Warped obelisk

The warped obelisk (also referred to as the "Abductor") is one three potential obelisks that may arrive at your colony. It will kidnap creatures and colonists on activation, sending them to an alternate dimension called the labyrinth.

Occurrence[edit]

An obelisk can ^{[Spawn Chance]} spawn in the map as a major threat event sometime after day 50 when the void monolith level is 1 or greater. An obelisk has a chance to spawn 120 days after the last of any type.

Summary[edit]

Obelisk mechanics[edit]

Like the other obelisks, the warped obelisk has an activity level, which can be supressed as wardening work. Reaching 100% activation will cause a special, dangerous event and cause the obelisk to be destroyed afterwards. At full HP, an obelisk gains +20% activity per day, but damaging it will raise activity, and once it falls below 80% HP, the daily rate will rapidly increase.

Obelisks can be studied for advanced anomaly research, with the rate of study increasing with activity level.

Abduction[edit]

When supressing or studying the warped obelisk, there is a chance that the interacting pawn is warped to the labyrinth. Inside the labryinth, you can find gray boxes and corpses with food, organs, and weapons.

After 10 Anomaly research points from studying the obelisk, a teleport button will appear. (15-80 day cooldown)

"You've completed your investigation of the obelisk. It creates a bridge to a point in a spacetime void separated from ours along usually inaccessible spatial dimensions. The void plane is filled with a gray labyrinthine structure of astronomical scale. Someone trapped there could return by finding the obelisk's mirror version inside the gray rooms and hallways. The gray structures seem to have been created by an archotech superintelligence, but there's no way to know their purpose, age, or spatial limits. The obelisk is damaged and unstable, so its energy level rises unless suppressed. If it were to fully activate, it could begin to abduct individuals at random. You can now intentionally provoke a response from the warped obelisk."

It can be escaped by finding another warped obelisk in the labryth map. Activating it will cause all pawns (including enemies) and items on the labryinth to be teleported to the home tile.

Full activation[edit]

If the activity level of the warped obelisk reaches 100%, it will teleport random pawns on the map into the labryinth, drop a shard, and then explode. Colonists, prisoners, and animals all can be teleported. Do note that the obelisk's explosion is extremely deadly within 1 tile as it causes 800 vaporize base damage within a 2.9 radius, which translates to a 5x5 square.

Destruction[edit]

After interacting with the warped obelisk inside the labryinth, the warped obelisk in the main tile will be gone even if it has not reached its full activation. Unlike the other obelisks, there is no way to deactivate the warped obelisk using shards.

Analysis[edit]

Like all obelisks, the pawn studying and suppressing the Warped obelisk should be the pawn intended to receive its effect, not necessarily the main researcher. This is to take advantage of the random interaction effect when suppressing or studying.

Counterintuitively, nether the intellectual skill, the entity study rate, nor the research speed significantly affect on the speed of dark study of the obelisk due to the 2-day cooldown. The only things that affect this speed is the study efficiency, how quickly you study after the cooldown expires, and the obelisk's activity level. This means the best possible, but very risky, study speed for the obelisk is to study it at 99% activity level, suppress it down to 59%, and come back exactly 2 days later to study it again at 99%. This method gives 2 advanced/day research points, before the effect of the studying pawn's study efficiency and the AI storyteller's Study efficiency setting which varies by difficulty.

Once 2 points of research have been earned from an obelisk a event notification will be triggered with following the flavor text:

"Investigation of the obelisk has revealed some information. It is an archotechnological device that seems to interact with organic creatures at a distance. It is probably a piece of a much larger archotech structure that was destroyed or broken apart long ago. The machinery at its core is inhumanly complex and frighteningly powerful. Its purpose and method of action remain totally mysterious.
If not suppressed, its activity level will increase over time. You can't tell what will happen when the device fully activates."

If wanting to rescue a pawn inside the labrynth immediately, one way to do so is attack the obelisk and force its full activation, which will bring more pawns (and thus more firepower) into the sub-map. Alternatively, the teleport gizmo can be used to bring a selected pawn inside.

Brute-force destruction

While obelisks generally have a positive effect on your colony, it is possible to destroy them by dealing enough damage before they take effect. You can do this with pawns wielding frag grenades. You'll need 7 pawns to destroy an obelisk without triggering adverse effects.

Suppress the obelisk down to 0%.
Melee attack the obelisk until its activity level increase (not the activity level itself) rises above +20%/day. The obelisk's health should be at 80% or lower by this point. ^[80%?]
Suppress the obelisk to 0% again.
Melee attack the obelisk, this time until it almost reaches 100% activity.
Move all pawns to a safe distance and start throwing grenades at the obelisk at the same time. After 1 or 2 throws, the obelisk should have been destroyed.

Alternatively, you can use high-explosive shells, 2 ancient mining charges or a diabolus' cannon to destroy the obelisk without having to use multiple pawns and suppression.