Genre: Real Time Strategy (RTS), Simulator, Strategy, Indie
RimWorld
Anomaly preview #1: Fleshbeasts, fleshmass heart, pit gate and dreadmeld
🚨 SPOILER WARNING: Reading these blogs will reveal some of the surprises in the expansion! Read at your own risk!
Hi everyone! Tia here with the first of our Anomaly feature blogs where we go over the expansion’s content in detail. We’ll be posting these blogs leading up to release - which is in 3 weeks!
If you missed RimWorld - Anomaly’s announcement, read it here! And please wishlist Anomaly!
In the narrative framework of Anomaly, there are many threats. Some are mysterious and attractive, like the delightful golden cube. Others are insidious and progressive, like the metalhorror infestations. Finally, some threats are direct and aggressive. Today’s feature blog covers the latter - a family of new fleshy threats in the expansion: the squealing flesh beasts, their disgusting momma, and the all-consuming fleshmass heart.
THE FLESH BEASTS
You intercept a distress signal from a nearby camp. The frantic voice begs you to save them from something horrible and offers everything at their camp in return, including shards of dark archotechnology.
As the voice tries to explain what’s happening, the signal goes dead.
If you choose to help this poor soul, assemble your caravan and come well-armed.
You arrive - and it’s a massacre. Bodies everywhere, fleshy creatures roam freely, and throbbing tissues cake the walls of the encampment. Giant burrows dot the ground’s surface, connecting to tunnels deep in the earth.
These cancerous enemies are an amalgamation of many tissues and parts. When you destroy a bigger one, it explodes into several smaller creatures. This means one flesh creature can become many and easily overwhelm your soldiers and defenses.
Embedded in the organic mass are fleshbulbs, organs that store and refine nutrients. This chemical process generates a soft bioluminescent glow, allowing you to see the full extent of the horror, day or night.
If you’re fortunate when investigating an area blighted by the fleshmass, you might stumble across a swollen lump with something inside. These are fleshsacks - stationary fleshbeasts that act as digestive organs, supplying the surrounding fleshmass with nutrients. Note that fleshsacks are unable to break down non-organic matter, meaning that valuable items can occasionally be found within - if you want to go rummaging in there!
There are many approaches to clearing out a flesh infestation: you can focus on systematically slaughtering the remaining flesh beasts with guns, or bring out the incinerator to properly cleanse the area (with the risk of destroying flammable loot), or work on filling in their burrows first to prevent further reinforcements.
THE FLESHMASS HEART
If you’re unfortunate enough to encounter the fleshmass heart, it starts with a small circle of terrain that shifts and cracks apart, pulsating rhythmically as something digs upwards. Eventually, the fleshmass heart will emerge. It is a cancer-like creature that grows flesh across (and under) the surface.
From the heart, grows the fleshmass. This is an enormous assimilating creature that spreads across the landscape, consuming and covering the whole map with a quivering mass of meat. It defends itself with beasts and acid. You must fight it to acquire samples of its nervous system, then study them until you can venture to its heart and kill it for good.
The resulting fleshmass is a solid wall of twisted flesh, which throbs and shivers with horrible life. As it grows from the heart, it puts arterial roots into the ground in its quest for nutrients.
For any nearby colonists, the choices are simple - flee the colony or discover how to destroy the fleshmass. Whilst the heart itself is invulnerable due to rapid regeneration, the mass is susceptible to attacks. However, that doesn’t mean that it’s without weapons...
Embedded in the mass are spitters, defensive organs that filter toxins from the surrounding biomass, concentrate them into potent acid, and then spit it long distances. You don’t want your colonists to get hit by those.
The second line of defense is fleshbeasts, which normally emerge from temporary pit burrows that connect to a cave network deep below. These can be roughly categorized, depending on their mass. Toughspikes are man-sized lumps of roiling flesh with 2 spiked ‘limbs’ and a keratin-armored carapace. Trispikes are smaller three-pronged entities, which break down into the singular fingerspikes when killed. All of the ‘spike’ entities also throw hardened keratin or bone spikes.
Once your colonists have defeated the fleshbeasts and killed enough fleshmass nerve bundles, they will have gathered several neural lumps. Research these and you’ll discover the secret to defeating the heart, allowing you to capture and study it…
…
…
…oh, what? You thought that was the end? That’s just one way it could go.
THE PIT GATE
Another time, the ground might shake with a different result. Now a larger piece of terrain has begun sinking into the depths, forming a deepening hole, much wider than before. Inhuman shrieks rise from the depths. It'd be wise to move your colonists, buildings and items away from the emergence point.
Within a day, the pit’s floor will vanish from sight, falling into the depths where the fleshmass heart came from. A pit gate has formed and will remain open until you collapse it, occasionally releasing foes. To celebrate, a horde of fleshbeasts emerges, along with a noxious stench of rot…
To close the gate, the colonists must descend into it. Under the ground all is flesh, having infested a massive cave system. The tunnels are so crammed with biomass that it’s supporting the ceiling and walls, making it thoroughly unstable. Defeat the motive force of the fleshmass and the tunnels should collapse.
That motive force is housed in a dreadmeld - a mammoth leader creature made up of dozens of smaller fleshbeasts and buried inside the stinking fleshmass.
Its psychic connection to the fleshmass filling the cavern is strong. So strong that killing the dreadmeld will destabilize the whole organism! If you manage to take down the flesh momma, grab what you can (particularly the strange archotech shards it drops) and flee before it collapses and buries you all!
MORE TO COME!
So that’s the fleshmass, an amorphous, expanding cancerous blob from the dark-beyond. Whether it arrives as a distress call, bursts from the ground as a fleshmass heart, or lurks beneath in the twisted form of a dreadmeld, it just wishes to be loved - or rather, consume all life and turn it into more of itself. Who can’t empathize with that?
Survive through time! Begin in the Middle Ages and endure hard yet wonderful times, then continue your adventure on a sci-fi Western-themed world in the far future! Medieval Dynasty meets RimWorld - a unique opportunity to experience both of these top indie hits.
About Medieval Dynasty: Hunt, survive, build and lead in the harsh Middle Ages: Create your own Medieval Dynasty and ensure its long-lasting prosperity or die trying! Play alone or team up with friends to enjoy the ultimate medieval experience.
About RimWorld: A sci-fi colony sim driven by an intelligent AI storyteller. Generates stories by simulating psychology, ecology, gunplay, melee combat, climate, biomes, diplomacy, interpersonal relationships, art, medicine, trade, and more.
Good luck on your medieval and sci-fi adventures! - Ludeon Studios
Winter Sale, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Tis the season to be merry!
We had a great 2023 together with you guys! Thank you for sharing your love for what we've all created. We see your mods, art, writing, videos, screenshots, Reddit posts, lore analyses, bug reports, comments, suggestions, Steam reviews, memes... all of it!
In 2023, we released our first ever official plushie (the Thrumbo), the Ideology expansion came out on consoles, and our team grew again. Also, RimWorld turned ten years old in November - that even surprised us. How can time go by so quickly?!
Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and Happy New Year! Ludeon Studios
Steam Winter Sale
Steam's running their annual Winter sale and RimWorld, Ideology, and Royalty are all on sale. Grab them as a holiday treat, or share the spirit of RimWorld this season with your friends.
Ten years of RimWorld, it's our "Labor of Love"
Hey everyone. RimWorld turned ten years old on November 4, 2023, and it's just in time for the 2023 Steam Awards. You can nominate RimWorld under the "Labor of Love" category!
It's been ten years of content from the Kickstarter, alpha, beta, and Steam greenlight days, plus game updates, lore, fanart, videos, streams, memes, Royalty, Ideology, Biotech, Steam Deck, console release, and much more I didn't cover. We're really proud of RimWorld and our community. Here's to more RimWorld!
The Steam Autumn Sale just started as well, and we're running discounts on RimWorld, Royalty, and Ideology until Nov 28.
Happy ten years! - Ty & the Ludeon team
Rare plushie thrumbos have wandered into the area!
Hello! We just launched these adorable plush thrumbos on Makeship! They're delightfully fluffy and only available for a limited time - the campaign ends May 17. (They're also our very first official RimWorld merch.)
Get your own thrumbo before they move on: https://www.makeship.com/products/thrumbo-plush
Update 1.4.3704 released
Hello hello! There's a little update today that fixes a bug where colonist assignments were removed when you entered a caravan, plus some other useful changes. :)
- Clarify that pawns with no xenogenes cannot implant their xenogerm into another person. Show correct warning message on attempt. - Updated psychic bonding hediff tooltip to factor in pawns contained in buildings. - Updated player name-in-game content.
Fixes
- Fix: Load stack count is incorrect for caravan itab when there is only one thing in the transferable and the player isn't taking the whole stack. - Fixed some typos. - Fix: Magenta square fetus graphics when reloading. - Fix: Pawns leaving map have their assignments reset. - Fix: Error on corpse destruction when completedObligations is null. - Fix: Gibbet cage description mentions they are made of "steel" but can actually be made of any metal.
Update 1.4.3682 released
Spring is here, so we’re springing into action with a (small) update of fixes for RimWorld and its expansions.
The changelog is below, but here are the highlights! We fixed an issue where captured prisoners were escaping from your caravans and another issue where siblings became unrelated to each other if their parents were removed from the game.
- The bestowing ceremony lord will now be removed once the last pawn has left the map. - Removed 2 second damage stagger from tunneler mechs. Staggering is based on weapon stopping power as with all other pawns. - Update previous passion values if a child growth moment picks a skill with passion dropped by gene. - Pawns that generate with passion-dropping genes will no longer generate with passion for those skills. - Updated player name-in-game content.
Fixes
- Fix: Incapable of violence pawns can activate rocketswarm launchers. - Fix: Error when shield belt on ground is hit by EMP explosion. - Fix: Captured prisoners escaping from reformed caravans. - Fix: Slaves freed on exiting map. - Fix: Ranged weapons that don't do bullet damage don't display "Headshot" text on head hit. - Fix: Dead calm pawns go berserk when arresting fails. - Fix: Embryo skin color not preserved in growth vat between save/load. - Fix: Pawns incapable of manipulation are able to strip targets via float menu option. - Fix: Caravans holding relics cause "relic lost" thought on map exit. - Fix: Rare exception occurring when attempting to start a queued job with a null def. - Fix: Rare error when attempting to dye buildings. - Fix: Items in fogged areas counting as complete for bills. - Fix: Invalid destination for shuttle causes errors. - Fix: Pollution overlay grid not updating after cell-filling buildings are destroyed. - Fix: Pawn sibling relationships disappearing when parents are removed. - Fix: Long range mineral scanner tune command has no description. - Fix: Hard-coded English string "No description." for commands without a description. - Potential fix for TKey system suggesting long-form translation aliases. - Fix: Missing period in legionary description. - Fix typo: "Do really want to hack..." - Fix: Awkward wording in dirtmole description.
Price reduction adjustments coming to multiple non-USD currencies.
Hello everyone, Tynan here.
Good news today: We're reducing prices for RimWorld and its expansions in multiple non-USD currencies.
The prices were already below Valve's recommended prices in most cases (you can see the discounts here). This price reduction will increase the discount even further.
The price reductions range from 3% to 15% and affect 7 different currencies. For example, in Canadian dollars, RimWorld will be reduced from $42.99 CAD to $39.99 CAD. See the full list below.
Thanks for playing and to everyone who keeps contributing to our awesome community. The subreddit is always creative, the Discord is always friendly, our forums and the workshop are always full of great mods and it's all wonderful to see. Cheers. - Ty
Update 1.4.3641 released
Hi again, just dropping by with another small update. We addressed some issues with Biotech and fixed a UI scaling issue that occurred when players had DSR enabled. (UI was way too big!). The changelog is below for you to read.
The update is small and should be compatible with all RimWorld savegames and mods.
Just a reminder that you can share any bugs you find and even help us test builds on our official RimWorld Development Discord! Our community helps us a ton with getting these updates and fixes out quickly. :D
Until next time! - Tia
Changelog
- Betrayal quests now fail once all the surviving refugees have joined your faction instead of just any. - Don't display owner types for cribs since cribs don't have their owner types changed as the room changes. - Updated name-in-game content. - Colonists can now put unadopted babies born to prisoners in cribs. - Moved speech letter translation keys to Core from Royalty. - Allow rescuing babies, even if they are from a hostile faction, without having to adopt them first. - Ageless gene stops aging progress at 18.5 instead of 18. - Unassign beds from pawns that have grown too large to fit in them. - Added an alert for babies from other factions which have no local caregivers and can be adopted. - Moved some speech-related translation keys from Royalty to Core.
Fixes
- Fix: Recommended screen resolution incorrect when using DSR. - Fix: UI scale resetting to higher numbers for monitors with height below expected values. (eg 1280x720) - Fix: If a child goes through a growth moment expecting passion increase choices, but there are no available passions, the UI will lock. - Fix: Errors when trying to bring a baby to a mom inside a container to breastfeed. - Fix: Colonist in labor letter doesn't have look target set. - Fix: Error on releasing space refugee prisoners. - Fix: Pawns considered free when using shuttle/pods, causing "Relic lost" thought if equipped. - Fix: Generated immediate family relationships unable to generate. - Fix: Fabricors not making medicine. - Fix: Paramedics not fighting fires automatically. - Fix: Apparel that can be made of any non-smeltable stuff does not show up on the smelting bill UI. (Eg plate armor) - Fix: Permits not reset when royal pawn dies, has title inherited, then is resurrected. - Fix: Psychic suppression targeted by healer mech serum. - Fix: Mech global work speed is affected by darkness. Inconsistent with move speed. - Fix: Error when non-human pawn reaches growth moment age. - Fix: Exception when trying to get mech with no energy need for tooltip in niche circumstances. - Fix: Inactive sterile gene affects fertility. - Fix: Gauranlen and polux seeds can be planted on hydroponics basins and plant pots. - Fix: Beard and genes offset incorrectly based on rotation in some situations. - Fix: Growth stat appearing on humans. - Fix: Lancer shoulder parts labels inconsistent. - Fix typo "crytosleep". - Fix: Typo in config error when pawn kind appears in more than one BossDef. - Fix typo: "means that so" - Fix typo "forth body ring".
Update 1.4.3613 released
Hi folks! We have a pretty small update with just a few changes and fixes to get 2023 started. This update should be compatible with all savegames and mods.
Big thanks to our community for submitting bugs and testing our updates over at the official RimWorld development Discord. If you encounter any issues while playing, please share them with us on the Discord.
Hope you're having fun out there! - Tia
Changelog
- Improved performance of apocriton's resurrection ability on maps with many mech corpses. - Shuttles trying to land on a map that was despawned will fallback to using one of the player's home colonies instead. - Xenotype name is locked when loading custom xenotypes from gene assembler. - Updated name-in-game content. - Moved "Person" translation key to Core. - Removed duplicate stat entry RestFallRateFactor.
Fixes
- Fix: Styling station can instantly change hair and tattoo styles by pressing Escape or Enter while the dialog is open. - Fix: Power consumption on inspect string incorrect when using a consumer with idle power consumption. - Fix: Fence-blocked animals attempting to reach food that is diagonally accessible but cannot path to become stuck. - Fix: Child prisoners attempt to wear adult clothing, causing it to disappear. - Fix: Odd ordering of animals on animals main tab in certain circumstances. - Fix: The "No trait" option on growth letters does not save and load correctly. - Fix: Releasing pawns from prison sometimes automatically recruits them. - Fix: Pawn auto-uses age reversal after changing from Transhumanist to Non-Transhumanist ideoligion. - Fix: AI trying to use tox gas on immune targets. - Fix: Baby to child dialog becoming locked. - Fix: Newly purchased and downloaded game sometimes has extremely high UI scale, making the game unplayable. - Fix: Randomize symbols doesn't update member noun in ideology's description. - Fix: Some recipes missing ingredients in tooltip. - Fix: Reimplant ability not working with custom xenotypes. - Fix: BackstoryTitle translation key not used in Dialog_NamePawn. - Fix: {PAWN_gender ? ...} is not processed/ignored in precept tooltips. - Fix: Thought LabelCap loses lapel capitalization in PostProcessLabel. - Fix: Issues recruiting pawns in quests. - Fix: Colonists with pending bestowing ceremony quest in caravans don't have hediffs ticked. - Fix: Idle and active power draw displayint incorrectly in inspect string. - Fix: Babies and children added onto total population for shuttle mission quests. Ensure that at least one adult pawn can be left behind before generating quest. - Fix: Xenogerms with different genes and name stack in trade screen. - Fix: Pawn lend quests only take into consideration children and babies when determining colonist count when generating. - Fixed issues dealing with betrayal and refugee quests around recruiting of refugees: Refugees are properly removed from extra faction lists when they are recruited. Recruiting a refugee will immediately fail the betrayal quest. - Fix typo "targetter". - Fix typo "capactities".
