A thin veil of fog falls over you like a blanket and an alien, guttural groan fills the air with dread. A small bead of sweat gently rolls from your forehead to your cheek as you step out into the open air; you can feel a presence all around you, mocking your defiance. You grasp your rifle tightly, the coarse wood of the stock acting as your only comfort while you survey the tree line for signs of even a flicker of life, human or… otherwise. 

Where are the others? 

That awful groan answers. It’s closer now.

Your heart races against your chest, as if demanding to be let out so it may escape the coming onslaught. A tree rustles and your reflexes jolt you to attention, muscles tensed and jittering. You wait… And wait… And you wait… Then, out of the shadows… 

Comes me! The Rimworld Guide Guy! Hello!

Anomaly is the most recent Rimworld DLC, adding horrific abominations, new technology, events, and more! It’s also a DLC all about surprises and adapting, so I’m going to try to keep this article as spoiler-free as possible! So let’s get going before the terror sets in!

It’s Opt-in

Communing with dark forces has never been so convenient!

Sometime at the start of your game, you’ll receive a notification that your colonists have found an ominous monolith. Studying this monolith will activate a majority of the DLC’s new events and content.

If you simply want to ignore it, though, feel free! The DLC only affects your game significantly if and when you want it to!

Power is Recommended

Pictured here is a geothermal generator. Imagine that the Earth farts and those farts become power which help contain the demons.

Anomaly is entirely playable at any tech level and the devs even added a menu to tweak the DLC’s difficulty to your liking on the difficulty screen when starting a game. That said, much of the benefits you’d gain from studying anomalies will be easier to acquire with power.

Ultimately, all I’m saying is your first anomaly run ought to be with a colony that has unlocked electricity first!

New Resources

Personally, I'd eat them all at least once. Provided they wouldn't immediately kill me.

There are a few new important resources you should keep in mind while facing down the unknown. One is bioferrite, a fleshy-metal fiber, and another is shards, pieces of archotechnology. 

Bioferrite acts as a building and crafting material that is especially useful for psychics when turned into clothes or armor. On the other hand, shards help suppress captured entities using machines and enable you to create powerful serums. 

Lastly, there is the grim twisted meat, which can either be eaten (inadvisable for human colonists) or used to make serums.

How do I get these new resources?

It's like giving blood except not at all.

You’ll be retrieving these resources mostly through combat encounters. Bioferrite can be extracted from captured entities, shards often drop after completing combat encounters with an anomaly, and twisted meat comes from butchering entities.

New Serums

Don't talk to me until I've had my serum!

Serums are one-use, powerful, but ultimately temporary effects that can be crafted with some of the new resources added in the DLC. Mostly, you’ll be using twisted meat and bioferrite. 

Although powerful, all serums come with downsides that you should take into consideration. For example, the Juggernaut serum makes a colonist tougher but reduces their mood for the duration of the serum’s effects.

New Lances

I've never built a lance for reasons I can't articulate, but you probably should.

If you don’t know, lances are usually two-uses items that achieve an effect on a chosen pawn. This could be a colonist, raider, or animal. In Anomaly, there are three new lances to experiment with!

One lance immediately mutates a pawn into a fleshbeast, another stuns a pawn with a psychic shock, and the last induces madness.

Ghouls

GET EM' GIRLS

Ghouls are a new colonist type added in the DLC specializing in melee combat exclusively. They can’t do any work outside of fighting, nor can they wield weapons, clothes, or armor, but they deliver powerful melee attacks and can regenerate from wounds. Essentially, ghouls act as powerful attack dogs.

Ghouls are not recruited but rather created. Once you’ve progressed enough on the anomaly tech tree, you can ghoul-ify a colonist or prisoner permanently through a medical procedure. But, beware, do not let your ghouls go hungry, they’ll turn on your colonists!

They like raw meat, so keep that in stock.

Anomaly Tiers

Imagine eating lunch with the love of your life here, though.

As your colonists study the monolith, it will morph and change shape with each level of study. With each level, more entities will begin to appear to harass your colony. It’d be a shame to lose your colony to wayward horrors from beyond the veil, so make sure you’re ready for them as you study the monolith!

Secure, Contain, Protect

Run your very own containment facility and study the monsters of the dark archotech!

One option players have when facing the realm of the dark machine god is to capture anomalies for study and containment. You will gain access to several machines that can either help suppress the anomalies or extract resources from them! Just be wary of containment breaches, because they can and will happen!

Containment

Nothing like steel chains to contain monsters from the evil dimension.

But how do you contain entities? It’s a lot like capturing prisoners in the base game with much higher stakes.

To contain entities, you first need a holding platform. Don’t just place it anywhere, make sure it’s in an enclosed space with strong walls and a roof. Additionally, containment rooms should only have one platform each to maximize containment.

Containment is the value that determines how likely it is for an entity to escape. Outside of proper containment cell construction, you can build machines that can help contain an entity or extract resources from them at the cost of containment. Theoretically, you can build a powerplant that exclusively uses dark anomalies from the evil dimension to light up your colony.

Dark Research

I imagine they circle around the anomalies and poke at them for fun.

Dark research is a new job added in Anomaly that enables colonists to study the monolith and entities to advance on the Anomaly tech tree. It may be wise to split up your intellectually-minded colonists into standard researchers and dark researchers when possible. This way, you won’t fall behind on either tech tree from researchers splitting their time.

Hail the Dark Machine God

You can see local community college witches in your area doing this in the woods every saturday.

Everyone likes an evil playthrough every now and then. Anomaly gives you the option to align yourself with the dark archotech! You’ll still need to capture and contain anomalies like with the “good guy” path, but you’ll be more dark, twisted, and evil instead. 

With the new memes added if you also own the Ideology DLC, ritualist and inhuman, you’ll have an easier time of it too! For your efforts, you gain access to a brand new ending.

Psychic Rituals

Listen, there's nothing wrong with tapping into dark forces for material, earthly rewards. I think.

To draw from the dark archotech’s power, one must conduct a psychic ritual. These rituals will require some amount of material sacrifice, typically in the form of bioferrite or shards. Some rituals will require a human sacrifice, so having prisoners in stock might be a good idea if you’re communing with dark forces.

The rewards for successfully conducting these rituals include making your whole colony work faster, stealing skills from enemies, and resurrection of a colonist upon their death.

Bioferrite Shaper

Harvest anomaly resources to build weapons to kill monsters to harvest resources. Simple.

The bioferrite shaper, unsurprisingly, uses bioferrite in combination with other resources to create new, unique items and weapons. For example, the nervespiker is a crossbow that will temporarily stun enemies, making them easier to capture.

The shaper also lets you create body augmentations for your ghouls, enhancing an already powerful melee unit!

Killing with Fire

This is how I keep people off my property, by the way.

Anomaly adds two new weapons that incorporate fire, the hellcat rifle and the incinerator. Simply put, build these when you can. Fire is one of the best tools against the fleshbeasts. 

No, I will not be extrapolating on the fleshbeasts. You’ll know them when you see them.

Creepjoiners

I trust most creepy strangers unconditionally in real life, too.

Creepjoiners are a new type of recruitable stranger that will start appearing when Anomaly is installed, meaning they’re gonna start showing up even if you don’t activate the monolith. These strangers bring with them powerful boons and dangerous risks. Some may recommend caution at this point, but I recruit them all indiscriminately, so do whatever feels right.

I mean, it’s Rimworld, I know a lot of you will just kill, eat, and then turn their skin into a hat or chair anyway. 

Shamblers

Like zombies, but not zombies. But they're zombies. But technically they're not zombies.

Although I don’t want to spoil many of the anomalies you’ll face, I do want to clue you in on a couple of the most common encounters. 

Shamblers are, for all intents and purposes, zombies. They’ll wander onto your map and meander for a time before leaving, provided they don’t see your colonists.

While not difficult to take care of, the initial passive state of shamblers might tempt you to ignore them until they collapse dead on their own. They’re so easy to deal with that I’d recommend just getting your colonists out there to deal with them ASAP.

Harbinger Trees

Hungry trees offer excellent body removal services to those with spare corpses.

Harbinger Trees are excellent sources of twisted meat and bioferrite, but need to be fully grown to get the most out of their yield. The best way to grow a harbinger tree is to feed it with corpses! That’s right, forget the crematorium and graves, you’ve just found the best way to deal with raider corpses!

Luckily, there seems to be no downside to harboring harbinger trees, other than the fact they’re gross and ugly, but the rewards make up for that.

The Cube

What other games have a golden cube worthy of worship?

You might have seen people online talk about a certain golden cube. I’m here to let you know that their adoration for the Cube is entirely unironic despite the obvious layers of sardonic irony! It’s the best item in the game with no apparent downsides other than withdrawal, comas, and madness it inflicts over time!

What does the Cube do that makes it so great? Don't ask questions! It's insulting to the cube!

Don’t wait! Find the Cube! Cherish the Cube!

Experiment, Succeed, and Fail

oooooaaAAAAAAAAAH WHAT IS THAT

As with all things in Rimworld, trial and error is the greatest way to learn. Failure is part of the game and learning to circumvent that failure next time is part of the fun! Don’t give up, keep adapting!