Unnatural darkness

Unnatural darkness is an event added by the Anomaly DLC. After a short warning, all unlit tiles in the map will become shrouded in near-total darkness and lingering within it will cause damage to human pawns. This damage can occur indoors and under roofs.

Summary

When the event begins, the map will gradually grow dark no matter the time of day. However, this is only the first phase. Several hours after it reaches the equivalent of standard nightfall, after two warnings, the following will happen:

• Several noctoliths will appear at random, unlit locations.
• The map will be rapidly be covered in pitch black darkness, making unlit areas difficult to see. In addition, unlit pawns won't be highlighted when zooming out.
• All colonists in lit areas without inhumanized will receive a −5 Unnatural Darkness mood penalty, while those that are get a +5 Unnatural Sky mood buff.^[NPCS?]
• All human pawns in unlit areas (0% light) will suffer a mood debuff and take damage - see below for details.
• Noctol raids are periodically spawned in unlit areas.

The unnatural darkness will end once all noctoliths are destroyed or after 6-8 days have passed.

Dark areas

Any pawn that spends time within a 0% light area will have a −10 Swallowed by darkness mood, even if inhumanized.

In addition, colony-affiliated humans in an unlit area will be randomly injured by an unspecified claw attack, inflicting sharp damage and bleeding. These attacks do not originate from any particular entity, and are instead inflicted by the darkness itself. Colonists undergoing a mental break are immune while the mental break lasts, but are immediately vulnerable once the break ends. Downed colonists will not get hurt by darkness while downed (but are still liable to bleed out). Animals, shamblers, friendly mechanoids are not hurt, but ghouls will be. Humans from other factions are not hurt; raiders and hostile entities are not hurt either.

A light level of at least 1% is sufficient for preventing both effects. The damage and mood penalty the darkness inflicts is entirely unaffected by ideoligion, genes, or traits.

Noctoliths

The noctoliths that spawn do not take any direct action against you, but the only way to end the darkness early is to destroy them all. When attacked, a noctolith will summon a group of noctols to defend itself. These noctols can spawn in the light but they will prefer to spawn in the dark. A spot is selected that is the darkest and they will spawn in a large circle around that point. Doors tend to attract spawns as they have a lower light level than the rooms surrounding them.

Other impacts

Solar flares specifically are disallowed from occurring during the unnatural darkness. ^[Others?]

The weather is forced to clear. This disables the game's firewatcher, so wildfires are prone to spreading.

Lightning and orbital power beams can still light the entire map for the duration they exist.

Analysis

Unnatural darkness can be an enormous pain if encourtered in the early game, or if otherwise unprepared. The random damage can be debilitating or even deadly if endured long enough, and the noctols which periodically raid the player pose a significant threat. In addition, it will shut off solar generators and prevent crops from growing using outdoor light. Sun lamps can overcome this limitation. Alternatively, nutrifungus can still grow and requires less power, but it is only safe to farm with agrihands. In any case, it would be ideal to have several days' worth of food stocked. It is important to note that most other events may still occur during this time: for example, there is nothing stopping a pit gate from spawning during a noctol raid.

Keeping the base well-lit in all areas is the most obvious safety measure, as it prevents the random damage and heavily weakens the noctols. It is ideal to set up lights before unnatural darkness is triggered - if one is suprised by unnatural darkness, it is likely too late to light up the entire base. It could be theoretically advantageous for a noctolith to spawn within one's base as it drastically shortens the journey required to reach and destroy it, but because the spawn locations are unpredictable, this strategy is not recommended.

Keeping pawns from wandering is crucial if you want to avoid needless deaths. Allowed areas are great for forcing undrafted pawns to stay in a lit area. Also, consider adjusting work priorities to keep your pawns inside, researching and cleaning rather than going outdoors. They might not enjoy these tasks, but it's far safer. Mood management is important, too, as pawns under a mental break will be vulnerable as soon as

Attacking nocoliths

There are two options for ending unnatural darkness: waiting it out or destroying the noctoliths. Destroying the noctoliths is risky, but can significantly hasten the end of the event and rewards you with shards.

Flood lights are a powerful tool to deal with this event. They illuminate a large area, slowing the noctols and intensifying their light exposure before they reach your pawns. They can also be used with batteries to create a path to the Noctoliths; you can reinstall the light from the back of your path to the front to reduce the number of lights needed. It's also useful to have a flood light at the noctolith to expose attacking noctols when you damage it.

Alternatively, sending out teams of builders to create a path of torches is sufficient to reach a noctolith safely. Managing haulers to bring wood to the front line as it creeps forward can speed up the process significantly. Even faster is to use disruptor flares or the solar pinhole psycast to quickly create a path. A riskier but admittedly quick option is to command a pawn armed with molotov cocktails or other incendiary weapons to start fires by targeting the Noctolith from a distance. Noctol raids will almost certainly occur while you travel, but a crew of well-armed pawns can easily shoot down single Noctols before they can enter melee range, even in darkness. Noctol raids announce the direction they will come from as soon as they spawn, allowing you to retreat to a well-lit part of the map and give yourself even more of an advantage.

Also remember that you don't need to travel all the way to a noctolith to destroy it. Pawns with long range guns like the bolt-action rifle or sniper rifle can pick away at them from a distance in relative safety. Alternatively, mortars can very effectively destroy a Noctolith without leaving a base with about 5 hits from high-explosive shells, though the cost of doing so should be evaluated: the ammunition cost and mortar deterioration will likely be much higher than 5 shots per Noctolith due to missed shots. Even so, the relative safety of this option makes it worth considering for late-game colonies which can afford to spend the resources. In addition, as the Noctoliths themselves generate several tiles of light, a ghoul can be sent through moderate stretches of darkness to deal with it in melee. It can regenerate the damage from any hits the darkness delivers, and once it arrives at the Noctolith, it can gradually punch the structure to rubble in relative safety. Alternately, a melee pawn with fast movement speed, the skip psycast, or a jetpack can sprint through the darkness and rapidly tear down a noctolith, especially if they're wielding a breach axe for the extra building damage. Consider sending them immediately after finishing a wave of enemies to reduce the chances of them getting isolated and surrounded by a fresh wave of Noctols.

If you lit up the entire map except for one tile, the noctols are guaranteed to spawn on it which you can take advantage.

In glowforests, unnatural darkness's tedium is effectively nullified due to the large amount of natural light sources creating a path to most noctoliths.

Anomaly Endgame

In addition to spawning as a unique event, unnatural darkness will also occur once the Void monolith is awakened. In this case, the darkness requires defeating two waves of Void structures rather than Noctoliths, but the darkness' damage mechanics remain the same.

Gallery

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  The first message that appears once the Unnatural darkness incident has occurred, advising the use of light sources

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  The second unnatural darkness message warning of the impending danger

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  The third unnatural darkness message marking the appearance of noctoliths

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  This message preempts a noctol raid. It will be triggered either naturally by time progressing or if a noctolith is severely damaged (under 25% hp)

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  Message received after the first noctolith is destroyed during an unnatural darkness

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  The message received when the final noctolith is destroyed and the unnatural darkness incident is over

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  The message received when the unnatural darkness incident naturally runs it's course and ends (i.e the noctolith aren't destroyed)

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  The message which appears when a colonist takes damage by being outside in Unnatural darkness

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  The beginnings of the unnatural darkness. At this early stage the darkness is unremarkable and typical of night

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  Unnatural darkness which has progressed to it's final state of darkness. It is much darker than a standard night and there are black particles falling

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  Close of up the falling particles

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  Example of ambient damage taken by standing in unnatural darkness. This is the cumulative damage of three separate "attacks"

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  All three noctoliths during an unnatural darkness. Note that they provide a small amount of light as does the anima tree

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  Example of the faint light given off by a noctolith during an unnatural darkness

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  Using a chain of torches to provide a lit path to a noctolith during an unnatural darkness

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  Noctol eyes glowing in the dark as it approaches a colonist

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  Noctol attacking an unzoned pet during an unnatural darkness raid. In this instance, the dog was able to down the noctol in a single scratch to it's left leg

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  Noctol raid during unnatural darkness breaching the wall after having destroyed all the torches outside. The torches are destroyed not because they generate light but because they are furniture that the noctol can immediately path to upon spawning

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  Example of light levels after the unnatural darkness has lifted by destroying all three noctoliths

Version history

• Anomaly DLC Release - Added.