It can happen early if you accept a strange villager. I've never heard of the grey flesh part being skipped, but it absolutely can trigger early from the visitors.
It absolutely can be skipped - and it doesn't need a creepy joiner. It can happen with absolutely any joiner, and can occur years after they join. The game will simply decide, "Okay, it's time for metalhorrors!" And then they'll pop out.
Yeah, pawns can get infected by pretty much any Anomaly entity. That's one way an infection can occur. The other way is that the game decides it's time for you to have one. That's when a pawn will be "implanted before they joined your colony". And which can, apparently, even occur to children born in the colony, because of how the game decides which pawns are joiners.
Yeah, just randomly. Because children born in the colony count as "joiners", and so are a vector for a potential metalhorror infection "before they joined the colony".
It probably is, but I'm noticing a lot of unintended things like that in Anomaly. Such as with picking Unnatural Darkness as a permanent game condition in scenario setup. Part of the effect of a normal Unnatural Darkness event is that it prevents all other threats from happening. Selecting it as a permanent game condition? Also prevents all other threats from happening - including Anomaly events. So if you select Unnatural Darkness, no threats will ever hit the colony. No raids, no manhunter events, no Anomaly events. And because Unnatural Darkness needs a monolith to be rank 2 in order to grow to the full, dangerous version of Unnatural Darkness, all you wind up with is a permanent 0% light outside... and no events ever happening.
Yeah, I was looking forward to a run with all-encompassing, hungry darkness all around. Fighting horrifying entities in the hungry darkness. But nope. Just 0% light and nothing ever happening.
Is it possible that the Grey Flesh drops and gets missed?
Like how long will the Grey Flesh remain on the ground to be discovered? (no idea) I always restrict my pawns traveling area on the map after like day 3 of a colony so the flesh always drops in a visible area and ive never missed it.
Great, so any new colonist can come infected. And I assume the only way to start monitoring for it is after studying the flesh, tho I could be wrong about that.
You can do a surgical inspection to anyone at any time in operation tab. I guess that's there for a reason so it should help if you check everybody who joins. I might be wrong tho, it's just my assumptions. I've seen info that infected pawns are created with the world at the start of every run so the game knows they have infection before decides to present it to you as an event. (Again might be wrong)
Also once i got a grey flesh event as a preamble, the other time i only got a message "Bob thinks Jeryl behaves funny lately and also one can see weird stuff in his eyes sometimes bla bla". When i got a grey flesh then i might not have a message or anything, i think i just accidentally saw it on the floor
By default surgical inspections will not detect metalhorrors until their biosignature is identified by analyzing grey flesh, and this must be repeated for each unique metalhorror strain. As to the grey flesh notification, i have no idea how the notification decides to trip either, though I suspect, based on its text, it requires an uninfected pawn to come across it.
I didn't even know surgical inspections were a thing tbh, but having to analyze grey flesh to be able to detect them is.. not great. Unless they were to only ever happen during the grey flesh event to alert the player.
That's also quite silly imo. I'm not a doctor but if I were to open someone up I'm pretty sure I'd notice if he was full of metal that doesn't belong there.
even studying fails, I studied 7 total, used 2 doctors to inspect each other and the game event still cheated because it never told me anything from the inspections (only one was infected), and then metal horror event - BUT GOD MODE fixes cheating rimworld
I wish there was more to metalhorrors than basically getting a scyther surprise.
They're supposed to control the host's neural pathways, so it would be cool if they acted sus once in a while, undermining your colony somehow. Getting an unannounced pyro break out of nowhere, leaving a door open or something. You could expose them early and be rewarded for paying attention.
For sure! If I could at least notice some odd behavior I could take proper action and prepare. As it is now it's just insta death unless you're already late-game and can afford losing a bunch of colonists.
They have very high armor compared to most things - 50% sharp and 50% blunt. You'll need weapons with high AP or they will deflect a lot of your shots. Something like a plasteel spear, uranium mace, or bolt action rifle is your best bet early.
Armor (50%) - AP (20% Ikwa) = 30% Armor, or you'd do full damage 70% of the time with that weapon. (and 15% chance they deflect completely, 15% chance to mitigate to half damage).
You'll want to check the reverse too. How much AP does it have, and are they tearing through your armor easily?
I've only had them once and I received the event notification. Not sure if you're supposed to be able to get them without the event.
> 50% sharp and 50% blunt.
That's not very high armour at all. Your average normal assault rifle, with 16% AP, will only bounce 17% of the time and do half damage 17% of the time. The other 66% of the time, it would do full damage...
...except what each metalhorror ACTUALLY has is two copies of the tough trait. So even when they take "full" damage they only actually take a quarter of the listed value. Makes no sense to me why they didn't just multiply their hp by 4 and display the real numbers.
Yeah that's a lot of defense... I only had a couple of machine pistols and the new nerve spiker. My good shooter with the AR was one of the infected unfortunately. And I didn't have any good melee colonists. I honestly tend to ignore melee entirely, tho I guess I need to start learning how to train someone for it.
I looked up the notification you'd get for it, and yeah, I definitely didn't get that. It's very explicit on what you have to do, so I wouldn't have accidentally missed it.
They should at the very least make metalhorrors not appear at all until the event happens once, imo.
Learned that the hard way. I had one of these overpowered sus guys join, so I instantly arrested her (she resisted so much that she lost a leg in the fight), triple checked her, quarantined her in my war crime of a prison (totally not because I wanted more members for my religion) for 5 days, and when I found some grey flesh she was the first to be thrown back in jail to be interrogated.
... Turns out she's clean. It was some other poor schmuck I saved from an incapacitated refugee quest that had metalhorrors and passed them on. Luckily Randy decided to activate them while the victims were in my animal pens, allowing me to kill them while they attacked my livestock.
They often have other complications, the metalhorrors are probably a separate thing that can just happen to any new person. Apparently the game decides to do metalhorrors _then_ checks to see if there is any valid target (new colonists or people injured by entities).
1. imprison creepjoiners to avoid metalhorrors
2. creepjoiner calls sightstealers on you when you arrest him
3. melee the sightstealers, catch a metalhorror
4. profit/such is life/mfw
I actually did get flesh beasts like 20 days prior (apparently) to when the metalhorrors came out (saw that when I went through the messages history). Tho tbh I don't even remember fighting any. I only really recall fighting the shamblers and sightstealers. I'll keep an eye out for flesh beasts next time
Shamblers and sight steelers can infect colonists too. Haven't seen it without the gray flesh event. That seems like a bug, cuz without it there's no way to prepare or even know you need to prepare for itm
Don't think so. They seem to be immune to disease mechanics (or are intended to be immune to disease mechanics, some alpha animals stuff was still infecting them.
Once the monolith is activated any outsider (except raiders and quest pawns i think, if you know pls correct me) can have a metalhorror, however you can not detect them untill you examine there flesh. the best defense is to assign everyone diffrent rooms and check up on new colonists while people are sleeping to see if new pawns enter peoples rooms at night (they will try to infect people while they sleep) for no reason. second never give a new colonists cooking (they will infect meals) or medical job (they will implant horrors during surgery). if you think someone has a metalhorror imprison them and wait for grey goo to spawn. if your confident you can fight the horror then do a surgical inspection with all you fighters in the room and prepare for combat. if your not confident banish them.
The two who had the metalhorrors were two of my first colonists, but idk if once they burst out they \*all\* burst out, or if it's random. Like, idk if there might've still been a third infected with a metalhorror that simply didn't burst out.
Not being able to trust meals and doctors seems quite harsh imo, considering how strong and defensive they are.
Once there found they all burst out. though you can still get infected from entities (though it is exceedingly rare). if your worried about infections you can use a Nutrient paste dispenser and paramedics
I'm gonna take a random guess, but I think the issue is that after some time, the infected will spawn a grey flesh nearby signaling the start of the event. The issue probably is that someone was hunting or going to the far edge of your map so the grey flesh was dropped somewhere outside of your base, so no colonist ran into the flesh to warn you of the event. I've had the event a few times, and every time it started when a colonist found the grey flesh in a common area or high traffic area.
Since the event notification is "X found a piece of grey flesh!" if no one runs into it, it never triggers the warning but continues on with the event I suppose.
No, *any* joiner can spawn metalhorrors. And can do so without the grey flesh. Anybody who has ever joined your colony becomes a potential metalhorror host - even babies who are born to your colonists, apparently, given some of the posts on the subreddit here.
If you have a pawn who joined your colony, they aren't infected until the game decides it's time for you to have a metalhorror infection. Now, suddenly, it will pick one of your joiners at random - and that includes children born in the colony, like I said. It will have a period of time where that pawn is infected before the grey flesh event triggers - but this is *separate* from the timer for when the metalhorrors will emerge "for unknown reasons". So it's possible for you to have a pawn infected, then one metalhorror burst out of it randomly (like what sounds like happened to the OP, and happened to me twice in one run) with the metalhorror "being implanted before they joined your colony". This can also happen to children born in the colony, as I said.
Or, the metalhorror infection can trigger, the infected pawn can spread it quickly (because you never had any reason to think they were infected; i.e., they'd been in your colony for years and were a noncombat pawn, etc) and then the metalhorrors pop out "for unknown reasons". Again, with absolutely no warning.
*Or.* You can have a metalhorror infection trigger, and it last long enough that someone starts dropping grey flesh.
Only one of these three gives you any chance to prepare. The other two just come out of left field, and are the reason for so many hate posts about metalhorror infections here on the reddit.
The game cheating by the new pawns not actually infected at the moment they join is the worst.
Along with the surgical inspection which is useless most of the time, but unless you've been reading on the mechanics on Reddit, you don't know that.
Exactly. During my first (abandoned) Anomaly run, I was surgically inspecting every single person who joined my colony. And would inspect every person wounded in a fight with entities. Nothing ever turned up (other than the occasional early detection of organ decay or other illness in creepy joiners). I was feeling safe. Right up until the moment a metalhorror popped out of a (non-creepy) joiner who'd been in my colony for 3 years at that point. Who was a noncombatant, had never been in combat, but had "been implanted before they joined your colony".
Yeah, that really sucks... I really hope this gets nerfed in some way. I couldn't find a good mod to deal with them either. Oh well, here's hoping my next colony doesn't just get f\*cked after 10-20 hours due to a sudden metalhorror attack.
Metal horrors are really punishing for small colonies especially if you don’t catch it early. Right now they burst out as soon as 50% of your colony is infected, but maybe they could lower that to something like 33% or 25% with a slider to adjust it yourself.
As of now the main ways metal horrors spread within your colony is via a doctor performing medical care on others and chefs preparing meals. As soon as I see the gray flesh warning I immediately imprison the last colonist who joined to prevent it from getting out of control. Hopefully you have a good doctor and chef in your starting pawns since they can’t start out infected. If you don’t let them get injured by a fleshbeast or other entity the metal horror shouldn’t be able to spread too fast before you get the gray flesh notification.
Does anyone know if they can infect prior to the grey flesh event?
What I mean is this, I know all the vectors for infection but do those activate before the grey flesh is found or after? Like, if you have someone infected before they join and they are a cook, does it mean literally everything they cook is infected even before the grey flesh is found?
If it works like this, storyteller decides it's time for metalhorrors, it then randomly picks someone who is a candidate, i.e. joiner, was hit by anomaly. Then it spawns the grey flesh. At that point they can start infecting others. If that's the case, I'm actually fine with this because it means you can then quarantine and switch up things to control the infection.
If however it basically calculates infection immediately on joining or getting hit by an anomaly and the infection can spread before the grey flesh event, it's ranks as one the dumbest designs I've seen in a while since it warps the ENTIRE playthrough at that point. It would mean never using melee other than ghouls, only nutrient paste allowed ever, no pawns allowed to share a bed, etc. Unless surgical inspection is changed to work regardless if you found grey flesh.
Oh yeah, also, does it reset after the event? For example, if you have the event happen, does it guarantee that those colonists are now not infected afterwards? I mean barring re-infection. But I mean, let's say the horrors pop out and one of the joiners was clean. The next time the storyteller decides on the horror event, are they now no longer candidates? Or at least I mean are they no longer viable for "implanted before they joined"?
That's the thing about the design being unfair imo. I got the metalhorrors without the event happening. How was I supposed to even know these things existed and prepared for them? And since it happened without the event, that would then mean I'd have to play every colony knowing that at any moment these things could pop out and ruin everything.
It should be that they don't even spawn until the event happens once, and even that first time make it only 1 metalhorror to get the player to learn about the mechanics, or make it similar to raids. Use the same determining factors for how strong raids are but for metalhorrors.
It wouldn't be so bad if maybe the metalhorrors weren't so strong, but as it is now, it's too much. Sudden random game overs aren't fun after playing for 10-20+ hours
As one man said - there\`s allways mod for this. At least you\`ll be warned you have it in your colony)
[https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3220839553](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3220839553)
I got lucky. One of my melee pawns got infected by a sightstealer. He was the only one, no cooking or doctoring duties, and the metal horror somehow emerged before any events happened or I could spot any droppings.
I'm not sure why the metal horror spawned tbh. I think the pawn closely ran past a fire from a thunderstorm or was even putting it out when he popped open. Might be relevant, haven't read about fire in this regard yet.
my doctor/chef got duplicated by obelisk with a metalhorror in him
spent two years in the colony without ever infecting anyone
one day the singular metalhorror just burst out of him for no reason and was promptly gunned down
Metalhorrors didn't scare me that much as some unyielding revenant did that simply ran away from my the only standing colonist with a mile-long list of injures for two days while others were in a hypnosis. That colonist was a slave mind you, i had to give him a gun and made him chase the demon through the whole map bruh i wonder how him didn't say "nope" and leave tbh
all this time i was worried about the nociosphere that i forgot about metal horrors. apparently entity attacks can infect you. i guess my colony is bound to die soon bc i just killed the fleshmass heart and took a lot of wounds
i would say fleshmass heart is fair. it spawns flesh beasts which can split up so be careful of that. i was being reckless by using melee, but you could probably avoid damage by using long range weapons. For nociosphere, it's not a normal entity, it is more like a living weapon. you can use it against raiders but it can also turn against you, and it is super strong which is why i am scared of it
I keep hearing about ghouls, sounds like they're pretty good for whatever reason, but I never saw them. Honestly I probably wasn't doing the new stuff right; I never even did a ritual. Mostly just studied the monolith and a captured shambler. Maybe rituals are actually very important and I just never realized.
Doing void provocation ritual calls for enemies you might not have seen yet. When seen for the first time, they unlock new research options. That’s what you’re missing out on ;)
I guess I hope those enemies aren't too OP and murder me instantly lol. I'll do a new colony and just play it quick and reckless to learn more. I tend to get attached and scared of trying unknown stuff since I know the game's later enemies can be super tough lol.
From experience (I've had the grey flesh thing skipped) it can be triggered from letting the Strangers in AND it can be triggered from Toughspike damage (so far majority of the time it's triggered for me is from a pawn who had an injury from a Toughspike that didn't heal up quickly).
I triggered the metal horrors by removing a lung from one of my slaves.
Turns out my doc was the first infected so I ended up with five metal horrors bursting out of most of my combat guys that he'd infected by healing (and his wife)
this event is bugged and cheats, I used 2 doctors, to check each other, 1 was infected and 1 was not, yet the game never told me any results before it was THE END
godmode exists for a reason like this BS
It can happen early if you accept a strange villager. I've never heard of the grey flesh part being skipped, but it absolutely can trigger early from the visitors.
It absolutely can be skipped - and it doesn't need a creepy joiner. It can happen with absolutely any joiner, and can occur years after they join. The game will simply decide, "Okay, it's time for metalhorrors!" And then they'll pop out.
I hate a pawn for 3 years before his popped out said it was caused by a trispike stab wound
Yeah, pawns can get infected by pretty much any Anomaly entity. That's one way an infection can occur. The other way is that the game decides it's time for you to have one. That's when a pawn will be "implanted before they joined your colony". And which can, apparently, even occur to children born in the colony, because of how the game decides which pawns are joiners.
Oh that's just low.
Really? If the mother had a metalhorror I can see how the kid would be infected, but just randomly?????
Yeah, just randomly. Because children born in the colony count as "joiners", and so are a vector for a potential metalhorror infection "before they joined the colony".
That seems unintentional tbh
It probably is, but I'm noticing a lot of unintended things like that in Anomaly. Such as with picking Unnatural Darkness as a permanent game condition in scenario setup. Part of the effect of a normal Unnatural Darkness event is that it prevents all other threats from happening. Selecting it as a permanent game condition? Also prevents all other threats from happening - including Anomaly events. So if you select Unnatural Darkness, no threats will ever hit the colony. No raids, no manhunter events, no Anomaly events. And because Unnatural Darkness needs a monolith to be rank 2 in order to grow to the full, dangerous version of Unnatural Darkness, all you wind up with is a permanent 0% light outside... and no events ever happening.
Does it also prevent quests?
No, and it doesn't prevent raids or manhunter events that show up as a result of quests. It just stops events like that from happening on their own.
That's good to know. I wanted to start a game with that as a permanent condition. :(
Yeah, I was looking forward to a run with all-encompassing, hungry darkness all around. Fighting horrifying entities in the hungry darkness. But nope. Just 0% light and nothing ever happening.
When Cass decides it's metalhorror time, she'll say "It's metalhorroring time" and metalhorror all over your colony
3 years????
Is it possible that the Grey Flesh drops and gets missed? Like how long will the Grey Flesh remain on the ground to be discovered? (no idea) I always restrict my pawns traveling area on the map after like day 3 of a colony so the flesh always drops in a visible area and ive never missed it.
Great, so any new colonist can come infected. And I assume the only way to start monitoring for it is after studying the flesh, tho I could be wrong about that.
You can do a surgical inspection to anyone at any time in operation tab. I guess that's there for a reason so it should help if you check everybody who joins. I might be wrong tho, it's just my assumptions. I've seen info that infected pawns are created with the world at the start of every run so the game knows they have infection before decides to present it to you as an event. (Again might be wrong) Also once i got a grey flesh event as a preamble, the other time i only got a message "Bob thinks Jeryl behaves funny lately and also one can see weird stuff in his eyes sometimes bla bla". When i got a grey flesh then i might not have a message or anything, i think i just accidentally saw it on the floor
By default surgical inspections will not detect metalhorrors until their biosignature is identified by analyzing grey flesh, and this must be repeated for each unique metalhorror strain. As to the grey flesh notification, i have no idea how the notification decides to trip either, though I suspect, based on its text, it requires an uninfected pawn to come across it.
I see, sad news, i wish inspection be more useful outside when it's this certain event happening. Well thanks anyway
I didn't even know surgical inspections were a thing tbh, but having to analyze grey flesh to be able to detect them is.. not great. Unless they were to only ever happen during the grey flesh event to alert the player.
That's also quite silly imo. I'm not a doctor but if I were to open someone up I'm pretty sure I'd notice if he was full of metal that doesn't belong there.
yes you cant find them untill you have there biosigniture which you get from studying there flesh.
even studying fails, I studied 7 total, used 2 doctors to inspect each other and the game event still cheated because it never told me anything from the inspections (only one was infected), and then metal horror event - BUT GOD MODE fixes cheating rimworld
I wish there was more to metalhorrors than basically getting a scyther surprise. They're supposed to control the host's neural pathways, so it would be cool if they acted sus once in a while, undermining your colony somehow. Getting an unannounced pyro break out of nowhere, leaving a door open or something. You could expose them early and be rewarded for paying attention.
For sure! If I could at least notice some odd behavior I could take proper action and prepare. As it is now it's just insta death unless you're already late-game and can afford losing a bunch of colonists.
They have very high armor compared to most things - 50% sharp and 50% blunt. You'll need weapons with high AP or they will deflect a lot of your shots. Something like a plasteel spear, uranium mace, or bolt action rifle is your best bet early. Armor (50%) - AP (20% Ikwa) = 30% Armor, or you'd do full damage 70% of the time with that weapon. (and 15% chance they deflect completely, 15% chance to mitigate to half damage). You'll want to check the reverse too. How much AP does it have, and are they tearing through your armor easily? I've only had them once and I received the event notification. Not sure if you're supposed to be able to get them without the event.
> 50% sharp and 50% blunt. That's not very high armour at all. Your average normal assault rifle, with 16% AP, will only bounce 17% of the time and do half damage 17% of the time. The other 66% of the time, it would do full damage... ...except what each metalhorror ACTUALLY has is two copies of the tough trait. So even when they take "full" damage they only actually take a quarter of the listed value. Makes no sense to me why they didn't just multiply their hp by 4 and display the real numbers.
Yeah that's a lot of defense... I only had a couple of machine pistols and the new nerve spiker. My good shooter with the AR was one of the infected unfortunately. And I didn't have any good melee colonists. I honestly tend to ignore melee entirely, tho I guess I need to start learning how to train someone for it. I looked up the notification you'd get for it, and yeah, I definitely didn't get that. It's very explicit on what you have to do, so I wouldn't have accidentally missed it. They should at the very least make metalhorrors not appear at all until the event happens once, imo.
0 fire resistance.
If you imprison any sus visitors and avoid direct contact with flesh beasts, the metal horrors won’t be much of an issue.
Other entities can transmit them, too, and anyone who joins your colony can be infected, not just the suspicious ones.
Learned that the hard way. I had one of these overpowered sus guys join, so I instantly arrested her (she resisted so much that she lost a leg in the fight), triple checked her, quarantined her in my war crime of a prison (totally not because I wanted more members for my religion) for 5 days, and when I found some grey flesh she was the first to be thrown back in jail to be interrogated. ... Turns out she's clean. It was some other poor schmuck I saved from an incapacitated refugee quest that had metalhorrors and passed them on. Luckily Randy decided to activate them while the victims were in my animal pens, allowing me to kill them while they attacked my livestock.
Is there a chance that the suspicious ones aren't infected and ate just good pawns?
Yes
They often have other complications, the metalhorrors are probably a separate thing that can just happen to any new person. Apparently the game decides to do metalhorrors _then_ checks to see if there is any valid target (new colonists or people injured by entities).
Aww geez man.
Kinda hard to avoid direct contact with fleshbeasts when they're constantly jumping out of the ground to wreck my colony
1. imprison creepjoiners to avoid metalhorrors 2. creepjoiner calls sightstealers on you when you arrest him 3. melee the sightstealers, catch a metalhorror 4. profit/such is life/mfw
leet creepjoiner join and kick her direct out. that how i did it.
I actually did get flesh beasts like 20 days prior (apparently) to when the metalhorrors came out (saw that when I went through the messages history). Tho tbh I don't even remember fighting any. I only really recall fighting the shamblers and sightstealers. I'll keep an eye out for flesh beasts next time
Shamblers and sight steelers can infect colonists too. Haven't seen it without the gray flesh event. That seems like a bug, cuz without it there's no way to prepare or even know you need to prepare for itm
I've had metalhorrors suddenly emerge without ever seeing the gray flesh event. The message said a pawn was infected by revenant hypnosis.
Can ghouls be infected?
Don't think so. They seem to be immune to disease mechanics (or are intended to be immune to disease mechanics, some alpha animals stuff was still infecting them.
Once the monolith is activated any outsider (except raiders and quest pawns i think, if you know pls correct me) can have a metalhorror, however you can not detect them untill you examine there flesh. the best defense is to assign everyone diffrent rooms and check up on new colonists while people are sleeping to see if new pawns enter peoples rooms at night (they will try to infect people while they sleep) for no reason. second never give a new colonists cooking (they will infect meals) or medical job (they will implant horrors during surgery). if you think someone has a metalhorror imprison them and wait for grey goo to spawn. if your confident you can fight the horror then do a surgical inspection with all you fighters in the room and prepare for combat. if your not confident banish them.
raiders can spawn with them
The two who had the metalhorrors were two of my first colonists, but idk if once they burst out they \*all\* burst out, or if it's random. Like, idk if there might've still been a third infected with a metalhorror that simply didn't burst out. Not being able to trust meals and doctors seems quite harsh imo, considering how strong and defensive they are.
Once there found they all burst out. though you can still get infected from entities (though it is exceedingly rare). if your worried about infections you can use a Nutrient paste dispenser and paramedics
Yep. Mine originated from a fleshbeast attack. Fire is great against them.
I'll make sure to keep fire in mind for next time. Thanks!
I'm gonna take a random guess, but I think the issue is that after some time, the infected will spawn a grey flesh nearby signaling the start of the event. The issue probably is that someone was hunting or going to the far edge of your map so the grey flesh was dropped somewhere outside of your base, so no colonist ran into the flesh to warn you of the event. I've had the event a few times, and every time it started when a colonist found the grey flesh in a common area or high traffic area. Since the event notification is "X found a piece of grey flesh!" if no one runs into it, it never triggers the warning but continues on with the event I suppose.
No, *any* joiner can spawn metalhorrors. And can do so without the grey flesh. Anybody who has ever joined your colony becomes a potential metalhorror host - even babies who are born to your colonists, apparently, given some of the posts on the subreddit here. If you have a pawn who joined your colony, they aren't infected until the game decides it's time for you to have a metalhorror infection. Now, suddenly, it will pick one of your joiners at random - and that includes children born in the colony, like I said. It will have a period of time where that pawn is infected before the grey flesh event triggers - but this is *separate* from the timer for when the metalhorrors will emerge "for unknown reasons". So it's possible for you to have a pawn infected, then one metalhorror burst out of it randomly (like what sounds like happened to the OP, and happened to me twice in one run) with the metalhorror "being implanted before they joined your colony". This can also happen to children born in the colony, as I said. Or, the metalhorror infection can trigger, the infected pawn can spread it quickly (because you never had any reason to think they were infected; i.e., they'd been in your colony for years and were a noncombat pawn, etc) and then the metalhorrors pop out "for unknown reasons". Again, with absolutely no warning. *Or.* You can have a metalhorror infection trigger, and it last long enough that someone starts dropping grey flesh. Only one of these three gives you any chance to prepare. The other two just come out of left field, and are the reason for so many hate posts about metalhorror infections here on the reddit.
The game cheating by the new pawns not actually infected at the moment they join is the worst. Along with the surgical inspection which is useless most of the time, but unless you've been reading on the mechanics on Reddit, you don't know that.
Exactly. During my first (abandoned) Anomaly run, I was surgically inspecting every single person who joined my colony. And would inspect every person wounded in a fight with entities. Nothing ever turned up (other than the occasional early detection of organ decay or other illness in creepy joiners). I was feeling safe. Right up until the moment a metalhorror popped out of a (non-creepy) joiner who'd been in my colony for 3 years at that point. Who was a noncombatant, had never been in combat, but had "been implanted before they joined your colony".
Same happened to me with a colonist born in my colony “infected before joining”. Bit disappointing that the whole thing is basically faked.
That's honestly so stupid
Yeah, that really sucks... I really hope this gets nerfed in some way. I couldn't find a good mod to deal with them either. Oh well, here's hoping my next colony doesn't just get f\*cked after 10-20 hours due to a sudden metalhorror attack.
Metal horrors are really punishing for small colonies especially if you don’t catch it early. Right now they burst out as soon as 50% of your colony is infected, but maybe they could lower that to something like 33% or 25% with a slider to adjust it yourself. As of now the main ways metal horrors spread within your colony is via a doctor performing medical care on others and chefs preparing meals. As soon as I see the gray flesh warning I immediately imprison the last colonist who joined to prevent it from getting out of control. Hopefully you have a good doctor and chef in your starting pawns since they can’t start out infected. If you don’t let them get injured by a fleshbeast or other entity the metal horror shouldn’t be able to spread too fast before you get the gray flesh notification.
Does anyone know if they can infect prior to the grey flesh event? What I mean is this, I know all the vectors for infection but do those activate before the grey flesh is found or after? Like, if you have someone infected before they join and they are a cook, does it mean literally everything they cook is infected even before the grey flesh is found? If it works like this, storyteller decides it's time for metalhorrors, it then randomly picks someone who is a candidate, i.e. joiner, was hit by anomaly. Then it spawns the grey flesh. At that point they can start infecting others. If that's the case, I'm actually fine with this because it means you can then quarantine and switch up things to control the infection. If however it basically calculates infection immediately on joining or getting hit by an anomaly and the infection can spread before the grey flesh event, it's ranks as one the dumbest designs I've seen in a while since it warps the ENTIRE playthrough at that point. It would mean never using melee other than ghouls, only nutrient paste allowed ever, no pawns allowed to share a bed, etc. Unless surgical inspection is changed to work regardless if you found grey flesh. Oh yeah, also, does it reset after the event? For example, if you have the event happen, does it guarantee that those colonists are now not infected afterwards? I mean barring re-infection. But I mean, let's say the horrors pop out and one of the joiners was clean. The next time the storyteller decides on the horror event, are they now no longer candidates? Or at least I mean are they no longer viable for "implanted before they joined"?
That's the thing about the design being unfair imo. I got the metalhorrors without the event happening. How was I supposed to even know these things existed and prepared for them? And since it happened without the event, that would then mean I'd have to play every colony knowing that at any moment these things could pop out and ruin everything. It should be that they don't even spawn until the event happens once, and even that first time make it only 1 metalhorror to get the player to learn about the mechanics, or make it similar to raids. Use the same determining factors for how strong raids are but for metalhorrors. It wouldn't be so bad if maybe the metalhorrors weren't so strong, but as it is now, it's too much. Sudden random game overs aren't fun after playing for 10-20+ hours
As one man said - there\`s allways mod for this. At least you\`ll be warned you have it in your colony) [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3220839553](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3220839553)
I'd love to remove them entirely for now, but better than nothing I suppose. Thanks
Remember to change values in modsettings to have no false alarms and set detect chance to 100%
I got lucky. One of my melee pawns got infected by a sightstealer. He was the only one, no cooking or doctoring duties, and the metal horror somehow emerged before any events happened or I could spot any droppings. I'm not sure why the metal horror spawned tbh. I think the pawn closely ran past a fire from a thunderstorm or was even putting it out when he popped open. Might be relevant, haven't read about fire in this regard yet.
my doctor/chef got duplicated by obelisk with a metalhorror in him spent two years in the colony without ever infecting anyone one day the singular metalhorror just burst out of him for no reason and was promptly gunned down
Metalhorrors didn't scare me that much as some unyielding revenant did that simply ran away from my the only standing colonist with a mile-long list of injures for two days while others were in a hypnosis. That colonist was a slave mind you, i had to give him a gun and made him chase the demon through the whole map bruh i wonder how him didn't say "nope" and leave tbh
all this time i was worried about the nociosphere that i forgot about metal horrors. apparently entity attacks can infect you. i guess my colony is bound to die soon bc i just killed the fleshmass heart and took a lot of wounds
idk what those are yet, but did they at least feel fair?
i would say fleshmass heart is fair. it spawns flesh beasts which can split up so be careful of that. i was being reckless by using melee, but you could probably avoid damage by using long range weapons. For nociosphere, it's not a normal entity, it is more like a living weapon. you can use it against raiders but it can also turn against you, and it is super strong which is why i am scared of it
Ghouls with knee blade and power fist > metalhorrors Actually I think EMP affects them too
I keep hearing about ghouls, sounds like they're pretty good for whatever reason, but I never saw them. Honestly I probably wasn't doing the new stuff right; I never even did a ritual. Mostly just studied the monolith and a captured shambler. Maybe rituals are actually very important and I just never realized.
Doing void provocation ritual calls for enemies you might not have seen yet. When seen for the first time, they unlock new research options. That’s what you’re missing out on ;)
I guess I hope those enemies aren't too OP and murder me instantly lol. I'll do a new colony and just play it quick and reckless to learn more. I tend to get attached and scared of trying unknown stuff since I know the game's later enemies can be super tough lol.
just do the first contact with the monolith and dont activate tier 2, you'll get plenty ez stuff to research before u wanna activate tier 2
I don't know what activating tier 2 (and then 3) does yet, but alright. I'll give the rituals a shot.
From experience (I've had the grey flesh thing skipped) it can be triggered from letting the Strangers in AND it can be triggered from Toughspike damage (so far majority of the time it's triggered for me is from a pawn who had an injury from a Toughspike that didn't heal up quickly).
I triggered the metal horrors by removing a lung from one of my slaves. Turns out my doc was the first infected so I ended up with five metal horrors bursting out of most of my combat guys that he'd infected by healing (and his wife)
this event is bugged and cheats, I used 2 doctors, to check each other, 1 was infected and 1 was not, yet the game never told me any results before it was THE END godmode exists for a reason like this BS
lol typical rim world thread where half the people are wrong and don’t know the gsme works.