Ghoul

Ghouls are humans that have been warped into powerful, twisted combat entities with very few needs. Ghouls can appear as both enemy units and become a part of your colony. Ghouls that are part of your colony can only eat raw meat and fresh corpses. Captured Ghouls do not require food.
== Acquisition ==
Ghouls appear in both the "Standard with Monolith" start and the "Ambient Horror" start. "The Anomaly" starting Scenario begins the player with one friendly player-controlled Ghoul.
Wild Ghouls can be encountered as a Basic Entity at any level of Void Monolith activity, meaning the Monolith does not have to have been interacted with for them to appear. Any Ghoul encountered in the wild will be permanently hostile to the player. These Ghouls can be captured for Study or to extract Bioferrite from, as is normal to hostile Entities. Capturing a wild Ghoul alive can be difficult, as they will not be downed by pain and psychic weaponry is ineffective.
Once a Ghoul has been encountered the ghoul infusion research project becomes available. After completing the research, the player can schedule the Ghoul infusion operation on any colonist, slave, or prisoner for Bioferrite and Shard permanently turning that pawn into a Ghoul. Regardless of if the pawn was a member of your colony, they will be under the player's control once the operation is completed. The pawn completing the medical operation must have a Medical skill of four or higher.
== Summary == 
A ghoul is effectively a colonist that is limited to only melee attacks. They cannot wield weapons or apparel, do any work, take drugs or use any special ability they had in life. Ghouls can be restricted to zones and drafted like normal colonists. In combat, they can be directly commanded to melee attack or use the ability provided by ghoul-specific body parts. Ghouls will fight adjacent fires, but do not seek out fires to extinguish. All Ghouls are capable of violence no matter their backstories, traits, or genes.
=== Properties ===
Ghouls do not age at all, even if not yet at maturity. Note that this means that ghouls created from younger pawns will never have the full body size and body part health of an adult. Ghouls can have age related heart attacks. They retain most properties they had in life:
* Melee and Shooting skills (even though ghouls can't shoot) and passions are retained. Other skills and passions are disabled.
* Traits and backstories are retained, this can cause a ghoul to be incapable of firefighting.
* Hediffs are retained, including void touched.
* Body types and non-cosmetic genes are retained. After converted, they can still undergo gene extraction or be implanted with new xenogerms. Due to the low cost of ghoul resurrection serum, ghouls can be killed and resurrected to bypass the gene regrowing time.
All ghouls are given two hediffs that implement the majority of the stat changes experienced by ghouls. These hediffs are "Ghoul" and "Regeneration".
Ghoul:
* Pain: ×0%
* Max Nutrition: 2
* Psychic sensitivity: ×0%
* Minimum Comfortable Temperature: 
* Maximum Comfortable Temperature: 
* Minimum Containment Strength: 
* Talking: 
Regeneration:
* Regenerate 100 HP/day
Separate from these hediffs, ghouls also don't bleed when injured. The regeneration hediff will heal any wound, including missing limbs or scars that the Ghoul has at a rate of 0.1 HP/s. Ghoul regeneration heals wounds in the order they were received, one wound at a time until that wound is fully healed. The one exception is fully missing body parts: these will be converted into a generic "wound" and healed after all other injuries. Note that if the Ghoul regeneration has already began to heal the missing body part when another injury is dealt it will not switch targets, it will continue to heal the missing limb once it has began.
Ghoul Regeneration is separate from a pawn's normal healing rate. The Ghoul continues to heal the way a normal pawn does at the same time as healing from Ghoul Regeneration. As with normal human pawns, a Ghouls natural healing is affected by Genes, Healing enhancers, and Juggernaut serum. Ghoul Regeneration is not affected by these factors. See Healing for more information on healing mechanics for all pawns.
=== Needs ===
Ghouls can only eat raw meat and fresh corpses. They will automatically try to eat available food in their assigned zone. Friendly ghouls that are not fed will eventually betray the colony, never becoming friendly again. Once their food need reaches 0, a hidden Meat hunger hediff will appear and worsen over roughly 24 hours. The more extreme this hediff is, the more likely the ghoul will betray.
Other than food, ghouls have no other need, mood, or relationship. Other needs created by genes or addiction will be disabled. They can't have mental breaks and won't be counted as a colonist for things like the recluse trait.. Despite the in-game description, colonists do not gain negative mood for being near a friendly ghoul, however they will experience a negative mood if a loved one becomes a ghoul or spawns as a ghoul.
=== Ghoul-specific Upgrades ===
Ghouls can have normal human body parts installed. However there are also some ghoul-specific upgrades available by researching Ghoul enhancements in the Anomaly tech tree:
* Adrenal heart — Passively increases hunger, grants an ability to gain a burst of attack cooldown and movement speed for 15 seconds. The cooldown is 29.17 seconds.
* Corrosive heart — Allows the ghoul to spew acid on a 2 hour cooldown, but only has 85% part efficiency
* Ghoul barbs — Increases melee damage by at the cost of speed
* Ghoul plating — Incoming Damage Multiplier at the cost of speed. 
* Metalblood heart — On a 6 hour cooldown, gain the Metalblood hediff for 40 seconds, which gives damage resistance and fire and burn vulnerability. This hediff does not stack with the metalblood serum.
Ghouls can be administered serums, but not drugs. They aren't affected by any mood effect by serums.
== Analysis ==
Ghouls are very powerful guard dogs and melee attackers:
* With melee upgrades of ghoul barbs, power claws, juggernaut serum, and strong melee damage gene, their attacks will destroy any body part of any human they hit (no matter the armor), frequently one-hit killing enemies in cataphract armor.
* With metabolic upgrades of nuclear stomach, +5 metabolic efficiency, and robust digestion gene, they need less than 4 twisted meat per day to survive.
* Due to their regeneration and the affordability of ghoul resurrection serum, it's safe to use ghouls as tanks, or even let them die in combat.
Converting a colonist into a ghoul is a good way to make use of an otherwise terrible pawn or a colonist you can't save from death. The converted ghoul will quickly regrow lost limbs and self-cure detrimental health conditions.
A ghoul makes excellent bait to lure sightstealers, as they can remain patrolling outside forever.
While requiring direct control, Ghouls can still help with some work in colony. While drafted they can be used to hunt animals (though they will not carry the corpses back). They can also be used to fight fires. In Anomaly starting scenario the Ghoul allows you to skip early defences, indirectly reducing amount of work that needs to be done. 
Be especially careful when engaging enemy ghouls in melee combat. They will not be forced down due to pain, so they will fight much longer than regular human raiders.
Ghouls can benefit from the frenzy inducer and the Pollution stimulus gene. You can build a room with pollution and a frenzy inducer for your ghouls to take advantage of their effects. Additionally, this can double as a freezer for your twisted meat, the containment cell for the fleshmass nucleus, and the frosbite chamber for toughspikes.
=== Hunger management ===
Hunger is the primary cost of ghouls and their inability to eat anything but raw meat and corpses means that traditional sources of nutritional efficiency are unavailable. However, with some upgrades, ghouls require less resources to maintain than humans in every way.
Theses are:
* The nuclear stomach: An artificial body part which multiplies hunger rate by 
* The Robust digestion gene: A gene multiplies the nutrition gained from raw meat, but not corpses, by 
* A metabolic efficiency of 5+: which multiplies hunger rate by 
These stack to make for a ghoul that only requires as little as meat per day.
Ghoul made from body-mastery creepjoiner don't need to eat at all, however this significantly reduces the trait options available for the sake of removing an almost negligible cost in the mid and late game.
=== Body parts ===
Due to their massive improvement to resilience and damage, ghoul barbs and ghoul plating are essential upgrades for ghouls, try to get them as soon as possible. For the heart upgrade, get the the metalblood heart if you don't plan to produce metalblood serums. But if you do, instead upgrade your ghoul with an adrenal heart to improve combat power or a corrosive heart for the painful acid spray attack.
Another powerful upgrade is the power claw or flesh whip. These provide another massive jump in terms of damage, especially if your ghoul have already gotten the strong melee damage gene and ghoul barbs. Note that you can replace 1 power claw with a wooden hand for a higher move speed while retaining almost the same DPS. 2 flesh whips gives the fastest move speed while having slightly lower DPS.
 Ghoul melee damage at melee level 20 and no other hediff or gene
Upgrades 	Move Speed	Melee DPS	Melee AP
None 	4.6 c/s 	3.29 	11%
1 Power claw 	4.23 c/s 	8.28 	28%
2 Flesh whips 	4.6 c/s 	9.22 	60%
Power claw + Wooden hand 	4.23 c/s 	9.64 	33%
2 Power claws 	3.86 c/s 	9.90 	33%
Ghoul barbs + 1 Power claw 	4.00 c/s 	12.42 	41%
Ghoul barbs + 2 Flesh whips 	4.35 c/s 	13.84 	60%
Ghoul barbs + Power claw + Wooden hand 	4.00 c/s 	14.45 	49%
Ghoul barbs + 2 Power claws 	3.65 c/s 	14.85 	49%
Barbs + Juggernaut + Strong Melee Damage + 1 Power claw 	4.46 c/s 	27.72 	92%
Barbs + Juggernaut + Strong Melee Damage + 2 Flesh whips 	4.85 c/s 	31.13 	60%
Barbs + Juggernaut + Strong Melee Damage + Power claw + Wooden hand	4.46 c/s 	32.52 	111%
Barbs + Juggernaut + Strong Melee Damage + 2 Power claws 	4.07 c/s 	33.52 	111%
=== Genetics ===
Ghouls primarily benefit from genes that improve their Incoming Damage Multiplier, melee skill and damage, movement speed, and achieving a good metabolic rate to reduce meat consumption. Ghouls will inherit genes from their underlying xenotypes, meaning that some make for better ghoul candidates than others. 
Below are all genes that have positive effects on ghouls. Other genes either have negative effects, no effects, or only positive in term of metabolic efficiency
 Good Genes
Gene 	Improves 	Metabolic Cost	Commentary
Robust 	Incoming Damage Multiplier 	 	Reduces damage taken by ghouls, improving their capability to soak incoming damage for longer.
Strong melee damage 	Melee Damage Factor 	 	Increases damage dealt by ghouls
Naked speed 	Movement speed 	 	Slight increase to movement speed while giving free metabolic efficiency
Fast runner 	Movement speed 	 	Double the movement speed bonus of Naked Speed
Very fast runner 	Movement speed 	 	Huge increase to movement speed, but very metabolically costly.
Strong melee 	Melee Skill 	 	Improves Melee skill which boosts melee hit chance and melee dodge chance
Great melee 	Melee Skill 	 	Larger Improvement to Melee skill
Unstoppable 	Stagger Time Multiplier 	 	Removes stagger from receiving damage
Fire resistant 	Flammability , Flame damage 	 	Resist flame damage and avoid being set on fire
Robust digestion 	Raw Nutrition Multiplier 	 	Increase nutrition given by raw meat
Elongated fingers 	Manipulation 	 	Slightly increase manipulation, which affects melee hit chance
Smooth tail 	Manipulation 	 	Slightly increase manipulation
Superfast wound healing	Injury Healing Factor 	 	Quadruple the normal healing factor to roughly 25 HP/day
Pollution stimulus 	Up to consciousness and move speed	 	Speed boost when exposed to pollution
There are many genes whose negative effects don't affect ghouls at all, thus they can be used to improve their metabolic efficiency. Some of the notable genes are:
 Free Metabolic Efficiency
Gene 	Changes 	Metabolic Cost	Commentary
Awful Skill 	Skill 	 	Ghouls only use Melee skill, any other skill can be ignored
Poor Skill 	Skill 	 	Ghouls only use Melee skill
Hyper-aggressive	Mental Breaks and Social Fights	 	Ghouls don't social fight or have mental break
Aggressive 	Mental Breaks and Social Fights	 	Ghouls don't social fight or have mental break
Very sleepy 	Sleep Fall Rate 	 	Ghouls don't need rest
Sleepy 	Sleep Fall Rate 	 	Ghouls don't need rest
Very unhappy 	Mood Penalty 	 	Ghouls are unaffected by mood penalties
Unhappy 	Mood Penalty 	 	Ghouls are unaffected by mood penalties
Deathrest 	Need for deathrest 	 	Ghouls don't need deathrest
Hemogen drain 	Hemogen per day 	 	Ghouls don't need hemogen
Pyrophobia 	Fleeing fire mental break 	 	Ghouls don't have mental breaks
=== Medical quirks ===
Because ghouls rapidly regenerate their organs, you can harvest their organs before turning them into a ghoul:
* Harvesting a spare lung and kidney is possible for normal pawns.
* You can harvest all six organs from a sanguophage.
* If you have a detoxifier lung and kidney, you can install them to the pawn and harvest both natural lungs and kidneys. After the ghoul has finished regenerating, you can safely remove the artificial organ.
* By spending some ghoul resurrection serums, you can also harvest the heart in the same manner.
* Ghouls can have genes implanted or harvested same as other pawns. If a Ghoul has the Gene implanter Archite Gene, The option for the Ghoul to implant genes will not appear, but can still be manually triggered. The Ghoul must first be downed, such as under anesthetic from a surgery. Select the pawn you want to implant the Genes into, and right-click on the Ghoul to bring up the option. If the Ghoul dies from having its Genes harvested too early, simply use ghoul resurrection serum. Being resurrected will remove the "Genes regrowing" Hediff, allowing for rapid implantation for relatively low cost.
Becoming a ghoul does not remove duplicate sickness, paralytic abasia or cirrhosis. However, if you then euthanize the ghoul and revive them with a ghoul resurrection serum, it does remove the sickness but won't cure the paralytic abasia.
=== The Ideal Ghoul ===
Here is the setup for the best ghoul that can be mass-produced by an advanced colony. The follow features are very hard to achieve; but once achieved, they can be duplicated using the Corrupted obelisk any number of times:
* Void touched: available during the Anomaly ending, gives 100 hp/day regeneration on top of ghoul's regeneration.
* Level 20 melee skill: massively improve melee hit and dodge chance.
* All keystone and good genes listed above, except for Strong Melee and Great Melee, as they have already been covered by the base melee skill. Other metabolically efficient genes should be included to bring the efficiency up to +5.
* Tough trait: Incoming Damage Multiplier x50%.
* Jogger trait: Move Speed +0.4.
* Nimble trait: Melee Dodge Chance +15. This gives a small increase in the final melee dodge chance and can be skipped.
* Trauma savant: arguably the hardest to achieve, while only giving a very small improvement for melee hit chance.
* Fleshmass lung: optional, will give some tox resistance for the ghoul if you don't install detoxifier lungs for them.
* Flesh whip: optional, will give some melee damage for the ghoul if you don't install power claw.
Once you have a colonist or slave with these features, duplicate them using the Corrupted obelisk and turn the duplicate to ghoul, keeping the original. The ghouls can have these body parts installed to upgrade them further:
* Ghoul plating: Incoming Damage Multiplier x50%, while Move Speed -0.7
* Ghoul barbs: Melee Damage Factor x150%, while Move Speed -0.25
* Adrenal heart: gives a massive buff for move speed and melee damage when used.
* Power claws, or power claw and wooden hand: greatly improves ghouls' melee damage. This is optional if the ghoul already has 2 flesh whips.
* Detoxifier lungs: gives tox resistance and a slight boost for move speed.
* Nuclear stomach: Food Consumption x25%.
* Stoneskin gland: sharp armor +70%, blunt armor +30%, heat armor +50% while moving x85%. This will also be the final armor values of the ghoul.
* Regular Juggernaut serum administering: Move speed +0.5, Melee Damage Factor x150%, Injury Healing Factor x200%.
* Metalblood serum administering: Incoming Damage Multiplier x50%, while flame and burn weakness x400%. The flame weakness is cancelled out by the fire resistant gene.
* Frenzy inducer's field: +0.4 move speed.
* Pollution stimulus: x120% move speed.
* Healing enhancer: natural healing factor x150%.
* Bionic eyes and legs: improve melee hit and dodge change, and also move speed. These can also be skipped without reducing the power of the ghoul by much. Archeotech eyes and legs could be used instead, but the shear amount of punishment you will likely have your ghoul be taking means that they will break eventually, giving them to a ranged pawn to help them better support the ghoul is a better use of resources. 
Note that power claws, bionic eyes and legs may be destroyed in combat if they take too much damage, so be ready to replace them if you decide to give to the ghoul. Other body parts are less likely to be lost as the ghoul are more likely to be downed or die before that. Overall, the ghoul would have these stats:
* Daily Food Consumption 0.32 with Raw Food Multiplier x180%: this means they need only 3-4 twisted meat per day to live.
* Healing 200 hp/day, plus roughly 96 hp/day (208 HP/day when lying on hospital bed) from the 800% Injury Healing Factor and 150% Natural Healing Factor.
* Incoming Damage Multiplier 9.4%: this improves the amount of damage ghouls can take by over 10 times, which means it takes roughly 2925 damage point/day, or 2.9 point/s (after armor and melee dodge) just to negate the healing effect of the ghoul. In practice, the ghoul can fight an infinite horde of Chimera one by one.
* Melee Dodge Chance 38%.
==== Weapon ====
As mentioned above, there are multiple choices for the weapon, each with its own tradeoff between damage and move speed:
 Ghoul weapon combos
Weapons 	Move speed	Move speed (ghoul frenzy)	Melee hit damage	Melee DPS	Melee AP
2 flesh whips 	6.93 c/s 	12.02 c/s 	69.19 	32.07 	60%
1 power claw + 1 wooden hand	6.47 c/s 	11.23 c/s 	74.25 	34.39 	111%
2 power claws 	6.08 c/s 	10.55 c/s 	74.25 	34.41 	111%
== Gallery ==
=== Hairs ===
Ghoul Hair Furious south.png|Furious, facing south
Ghoul Hair Furious east.png|Furious, facing east
Ghoul Hair Furious north.png|Furious, facing north
Ghoul Hair Hungry south.png|Hungry, facing south
Ghoul Hair Hungry east.png|Hungry, facing east
Ghoul Hair Hungry north.png|Hungry, facing north
Ghoul Hair Ravenous south.png|Ravenous, facing south
Ghoul Hair Ravenous east.png|Ravenous, facing east
Ghoul Hair Ravenous north.png|Ravenous, facing north
Ghoul Hair Twisted south.png|Twisted, facing south
Ghoul Hair Twisted east.png|Twisted, facing east
Ghoul Hair Twisted north.png|Twisted, facing north
Ghoul Hair Vengeful south.png|Vengeful, facing south
Ghoul Hair Vengeful east.png|Vengeful, facing east
Ghoul Hair Vengeful north.png|Vengeful, facing north
Ghoul Hair Warped south.png|Warped, facing south
Ghoul Hair Warped east.png|Warped, facing east
Ghoul Hair Warped north.png|Warped, facing north
Ghoul Hair Wicked south.png|Wicked, facing south
Ghoul Hair Wicked east.png|Wicked, facing east
Ghoul Hair Wicked north.png|Wicked, facing north
=== Heads ===
Ghoulskin Head Heavy south.png|Heavy, facing south
Ghoulskin Head Heavy east.png|Heavy, facing east
Ghoulskin Head Heavy north.png|Heavy, facing north
Ghoulskin Head Narrow south.png|Narrow, facing south
Ghoulskin Head Narrow east.png|Narrow, facing east
Ghoulskin Head Narrow north.png|Narrow, facing north
Ghoulskin Head Normal south.png|Normal, facing south
Ghoulskin Head Normal east.png|Normal, facing east
Ghoulskin Head Normal north.png|Normal, facing north
Ghoulskin Head Wide south.png|Wide, facing south
Ghoulskin Head Wide east.png|Wide, facing east
Ghoulskin Head Wide north.png|Wide, facing north
=== Bodies ===
Ghoulskin Fat south.png|Fat, facing south
Ghoulskin Fat east.png|Fat, facing east
Ghoulskin Fat north.png|Fat, facing north
Ghoulskin Female south.png|Female, facing south
Ghoulskin Female east.png|Female, facing east
Ghoulskin Female north.png|Female, facing north
Ghoulskin Hulk south.png|Hulk, facing south
Ghoulskin Hulk east.png|Hulk, facing east
Ghoulskin Hulk north.png|Hulk, facing north
Ghoulskin Male south.png|Male, facing south
Ghoulskin Male east.png|Male, facing east
Ghoulskin Male north.png|Male, facing north
Ghoulskin Thin south.png|Thin, facing south
Ghoulskin Thin east.png|Thin, facing east
Ghoulskin Thin north.png|Thin, facing north
== Version history == 
* Anomaly DLC Release - Added.
Category: Entities