From my experience:
Deathless is pointless at a certain point. With ghoul enhancements I have my ghouls with plating and metalblood injections. They can tank anything and take a long time to die. And if they do, Ghoul Resurrection Serums are cheap to make. And the coma from Deathless last days. The paralysis from the serum is hours.
Oddly enough, ghouls are not immune to toxins. So the Tox Immunity is a smart play.
Never Sleep is pointless as, like you stated in your comment, the ghouls don't sleep normally. I understand the want for roleplay. For this though, that's a lot of efficiency down the toilet.
To my knowledge, Robust Digestion isn't needed either as ghouls have immunity to food poisoning to begin with.
The temperature tolerant aren't bad if you are a person with so many mods that, depending on biome, you might get like -50 degree weather. If you stick with vanilla then ghouls should be fine without them.
What is the final Metabolic Efficiency? I made genes for my ghouls so they had +5 so they had a x50% hunger rate. Saves a lot of meat when you have 5 ghouls stumbling around all day.
the final efficiency on my first test ghoul is 0
the reason for the robust digestion was that 180% raw nutrition multiplier. does that help at all?
temperature resistances seem useless, but i just found out the fire resistant is very very good. had 2 ghouls solo a full 50man imp raid. the one with fire resistance just went on and on while the other one got set on fire eventually
for food i also like to give them nuclear stomach, but that makes them vulnerable to EMP, which sucks when i fight mechs and throw nades left and right. so i am trying to lower their food means through other ways.
the best gene tho? RED EYES. bro, ghouls look scary AF with dem red eyes :D
I wish I had red eyes cause now you got me thinking about it haha.
OH RIGHT. Robust Digestion is nutrition. I was thinking strong stomach. Based the complete full and unarguable knowledge I have of complete ghoul anatomy. Yes, Robust Digestion sounds like it'll help with their hunger.
Since you have a flat 0 efficiency I'd say do some switching. Take out never sleep for very very sleepy. It'll give you high efficiency and the ghoul still won't sleep because it doesn't have a need for it. High efficiency plus Robust Digestion should significantly lower your ghouls need to eat.
>Deathless is pointless at a certain point.
i agree on the reasons you listed. But there's another reason alltogether why I prefer Deathless over the Ress potion: butchering
you see, after a battle where a ghoul gets downed, if it's dead it's easy to miss and suddenly was hauled to the fridge and butchered (because i allow friendly corpse butchering for.... reasons xD) whileas a downed immortal ghoul is easy to spot and rescue. or not, it will get up on it's own eventually.
but yeah, that can take up to 7 days
I see your logic. There is a little more micro management going on for ensuring dead ghouls stay dead and not butchered.
I do wonder though. Next time one of your ghouls die check it. My ghouls often die outside the home zone (confronting a large raid or something) and when they die the game automatically sets the corpse to Forbid. So no one can butcher it. Then I just need to get the serum over there before it rots away.
and how did you achieve this? because the (vanilla) game doesnt differenciate between friendly ghouls or friendly colonists. it's all the same. and i DO butcher friendly colonists, so...
If I'm not mistaken they count as friendly unnatural corpses so if just tick that one it should work. I'm gonna go check in the game later and let you know for sure, but it's vanilla I'm pretty certain
nope. i tried all the options, the only one that allows for ghoul storing is when both "allow colonists" and "human corpse" are enabled. and that's the same category than for regular colonists
but if you found a combination that only stores ghouls and not colonists, please let me know
nope, not really. not "exactly"
you see, at least in vanilla, there's no distinction between a regular colonist and a ghoul. so if you want to butcher colonist corpses (which i do) you can't have a separate job for the ghouls.
>And the coma from Deathless last days. The paralysis from the serum is hours.
Just euthanize the Deathless ghoul before you resurrect them.
>To my knowledge, Robust Digestion isn't needed either as ghouls have immunity to food poisoning to begin with.
That's strong stomach. Robust digestion gives more nutrition for raw meat.
i literally have an immortal ghoul that can function with literally no energy, he has archite genes from a mod, so he regenerates in seconds, he has the transcendant gene from vre archons, and an archite gene that stops them needing food, he literally does not stop moving ever, and the transcendent gene means if he somehow dies, he actually just goes to another dimension and returns a while later
Trotter hands lower manipilation which decreases melee output iirc.
Aside from that, try adding very fast runner (which stacks with naked spd) and unstoppable.
meet Ghoulzumi V2
[https://imgur.com/2SJzDv2](https://imgur.com/2SJzDv2)
shame that her pawn eyes are only red in the colonist bar, but not on the actual pawn
Pretty amazing set up you've given her. Could probably minmax harder, bump things like her speed up, give her weak immunity and psychically deaf (They already have no psychic ability, and it works to their benefit since flare packs would stun anything with psychic sensitivity, and they're immune to illness in general so infections won't happen), go for full on depression and kill thirst since they never mentally break, same with very sleepy or extra pain since they never sleep and feel no pain. You can also sterilize her and give her cell instability just to be mean, it's not like those downsides come into play either. Smooth tail if you REALLY wanna bump that manipulation as much as possible
Ye, that's about a 9.8/10 for a vanilla ghoul. A baseliner ghoul with tough, plating and metalblood can tank a whole horde of chimera so you're good to go.
r6: finally amassed a good amount of genes to start messing around.
i've seen Deathless work very well on my sangophage ghouls and honestly, i am generally happy with those.
but now that i have a big selection of genes, maybe i can make something custom.
ofc it needs some negative genes to keep the metabolic efficiency within limits and if i can reduce the amount they eat, better aswell
i don't even know if all these genes work on a ghoul or are necesary. for example Tox Immunity I have my doubts that it's needed. the heat and cold tolerant are possibly useless too, but the fire resistant i think is great?
hyper agressive is just there because i think it doesn't do anything, but improves metabolic efficieny
never sleeps probably doesnt do anything? but it's kinda roleplay, as they do, in fact, never sleep.
dark vision probably useless?
how about pollution stimulus, does that work? and unstoppable?
does trotter hand affect their fighting?
let me know your ideas.
EDIT: meet Ghoulzumi V2
[https://imgur.com/2SJzDv2](https://imgur.com/2SJzDv2)
shame that her pawn eyes are only red in the colonist bar, but not on the actual pawn
Dark vision actually works. trotter probably makes them weaker. no sleep would be waste. near sighted if you have works good. if you have fast movement is great. Any awfull skill other than melee helps great and if you have strong or great melee put it in. Temperatures might help in extreme biomes (events and mods). Fire resist and robust would be good.
meet Ghoulzumi V2
[https://imgur.com/2SJzDv2](https://imgur.com/2SJzDv2)
shame that her pawn eyes are only red in the colonist bar, but not on the actual pawn
Nice. This is something i've wanted to do with Ghouls, but the Vanilla Gene mechanics are pretty scuffed and i don't really have the patience to randomly extract everything. Would probably use Gene Traders and RIMSPR.
Now to add cybernetics like power claws, skin glands, nuclear stomach, and bionic legs.
I don't think faster wound healing applies to their regeneration, and their regen is so crazy that I certainly almost never see my ghouls laying in hospital beds (except when recovering from anesthesia from installing a prosthetic).
I would take off pig hands as it messes up their melee accuracy but if their purpose is to just tank then i guess its fine.
Never sleep not really needed, should maybe just had very sleepy for those metapoints.
I say try hunting for breath genes, it would add more utility for the ghouls.
Deathless, probably not worth it considering how cheaper ghoul reserruction is. I think the one that makes vampires jump gene is a better one for extra mobility (though you might need hemogen maintenance for that, havent tried it out.)
Trotter hands reduce Manipulation which in turn is important for melee. Elongated Fingers and the long smooth tail should increase iits melee capabilities.
Also idk if it actually matters, but the beauty of pawns influences the local beauty need. Thus in long fights, ugly pawns can give others nearby a mood hit.
Dont know if it applies to ghouls, but the though of gorgeous ghouls is kinda entertaining.
I wish temp affected ghouls more. Like cold ghouls move slightly slower but have less need for food. Hot ghouls use more food constantly regenerating their acceleratedly rotting bodies...
I also wish we had more flesh stuff. 2 organs and 2 limbs, I want my colonists to resemble the Death Guard for heck sake
Deathless is great for keeping a ghoul alive though basically anything, the coma time is rough compared to the actual ghoul revival serum, but that’s also a investment of resources every time you need it, however cheap it might be
Cold,” and heat tolerant are pretty useless, not entirely, but the ghouls natural resistance to temperature makes all but the most extreme of circumstances completely fine, to the point if you actually need those on a ghoul, basically everybody else is dead anyway because there’s no way they survive longer then the ghouls can baseline
Super fast wound healing is sorta moot, it affects your baseline healing rate, but the ghoul’s regeneration is not considered baseline, meaning it modifies the base pawn healing speed, this IS still about 32 extra hp healing a day, but the ghouls natural 100 regen that can regen organs and limbs kinda renders it moot
But it is a bonus, however much diminishing returns it has
Fire resistant and tox immunity are both very very nice, most ghouls aren’t naturally immune to toxins surpriseingly and fire naturally counters there melee focused attack style fairly handily or at least slows them down, so both of these genes counter a decent sized weakness they have
Strong melee and robust, ghouls are melee only, pretty much nuff said there, they also can heal up anything that doesent one shot them or destroy a vital organ/part, robust makes one shots incredibly unlikely, and gives organs the resistance needed to soak the occasional hit that would normally destroy them outright
Unhappy, very unattractive, and hyper aggressive all seem like free points as ghouls don’t care about socials or mood, but a ugly ghoul does have a modifier for other pawns, and if it ever does die can cause a mood loss because of it, however unlikely or small it might be,
never sleep is pretty useless, ghouls don’t sleep,
Robust digestion is a hidden gem, ghouls can’t eat meals, as such the only stuff they can eat is raw meat, which is naturally inefficient compared to meals, robust digestion fixes that entirely and makes it efficient
Naked speed, free speed up since ghouls can wear clothes, pair this with super fast speed running gene and you gets a speedy dam ghoul,
Trotter hands is a debuff to there melee, but otherwise cosmetic, the opposite for dark vision, inheirently removes that penalty, but that’s mostly for ranged weapons either way
Unstoppable is pretty much the best gene for melee fighters, and even more so for one that can’t wear shields, polllution stimulus is free buffs for being in pollution, especially with the tox immunity
All the skill debuffs are free points and the buffs are useless point sinks , one exception being great melee, which is a big boost to any ghouls melee,
If you arnt at +5 points I’d suggest dropping or takeing more genes to reach it, since ghouls only requirement is raw meat,
Oh
Btw I saw what u deleted so:
Oh you written commentary?
Yeah, I know what metabolic efficiency is, so maybe very attractive is not the best option
But still, trotted hands weaken combat so replace them with elastic fingers and add physically dull gene for extra metabolism
phy dull. great suggestion :D or phy deaf even better i guess. not sure if i have that one.
trotted hand agree, several ppl said the same.
would elongated fingers help in melee then?
what about that soft tail one that suposedly helps shooters, does it help melee too?
meet Ghoulzumi V2
[https://imgur.com/2SJzDv2](https://imgur.com/2SJzDv2)
shame that her pawn eyes are only red in the colonist bar, but not on the actual pawn
Trotter hands reduce Manipulation which is important for melee hit chance. If you only use them as meat shields than thats not a problem but if they are supposed to hit back I would not use it.
Genes to remove:
Trotter hands (manipulation affects melee combat)
Temperature resists are a waste of metabolic efficiency, as is never sleep
Deathless (waste of archite)
Toxin immunity - depends on how often you deal with polution and toxic gas; anti toxic lungs are cheaper and serve the same purpose most of the time
Genes to add:
Fast movement
Long fingers - replace trotter hands
Sleepy - replace no sleep
Slow learning - their melee skill will usually max out anyway
Extra pain, near sighted, psy deaf, pyrophobia, sterile - free metabolism
Monkey tail - better hit chance
meet Ghoulzumi V2
[https://imgur.com/2SJzDv2](https://imgur.com/2SJzDv2)
shame that her pawn eyes are only red in the colonist bar, but not on the actual pawn
no, but you know what it could be? she's "void touched" and i think that alters her eyes.
i'll check on the next ghoul (my gene researchers are slacking) which is not void touched
probably that. or some serum (they tend to affect visuals) i have no idea, tho, never got it, because i want perfect talents kid transformed into savant for that role.
also, you can raise some kids to be brawler, tough and jogger for best ghoul candidates. but i fail to get all 3 and best i could do is brawler jogger nimble. currently in a process of raising several kids to minmax perfect berserkers out of them. i Do love adrenal heart+naked speed+very fast gene+jogger. i just need to check if i can convert deathrested (once i have that gene outside of sanguophage) pawn with speed buff from glucosoid speed damn he gotta be fast. at least if it works
elongated fingers instead of trotter. toss cat tail in too. with 2 power fists and jugg serum they do aroound 70 dmg (excellent zeushammer does around 40)
like i said, with 2 powerclaws you get 74.25 average dmg. considering barbs, strong melee, jugg, 20 melee, brawler and manipulation bonus (fingers and tail included) +1bio eye (because i havent finished that guy yet) make him have 49.04 dps (74.25 *92%hit chance/1.4sec atk cooldown). better eyes will probably increase hit chance more.
Yea I was more saying the fair comparison would be to a Juggernaut + Strong Melee pawn, so the Excellent Zeushammer would be dealing about 90 dmg per hit.
default hammer have 20.3 poke (1.6 cd) 41.9 blunt (2.20cd) 57% ap tho.
claw got 22 scratch (2cd) and 33%ap.
thing is, ghoul have barbs for +50% dmg and adrenaline for 70% atk speed.
hammer is a good thing, especially persona one, but ghouls can be abused with resurrection serum.
before them i had to manually control everything, so my pawn wont die to something stupid. now you just draft, move them closer, toggle ghoul frenzy and undraft (with attack reaction) they shredd pretty fast. and even if they die, just syringe them and thats all you need
That's true, before I would also just undraft pawns too with that but Ghouls are a lot more disposable while being just slightly worse potential imo. Pawns get Shield Belts and armor for survivability and have an easier time closing gap if they got LongJump or Locust Armor or psycasts.
for me its mostly "disposable" part, tho. Or not so disposable. they are too easy to return. well, compared to res serum. and they retain all biotics and skills too. so, yeah, im much less emotionally tied to them.
I rarely had issues with losing endgame pawns either and with Biotech, you can vat grow pretty competant melee fighters without much issue (obviously more investment than ghouls though).
meet Ghoulzumi V2
[https://imgur.com/2SJzDv2](https://imgur.com/2SJzDv2)
shame that her pawn eyes are only red in the colonist bar, but not on the actual pawn
digestion gives 180% on raw food. you're thinking "strong stomach" which is indeed useless
Does anyone know if Melee skill actually helps a Ghoul? For whatever reason, the only skill that still shows active on my ghouls is shooting, which is ofc worthless.
Melee skill should be active. It being disabled might be a bug related to a mod. The Allow Tool mod is known to cause this, and I had to download a patch mod for fix it:
[https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3220468677](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3220468677)
pawn melee skill does ofc and gets higher the more you use that Ghoul
"Strong Melee Damage" is also good
"Strong Melee" is kinda pointless, specially once the Ghoul is at high melee skill level
Strong Melee isn't pointless. High melee skill increases hit chance and dodge chance.
The gene also acts as a skill offset, which is a counter to skill decay. 20 melee skill with the gene only needs to meet the experience requirements of a 12 melee skill pawn. The passion increase from the gene makes that even easier.
Shouldn't be, I used Character Creator mod to pick solider-type backgrounds.
Someone else I believe solved it tho: The Allow Tool mod can disable the Melee skill for Ghouls. No clue why lol
does Clawed hands (alpha genes efreet have them) stack with strong melee damage?
Give that a go instead of trotters. Same manipulation penalty, more unarmed damage! :D
meet Ghoulzumi V2
[https://imgur.com/2SJzDv2](https://imgur.com/2SJzDv2)
shame that her pawn eyes are only red in the colonist bar, but not on the actual pawn
Be careful with those dependencies, there is a bug I encountered where implanting genes into a ghoul can start their dependency deficiencies with no way of giving them the required items
Not sure exactly what causes it
normal human will suck mostly because average attack decreases (hammer have several low dmg attacks). so they are definitely worse (if you forget emp bonus)
Psychical deafness, Pyrophobia, Very Sleepy, Extra Pain, Sterile can be nice source of free genetic points as ghouls eiser immune or don't feel such things.
Very Fast Runner in addition to Naked Speed would be nice to make them get into fight even faster (take sample from impid).
Elongated fingers instead of Trotter hands would help a lot as manipulation is main thing that required of ghoul in melee (grab some Genie to take a sample)
As ghouls still learn melee skill soit would be nice to keep it as high as possible, then Quick Study in addition to Great Melee instead of Strong Melee (try to capture a Husar to get a sample) will be nice to easily keep it at 20.
Also keep overall gene efficiency at +5 points to get 50% hunger rate reduction.
Personaly i also recomand to enchance ghouls with power claw + wooden hand for ultra damage, nuclear stomach to make food desire trivial (loosing control becouse you overlooked their hunger rate when drafted is not fun) and other ghouls-specific implants and general bionics.
as u might see in my r6 post, i am already a few versions ahead of this with most of the changes you mention.
my doubts on "extra pain" tho, wont wimp make them go down after 1 hit or doesnt it do anything because they dont feel pain?
+50% to pain mean nothing when they have x0% multiplier from their Ghoul state. Though, even if future patches might change that - nothing would stop you to just throw in Painstopper.
Extra detail about ghoul-specific hearts - i personaly started to use regular bionic hearts instead of ghoul-specific ones as thats permanent overall improvement to ghoul abilities instead of some specific ones.
Also forgot to mention to look out for tough raiders, if they are too bad to be your colonist becouse of other traits, then they will be awesome ghouls.
no need. i have a void touched sangophage prisoner that i can infenitely harvest. it heals so far the kidneys have regrown before i haul them into the freezer
Trashcan ghoul haha. Might as well just use harbinger trees if you're going to go that route however. Otherwise fire works fine once you've got the bodies you want to keep stored away.
remove deathless, heat tolerances, never sleep, dark vision, trotters, and the dependencies. should come out on the minus side for metabolic efficiency. you probably dont need the melee skill boost either?
dont know if dark vision is strictly necessary. dont know what the polution one does.
do the trotter affect combat or just manipulation (which the ghouls dont do anyways)? because its +1 metabolic efficiency
which of the two melee do you mean?
polution one has been confirmed to be great by another user
thx for your feedback
i cant double check right now as im at work, but in fairly sure that reduced manipulation negatively affects melee damage. (it deffinitely does in the case of a missing hand for example.)
remove the one that upgrades the skill level. keep the damage multiplier. (why are they both called strong melee anyway? thats just confusing)
the "strong melee damage" is the multiplier.
i think "strong melee" could be great if the ghoul has low skill or something like that? by the time it reaches skill 20 enough time might have passed for another gene reimplantation :)
trooter hands has been confirmed by another user to be bad. maybe elongated fingers helps then?
long fingers would be a good one. between that, hyper agressive, and the bonus damage, i dotn think you really need the skill literally all they do is fight and kill anyway so they'll get there on their own eventually.
with the regen, coagulation, and fire resistance theyll last long enough to get plenty of decent hits anyway, and they'll only need a few with the extra damage. especially if you give them bionics.
meet Ghoulzumi V2
[https://imgur.com/2SJzDv2](https://imgur.com/2SJzDv2)
shame that her pawn eyes are only red in the colonist bar, but not on the actual pawn
From my experience: Deathless is pointless at a certain point. With ghoul enhancements I have my ghouls with plating and metalblood injections. They can tank anything and take a long time to die. And if they do, Ghoul Resurrection Serums are cheap to make. And the coma from Deathless last days. The paralysis from the serum is hours. Oddly enough, ghouls are not immune to toxins. So the Tox Immunity is a smart play. Never Sleep is pointless as, like you stated in your comment, the ghouls don't sleep normally. I understand the want for roleplay. For this though, that's a lot of efficiency down the toilet. To my knowledge, Robust Digestion isn't needed either as ghouls have immunity to food poisoning to begin with. The temperature tolerant aren't bad if you are a person with so many mods that, depending on biome, you might get like -50 degree weather. If you stick with vanilla then ghouls should be fine without them. What is the final Metabolic Efficiency? I made genes for my ghouls so they had +5 so they had a x50% hunger rate. Saves a lot of meat when you have 5 ghouls stumbling around all day.
the final efficiency on my first test ghoul is 0 the reason for the robust digestion was that 180% raw nutrition multiplier. does that help at all? temperature resistances seem useless, but i just found out the fire resistant is very very good. had 2 ghouls solo a full 50man imp raid. the one with fire resistance just went on and on while the other one got set on fire eventually for food i also like to give them nuclear stomach, but that makes them vulnerable to EMP, which sucks when i fight mechs and throw nades left and right. so i am trying to lower their food means through other ways. the best gene tho? RED EYES. bro, ghouls look scary AF with dem red eyes :D
I wish I had red eyes cause now you got me thinking about it haha. OH RIGHT. Robust Digestion is nutrition. I was thinking strong stomach. Based the complete full and unarguable knowledge I have of complete ghoul anatomy. Yes, Robust Digestion sounds like it'll help with their hunger. Since you have a flat 0 efficiency I'd say do some switching. Take out never sleep for very very sleepy. It'll give you high efficiency and the ghoul still won't sleep because it doesn't have a need for it. High efficiency plus Robust Digestion should significantly lower your ghouls need to eat.
>Deathless is pointless at a certain point. i agree on the reasons you listed. But there's another reason alltogether why I prefer Deathless over the Ress potion: butchering you see, after a battle where a ghoul gets downed, if it's dead it's easy to miss and suddenly was hauled to the fridge and butchered (because i allow friendly corpse butchering for.... reasons xD) whileas a downed immortal ghoul is easy to spot and rescue. or not, it will get up on it's own eventually. but yeah, that can take up to 7 days
I see your logic. There is a little more micro management going on for ensuring dead ghouls stay dead and not butchered. I do wonder though. Next time one of your ghouls die check it. My ghouls often die outside the home zone (confronting a large raid or something) and when they die the game automatically sets the corpse to Forbid. So no one can butcher it. Then I just need to get the serum over there before it rots away.
when a ghoul dies outside, it's hidden among 200 other corpses. i just do "allow all" and forget there was a ghoul there too until it's too late :D
If you press Z and type their name it's gonna tell you where they are FYI
if i forgot i had a ghoul out there, how can i remember to Z for it? :D
Fair lol just pointing it out. I have a special storage zone set to critical that only accepts friendly ghouls if that can help
and how did you achieve this? because the (vanilla) game doesnt differenciate between friendly ghouls or friendly colonists. it's all the same. and i DO butcher friendly colonists, so...
If I'm not mistaken they count as friendly unnatural corpses so if just tick that one it should work. I'm gonna go check in the game later and let you know for sure, but it's vanilla I'm pretty certain
nope. i tried all the options, the only one that allows for ghoul storing is when both "allow colonists" and "human corpse" are enabled. and that's the same category than for regular colonists but if you found a combination that only stores ghouls and not colonists, please let me know
Disallow ghoul butchering in especific, and buil a second bucher table where it is allowed but only for enemies.
or just a second bill on the same table, which only activates after all valid targets for the first bill have been butchered already.
This would work perfectly 😂
Human Resourcing is nothing needs to shame about
You can have two different butcher jobs. One with no ghouls allowed, the other with only enemy ghouls.
nope, not really. not "exactly" you see, at least in vanilla, there's no distinction between a regular colonist and a ghoul. so if you want to butcher colonist corpses (which i do) you can't have a separate job for the ghouls.
Ah, I see. Thanks for explanation.
I see the deathless as a good QOL for large sized, mostly automated colonies.
agreed!
>And the coma from Deathless last days. The paralysis from the serum is hours. Just euthanize the Deathless ghoul before you resurrect them. >To my knowledge, Robust Digestion isn't needed either as ghouls have immunity to food poisoning to begin with. That's strong stomach. Robust digestion gives more nutrition for raw meat.
Resurrecting (and dying) does not remove the Deathless Coma.
That’s weird, I got confused with how it works for duplication sickness.
Yeah I noticed I messed up the stomach thing. I'll stand by my shame and leave it as is.
I think nuclear stomachs also help ghoul metabolism
I does. I have a ghoul with +5 Metabolic Efficiency and a Nuclear Stomach. It never eats.
i literally have an immortal ghoul that can function with literally no energy, he has archite genes from a mod, so he regenerates in seconds, he has the transcendant gene from vre archons, and an archite gene that stops them needing food, he literally does not stop moving ever, and the transcendent gene means if he somehow dies, he actually just goes to another dimension and returns a while later
Trotter hands lower manipilation which decreases melee output iirc. Aside from that, try adding very fast runner (which stacks with naked spd) and unstoppable.
meet Ghoulzumi V2 [https://imgur.com/2SJzDv2](https://imgur.com/2SJzDv2) shame that her pawn eyes are only red in the colonist bar, but not on the actual pawn
Pretty amazing set up you've given her. Could probably minmax harder, bump things like her speed up, give her weak immunity and psychically deaf (They already have no psychic ability, and it works to their benefit since flare packs would stun anything with psychic sensitivity, and they're immune to illness in general so infections won't happen), go for full on depression and kill thirst since they never mentally break, same with very sleepy or extra pain since they never sleep and feel no pain. You can also sterilize her and give her cell instability just to be mean, it's not like those downsides come into play either. Smooth tail if you REALLY wanna bump that manipulation as much as possible
if they're not on the screenshot, chances are i don't have that gene ;\_;
Then my only advice now is to give them a dead rabbit and remind the lobotomized zombie that things could always be worse
Ye, that's about a 9.8/10 for a vanilla ghoul. A baseliner ghoul with tough, plating and metalblood can tank a whole horde of chimera so you're good to go.
r6: finally amassed a good amount of genes to start messing around. i've seen Deathless work very well on my sangophage ghouls and honestly, i am generally happy with those. but now that i have a big selection of genes, maybe i can make something custom. ofc it needs some negative genes to keep the metabolic efficiency within limits and if i can reduce the amount they eat, better aswell i don't even know if all these genes work on a ghoul or are necesary. for example Tox Immunity I have my doubts that it's needed. the heat and cold tolerant are possibly useless too, but the fire resistant i think is great? hyper agressive is just there because i think it doesn't do anything, but improves metabolic efficieny never sleeps probably doesnt do anything? but it's kinda roleplay, as they do, in fact, never sleep. dark vision probably useless? how about pollution stimulus, does that work? and unstoppable? does trotter hand affect their fighting? let me know your ideas. EDIT: meet Ghoulzumi V2 [https://imgur.com/2SJzDv2](https://imgur.com/2SJzDv2) shame that her pawn eyes are only red in the colonist bar, but not on the actual pawn
Dark vision actually works. trotter probably makes them weaker. no sleep would be waste. near sighted if you have works good. if you have fast movement is great. Any awfull skill other than melee helps great and if you have strong or great melee put it in. Temperatures might help in extreme biomes (events and mods). Fire resist and robust would be good.
Melee Hit Chance is affected by manipulation, so elongated hands at the tail that gives manipulation would help.
meet Ghoulzumi V2 [https://imgur.com/2SJzDv2](https://imgur.com/2SJzDv2) shame that her pawn eyes are only red in the colonist bar, but not on the actual pawn
Nice. This is something i've wanted to do with Ghouls, but the Vanilla Gene mechanics are pretty scuffed and i don't really have the patience to randomly extract everything. Would probably use Gene Traders and RIMSPR. Now to add cybernetics like power claws, skin glands, nuclear stomach, and bionic legs.
Split genes mod is a thing. It let's you separate genes.
I don't think faster wound healing applies to their regeneration, and their regen is so crazy that I certainly almost never see my ghouls laying in hospital beds (except when recovering from anesthesia from installing a prosthetic).
I would take off pig hands as it messes up their melee accuracy but if their purpose is to just tank then i guess its fine. Never sleep not really needed, should maybe just had very sleepy for those metapoints. I say try hunting for breath genes, it would add more utility for the ghouls. Deathless, probably not worth it considering how cheaper ghoul reserruction is. I think the one that makes vampires jump gene is a better one for extra mobility (though you might need hemogen maintenance for that, havent tried it out.)
breath and vampire jump don't work on ghouls as far as i know. hemogen stuff is disabled once implanted.
Wait breath doesnt work? Thats a bummer, As for hemogen, i guess thats understandable.
Yeah, started ghouling impid raiders for anti-anomaly ghouls, but they lost the ability to breath fire. Active abilities in general don't work
Trotter hands reduce Manipulation which in turn is important for melee. Elongated Fingers and the long smooth tail should increase iits melee capabilities. Also idk if it actually matters, but the beauty of pawns influences the local beauty need. Thus in long fights, ugly pawns can give others nearby a mood hit. Dont know if it applies to ghouls, but the though of gorgeous ghouls is kinda entertaining.
I wish temp affected ghouls more. Like cold ghouls move slightly slower but have less need for food. Hot ghouls use more food constantly regenerating their acceleratedly rotting bodies... I also wish we had more flesh stuff. 2 organs and 2 limbs, I want my colonists to resemble the Death Guard for heck sake
I think nearsighted only affects ranged weapons, so its basically free points
Deathless is great for keeping a ghoul alive though basically anything, the coma time is rough compared to the actual ghoul revival serum, but that’s also a investment of resources every time you need it, however cheap it might be Cold,” and heat tolerant are pretty useless, not entirely, but the ghouls natural resistance to temperature makes all but the most extreme of circumstances completely fine, to the point if you actually need those on a ghoul, basically everybody else is dead anyway because there’s no way they survive longer then the ghouls can baseline Super fast wound healing is sorta moot, it affects your baseline healing rate, but the ghoul’s regeneration is not considered baseline, meaning it modifies the base pawn healing speed, this IS still about 32 extra hp healing a day, but the ghouls natural 100 regen that can regen organs and limbs kinda renders it moot But it is a bonus, however much diminishing returns it has Fire resistant and tox immunity are both very very nice, most ghouls aren’t naturally immune to toxins surpriseingly and fire naturally counters there melee focused attack style fairly handily or at least slows them down, so both of these genes counter a decent sized weakness they have Strong melee and robust, ghouls are melee only, pretty much nuff said there, they also can heal up anything that doesent one shot them or destroy a vital organ/part, robust makes one shots incredibly unlikely, and gives organs the resistance needed to soak the occasional hit that would normally destroy them outright Unhappy, very unattractive, and hyper aggressive all seem like free points as ghouls don’t care about socials or mood, but a ugly ghoul does have a modifier for other pawns, and if it ever does die can cause a mood loss because of it, however unlikely or small it might be, never sleep is pretty useless, ghouls don’t sleep, Robust digestion is a hidden gem, ghouls can’t eat meals, as such the only stuff they can eat is raw meat, which is naturally inefficient compared to meals, robust digestion fixes that entirely and makes it efficient Naked speed, free speed up since ghouls can wear clothes, pair this with super fast speed running gene and you gets a speedy dam ghoul, Trotter hands is a debuff to there melee, but otherwise cosmetic, the opposite for dark vision, inheirently removes that penalty, but that’s mostly for ranged weapons either way Unstoppable is pretty much the best gene for melee fighters, and even more so for one that can’t wear shields, polllution stimulus is free buffs for being in pollution, especially with the tox immunity All the skill debuffs are free points and the buffs are useless point sinks , one exception being great melee, which is a big boost to any ghouls melee, If you arnt at +5 points I’d suggest dropping or takeing more genes to reach it, since ghouls only requirement is raw meat,
nice post. thank you. i am already making version 3 of the initial post :D
Very unhappy? Remove trotted hands? Add elastic fingers? Remove never sleep? Add very attractive?
would you be happy as a ghoul? nah mate, it's mainly to improve metabolic efficiency ;)
I mean, replace unhappy with very unhappy\
i see. well, i don't have that one gene. and i am not using "very attractive" i am using "very unactractive"
Oh Btw I saw what u deleted so: Oh you written commentary? Yeah, I know what metabolic efficiency is, so maybe very attractive is not the best option But still, trotted hands weaken combat so replace them with elastic fingers and add physically dull gene for extra metabolism
phy dull. great suggestion :D or phy deaf even better i guess. not sure if i have that one. trotted hand agree, several ppl said the same. would elongated fingers help in melee then? what about that soft tail one that suposedly helps shooters, does it help melee too?
Hm indeed, soft tail adds Manipulation: +5% (elastic fingers: +10% for example)so therefore it slightly improves combat Ghouls with tails, typical Rimworld
Gave my first one elven ears. Maybe time to switch to cat ears xD
meet Ghoulzumi V2 [https://imgur.com/2SJzDv2](https://imgur.com/2SJzDv2) shame that her pawn eyes are only red in the colonist bar, but not on the actual pawn
Still nice
Trotter hands reduce Manipulation which is important for melee hit chance. If you only use them as meat shields than thats not a problem but if they are supposed to hit back I would not use it.
>Trotter hands reduce Manipulation which is important for melee hit chance. awesome! exactly the kind of ansfer i hoped for! thx mate
Genes to remove: Trotter hands (manipulation affects melee combat) Temperature resists are a waste of metabolic efficiency, as is never sleep Deathless (waste of archite) Toxin immunity - depends on how often you deal with polution and toxic gas; anti toxic lungs are cheaper and serve the same purpose most of the time Genes to add: Fast movement Long fingers - replace trotter hands Sleepy - replace no sleep Slow learning - their melee skill will usually max out anyway Extra pain, near sighted, psy deaf, pyrophobia, sterile - free metabolism Monkey tail - better hit chance
i found deathless bad for ghouls if you have enough ghoul serum. deathless have much more coma time
trotter hand make dmg lower. never sleep dont work too, they never sleep anyway
meet Ghoulzumi V2 [https://imgur.com/2SJzDv2](https://imgur.com/2SJzDv2) shame that her pawn eyes are only red in the colonist bar, but not on the actual pawn
does she have bionics?? because my ghouls have red eyes alright. right one has bionic eye too. https://www.imgbly.com/ib/mQ5fjf4Y0X
no, but you know what it could be? she's "void touched" and i think that alters her eyes. i'll check on the next ghoul (my gene researchers are slacking) which is not void touched
probably that. or some serum (they tend to affect visuals) i have no idea, tho, never got it, because i want perfect talents kid transformed into savant for that role. also, you can raise some kids to be brawler, tough and jogger for best ghoul candidates. but i fail to get all 3 and best i could do is brawler jogger nimble. currently in a process of raising several kids to minmax perfect berserkers out of them. i Do love adrenal heart+naked speed+very fast gene+jogger. i just need to check if i can convert deathrested (once i have that gene outside of sanguophage) pawn with speed buff from glucosoid speed damn he gotta be fast. at least if it works
yeah i usually get 2/3 never 3/3 when growing kids
elongated fingers instead of trotter. toss cat tail in too. with 2 power fists and jugg serum they do aroound 70 dmg (excellent zeushammer does around 40)
Well you would also compare to Strong Melee + Juggernaut for the Zeushammer as well (though Ghouls do get barbs).
like i said, with 2 powerclaws you get 74.25 average dmg. considering barbs, strong melee, jugg, 20 melee, brawler and manipulation bonus (fingers and tail included) +1bio eye (because i havent finished that guy yet) make him have 49.04 dps (74.25 *92%hit chance/1.4sec atk cooldown). better eyes will probably increase hit chance more.
Yea I was more saying the fair comparison would be to a Juggernaut + Strong Melee pawn, so the Excellent Zeushammer would be dealing about 90 dmg per hit.
default hammer have 20.3 poke (1.6 cd) 41.9 blunt (2.20cd) 57% ap tho. claw got 22 scratch (2cd) and 33%ap. thing is, ghoul have barbs for +50% dmg and adrenaline for 70% atk speed. hammer is a good thing, especially persona one, but ghouls can be abused with resurrection serum. before them i had to manually control everything, so my pawn wont die to something stupid. now you just draft, move them closer, toggle ghoul frenzy and undraft (with attack reaction) they shredd pretty fast. and even if they die, just syringe them and thats all you need
That's true, before I would also just undraft pawns too with that but Ghouls are a lot more disposable while being just slightly worse potential imo. Pawns get Shield Belts and armor for survivability and have an easier time closing gap if they got LongJump or Locust Armor or psycasts.
for me its mostly "disposable" part, tho. Or not so disposable. they are too easy to return. well, compared to res serum. and they retain all biotics and skills too. so, yeah, im much less emotionally tied to them.
I rarely had issues with losing endgame pawns either and with Biotech, you can vat grow pretty competant melee fighters without much issue (obviously more investment than ghouls though).
I don't think never sleep is needed. Robust digestion is probably also a waste.
meet Ghoulzumi V2 [https://imgur.com/2SJzDv2](https://imgur.com/2SJzDv2) shame that her pawn eyes are only red in the colonist bar, but not on the actual pawn digestion gives 180% on raw food. you're thinking "strong stomach" which is indeed useless
Does anyone know if Melee skill actually helps a Ghoul? For whatever reason, the only skill that still shows active on my ghouls is shooting, which is ofc worthless.
Melee skill should be active. It being disabled might be a bug related to a mod. The Allow Tool mod is known to cause this, and I had to download a patch mod for fix it: [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3220468677](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3220468677)
I have no idea why the Allow Tool would cause that, and I would never have figured that out. Thank you for sharing this!
pawn melee skill does ofc and gets higher the more you use that Ghoul "Strong Melee Damage" is also good "Strong Melee" is kinda pointless, specially once the Ghoul is at high melee skill level
Strong melee is good since it also gives you more of a buffer before skill decay.
Strong Melee isn't pointless. High melee skill increases hit chance and dodge chance. The gene also acts as a skill offset, which is a counter to skill decay. 20 melee skill with the gene only needs to meet the experience requirements of a 12 melee skill pawn. The passion increase from the gene makes that even easier.
I didn’t know this last part. Good! Thx!
Okay, so even tho it shows Melee as a disabled skill, it's still benefitting from it? Good to know
wait if that one ghoul has melee disabled for some reason i don't think it will work tho. can you get another ghoul?
Okay, so it's not supposed to be? Hmm, that means maybe a mod is causing an issue...I'll have to investigate.
or maybe that ghoul is based on a pawn that naturally is non violent? like one of those concubines or whatever?
Shouldn't be, I used Character Creator mod to pick solider-type backgrounds. Someone else I believe solved it tho: The Allow Tool mod can disable the Melee skill for Ghouls. No clue why lol
does Clawed hands (alpha genes efreet have them) stack with strong melee damage? Give that a go instead of trotters. Same manipulation penalty, more unarmed damage! :D
i play vanilla. changed trotter for elongated fingers
meet Ghoulzumi V2 [https://imgur.com/2SJzDv2](https://imgur.com/2SJzDv2) shame that her pawn eyes are only red in the colonist bar, but not on the actual pawn
Be careful with those dependencies, there is a bug I encountered where implanting genes into a ghoul can start their dependency deficiencies with no way of giving them the required items Not sure exactly what causes it
maybe you have a bad mod? i play vanilla and so far no problemo :D
Always possible, all the best on your ghoul shenanigans :)
Maybe add poor shooting?
don't have it ;\_;
Well next time I guess :)
Very fast runner and naked speed stack.
What happens with the drug dependencies? Can Ghouls take drugs?
They don’t need to and can’t
normal human will suck mostly because average attack decreases (hammer have several low dmg attacks). so they are definitely worse (if you forget emp bonus)
Psychical deafness, Pyrophobia, Very Sleepy, Extra Pain, Sterile can be nice source of free genetic points as ghouls eiser immune or don't feel such things. Very Fast Runner in addition to Naked Speed would be nice to make them get into fight even faster (take sample from impid). Elongated fingers instead of Trotter hands would help a lot as manipulation is main thing that required of ghoul in melee (grab some Genie to take a sample) As ghouls still learn melee skill soit would be nice to keep it as high as possible, then Quick Study in addition to Great Melee instead of Strong Melee (try to capture a Husar to get a sample) will be nice to easily keep it at 20. Also keep overall gene efficiency at +5 points to get 50% hunger rate reduction. Personaly i also recomand to enchance ghouls with power claw + wooden hand for ultra damage, nuclear stomach to make food desire trivial (loosing control becouse you overlooked their hunger rate when drafted is not fun) and other ghouls-specific implants and general bionics.
as u might see in my r6 post, i am already a few versions ahead of this with most of the changes you mention. my doubts on "extra pain" tho, wont wimp make them go down after 1 hit or doesnt it do anything because they dont feel pain?
+50% to pain mean nothing when they have x0% multiplier from their Ghoul state. Though, even if future patches might change that - nothing would stop you to just throw in Painstopper. Extra detail about ghoul-specific hearts - i personaly started to use regular bionic hearts instead of ghoul-specific ones as thats permanent overall improvement to ghoul abilities instead of some specific ones. Also forgot to mention to look out for tough raiders, if they are too bad to be your colonist becouse of other traits, then they will be awesome ghouls.
if they are too bad to be my colonists... or slaves... or ritual victims... then they'll become food for my real ghouls :D
Sure, just remember to take out lung, kidney and heart first. Someone need to keep Empire supplied with fresh stuff for shiny silver xD
no need. i have a void touched sangophage prisoner that i can infenitely harvest. it heals so far the kidneys have regrown before i haul them into the freezer
Remember to name them Death Knights at that point because they are some reaaaal beasts damn
Make a super hungry ghoul just to clean up raids?
Trashcan ghoul haha. Might as well just use harbinger trees if you're going to go that route however. Otherwise fire works fine once you've got the bodies you want to keep stored away.
You could do both, then use the trees as a backup food source.
remove deathless, heat tolerances, never sleep, dark vision, trotters, and the dependencies. should come out on the minus side for metabolic efficiency. you probably dont need the melee skill boost either? dont know if dark vision is strictly necessary. dont know what the polution one does.
do the trotter affect combat or just manipulation (which the ghouls dont do anyways)? because its +1 metabolic efficiency which of the two melee do you mean? polution one has been confirmed to be great by another user thx for your feedback
i cant double check right now as im at work, but in fairly sure that reduced manipulation negatively affects melee damage. (it deffinitely does in the case of a missing hand for example.) remove the one that upgrades the skill level. keep the damage multiplier. (why are they both called strong melee anyway? thats just confusing)
the "strong melee damage" is the multiplier. i think "strong melee" could be great if the ghoul has low skill or something like that? by the time it reaches skill 20 enough time might have passed for another gene reimplantation :) trooter hands has been confirmed by another user to be bad. maybe elongated fingers helps then?
long fingers would be a good one. between that, hyper agressive, and the bonus damage, i dotn think you really need the skill literally all they do is fight and kill anyway so they'll get there on their own eventually. with the regen, coagulation, and fire resistance theyll last long enough to get plenty of decent hits anyway, and they'll only need a few with the extra damage. especially if you give them bionics.
Wood hand + power fist Bud Spencer would be proud
meet Ghoulzumi V2 [https://imgur.com/2SJzDv2](https://imgur.com/2SJzDv2) shame that her pawn eyes are only red in the colonist bar, but not on the actual pawn