Just to add an additional note, ghoul plating and barbs can actually be made at a crafting spot! Even pre-electricity tribes can make effective use of ghouls.
DLC in a nutshell: Royalty - no more caravan management. A lot of fun stuff added. Ideology - no more mood management. A lot of fun stuff added. Biotech - no more trait management. A lot of fun stuff added. Anomalies - no more limb management. A lot of fun stuff added. I personally think that there is not enough endgame threat anymore for a while now.
Eh, I'm happy for it, I would hate to go back to the days where the only fun colony to have was a psychopath one, and the only way for a colony to last more than an in-game week was with a killbox.
Imo that argument comes up way too often (@ the lack of endgame threats) and from my experience it goes hand in hand with people heavily exploiting/cheesing game mechanics and/or them playing with easy-mode randy. the default reply remains the same: remove the raid cap from day1, play with cas instead of easyrandy. don't cheese and usually people will find the challenge they are looking for. It is a singleplayer game after all. It can be as challenging as you want it to be. That is the beauty of having those options. If you pick easy options you only cheat yourself out of the experience.
This is unironically a skill issue. This is a sandbox game, and you can play it in many different ways. If you're not having fun because you only use the most powerful stuff and cheese the game, then play it a different way. Play with harder ideologies. Play with hard gene packs. Play with angering the empire. Capture entities and progress the monolith without doing dark study (beyond unlocking "void provocation"). If you can't figure out how to make the game harder and you generally like games like Rimworld, then that's on you
@@sweetcornwhiskeyHonestly, angering the empire wasn't nearly as scary as I thought it'd be (playing Randy, Blood and Dust). Maybe it's because they don't tend to attack me a lot, but I tend to be more scared of the Blue Moon Corporation than anything.
@@HolyApplebutter Angering the empire isn't usually difficult because of their attacks but rather because of the valuable trade that they provide that you lose access to if you anger them
Don't forget that void touched stacks with unnatural healing! 1600 health regen per day!! And flesh whip is strong as power claw and it works with corrupted obelisk!!
Flesh whip is a bit worse since it has a fixed AP of 60%, but it does not need to be replaced like the power claw if it is destroyed. Plus it's much easier to get a flesh whip + tentacle combo before power claw with how rare those techprints are
@@EastWind-tr4rc well noticed. Considering a ghoul with barbs: power claw has 56 armor pen, with strong melee it has 74 and with strong melee+juggernaut it has 111. I'd say the main thing is juggernaut there. 74 vs 60 isn't too bad when we compare cut Vs scratch. Cut is better DMG type because it has much lower overkill prevention, therefore it's much easier to destroy and cut limbs off with such damage type. But yeah, with juggernaut, power claw is indeed a no brainer! At least the flesh tentacle is a win as a ""side"" ""arm"" no matter what 😅😅
Totally not currently running 20 of these into anything with custom genes, bionics and full Ghoul addons in my 'gene collection' playthrough. Too much fun watching ghouls beat everything to death.
Another bonus for yttkin is they get furskin and furry tail, which provide -10c minimum comfortable temperature each. Now this may seem inconsequential on most playthroughs. When have you seen a ghoul get frost bite? The answer is below -36c, so not very often, but if you're in a very cold tile, it'll be what keeps them viable.
@@Bubbabbread it looks like it's not applying the -10c cold tolerance from furskin, either. since default is low temp tolerance is 16c, and being a ghoul lowers that by 40. every ghoul should have a tolerance of -26c. so it looks like the tail is applying its -10c, but not furskin.
@@iumiforgotI guess it's becauss Ghouls lose the fur, but not the tail. For someone who's eventually planning to settle icy mountains for deterrence reasons, it's good info.
Uh... I haven't ever used the operating queue approach to give them metalblood. Click on the metal blood serum and there's a button to click to have a pawn take it, then click on the ghoul, they'll go take it themselves. Also, if you hold shift when you select the ghoul, if you already had the ghoul set to take juggernaut serum, it doesn't disrupt them, it queues it for them to take it next.
Been binging your Narcoleptic ONI run at work. I've come to the realisation that when there's a bit of a gap between uploads, we get something really cool. Big ups for all the hard work!
Wait Francis, u missed something. There's a way to give them permanent speed. Give them deathrest genes and let them deathrest with the glucose pump. After they get the speed buff u ghoul them. Once u do, they no longer need to deathrest but retain their speed buff permanently
For further testing you should roof the shooting ranges, it will remove the weather effect on shooting accuracy, if the shooter and the target are under a roof.
I actually make a small fridge with a shelf near my entrance with twisted and insect meat at critical. With the fridge mod, I actually have a fridge inside their guard post. It minimizes the ghouls time away from their post. Which given their slow movement and odd desire to hang out in the freezer is very important. Also, having them hang out outside the gates will draw almost every type of raid straight to them instead of your walls.
"Just get rid of your old ghouls ... if you're heartless enough" Francis John, while injuring and killing hundreds of paws for experimentation reasons 🤨
AND he was perfectly willing to get rid of Dumbshit Prime, only brought him back after universal shaming.... On the other hand, he's kind to his RW kids. Not all of us are!
well, I cant wait to see what Francis will say about Void Touched pawns when he gets one. but that's very late-game thing, so dont spoil it to much for him.
Ghouls were my favorite addition to this DLC. Even just for the flavor of having tame undead shuffle/sprint towards enemies, allies that die and rise back up, almost immortal. Having them then modified genetically, their bodies enhanced with bionics and serums pumping through their veins really gives the 'teetering on the edge of madness' vibes of either an eldritch cult or a mad scientist group. In my first and current anomaly playthrough, my initial ghoul is the mother of my religious preacher. The ghoul died early on defending the team from a melee fighter (I overestimated her strength), and she was buried, then unburied and stuck in a casket until the research of ghoul resurrection. In the meantime I got 2 more ghouls, one of which died permanently as their body got destroyed by mechs, and the other one was a brawler. Later on, a colonist joined my colony, a wimp with mediocre stats, but, to my surprise, he was the lover of my brawler ghoul. It was then fitting to turn them into a ghoul as well, so they can be together until death won't do them apart. Now I have these 3 as the colony super ghouls, and, while not tough, they can still take a massive beating and deal a ton of damage after being enhanced.
Forgot to add a good note - I created a xenogerm for my ghoul that included deathless and implanter. Haven't needed to test the deathless 'yet', but the implanter has been very helpful! I capture a tough pawn, you may have to recruit them, but if it works with the 'indentured servitude' approach, go for it. Have them absorb the xenogerm from the ghoul, they go into a coma, then you can do the ghoul infusion, and the other upgrades while they are passed out. They should recovery quickly. Not tested yet, but if it works, then it'll be very cool at reducing the cost.
Ghouls are super OP, you can literally make an army of them and they eat less than a chicken. Stoneskin+Tough+Robust+Ghoul plating+ Metalblood makes them tank like a beast. Strong melee damage+Ghoul barbs+powerclaw (+wooden hand) makes them destroy anything. +5 metabolic efficiency, nuclear stomach and Robust digestion makes them too easy to maintain. Jogger+Fast runner+Naked speed makes up for the speed loss of stoneskin and adds more. Healing enhancers +super fast regen +void touched makes them even more op at tanking. This made melee pawns not needed for anomaly stuffs as most of them are weaker than ghouls, though Melee pawns still are better in cases of mechanoids or raids which don't go in the killbox as they can carry better armor and shield while being a great psycaster but unlike Melee pawns they can be revived super easily and mass produced, it's harder to make a melee pawn and equipping them with cataphract with the same genepack than to just get a yttakin tough and call it a day. Plus you can make a ghoul out of those with body mastery and they will never need a single thing, they can just wait at the killbox forever.
Change power claw for a flesh whip. It deals almost same amount of damage, but it has more AP and cut instead of scratch. I consider cut better. No mov speed debuff and it it's duplicated by corrupt obelisk. You can also do flesh whip + flesh tentacle. Tentacle doesn't have an attack and adds 20% more manipulation. Free DPS. Also, you can stack unnatural healing with void touched 😂. Ghouls don't bleed. No need for clotting
Either way is pretty overpowered. you can just massively duplicate a great melee pawn. I then turn the damaged ones into ghouls and keep the others for laborers. With genetics, you can fix most any problems once you get enough of a gene supply. Only problem with turning them all into ghouls would be you can't duplicate a ghouls. Having that backup pawn to start over is a definite plus.
@@bemvas2484 Duplicating ghouls with void touched is way too op. Can they even die on francis' test (excellent charge lance) or will they just regenerate faster than the DPS. Plus since we are duplicating, your method is much better than giving powerclaw to each one everytime. Also just checked and manipulation does increase melee DPS, so adding elongated fingers and tails will probably help if you have the Un-Limited mod which I do. Kept forgetting that ghouls don't bleed because the damage is red (no bloodloss heddiff though), will remove it in their genepack but honesty their have so many extra metabolic positives that I just added everything I wanted on my melee pawn completely forgetting the bleed mechanic.
@Francis John if you take a vampire and make him into a ghoul the imortality gene still applies and they wont die (Hp never goes below 5%) unless their neck/head takes too much damage, good for never losing your ghouls early game before getting your hands on the ghoul res serum (only downside is the fire damage, however as they have no mood they dont fear it) later on you can just implant the deathless gene to avoid the fire weakness. they also benefit from the robust, strong melee damage, fast runner and superfast wound healing so way better than yttakins for starting ghoul.
I recently got a mod called "Integrated Implants" it adds some really wacky stuff that makes ghouls pretty nuts. I have 9 ghouls that basically deal with any threat.
Note, installing a wooden arm reduces the ghoul's DPS, because... reduces manipulation. You can put 2 claws + genes on long fingers and a tail, which will give an increase in manipulation and, accordingly, DPS. But, yes, it will reduce the speed =) You can also place a inducer in the area with ghouls (which speeds up the work), it also increases the speed of movement, and the effect lasts for some time (ghouls do not have nervous breakdowns).
Francis - "... death isn't the handicap it was back in the olden days" I know a Red Dwarf quote when I hear one! Lister - "..., it doesn't screw your career up like it used to." 😉
The reason I see for a melee pawn nowadays is a bioferrite longsword wielding caster getting the benefits of both a super powerful melee weapon (legendary bioferrite longsword is only behind masterwork and legendary persona monoswords, yes its better than a regular monosword and is craftable) and a psy boosting weapon like an eltex staff. In terms of psycasting bonuses its mixed, my understanding is on a pawn with limited psy investment its worse than a staff but with a lot of investment (genes, trait, other bioferrite gear, maybe even deathrest buffs) its better, mostly due to (both at legendary) the bioferrite longsword giving 1.2X sensitivity and the staff giving a flat +75%. Also a legendary bioferrite longsword is much easier to obtain than persona or eltex weapons of the same quality due to being craftable.
Ghouls fixed the innate frustration with running a melee pawn so its a 10/10 addition for me. I still think Vamps should be able to make ghouls on a cooldown, but the RW team has a history of leaving the different expansions as separate self-contained systems. Also, the tease at 20:00 on of your Nugget collection deserves its own Tutorial Nugget. The fact that you have largely domesticated the anomaly on your playthrough is pretty impressive.
Also if you used bionics will the bionics be repaired super fast as well ? Because if it is repaired with unnatural healing I think a full set of bionic ghoul can be sooo much scarier (Like having bionic eyes can drastically improve dodging chances , or ofc bionic legs to help with the speed issue) And I wonder if you can make a vamp ghoul, as long as you aren’t fighting the imps , a vamp ghoul can be really appealing , like speed buffs from deathrest
Yes. They get repaired but if the bionic part is destroyed a normal part is what grows back. So stack that ghoul with archotech arms, legs, and eyes. 😂
Hi Francis, if you like ghouls, you should create your own genotype, you would be surprise by the superfast wound healing + superclotting combo. I’m doing a tribal « no gun » run, with the genotype below and it’s amazing : it’s like dumbsh*t and Lunk had 5 kids, which are destroying the world on lucy and beers, Travelling the day, cracking upon the ancient danger the night, for lucy, zeushammer and cyborg parts, like they were pinata. Razing base like they were locust. Leaving on berries. No micromanagement, no cooking, no research, no worries, just pur fun. Time to time, they come back to the base for psy levelling. One day I accepted a quest for a resurrector mech serum with 3*60 impids raids under 24h, and they survived with severe scrathes but they all disappeared the next day. I din’t buy the anomaly DLC so I couldn’t use your test map the viking’s genotype - hemegenic - hemogen drain - bloodfeeder - longlump legs - weak immunity - superfast wound healing - superclotting - superpsy sensitive - very fast runner - very unhappy - cold weakness - fire resistant - hyper-agressive - Strong melee damage - kill thirst - kind instinct - never sleep - robust - sterile - very unattractive - strong stomach - robust digestion - quick study - dark vision - major cell instability - elongated fingers - unstoppable - smooth tall - awfull shooting - great melee - awfull mining - awfull cooking - awull crafting - awful artistic - awful intellectual - alcool dependency
I used mod for adding the traits tought and bloodlust PS : sorry for my english, but I’m french and we are genetickly configured with awfull foreign langages.
Great video, love your tutorials. Can you use ghouls to train up medical by constantly removing limbs. Can you pull their organs and if so are they usable?
Ghouls don't look to have organs so you can't remove them. However they introduced a new surgery "surgical inspection" this surgery cannot be failed even by a weak doctor who is blind, in drug withdrawal and suffering from brain damage and two wooden hands. Since time taken to perform surgery determines exp gain this allows you to gain skills incredibly quickly.
Regular pawns can be just as tough - even tougher. After all, regular pawn can have Robust+Tough+MetaBlood+Juggernaught+Stoneskin+Cata Armor. The biggest upside is that they just ridiculously cheap to ressurect, compared to pawns. They are still too OP, but man they are too cheap to ressurrect.
like before i still like the metal blood heart… then you can decide if you activate it or not depending if the situation could get flammy. (Brings up the question if the serum stacks with the hearth) Ofc the gene is best if you get it. I did give all of them bionic legs against all the movement reduction. I like to put them a little bit before my pawns, to fight in the open, so they get shot by my people, why the extra from metal blood heart is great.
Metal blood heart does not stack with the serum unfortunately. I can see the use cases for it but considering how tough ghouls are already I just can't go with it over the speed boost.
Use a weather controller to prevent weather messing up your testing. Also the wooden hand doesn't just reduce the non-powerclaw attacks, its stops them entirely, but only if they don't have another body part that adds an attack. The original reddit post goes into it more. Otherwise an excellent video as always
Ghouls also don't take armor damage. While yes, a Jedi in Cataphract armor with a shield belt _might_ be more useful, it's a lot higher maintainance. Save your nobles for speshul tacktiks.
Good spot, I split the list in two and during the monthly update I copy pasted instead of cut pasted. So the entire list was on the left instead of just one third. Sloppy of me.
Don't forget the juggernaut serum! For the price of 20 twisted meat and 10 bioferrite you get 0.50 move speed, 150% melee damage, and 200% healing rate for 10 whole days! Also ghouls barely contribute any raid points, that's a massive bonus especially if you are playing on 500%
Little off topic but bioferrite long swords are really good weapons. comparable to persona weapons. The sharp bonus from the material makes the main attack so high they never use the hilt.
I really like the metalblood heart. The speed is not too bad since I have them confined to a fridge set to high priority for meat, right next to my killbox. They are always where they need to be, they are always ready, they never sleep.
I turned a "body mastery" wanderer that came in, she was only a baseliner but had tough. turns out, the ghoul still didn't need to eat AT ALL. Good luck trying to get a pawn with that trait, but if you can you can turn it into a ghoul that wont need food and you can stick it on patrol or just leave it at its post when not in use or in between raids
That's not even everything that's good about them. They also don't count as colonists when counting pawn points for raid points calculation. They appear to be counted as if they were mechanoids with 30 power levels, which is to say that 5 ghouls produce the same amounts of pawn points as a single friendly scyther, which wouldn't perform as well in battle anyway. Also, you mentioned ghouls getting hypothermia as a down side. I don't think that's a very likely scenario. Don't forget that the cold hyper-resistant and the fur tail genes do work on them (though not the fur gene) so you can splice them to have a comfortable minimum temperature of -54, which would mean they won't suffer from hypothermia above -64 celcius. Between -64 and -75 celcius, it will take them about 20 hours to get downed from hypothermia at which point your ghoul is long due for a meal break anyway. Other than mechs, there are only a handful of creatures in this game with a minimum comfortable temperature below -55.
Things need balancing in anomaly like Ghouls. Too tough. At least if you resurrect they should lose skill in melee and not be able to use gene packs Duplication, same deal, lose some levels and lose random psycasts, or or get non-curable hediff or something, Manhunter pulse for anomaly beasts, a percentage chance to fail on a creature. Creature escape, too easy to contain at the moment. Maybe random chance of escape goes up or every time someone enters to study a creature it has a higher chance of escape than normal
Well, 1.3 already ruined this game, so obviously this is way far gone, but just had to observe that it is disgusting and human-like how the cockroaches what made the following versions pander to the worst desires of the most roachy redditors. Thankfully I am way past non NS financial decisions - when I torrented the to-be piece of shit (back at 1.1) I had a good sense of knowing the developers are such that the inevitable will indeed happen. To me it was never sad how it died, as this was expected - I can't get over how mankind died.
Brawler is a pretty weak trait. Wait that is mean. Brawler is +4 Melee and +4 chance to hit. Brawler is handy but Tough is straight up better. Nimble is +15 Melee Dodge Chance, which means you get hit less which means you take less damage, which means you get less injured which means more of your attacks hit. Injured people are less likely to hit. So in a short fight Brawler is ok, but after a few hits are made Tough and Nimble just dominate. For non ghoul fighters Tough, nimble, psy hypersensitve is the dream for a combat mage. For ghouls it would be Tough, nimble and then Jogger would be my preferred. Brawler just increases your chance to hit, having 16+ melee is usually all the hit you need. So Brawler is good early on but gets weaker as your fighter gets more skilled. To much Info sorry.
@@FrancisJohnYT not at all too much info. That's very informative. I was always under the impression brawler was a must for melee pawns. Usually I would look for tough, nimble, and brawler I was convinced it was a great combination. Now knowing brawler can be replaced with other useful traits opens up some new ideas. Glad you're running the numbers so I won't have to, now I'll sleep soundly knowing those psychopathic killing machines are in good hands. :)
Just to add an additional note, ghoul plating and barbs can actually be made at a crafting spot! Even pre-electricity tribes can make effective use of ghouls.
DLC in a nutshell:
Royalty - no more caravan management. A lot of fun stuff added.
Ideology - no more mood management. A lot of fun stuff added.
Biotech - no more trait management. A lot of fun stuff added.
Anomalies - no more limb management. A lot of fun stuff added.
I personally think that there is not enough endgame threat anymore for a while now.
Eh, I'm happy for it, I would hate to go back to the days where the only fun colony to have was a psychopath one, and the only way for a colony to last more than an in-game week was with a killbox.
Imo that argument comes up way too often (@ the lack of endgame threats) and from my experience it goes hand in hand with people heavily exploiting/cheesing game mechanics and/or them playing with easy-mode randy.
the default reply remains the same: remove the raid cap from day1, play with cas instead of easyrandy. don't cheese and usually people will find the challenge they are looking for.
It is a singleplayer game after all. It can be as challenging as you want it to be. That is the beauty of having those options. If you pick easy options you only cheat yourself out of the experience.
This is unironically a skill issue. This is a sandbox game, and you can play it in many different ways. If you're not having fun because you only use the most powerful stuff and cheese the game, then play it a different way. Play with harder ideologies. Play with hard gene packs. Play with angering the empire. Capture entities and progress the monolith without doing dark study (beyond unlocking "void provocation"). If you can't figure out how to make the game harder and you generally like games like Rimworld, then that's on you
@@sweetcornwhiskeyHonestly, angering the empire wasn't nearly as scary as I thought it'd be (playing Randy, Blood and Dust). Maybe it's because they don't tend to attack me a lot, but I tend to be more scared of the Blue Moon Corporation than anything.
@@HolyApplebutter Angering the empire isn't usually difficult because of their attacks but rather because of the valuable trade that they provide that you lose access to if you anger them
Finally a spreadsheet for the current playthrough, I thought Francis had lost his way. 😅
Don't forget that void touched stacks with unnatural healing! 1600 health regen per day!! And flesh whip is strong as power claw and it works with corrupted obelisk!!
Let's say you can get a ghoul that deals more than 45 DPS, receives 9.4% damage and regens 1600 HP daily
Flesh whip is a bit worse since it has a fixed AP of 60%, but it does not need to be replaced like the power claw if it is destroyed. Plus it's much easier to get a flesh whip + tentacle combo before power claw with how rare those techprints are
@@EastWind-tr4rc well noticed. Considering a ghoul with barbs: power claw has 56 armor pen, with strong melee it has 74 and with strong melee+juggernaut it has 111. I'd say the main thing is juggernaut there. 74 vs 60 isn't too bad when we compare cut Vs scratch. Cut is better DMG type because it has much lower overkill prevention, therefore it's much easier to destroy and cut limbs off with such damage type. But yeah, with juggernaut, power claw is indeed a no brainer! At least the flesh tentacle is a win as a ""side"" ""arm"" no matter what 😅😅
How many void touched ghouls do you get though?
@@River_of_Egypt One every 30 days with corrupted obelisk, which is quite good in the long run
Gotta love an obscure red dwarf quote 'death isnt the handicap it used to be'
Missed a day.
New tutorial.
Acceptable.
Totally not currently running 20 of these into anything with custom genes, bionics and full Ghoul addons in my 'gene collection' playthrough.
Too much fun watching ghouls beat everything to death.
Just a casual necromancer 😊
Helpful and informative as always. Thank you Francis!
Another bonus for yttkin is they get furskin and furry tail, which provide -10c minimum comfortable temperature each.
Now this may seem inconsequential on most playthroughs. When have you seen a ghoul get frost bite? The answer is below -36c, so not very often, but if you're in a very cold tile, it'll be what keeps them viable.
ive noticed that the furskin gene is just greyed out on ghouls like its disabled, so does it actually apply to them, or is it just a visual thing?
@@Bubbabbread it looks like it's not applying the -10c cold tolerance from furskin, either. since default is low temp tolerance is 16c, and being a ghoul lowers that by 40. every ghoul should have a tolerance of -26c. so it looks like the tail is applying its -10c, but not furskin.
@@iumiforgotI guess it's becauss Ghouls lose the fur, but not the tail.
For someone who's eventually planning to settle icy mountains for deterrence reasons, it's good info.
Uh... I haven't ever used the operating queue approach to give them metalblood. Click on the metal blood serum and there's a button to click to have a pawn take it, then click on the ghoul, they'll go take it themselves. Also, if you hold shift when you select the ghoul, if you already had the ghoul set to take juggernaut serum, it doesn't disrupt them, it queues it for them to take it next.
Yesss just as I was about to search through your vids for Ghoul tips, you give us this
Been binging your Narcoleptic ONI run at work. I've come to the realisation that when there's a bit of a gap between uploads, we get something really cool. Big ups for all the hard work!
Wait Francis, u missed something. There's a way to give them permanent speed. Give them deathrest genes and let them deathrest with the glucose pump. After they get the speed buff u ghoul them. Once u do, they no longer need to deathrest but retain their speed buff permanently
That's omega broken
@@bruhder5854 just wait till u find out that frenzy inducers work on ghouls too
"mom, can we have some cataphract pawn?"
"We have cataphract pawn at home"
Catapract pawn at home : Ghoul
For further testing you should roof the shooting ranges, it will remove the weather effect on shooting accuracy, if the shooter and the target are under a roof.
Tutorial nugggggggeeeetttttt! Let’s go potato man!
Great video 👍
I actually make a small fridge with a shelf near my entrance with twisted and insect meat at critical.
With the fridge mod, I actually have a fridge inside their guard post.
It minimizes the ghouls time away from their post. Which given their slow movement and odd desire to hang out in the freezer is very important.
Also, having them hang out outside the gates will draw almost every type of raid straight to them instead of your walls.
Gary was a Legend... he was LEGENGARY! (love the typo)
"Just get rid of your old ghouls ... if you're heartless enough" Francis John, while injuring and killing hundreds of paws for experimentation reasons 🤨
But he did keep dumbshit...
AND he was perfectly willing to get rid of Dumbshit Prime, only brought him back after universal shaming.... On the other hand, he's kind to his RW kids. Not all of us are!
@@kerrymoore1961 Power has corrupted Francis obviously
well, I cant wait to see what Francis will say about Void Touched pawns when he gets one. but that's very late-game thing, so dont spoil it to much for him.
I have not seen one yet, and running with 26 pawns and 14 ghouls with a prison pop of around 25(it fluctuates...)
@@multani16 you cant get one randomly, there is a special method to obtain it. but i would rather not spoil it here, its all on wiki.
Ghouls were my favorite addition to this DLC. Even just for the flavor of having tame undead shuffle/sprint towards enemies, allies that die and rise back up, almost immortal.
Having them then modified genetically, their bodies enhanced with bionics and serums pumping through their veins really gives the 'teetering on the edge of madness' vibes of either an eldritch cult or a mad scientist group.
In my first and current anomaly playthrough, my initial ghoul is the mother of my religious preacher. The ghoul died early on defending the team from a melee fighter (I overestimated her strength), and she was buried, then unburied and stuck in a casket until the research of ghoul resurrection.
In the meantime I got 2 more ghouls, one of which died permanently as their body got destroyed by mechs, and the other one was a brawler.
Later on, a colonist joined my colony, a wimp with mediocre stats, but, to my surprise, he was the lover of my brawler ghoul. It was then fitting to turn them into a ghoul as well, so they can be together until death won't do them apart.
Now I have these 3 as the colony super ghouls, and, while not tough, they can still take a massive beating and deal a ton of damage after being enhanced.
Forgot to add a good note - I created a xenogerm for my ghoul that included deathless and implanter. Haven't needed to test the deathless 'yet', but the implanter has been very helpful! I capture a tough pawn, you may have to recruit them, but if it works with the 'indentured servitude' approach, go for it. Have them absorb the xenogerm from the ghoul, they go into a coma, then you can do the ghoul infusion, and the other upgrades while they are passed out.
They should recovery quickly. Not tested yet, but if it works, then it'll be very cool at reducing the cost.
As a leftie (left handed person)I appreciate that you made a ghoul with the powerclaw in their left and the wooden hand on the right
Ghouls are super OP, you can literally make an army of them and they eat less than a chicken.
Stoneskin+Tough+Robust+Ghoul plating+ Metalblood makes them tank like a beast.
Strong melee damage+Ghoul barbs+powerclaw (+wooden hand) makes them destroy anything.
+5 metabolic efficiency, nuclear stomach and Robust digestion makes them too easy to maintain.
Jogger+Fast runner+Naked speed makes up for the speed loss of stoneskin and adds more.
Healing enhancers +super fast regen +void touched makes them even more op at tanking.
This made melee pawns not needed for anomaly stuffs as most of them are weaker than ghouls, though Melee pawns still are better in cases of mechanoids or raids which don't go in the killbox as they can carry better armor and shield while being a great psycaster but unlike Melee pawns they can be revived super easily and mass produced, it's harder to make a melee pawn and equipping them with cataphract with the same genepack than to just get a yttakin tough and call it a day.
Plus you can make a ghoul out of those with body mastery and they will never need a single thing, they can just wait at the killbox forever.
Tough Body Mastery would make an excellent ghoul
Change power claw for a flesh whip. It deals almost same amount of damage, but it has more AP and cut instead of scratch. I consider cut better. No mov speed debuff and it it's duplicated by corrupt obelisk. You can also do flesh whip + flesh tentacle. Tentacle doesn't have an attack and adds 20% more manipulation. Free DPS. Also, you can stack unnatural healing with void touched 😂. Ghouls don't bleed. No need for clotting
Either way is pretty overpowered. you can just massively duplicate a great melee pawn. I then turn the damaged ones into ghouls and keep the others for laborers. With genetics, you can fix most any problems once you get enough of a gene supply. Only problem with turning them all into ghouls would be you can't duplicate a ghouls. Having that backup pawn to start over is a definite plus.
@@bemvas2484 Duplicating ghouls with void touched is way too op. Can they even die on francis' test (excellent charge lance) or will they just regenerate faster than the DPS. Plus since we are duplicating, your method is much better than giving powerclaw to each one everytime. Also just checked and manipulation does increase melee DPS, so adding elongated fingers and tails will probably help if you have the Un-Limited mod which I do.
Kept forgetting that ghouls don't bleed because the damage is red (no bloodloss heddiff though), will remove it in their genepack but honesty their have so many extra metabolic positives that I just added everything I wanted on my melee pawn completely forgetting the bleed mechanic.
nuclear stomach is kinda bad if you want them to tank mechs and use EMP
Francis linking the test map as if we're all as mad as him willing to test all this
@Francis John if you take a vampire and make him into a ghoul the imortality gene still applies and they wont die (Hp never goes below 5%) unless their neck/head takes too much damage, good for never losing your ghouls early game before getting your hands on the ghoul res serum (only downside is the fire damage, however as they have no mood they dont fear it) later on you can just implant the deathless gene to avoid the fire weakness. they also benefit from the robust, strong melee damage, fast runner and superfast wound healing so way better than yttakins for starting ghoul.
I recently got a mod called "Integrated Implants" it adds some really wacky stuff that makes ghouls pretty nuts. I have 9 ghouls that basically deal with any threat.
Integrated Implants is pretty whack in general.
Note, installing a wooden arm reduces the ghoul's DPS, because... reduces manipulation.
You can put 2 claws + genes on long fingers and a tail, which will give an increase in manipulation and, accordingly, DPS. But, yes, it will reduce the speed =)
You can also place a inducer in the area with ghouls (which speeds up the work), it also increases the speed of movement, and the effect lasts for some time (ghouls do not have nervous breakdowns).
Flesh tentacle on the second arm: No attack with that arm, +20% manipulation.
Also good choice. But symmetry more appealing =)
Francis - "... death isn't the handicap it was back in the olden days"
I know a Red Dwarf quote when I hear one!
Lister - "..., it doesn't screw your career up like it used to." 😉
The reason I see for a melee pawn nowadays is a bioferrite longsword wielding caster getting the benefits of both a super powerful melee weapon (legendary bioferrite longsword is only behind masterwork and legendary persona monoswords, yes its better than a regular monosword and is craftable) and a psy boosting weapon like an eltex staff. In terms of psycasting bonuses its mixed, my understanding is on a pawn with limited psy investment its worse than a staff but with a lot of investment (genes, trait, other bioferrite gear, maybe even deathrest buffs) its better, mostly due to (both at legendary) the bioferrite longsword giving 1.2X sensitivity and the staff giving a flat +75%. Also a legendary bioferrite longsword is much easier to obtain than persona or eltex weapons of the same quality due to being craftable.
Ghouls fixed the innate frustration with running a melee pawn so its a 10/10 addition for me. I still think Vamps should be able to make ghouls on a cooldown, but the RW team has a history of leaving the different expansions as separate self-contained systems.
Also, the tease at 20:00 on of your Nugget collection deserves its own Tutorial Nugget. The fact that you have largely domesticated the anomaly on your playthrough is pretty impressive.
channel 27 has a hologram reading the news!
Oh... groovy funky Channel 27!!!
Also if you used bionics will the bionics be repaired super fast as well ? Because if it is repaired with unnatural healing I think a full set of bionic ghoul can be sooo much scarier (Like having bionic eyes can drastically improve dodging chances , or ofc bionic legs to help with the speed issue) And I wonder if you can make a vamp ghoul, as long as you aren’t fighting the imps , a vamp ghoul can be really appealing , like speed buffs from deathrest
Yes. They get repaired but if the bionic part is destroyed a normal part is what grows back.
So stack that ghoul with archotech arms, legs, and eyes. 😂
Deathrest buffs are kept after ghouling. So you can keep glucose forever. But I consider that an exploit
@@bemvas2484 Annoymoly at its current state is packed with exploits lol , I think they need sometime to iron cross DLC interactions out
Hi Francis, if you like ghouls, you should create your own genotype, you would be surprise by the superfast wound healing + superclotting combo.
I’m doing a tribal « no gun » run, with the genotype below and it’s amazing : it’s like dumbsh*t and Lunk had 5 kids, which are destroying the world on lucy and beers,
Travelling the day, cracking upon the ancient danger the night, for lucy, zeushammer and cyborg parts, like they were pinata.
Razing base like they were locust.
Leaving on berries.
No micromanagement, no cooking, no research, no worries, just pur fun.
Time to time, they come back to the base for psy levelling.
One day I accepted a quest for a resurrector mech serum with 3*60 impids raids under 24h, and they survived with severe scrathes but they all disappeared the next day.
I din’t buy the anomaly DLC so I couldn’t use your test map
the viking’s genotype
- hemegenic
- hemogen drain
- bloodfeeder
- longlump legs
- weak immunity
- superfast wound healing
- superclotting
- superpsy sensitive
- very fast runner
- very unhappy
- cold weakness
- fire resistant
- hyper-agressive
- Strong melee damage
- kill thirst
- kind instinct
- never sleep
- robust
- sterile
- very unattractive
- strong stomach
- robust digestion
- quick study
- dark vision
- major cell instability
- elongated fingers
- unstoppable
- smooth tall
- awfull shooting
- great melee
- awfull mining
- awfull cooking
- awull crafting
- awful artistic
- awful intellectual
- alcool dependency
I used mod for adding the traits tought and bloodlust
PS : sorry for my english, but I’m french and we are genetickly configured with awfull foreign langages.
Great video, love your tutorials.
Can you use ghouls to train up medical by constantly removing limbs. Can you pull their organs and if so are they usable?
Ghouls don't look to have organs so you can't remove them.
However they introduced a new surgery "surgical inspection" this surgery cannot be failed even by a weak doctor who is blind, in drug withdrawal and suffering from brain damage and two wooden hands. Since time taken to perform surgery determines exp gain this allows you to gain skills incredibly quickly.
Your ghouls also gain more hit points if they have a sh!t name. I’ve seen them being almost unstoppable on another Rimworld series…
Just curious, what can a cataphract legendary tough stoneskin Yttakin endure? The research was done against a normal human, not a Yttakin.
I understood that reference, Dave Rimmer (they both said it).
Regular pawns can be just as tough - even tougher. After all, regular pawn can have Robust+Tough+MetaBlood+Juggernaught+Stoneskin+Cata Armor.
The biggest upside is that they just ridiculously cheap to ressurect, compared to pawns. They are still too OP, but man they are too cheap to ressurrect.
nice tut video
Me: Sick as a dog and can't sleep.
FJ: Comes to my rescue with entertaining content
❤💜
does nimble and brawler effect ghouls?
Yes, nimble + tough is incredibly op against anything melee
Nuggets eh? Tutorial nuggets, EH?!
God, the ghoul shooting test range seems a little dark even for rimworld standards!
Francis gonna Francis....
like before i still like the metal blood heart… then you can decide if you activate it or not depending if the situation could get flammy. (Brings up the question if the serum stacks with the hearth) Ofc the gene is best if you get it. I did give all of them bionic legs against all the movement reduction. I like to put them a little bit before my pawns, to fight in the open, so they get shot by my people, why the extra from metal blood heart is great.
Metal blood heart does not stack with the serum unfortunately. I can see the use cases for it but considering how tough ghouls are already I just can't go with it over the speed boost.
A useful nugget
Use a weather controller to prevent weather messing up your testing.
Also the wooden hand doesn't just reduce the non-powerclaw attacks, its stops them entirely, but only if they don't have another body part that adds an attack. The original reddit post goes into it more.
Otherwise an excellent video as always
I linked the reddit post in the description in case anyone was interested.
LegenGary: a ghoul from Vault 108.
Ghouls also don't take armor damage. While yes, a Jedi in Cataphract armor with a shield belt _might_ be more useful, it's a lot higher maintainance. Save your nobles for speshul tacktiks.
My book report is called "Why Ghouls Are Awesome" by Francis John
I think you need to double-check the credits on this one; I think the lists got mixed up (e.g. NomadGunslinger showed up multiple times)
Good spot, I split the list in two and during the monthly update I copy pasted instead of cut pasted.
So the entire list was on the left instead of just one third. Sloppy of me.
If you get a creepjoiner with body mastery, you don't have to feed your ghoul. It's free real estate!
You forgot about the creepy joiner that doesn't need to eat +ghoul
What about the ex vampire ghoul? Does this makes a ghoul Immortal?
The issue I run into with ghouls is the killbox walls get destroyed before the ghouls!
I'm the #1 ghoul fan. They are so fun to use. Robust + metalblood serum is so incredibly easy to mass produce, bonus points if you add tough.
I read Yttakin as Yeet-ta-kin
I do believe that is close to the correct pronunciation. Francis often creates new ways to say things, though.
I read it as, eat-a-keen
Void Warcasket Ghouls
I feel like anomaly dlc is the type of thing you play with once then after that leave it off. Some of the events sounds more annoying than anything
It also seems like they spawn alot more than normal and most are run ending if not played properly.
@@chisenchouyou can change the percent chance anomaly events spawn in the settings
Link to the mod?
Don't forget the juggernaut serum! For the price of 20 twisted meat and 10 bioferrite you get 0.50 move speed, 150% melee damage, and 200% healing rate for 10 whole days!
Also ghouls barely contribute any raid points, that's a massive bonus especially if you are playing on 500%
Little off topic but bioferrite long swords are really good weapons. comparable to persona weapons. The sharp bonus from the material makes the main attack so high they never use the hilt.
side note for manhunter pulse:
Manhunter pulse works on every entity, not just fleshbeast
(shamblers are psy deaf, manhunter pulse will not work)
Link to mod¿
You could make the test less likely to be interrupted if you created an indoor building with roofs and lights so weather can't interrupt the test.
Store skin ghoul?
Ghouls are fantastic but getting a Vaffel is way more satisfying
Wait, that was only 22 minutes? Wheres the other 38 minutes?
I really like the metalblood heart. The speed is not too bad since I have them confined to a fridge set to high priority for meat, right next to my killbox.
They are always where they need to be, they are always ready, they never sleep.
Ghouls are Da Shitz 😉
You can install stoneskin on ghouls did you test that or no?
Yep, you can install stoneskin on ghouls. You can also install all the bionic/archotech limbs.
Tough, nimble, brawler, yttakin ghoul
I'll take twelve.
I turned a "body mastery" wanderer that came in, she was only a baseliner but had tough. turns out, the ghoul still didn't need to eat AT ALL.
Good luck trying to get a pawn with that trait, but if you can you can turn it into a ghoul that wont need food and you can stick it on patrol or just leave it at its post when not in use or in between raids
Can you give a ghoul trauma savant after ghoulification
They are probably just balanced with anomaly alone and not with the other DLC enabled
Nah dirty cheap melee pawn to create, resurrect and maintain is insanely broken, even compared to biotech mechs
That's not even everything that's good about them. They also don't count as colonists when counting pawn points for raid points calculation. They appear to be counted as if they were mechanoids with 30 power levels, which is to say that 5 ghouls produce the same amounts of pawn points as a single friendly scyther, which wouldn't perform as well in battle anyway.
Also, you mentioned ghouls getting hypothermia as a down side. I don't think that's a very likely scenario. Don't forget that the cold hyper-resistant and the fur tail genes do work on them (though not the fur gene) so you can splice them to have a comfortable minimum temperature of -54, which would mean they won't suffer from hypothermia above -64 celcius. Between -64 and -75 celcius, it will take them about 20 hours to get downed from hypothermia at which point your ghoul is long due for a meal break anyway. Other than mechs, there are only a handful of creatures in this game with a minimum comfortable temperature below -55.
Things need balancing in anomaly like
Ghouls. Too tough. At least if you resurrect they should lose skill in melee and not be able to use gene packs
Duplication, same deal, lose some levels and lose random psycasts, or or get non-curable hediff or something,
Manhunter pulse for anomaly beasts, a percentage chance to fail on a creature.
Creature escape, too easy to contain at the moment. Maybe random chance of escape goes up or every time someone enters to study a creature it has a higher chance of escape than normal
just a little tanky
Ghoul power? I prefer wight power
weaksauce? lol, they are probably the strongest contact fighters.
unnatural corpse is probably the only one who can absorb more damage.
Pointless Comment
2nd😂
i know no race named yattkin o.o i only know yttakin
When doing tests like this... Turn off the story teller.
Well, 1.3 already ruined this game, so obviously this is way far gone, but just had to observe that it is disgusting and human-like how the cockroaches what made the following versions pander to the worst desires of the most roachy redditors. Thankfully I am way past non NS financial decisions - when I torrented the to-be piece of shit (back at 1.1) I had a good sense of knowing the developers are such that the inevitable will indeed happen.
To me it was never sad how it died, as this was expected - I can't get over how mankind died.
Was the brawler trait removed in the new update? Is there a reason for not using it?
Brawler is a pretty weak trait.
Wait that is mean.
Brawler is +4 Melee and +4 chance to hit.
Brawler is handy but Tough is straight up better.
Nimble is +15 Melee Dodge Chance, which means you get hit less which means you take less damage, which means you get less injured which means more of your attacks hit.
Injured people are less likely to hit. So in a short fight Brawler is ok, but after a few hits are made Tough and Nimble just dominate.
For non ghoul fighters Tough, nimble, psy hypersensitve is the dream for a combat mage.
For ghouls it would be Tough, nimble and then Jogger would be my preferred.
Brawler just increases your chance to hit, having 16+ melee is usually all the hit you need.
So Brawler is good early on but gets weaker as your fighter gets more skilled.
To much Info sorry.
@@FrancisJohnYT not at all too much info. That's very informative. I was always under the impression brawler was a must for melee pawns. Usually I would look for tough, nimble, and brawler I was convinced it was a great combination.
Now knowing brawler can be replaced with other useful traits opens up some new ideas.
Glad you're running the numbers so I won't have to, now I'll sleep soundly knowing those psychopathic killing machines are in good hands. :)