CreepjoinerLast updated 7 hours ago

Creepjoiners are an exclusive event for the Anomaly DLC. They are pawns who will randomly arrive at your colony offering to join, often providing great benefits however potentially bringing a hidden downside. You can encounter creepjoiners even if you have not yet activated the monolith.

Summary

A random human pawn appears with a request to join your colony. The pawn waits on the edge of your map for someone to be sent to talk to them. Upon speaking to them, three options are presented: To accept their request to join, to arrest the creepjoiner, or to refuse the creepjoiner's request.

If rejected or ignored, they either depart peacefully or become hostile.

Creepjoiners have a specific list of upsides and possible downsides. Not all combinations below are possible. For some downsides, there is a minimum raid point requirement (e.g. metalhorror or fleshbeast emergence), and some creepjoiner types will be limited in their downsides and benefits (e.g., blind healer will always have unnatural healing, or someone with joybringer cannot have disturbing).

Creepjoiners can be studied for Advanced Anomaly Research if taken prisoner, as can the entities they spawn. They give 2 Advanced Research with a cooldown of 2 days. The creepjoiner must be walking to be able to be studied.

The monolith does not need to be active for creepjoiners to appear.

Types

Main creepjoiner types (each has its unique backstory and equipment):

• Leathery stranger
• Dark scholar
• Deal maker — Has the Beautiful trait in addition to their other benefit
• Drifter
• Blind healer — Usually missing both eyes, which can be replaced with surgery
• Timeless one — Usually a very young adult
• Cult escapee - Usually has many surgical scars and/or removed body parts
• Lone genius - Always has the Too smart and Abrasive traits.

Benefits

They can have one of the following benefits:

• Perfect human — Has the perfect memory and industrious trait and 14 to 18 in all skills. The perfect memory trait prevents their skills from degrading.
• Occultist — Has a bonus to research
• Unnatural healing - Has the Unnatural healing ability that replicates the effects of a Healer mech serum with a 25% chance to transform the target pawn's arm into a Flesh tentacle.
• Shambler overlord — Has an ability to create friendly shamblers through a release deadlife dust cloud power.
• Fleshcrafter — Has a Shape Flesh ability with a 1 hour cooldown, which converts a corpse into a fleshbeast that is hostile to all humans. The Fleshbeast created depends on the size of the corpse.
• Alchemist — Has a Transmute Steel ability with a 20 hour cooldown, which randomly converts one stack of steel or a steel slag chunk into plasteel, uranium, gold, bioferrite, or twisted meat; or a stuffable item or building made from steel into plasteel, uranium, gold, or bioferrite.
• Joybringer — Has the Joyous trait, which provides a passive +3 joyous presence mood buff to all pawns in your colony anywhere within the same map
• Death refusal — Can self-resurrect themselves up to 4 times, healing lost limbs and organs each time. Scarring and resurrection sickness are possible.
• Body master — Has the body mastery trait, which completely removes the pawn's need for food, sleep, and comfort.
• Psychic butcher — Has an ability that can instantly kill pawns, turning them into twisted flesh.

Name	Description	Effects	Target	Range	Warmup Time	Cooldown	Charges
Unnatural healing	Use dark psychic influence to heal someone. The process will stop bleeding, restore blood loss, and can even heal significant injuries. However, it may also have unexpected side effects. Has ability: Unnatural healing	Replicates the effect of a healer mech serum. 25% chance to also replace one of the pawn's arms with a flesh tentacle. At time of writing, this ability stuns its target for 4.5 seconds while being applied, the stun lasts for the full duration even when the ability is cancelled. This allows the user to stun an unlimited number of pawns indefinitely by repeatedly applying and cancelling the ability	Single non-mechanoid pawn. Cannot target self.	Touch	270 ticks (4.5 secs)	360,000 ticks (6 in-game days)	1
Psychic slaughter	Use dark psychic power to induce chaotic reconfiguration of flesh. This kills a flesh creature in seconds and converts its body into a pile of twisted flesh. Has ability: Psychic slaughter	On cast, instantly kills target. Generates Twisted meat where target once stood.	Single non-mechanoid pawn in LoS.	4.9 tiles	120 ticks (2 secs)	60,000 ticks (24 in-game hours)	1
Transmute steel	Reconfigure steel at the atomic level, turning it into a random valuable material. Can target a stack of steel or a steel slag chunk. Has ability: Transmute steel	Transforms any stack of steel or steel chunk into an equivalent amount of twisted flesh, gold, plasteel, bioferrite, or uranium. Can also target any stuffable steel item or building, changing its material type to gold, plasteel, bioferrite, or uranium.	1-75 steel, steel chunks, items, and buildings.	Touch	120 ticks (2 secs)	50,000 ticks (20 in-game hours)	1
Release deadlife dust	Releasee a cloud of dust-like substance that will settle on nearby corpses and raise them as shamblers. The shamblers will only attack your enemies. Deadlife dust is made of nano-scale archites that penetrate and reanimate dead tissue at the cellular level. Has ability: Release deadlife dust	Releases a dust cloud that reanimates any non-mechanoid corpse within about a 5-tile radius as a friendly Shambler for 15,000 ticks (6 in-game hours). Once the ability wears off, shamblers drop to the ground as corpses again and can be reanimated. Walls and other structures block the dust cloud. Blocked dust clouds will instead spread out in other directions.	Any non-mechanoid corpse	~5 tiles	30 ticks (0.5 secs)	60,000 ticks (24 in-game hours)	1
Shape flesh	Induce a dark archotech to reconfigure a corpse into a horrendous fleshbeast. The fleshbeast will be hostile to all humans, including the one who created it. Has ability: Shape flesh	Transforms any non-mechanoid corpse into a Fleshbeast hostile to humans. Resultant fleshbeast corresponds to the body size of the targeted corpse: Between 0 to 0.74: Fingerspike. Between 0.75 to 3: Toughspike or Trispike. Above 3: Bulbfreak.	Single non-mechanoid corpse in LoS.	25-tiles	120 ticks (2 secs)	2,500 ticks (1 in-game hour)	1

Drawbacks

Creepjoiners will have one downside applied to them upon spawning, which occurs after a 3-30 day delay while living at your colony. These downsides include:

• Nothing
• Desertion — The colonist will suddenly depart. Enslaved or jailed creepjoiners will not desert until they are freed. A creepjoiner captured while deserting and subsequently enslaved or recruited will not attempt to desert again.

 <PAWN NAME> departure: <PAWN NAME> thanks you for your hospitality, but says that it is time for <PAWN'S PRONOUN> to move on.  

• Traitor — The colonist will suddenly become hostile. This will also trigger either the fleshbeast emergence or sightstealer attack, should it apply.
• Metalhorror — The colonist is infected with a metalhorror (requires level 2 Monolith).
• Crumbling mind — The colonist will experience severe mental degeneration that renders them incapable of most tasks within a few days. This can be healed with a healer mech serum or by having another creepjoiner use Unnatural Healing.
  • Can be diagnosed early with a surgical inspection.
• Void fascination — The colonist will have a Entity Liberator mental break regularly and attempt to free all of your contained entities. This is immediately apparent due to being a trait. ^{[No entities?]}
• Psychic agony — The colonist emits an Agony pulse, on average once every 30 days, inflicting a large amount of psychic pain on nearby pawns. The pain is often enough to down your other colonists temporarily and leave them in lingering pain. Psychic sensitivity applies to this effect.
  • If a surgical inspection is done on a creepjoiner with psychic agony, the results will be: "<PAWN NAME> detected a faint but painful psychic presence emanating from <CREEPJOINER NAME> but failed to understand what was causing it"
  • This Event triggers on a random timer. When it happens, surrounding pawns within the 15-tile radius area of effect (including animals, insects, entities, and humans) that can feel pain will gain 100% pain for a few seconds,^{[Exact duration?]} reduced to 25% soon after, which lingers for 2-5 days. This can be sufficient to kill pawns.
• Organ decay — The colonist will suddenly develop severe organ decay, requiring you to replace their heart, liver, kidneys, and/or lungs.
• Disturbing — The colonist upsets other colonists, giving them a −2 [name] rambling moodlet when interacting with them, which can stack up to −12 mood. This is immediately apparent due to it being a trait.

Separate from the downsides above, creepjoiners will become hostile if they receive friendly fire damage or if a colonist attempts to enslave them once their will reaches 0. This aggressive response to friendly fire damage or enslavement can only occur once. When recruiting or enslaving creepjoiners, it's recommended to sedate them, punch them once to trigger their initial friendly fire hostility, and proceed to capture and recruit or enslave them like any other hostile pawn.

If they become hostile, they can react in various ways:

• Basic assault
• Fleshbeast emergence — A fleshbeast emerges from the creepjoiner, killing them in the process.
• Sightstealer attack — The joiner will scream and summon sightstealers ^{[Blind healer?]}:

 <PAWN NAME>'s howl: <PAWN NAME> has let out a twisted half-human scream. In the distance, you can hear other screams answering the call. They are coming...  

They are not able to romance ordinary pawns, however, they can romance other creepjoiners, or form relationships with pawns with the Psychic bonding gene, such as Highmates.

• 

  Marriage ceremony between two creepjoiners. Other pawns from the colony are participating.

Creepjoiners initially start as Unwaveringly Loyal. If you allow them to join your colony, the Unwaveringly Loyal aspect is removed permanently. If arrested before joining, like by choosing the "Send <PAWN NAME> to capture <CREEPJOINER NAME>." option when first speaking to them, they can only be recruited through either a Brainwipe Ritual to remove the Unwaveringly Loyal condition, or enslavement by reducing their 80-90 base will to 0 and emancipating them.

Pawn Kinds

Leathery stranger

• Letter Label: A ragged stranger with leathery skin is approaching your colony.
• Letter Prompt:

  The leathery stranger stares into space and speaks in a monotone, as though {PAWN_pronoun} hardly sees anyone or anything. {PAWN_pronoun} refuses to leave, insisting {PAWN_pronoun} is only interested in your colony. {PAWN_pronoun} says that {PAWN_pronoun} can help.

Dark scholar

• Letter Label: A dark scholar covered with twisted scars is approaching the colony.
• Letter Prompt:

  The dark scholar slouches in place, lifeless and silent. Only {PAWN_possessive} eyes seem alive, as if {PAWN_pronoun} could look inside you.
  
  {PAWN_pronoun} says that this is where {PAWN_pronoun} belongs and asks to stay for a while. {PAWN_possessive} tone indicates that {PAWN_pronoun} will not take 'no' for an answer.

Deal maker

• Letter Label: A stunningly good-looking stranger is approaching the colony.
• Letter Prompt:

  A stunningly good-looking stranger stands in front of you. {PAWN_possessive} face beams with confidence as {PAWN_pronoun} opens {PAWN_possessive} hands in a gesture of fellowship.
  
  {PAWN_pronoun} says {PAWN_pronoun} is here to make a deal and will help you in exchange for simple hospitality. This is {PAWN_possessive} purpose and {PAWN_pronoun} always fulfills {PAWN_possessive} purpose.

Drifter

• Letter Label: A visitor is approaching the colony.
• Letter Prompt:

  The weary-looking drifter stretches {PAWN_possessive} legs. {PAWN_pronoun} seems very tired.
  
  {PAWN_pronoun} asks to stay in your colony for a while - at least until {PAWN_pronoun} has recovered {PAWN_possessive} strength.

Blind healer

• Letter Label: A blind healer is approaching the colony.
• Letter Prompt:

  A small, withered {PAWN_genderNoun} stands in front of you. Where {PAWN_possessive} eyes should be, there are only scar-crusted holes in {PAWN_possessive} flesh. Yet, even without eyes, {PAWN_pronoun} somehow looks at you with kindness. {PAWN_pronoun} says that {PAWN_pronoun} knows that {PAWN_possessive} skills are needed here and wants to stay for a while.

Timeless one

• Letter Label: A teenager is approaching the colony. {PAWN_pronoun} has a strange air of confidence around {PAWN_objective}.
• Letter Prompt:

  {PAWN_nameDef} is barely more than a child but in {PAWN_possessive} thoughtful eyes you sense an ancient wisdom. When {PAWN_pronoun} speaks, the words seem to come from an unnatural knowledge of endless time. {PAWN_pronoun} says that the stars brought {PAWN_objective} here to fulfill {PAWN_possessive} destiny. {PAWN_pronoun} wants to stay with you and help.

Cult escapee

• Letter Label: A mangled figure is approaching the colony.
• Letter Prompt:

  The mangled stranger stares at you with empty eyes and speaks in a broken voice. {PAWN_pronoun} claims to have escaped from a terrible cult and begs to join your colony.

Lone genius

• Letter Label: A lone figure is approaching the colony.
• Letter Prompt:

  The strange figure keeps muttering about some scientific breakthrough. All {PAWN_pronoun} needs is a laboratory. If you let {PAWN_objective} stay, {PAWN_pronoun} will share {PAWN_possessive} vast knowledge with you. It's hard to tell whether {PAWN_pronoun}'s insane or a genius - or both.

Shared Parameters:

• Race: CreepJoiner
• Backstories: Unknown (Childhood) and Unknown (Adulthood)
• Is Fighter: false
• Pregnancy Chance: 0%
• Initial Will Range: 80~90
• Initial Resistance Range: 0~0
• Can Be Scattered: false
• Studiable As Prisoner: true
• Accept Arrest Chance Factor: 80%
• Base Prison Break MTB Days: 30
• Show In Debug Spawner: false
• Weight: 1

Pawn Kind	Combat Power	Gear	Apparel	Weapons	Tech	Inventory	Additional Info [edit]
Leathery stranger	55	Quality: Always Normal	Fixed: Poor Bison wool; Duster, T-shirt, Pants Allow Headgear Chance: 0% Ignore Seasons: false Ignore Pollution true Body Type: Leathery Head Type: Leathery BeardTags: NoBeard	Fixed: Bolt action rifle	-	10 Nutrition	Age Range: 35~70
Dark scholar	55	Forced Quality: Poor	Color: Ignore Ideo Apparel Colors: true Required: Robe Allow Headgear Chance: 0% Available: None Ignore Seasons: false Ignore Pollution true Head Type: Dark Scholar BeardTags: NoBeard	-	-	10 Nutrition	Age Range: 40~70 Forced Skills: 14~20 Intellectual Existing Damage: Damage; SurgicalCut, Groups; Legs, Arms, FullHead Forced Traits: Psychopath Favorite Color: Requires: Occultist, DeathRefusal, ShamblerOverlord, Fleshcrafter, PsychicButcher Excludes: Metalhorror, OrganDecay, Assault
Deal maker	55	Forced Quality: Good	Color: Ignore Ideo Apparel Colors: true Required: Top hat , Jacket, T-shirt, Pants Allow Headgear Chance: 0% Available: None Ignore Seasons: false Ignore Pollution true BeardTags:	Fixed: Revolver	-	10 Nutrition	Age Range: 20~40 Forced Skills: 14~20 Social, 14~20 Shooting Forced Traits: Beautiful Favorite Color: Requires: Joybringer, PerfectHuman, BodyMastery
Drifter	55	HP: 20~60% Quality: Poor	Budget: 90~280 Allow Headgear Chance: 20% Available: Bowler hat, Tuque, Cowboy hat, Gas mask , Parka, Button-down shirt, Pants, T-shirt Ignore Seasons: false Ignore Pollution true BeardTags:	Budget: 60~200 Available: Knife, Club	Budget: 50~50 Available: 15% chance of 1x: Denture, Wooden foot, Peg leg, Wooden hand	0 Nutrition 10% chance of: 1x Herbal medicine	Age Range: 20~60
Blind healer	55	Quality: Always Normal	Fixed: Poor Patchleather; T-shirt, Pants Allow Headgear Chance: 0% Ignore Seasons: false Ignore Pollution true Hair: Bald	Fixed: Poor Steel Knife	-	10 Nutrition	Age Range: 55~80 Missing Parts: 2x Eyes Requires: UnnaturalHealing
Timeless one	55	Forced Quality: Good	Color: Ignore Ideo Apparel Colors: true Required: T-shirt, Pants Allow Headgear Chance: 0% Available: Jacket, Flak jacket, Duster Ignore Seasons: false Ignore Pollution true Head Type: TimelessOne BeardTags: NoBeard	-	-	10 Nutrition	Age Range: 13~16
Cult escapee	55	Quality: Always Normal	Fixed: Poor Cloth; Robe, T-shirt, Pants Allow Headgear Chance: 0% Ignore Seasons: false Ignore Pollution true Body Type: Cult Escapee Head Type: Cult Escapee HairTags: Bald BeardTags: NoBeard	-	Starting Hediffs: 50% chance: Flesh tentacle	10 Nutrition	Age Range: 18~70 Missing Parts: 50% chance for each: Arm, Eye, Eye Existing Damage: Damage; SurgicalCut, Chance Per Group; 50%, Groups; Arms, Legs Requires: DeathRefusal, Occultist, ShamblerOverlord, Fleshcrafter, PsychicButcher Excludes: Joybringer
Lone genius	55	Quality: Always Normal	Fixed: Good; Cloth; Lab coat, Button-down shirt, Synthread; Pants Allow Headgear Chance: 0% Ignore Seasons: false Ignore Pollution true	Fixed: Charge lance	-	10 Nutrition	Age Range: 30~80 Forced Skills: 13~18 Intellectual Forced Traits: Too smart, Abrasive Requires: UnnaturalHealing, Alchemist, Occultist

Analysis

Creepjoiners often have many powerful, colony-changing abilities. Evaluate the possible tradeoffs above, and be prepared to deal with sudden turncoat behavior. Inspect the pawn's entire bio and health tab carefully before recruiting them. Some creepjoiners such as the perfect human can be incredible and frankly game-changing if acquired, however, one must decide whether the potential risks they may bring are worth it. You may also want to consider the potential downsides of not recruiting the creepjoiner (such as an aggressive response).

Performing a Surgical inspection operation right after recruiting a creepjoiner can sometimes reveal their downside early (for example, Organ decay, Psychic agony, Crumbling mind, Metalhorror). However, a surgical inspection doesn't reveal all potential downsides (for example, Desertion), so vigilance is still necessary even when the inspection finds nothing.

The progression of Crumbling mind or Organ decay disease in creepjoiners will be halted by placing them in a Cryptosleep casket until a cure is available, such as a replacement organ(s) or a Healer mech serum. This, however, will disable the creepjoiner until they're removed from the casket, so prepare to survive without their skills and abilities for what could potentially be an extended period of time.

If a creepjoiner's downsides cannot immediately be determined then it may be useful to keep them isolated from other colonists, such as by utilising areas to restrict their movement or using a schedule that isolates them until the downside either is discovered or reveals itself. This can be beneficial if the downside turns out to be one that can potentially affect other colonists, such as a Metalhorror.

Due to the risk of a recruited creepjoiner suddenly deserting the colony after a few days, you may want to consider whether or not it is worth giving them expensive or rare items (such as high-quality armor, weapons, or bionic parts). While this equipment can be recovered if the deserting creepjoiner is arrested, there is always the risk that your colonists will not catch them and you will consequently lose the equipment. To catch a deserting creepjoiner, it is advised to attack them to slow them down, and then capture them. Successfully arresting the deserter and then recruiting them again will make them join the colony permanently, without wanting to desert again.