The Rimworld Anomaly DLC has finally made its way to the game – and boy has it brought a lot of interesting content with it. For the first time, we have horror elements that have fundamentally changed a lot of how the game works. This can be quite confusing for a lot of players to understand.
To help players navigate all this content, we have prepared a complete guide that will tell you everything you need to know. In this way, you’ll be better equipped to deal with everything the Anomaly DLC throws at you. With that said, let’s get into it!
Anomaly DLC: Complete Guide
The Rimworld Anomaly DLC has added several new gameplay elements. We’ll be looking at each of them briefly, so you understand how they work. Feel free to use the Table of Contents below to easily navigate to whichever topic you find interesting.
Starting out
Starting off, we’ll be looking at the Anomalies that you come across at the start of the Anomaly DLC. But what exactly are Anomalies?
You can think of Anomalies as special creatures and items that are kind of like SCPs. Basically anything that is out of the ordinary is an Anomaly in the DLC!
The creatures specifically are known as Entities. These Anomalies and Entities form the basis of the horror that you’ll be experiencing in Rimworld!
When you start the Anomaly DLC, you’ll immediately start out with some Anomalies too. You’ll have the Ghoul who will just fight and nothing else. These special reanimated corpses will not require any sleep and entertainment.
They also have a god-like healing ability courtesy of their Regeneration ability.
Ghouls can be incredibly useful units and tools if you use them right. Check out our What To Do With Ghouls guide for more information about them!
You’ll come across various other Entities but you’ll need to progress your research in order to unlock them. To progress your research, you’ll need to turn your attention to another starting Anomaly.
This is the Monolith. It is a giant rock that you can find near your starting base. You can send your Pawns to look over it revealing some interesting stuff.
Researching the Monolith will allow you to access the other content that comes with the Anomaly DLC. So, if you don’t want to deal with the nightmares that come with the Anomaly DLC, this is your last chance to back out!
As you progress the Monolith, you’ll unlock a lot of stuff. This includes the handy Entity codex where you can keep tabs on all the creatures discovered.
Anomalous Research
As part of the Rimworld – Anomaly DLC, you also have access to a new kind of research. As you progress the Monolith Research, eventually you’ll also be able to conduct Anomalous research.
Additionally, you will also be able to do normal Research alongside Anomalous research. In this way, you’ll be able to get the best of both worlds!
But Anomalous Research does come with its dangers.
As you start conducting research, more entities and creatures will start getting attracted to your base. Some of these can be quite dangerous too, ranging from invisible stalkers to vampires.
So, you’ll need to have a defendable base with proper walls to fall back to. Here are some things we recommend for a base when researching:
- Keep Entities in a double layer stonewall room with security door
- Build the holding rooms deep into the mountain
- Construct a holding platform and proximity detector for the Entities
- Use Inhibitors to control Captured Entities.
Once you’ve dealt with Entities, you can actually capture them to help you with your research. By keeping them in holding cells, you can get a special bonus when you research them.
However, you will need to provoke and agitate them for research. This further adds a risk to your base, so keep that in mind when you go down this path.
A lot of players have complained that Research in the Anomaly DLC has been quite slow. In this case, we recommend checking out our Speed Up Research guide for more help with that!
Using Captured Entities
We’ve seen how you can use Entities for research in the Anomaly DLC. But what other things can you use Entities for?
Here are other ways that you can use Entities in Rimworld:
- Fighting Raiders outside your base
- Powering up your base via an Electroharvester
- Harvesting Bioferrite material using a Bioferrite Harvester.
The last one is especially useful since you’ll need a lot of Bioferrite material if you want to construct new buildings in the Anomaly DLC. However, this will agitate the Entities so keep that in mind before you decide to use Captured Entities!
Just make sure that you have researched the Monolith. Otherwise, the Entities tab will be locked for you and you won’t be able to use them.
Cults and Rituals
With the new DLC, you also have another enemy type in the form of Cults. These Cultists can be a huge threat and you want to kill them as soon as possible.
They can cause trouble in a variety of ways. Some of these to watch out for are:
- Taking away Colonists from your base
- Using a Ritual Circle to Summons Beasts
- Causing a Madness Wave that makes everyone go insane.
So, make sure you deal with them before they cause havoc.
Interestingly, you can actually conduct your own Rituals in the game too. These Rituals allow you to do a variety of things which include triggering Entity Attacks, boosting happiness and summoning Animals. They’re all listed in the Anomaly Tab.
When you conduct a Ritual, you can select Colonists to take part in the Ritual. We encourage you to test each of them out.
If you have trouble conducting a Ritual, consider checking out our How to Get Invoker guide!
Using Weapons
Entities are extremely strong so you will need to ensure that you have proper security against them when they do attack or break out.
In that case, you’ll need Weapons to deal with them. Luckily, you have quite a few reliable and useful weapons to choose from.
Here are some Weapons you should check out in the Anomaly DLC:
- Hellcat Rifle: Fires flames at enemies and corpses
- Incinerator: Heavy flame weapon that can be used on groups and above allies
- Animal Pulsar: Makes all animals in range go berserk
- Mutation Shock: Turn humans into horrible monsters
- Mutation Pulsar: Turn all animals on the Weapon to monsters
- Dead Life Packs: Turn corpses into explosive mines for Killboxes
- Turret Packs: Fire Flares that stun psychically sensitive creatures and reveal invisible creatures.
Flesh Pits
Next up, we’ll briefly be looking at Flesh Pits. These are giant pits or holes that will appear on the map. When you see one of these, prepare yourself for an expedition as it’s like going to a whole other location.
In essence, there are two ways to come across Flesh Pits in the Anomaly DLC:
- Randomly appearing on the map
- Going to Flesh Pit as part of distress signal quests.
When you enter inside the Flesh Pit, you’ll see all manners of fleshy walls and creatures. Be careful as there will be a lot of enemies here. In essence, you’re basically in a completely different area now.
If you want to deal with Fleshbeasts, we recommend having the flame weapons that we mentioned earlier.
The Fleshbeasts do not like fire and you’ll be able to burn them down.
It’s recommended that you do not ignore Flesh Pits. Otherwise, you’ll have to deal with the Fleshbeasts coming to the surface and attacking your base.
Besides, there is also a lot of good loot and resources to be found here.
Keep navigating the flesh pit and eventually you’ll come across the Dreadmeld. You can consider this the boss that is actually holding the whole Flesh Pit up. After you deal with it, make sure to run out as soon as possible.
You have about half a day before the whole Flesh Pit will collapse.
That’s about everything there is to discuss as part of the Rimworld Anomaly DLC complete guide. Of course, there is a lot more to explore and discover when you play the DLC. We strongly encourage you to explore all the quests that you can come across.
If you missed out on the previous DLC, we also have a Complete Guide on the Rimworld Biotech DLC!
