Creepy joiner

Creepy joiners are an exclusive event for the Anomaly DLC. You can encounter creepy joiners even if you have not yet activated the monolith.

Summary

A random pawn appears that wants to join your colony. The pawn waits on the edge of your map for someone to be sent to talk to them. They usually have some great benefit, but come with large risks too.

If rejected, they can either depart peacefully or become hostile.

Joiners have a specific list of upsides and possible downsides. Not all combinations below are possible. For some options there is a minimum raid point requirement (e.g. metalhorror or fleshbeast emergence), and some types will be limited in their downsides and benefits (e.g., blind healer will always have unnatural healing, or someone with joybringer cannot have disturbing).

Creepy joiners cannot be studied, but some of their side effects such as entities can be.

The monolith does not need to be active for creepy joiners to appear.

Types

Main creepy joiner types (each has its unique backstory and equipment):

• Leathery stranger
• Dark scholar
• Deal maker
• Drifter
• Blind healer
• Timeless one
• Cult escapee
• Lone genius

Benefits

They can have one of the following benefits:

• Perfect human — Has the Perfect memory trait and a high value in all skills. The trait prevents their skills from degrading.
• Occultist — Has a bonus to research
• Shambler overlord — Has an ability to create create friendly shamblers
• Fleshcrafter — Has a Shape Flesh ability with a 1 hour cooldown, which converts a corpse into a fleshbeast that is hostile to all humans. The Fleshbeast created depends on the size of the corpse.
• Alchemist — Has a Transmute Steel ability with a 24 hour cooldown, which randomly converts one stack of steel or a steel slag chunk into plasteel, uranium, gold, bioferrite, or twisted meat.
• Joybringer — Has the Joyous trait, which provides a passive +3 mood boost to all pawns in your colony anywhere on the map
• Death refusal — Has the ability to self-resurrect themselves up to 4 times, healing lost limbs and organs each time. Scarring and resurrection sickness are possible.
• Body master — Has the body mastery trait, which completely removes the pawn's need for food, sleep, and comfort.
• Psychic butcher — Has an ability that can instantly kill and butcher pawns/animals/entities, turning them into twisted flesh.

Caption text

Name	Description
Unnatural healing	{PAWN_pronoun} offers to use {PAWN_possessive} healing power to help you. Has ability: Unnatural healing Use dark psychic influence to heal someone. The process will stop bleeding, restore blood loss, and can even heal significant injuries. However, it may also have unexpected side effects. Replicates the effect of a healer mech serum.[Verify] 25% chance to also replace one of the pawn's arms with a flesh tentacle. Target: Single non-mechanoid pawn. Cannot target self. Range: Touch Warmup Time: 270 ticks (4.5 secs) Cooldown: 360,000 ticks (6 in-game days) Charges: 1
Psychic slaughter	{PAWN_pronoun} offers to use {PAWN_possessive} healing power to help you. Has ability: Psychic slaughter Use dark psychic power to induce chaotic reconfiguration of flesh. This kills a flesh creature in seconds and converts its body into a pile of twisted flesh. Target: Single non-mechanoid pawn in LoS. Range: 4.9 tiles Warmup Time: 120 ticks (2 secs) Cooldown: 60,000 ticks (24 in-game hours) Charges: 1

Drawbacks

They can come with a downside as well, which occurs on a delay after living with your colony for a while:

• Nothing
• Desertion — The colonist will suddenly depart.
• Traitor — The colonist will suddenly become hostile, accompanied by a message about their evil expression.
• Metalhorror — The colonist is infected with a metalhorror.
• Crumbling mind — The colonist will experience a severe health effect that destroys their brain in a number of days. The crumbling can be healed with a healer mech serum or by another Blind Healer creepy joiner.
• Entity jailbreaker — The colonist will suddenly attempt to free all of your contained entities.
• Psychic agony — The colonist inflicts a psychic mood debuff on nearby colonists, psychic sensitivity applies to this effect
• Organ decay — The colonist will suddenly develop severe organ decay, requiring you to replace their heart, liver, kidneys, and lungs.
• Disturbing — The colonist mumbles and gives other colonists a negative mood debuff when interacting with them.

If they become aggressive, they can react in various ways:

• Basic assault
• Fleshbeast emergence — A fleshbeast emerges from the joiner, killing them in the process.
• Sightstealer attack — The joiner will scream and summon sightstealers.

Analysis

Creepy joiners often have many powerful, colony-changing abilities. Evaluate the possible tradeoffs above, and be prepared to deal with sudden turncoat behavior. Inspect the pawn's entire bio and health tab carefully before recruiting them.

If a creepy joiner is planning to become hostile somehow, they can be downed and recruited normally afterward. At this point, they are not planning anything further and become a "normal" colonist. Players can preempt most hostile plans and still keep the creepy joiner by immediately anesthetizing and arresting them.

Performing a medical inspection surgery right after recruiting a creepy joiner can sometimes reveal their downside early.

Creepy joiners with crumbling minds or organ decay can be paused until you're able to deal with the issue by placing the colonist inside a cryptosleep casket.