fact the awoken corpses can teleport past walls, an awoken corpse is nearly unstoppable and very likely to kill the target pawn.
If the awoken corpse loses its regeneration and becomes downed, it will be destroyed. Destroying the corpse after it has awoken yields one shard as normal.
Analysis[edit]
Given how hard it is to stop an awoken corpse through standard combat, and the fact allowing it to awaken provides no benefit to the colony, it is highly recommended to destroy the unnatural corpse as soon as you are done studying it.
However, if for whatever the reason you must fight an awoken corpse, there are ways to make the fight significantly easier.
Sedation by proxy[edit]
The easiest way to fight the corpse once it has awakened is to render its target unconscious before the corpse awakens. This can be done through various means like anesthetics, neural heat dumping, and blood loss (Such as through extracting a hemogen pack.) After that, the corpse will awaken but be unconscious, allowing you to leisurely deal damage and exhaust its regeneration limit. Once this limit is reached, the corpse will be destroyed.
Delaying it[edit]
The target can be walled into a 1x1 room without any doors. This prevents the corpse from teleporting to the target and allows the rest of the colony to concentrate on the fight.
Alternatively, the target can be inside of cryptosleep caskets or a biosculpter pod. The awakened corpse does relatively little amounts of melee damage to try to break the target out. Assign one colonist to repair the biosculpter pods, and bring multiple melee-equipped pawns to engage the awakened corpse. You will be able to break through the awakened corpses' 800 hp worth of regeneration relatively quickly with several melee-equipped pawns. Keep an eye on the biosculpter health and re-order repairs as needed.
If your targeted colonist is downed, they can be relocated mid-trance by rescuing them. Trapping the awoken corpse in a confined space with colonists or animals, and blocking off most avenues of teleportation for the corpse, can allow you to quickly overpower and then kill it.
Biomutation lances can effect the corpse, similarly, sending the target away such as on a caravan will cause the awoken corpse to vanish as well, with a message stating it will return. These stalling tactics can be useful, but they will reset the corpse's regeneration capacity and its movement speed bonus, effectively restarting the fight.
Poisoning it[edit]
The awoken corpse is unable to regenerate from certain effects, namely temperature and poison. Extreme temperatures can inflict heatstroke and hypothermia into the corpse as normal, which will cripple it just like a normal pawn. Toxic build-up from venom fangs and venom talons cannot be regenerated from either. The only problem to this is the corpse's speed and teleportation can make it difficult to hit.
Psychic slaughter[edit]
The psychic slaughter ability that some Creepjoiners have can be used to instantly destroy the corpse. This means you lose the shard in the process, however.
Taking advantage of death refusal[edit]
Finally, the unnatural corpse's appearance unlocks the death refusal research. Unlocking the ritual and using it on the original pawn gives them the ability to revive even if the corpse manages to attack them. However, this is unlikely as you will probably finish studying the corpse long before the ritual is available.
Trivia[edit]
- A unique music track titled "Corpse_Attack" plays while there's an active awoken unnatural corpse on the map.
Version history[edit]
- Anomaly DLC Release - Added.
- Version/1.5.4069 - Fix: Error when trying to debug spawn unnatural corpse.
- Version/1.5.4081 - Added field in race props to generate unnatural corpse defs.