Void touched

Void touched is a special condition acquired from touching the Void node after embracing the void. A Void touched pawn receives the following effects:

• The pawn's rest and comfort needs are disabled.
• ×200% Psychic sensitivity.
• ×200% Study efficiency.
• The pawn gains a healing factor of 100 hp/day, similarly to that of a ghoul, including the ability to heal scars and regenerate missing body parts. This stacks with ghoul regeneration, resulting in a factor of 200 hp/day.
  • Void healing will prioritize immediately healing up one wound at a time. Depending on the order, this means a pawn can potentially survive misplacing both of their lungs/kidneys at once.
• If retaining talking capacities, they will start having strange chats.
• Their hair will immediately be (reversibly) bleached white, and their eyes will become white.

Additionally, embracing the void will also grant the inhumanized hediff, four charges of death refusal and five charges of a special ability "Void terror," and gives a +14 "Embraced the void" moodlet for 60 days.

Because the Void node can only be interacted with once, it is not possible for multiple pawns to gain Void touched through traditional methods, though there are ways around this. Once obtained, Void touched can not be removed, not even through a Brainwipe. Erasing the colonist's mind may still be worthwhile if one wishes to avoid the consequences of inhumanization, though this will also erase the significant mood bonus in the process.

Void terror

Ability

Description

Void Terror

Psychically induce terrifying hallucinations, causing a person to flee in terror. Applies the "Terrifying hallucinations" mental break on the selected human pawn for 40,000 ticks (11.11 mins) to 60,000 ticks (16.67 mins), causing them to cower away: Range: 31.9 tiles from the caster. Warmup: 30 ticks (0.5 secs) Cooldown: 7,500 ticks (3 in-game hours) Charges: 5 Requires line of sight. Ignores psychic sensitivity. Can't target downed pawns.

The Terrifying Hallucinations mental break will not be interrupted by taking damage, but can end early from starvation or sleep deprivation. The affected pawn will also ramble every 600 ticks (10 secs) to 1,800 ticks (30 secs), similar to the Insane ramblings mental break. Once recovered, the pawn will gain the +30 Void Catharsis thought instead of the regular +40.

Anyone affected actively flees any human it can see within a 21 tile radius at maximum speed, ignoring any other type of pawn.

It's considered a "Harmful ability", and will incur a goodwill penalty of −25 when cast on pawns from a neutral or allied faction.

Analysis

Void touched is a very powerful condition for a pawn to have. The extreme healing factor makes them extremely difficult to kill, and it's much harder to wear them down over the course of a long fight. Even if the Void touched pawn does die, it can resurrect itself up to four times. As such, these pawns should be strongly considered as a frontline fighter to draw fire away from more vulnerable pawns. Additionally, the ×200% Psychic sensitivity multiplier provides incredible support during combat, especially for pawns who are already sensitive, though one should be careful not to let your pawn suffer psychic attacks in return, as they will be extremely vulnerable.

Because the pawn no longer needs to sleep or experience comfort, they can work for much longer periods of time, while avoiding the consciousness penalty of a Circadian half-cycler.

As a void touched pawn will grow back body parts, use of the Deathless gene and duplication from a Corrupted obelisk can provide the colony with a renewable source of organs that are normally lethal to remove, such as hearts and livers.

Although the ×200% Study efficiency bonus is significant, it is actually the least useful of the bonuses by far, mostly due to the fact that a colony which has managed to awaken the Void Monolith has likely already researched all Anomaly projects. This does, however, remain helpful for restudying entities which leave the map and then must be restudied upon their return, such as the Nociosphere.

Version history

• Anomaly DLC Release - Added.