The Strongest Vanilla Pawn Guide (1 vs. 40 Pirates)

This guide explains how to build an unstoppable melee pawn capable of soloing 40+ pirate raids using only vanilla gameplay mechanics in v1.6. Every DLC is required except Odyssey. Cosmetic mods are enabled in the video, but gameplay is otherwise completely vanilla.

This build abuses four mechanics:

• Invisibility to become untargetable.
  
• Stack Psychic Sensitivity to massively increase your neural heat and psycast durations.
  
• Use a Kill-Focused Zeus Hammer for effectively infinite psyfocus.
  
• Abuse the Strong Melee Damage gene to one-shot enemies.

The end result is a pawn capable of soloing raids with 40+ pirates.

The entire build revolves around maintaining near-permanent invisibility.

Normally, invisibility is limited by your neural heat gauge. However, by stacking absurd amounts of Psychic Sensitivity, your heat gauge becomes enormous, allowing you to chain invisibility for several minutes.

Because enemies can't target invisible pawns, the only thing left is killing them quickly.

A Legendary Kill-Focused Zeus Hammer restores psyfocus every time you kill something. Combined with the Strong Melee Damage gene, it'll allow you to one-shot most enemies.

Since every kill restores psyfocus, you can keep casting invisibility while cutting through entire raids.

The result is a pawn capable of soloing raids with 40+ pirates.

Core Gameplay Loop

1. Cast Invisibility.
2. One-shot enemies with Strong Melee Damage.
3. Kill-Focused restores your psyfocus.
4. Recast Invisibility before it expires.
5. Occasionally cast berserk so enemies don't run away.
6. Repeat until the raid is dead.

A pawn with a good childhood will get to choose three traits. Breed a pawn with these traits:

• Tough
  
• Psychically Hypersensitive
  
• Jogger

Why these traits?

• Tough halves all incoming damage, making every point of armor and healing significantly more valuable.
  
• Psychically Hypersensitive gives a massive boost to your psychic sensitivity, which directly increases your neural heat gauge.
  
• Jogger lets your melee pawn reach targets much faster.

Optional Advanced Optimization: Use an Impid

If you're trying to create the absolute strongest pawn possible, and you're willing to abuse an exploit, it's actually better to breed an Impid rather than a Baseliner.

The reason is that Baseliners are limited to -5 metabolic efficiency from added genes. However, you can work around this limitation using the Gene Implanter archite gene.

The process is simple:

• Create an Impid with your desired traits (Tough, Psychically Hypersensitive, Jogger, etc.).
  
• Create a disposable Baseliner with the xenogenes described later.
  
• Have the Baseliner use Gene Implanter on the Impid.

The Impid keeps its endogenes (including Very Fast Runner and Fire Resistant) that are not overridden by the Baseliner's xenogenes.

Because you didn't need to spend metabolism on Very Fast Runner or Fire Resistant, you have enough room for additional genes. I recommend getting one additional Great Skill gene (e.g. Great Construction).

To summarize:

If you're using this exploit, follow the genetics guide exactly as written in Section 8: Genetics, but omit Very Fast Runner and Fire Resistant from your xenogenes. Have a baseliner implant them into the Impid. Since the Impid already has those as endogenes, you can instead take 5 Great Skill genes and 7 Awful Skill genes instead of the usual 4 Great Skills and 8 Awful Skills. The Impid will have around -12 metabolism, which isn't possible otherwise.

For reasons I discuss later, I would recommend these great skills:

• Great Melee
  
• Great Construction
  
• Great Medical
  
• Great Social
  
• Great Intellectual

The single best weapon is a Legendary Persona Zeus Hammer.

Using the Ideology DLC, make it your religion's relic so it's guaranteed during your playthrough.

Why a Zeus Hammer instead of a Monosword?

High blunt damage is much more likely to instantly kill or down enemies than high sharp damage. Overkill damage on a limb with a blunt weapon carries over to the torso, maximizing instant incapacitation chance.

• Kill-Focused

Every kill restores psyfocus, giving effectively infinite psyfocus during combat.

If you're low before a raid, simply kill a squirrel, alpaca, or other weak animal to refill your psyfocus before engaging.

• Psychic Hypersensitizer

This grants:

• More neural heat.
  
• Longer psycast durations.
  
• Better Psychic Reader trading.

The neural cooling and fast mover traits are acceptable alternatives.

Tip:

Don't settle for the first Zeus Hammer you find. (Unless you're very lucky, in which case, go buy a lottery ticket. Why are you even playing RimWorld, buy a yacht or something)

If you're willing to save and reload before getting the relic quest, you can reroll the persona traits until you get exactly what you're looking for.

---

You ideally want all implants that don't reduce speed or consciousness. That being said, I highly recommend:

• Archotech Arms
  
• Archotech Legs
  
• Archotech Eyes
  
• Psychic Sensitizer
  
• Painstopper
  
• Detoxifier Lungs
  
• Healing Enhancer
  
• Coagulator
  
• Nuclear Stomach
  
• Bionic Heart
  
• Revenant Vertebrae
  
• Psychic Reader

Highlights

• Psychic Sensitizer further increases your psychic sensitivity.
  
• Nuclear Stomach, which reduces your hunger rate x0.25, has no downsides because the pawn can't get diseases with the right genes.
  
• Revenant Vertebrae grants another invisibility ability, giving you even more survivability.
  
• Psychic Reader scales your negotiation ability with psychic sensitivity, allowing this pawn to become an excellent trader.

Recommended equipment:

• Prestige Cataphract Helmet
  
• Bioferrite Slave Collar (increases sensitivity because of the bioferrite)
  
• Prestige Recon Armor
  
• Eltex Shirt

You don't get hit very often since you're mostly invisible, so don't get armor that slows you down. Instead, prioritize:

• Psychic Sensitivity
  
• Movement Speed
  
• Temperature Resistance

If you keep your character fast, you too can cosplay as a NASCAR vehicle.

• Invisibility
  
• Focus
  
• Berserk

Invisibility is the core of the entire build. It makes your pawn untargetable, and maintaining it is what allows this build to solo massive raids.

Focus provides a massive movement speed bonus, allowing your pawn to quickly close the distance. Its duration also scales with psychic sensitivity.

Berserk prevents enemies from running away from you by forcing them to attack each other instead. Otherwise, all your friends are going to die while you're cosplaying as the Predator.

The pawn in the video has 610 neural heat, allowing invisibility to be maintained for roughly 262 seconds if no other psycasts are used. By combining legendary-quality equipment with every source of psychic sensitivity in this guide, I was able to reach 1124 neural heat, or ~8 minutes worth of invisibility.

• Stun
  
• Berserk Pulse
  
• Waterskip
  
• Skip
  
• Farskip
  
• Word of Inspiration

Explanation

• Stun can permanently lock down strong bosses like Revenants and Nociospheres.
  
• Berserk Pulse keeps enemies occupied instead of fleeing. It affects multiple pawns, but lasts for a shorter duration than Berserk.
  
• Waterskip removes fire hazards, which are common in quests and ancient complexes.
  
• Skip lets you teleport yourself or enemies. This is incredibly useful for repositioning. It can also be spammed if you need to get to a location quickly.
  
• Farskip instantly returns home from quests, saving a tremendous amount of travel time.
  
• Word of Inspiration converts excess psyfocus into inspirations for your colony. Since Kill-Focused provides effectively infinite psyfocus, you'll often have more than you know what to do with.

I put a ★ on the genes I think are mandatory.

Here's a picture guide for those who prefer visuals.

• Perfect Immunity ★
  
• Archite Metabolism ★
  
• Gene Implanter
  
• Scarless ★
  
• Ageless ★
  
• Non-senescent ★
  
• Deathless ★
  
• Breathless ★ (if Odyssey playthrough)

These genes provide some of the strongest passive bonuses in the game. If you're playing with Odyssey, Breathless becomes mandatory thanks to vacuum exposure.

• Strong Melee Damage ★
  
• Robust ★
  
• Very Fast Runner ★
  
• Deathrest ★
  
• Superfast Wound Healing
  
• Superclotting
  
• Coagulate
  
• Longjump Legs
  
• Hemogenic
  
• Fire Resistant
  
• Pollution Stimulus
  
• Unstoppable
  
• Elongated Fingers
  
• Dark Vision

Between Strong Melee Damage, Robust, Deathrest (for the associated pumps), and Very Fast Runner, these genes are what make the build feel unstoppable. Strong Melee Damage, in particular, lets you kill most things in one hit.

• Super Psychic-Sensitive ★
  
• Psychic Bonding ★

Psychic sensitivity is the single most important stat for this build. More psychic sensitivity means a larger neural heat pool, better Psychic Reader trading, and more value from certain psycasts.

• Great Melee ★
  
• 3 Other Great Skills (e.g. Great Medical, Social, Intellectual, etc.)
  
• Dead Calm
  
• Quick Study
  
• Very Attractive
  
• Smooth Tail
  
• Bloodfeeder
  
• Webbed Phalanges
  
• Very Happy
  
• High Libido

You can choose whichever Great Skills best suit your colony, but I highly recommend:

• Great Melee
  
• Great Medical
  
• Great Social
  
• Great Intellectual

These exist almost entirely to offset the expensive genes.

• Cold Weakness
  
• Heat Weakness
  
• Extra Pain
  
• Nearsighted
  
• Very Sleepy
  
• 8 Awful Skill Genes (e.g. Awful Shooting, Awful Cooking, etc.)
  
• Major Cell Instability
  
• Psychite Dependency

This setup allows you to choose 4 Great Skills and 8 Awful Skills.

Why these genes?

• Deathrest allows you to take advantage of Glucosoid Pumps (movement speed) and Psychofluid Pumps (psychic sensitivity).
  
• Very Sleepy becomes completely free after becoming Void-Touched because Void-Touched grants Sleepless.
  
• Extra Pain is free after getting a Pain Blocker.
  
• Nearsighted is effectively free because this pawn never uses ranged attacks.
  
• Psychite Dependency is taken because psychite drugs are easy to obtain and provide a massive movement speed bonus. If you have easy access to Go-Juice, you can add the appropriate dependency genes.
  
• Great Medical allows you to rescue enemies for recruitment without relying on Hemogen or Coagulate. If you don't care, Great Construction is another excellent choice for filling Anomaly pits faster.
  
• Great Social lets you take advantage of your massive psychic sensitivity while trading thanks to the Psychic Reader implant.
  
• Great Intellectual synergizes with Void-Touched's doubled anomaly study speed. Many Odyssey missions also require hacking.

If you got every gene in this guide, you should end up with approximately:

• ~85 Complexity
  
• -5 Metabolic Efficiency

After completing the Anomaly DLC, make your pawn Void-Touched.

Benefits:

• +200% Psychic Sensitivity
  
• Sleepless
  
• Rapid Regeneration
  
• Double anomaly study speed

This is the point where the build truly comes online.

The +200% Psychic Sensitivity massively increases your neural heat gauge, allowing you to remain invisible for minutes. It also improves the duration of Focus and the effectiveness of your Psychic Reader implant.

Once you've created your perfect pawn, why stop at one?

Find a Corrupted Obelisk.

Attack it until it creates duplicates of your colonists.

Use Shock Lances to down and recruit the clones.

Now your colony has multiple copies of your strongest pawn, each with the same traits, genes, and void-touched status.

Tip Caravan every colonist except your super pawn before activating the Obelisk. This guarantees that every duplicate will be the pawn you're trying to clone.

Fun Fact

If your super pawn became gay after turning 13 (there's a small chance), you can marry them to their clone. They'll be able to accompany each other on quests while benefiting from Psychic Bond.

Here are some other worthwhile things you can do to improve your pawn:

• Break a toxic wastepack near the pawn's workstation to constantly activate Pollution Stimulus.
  
• Make Glucosoid Pumps and Psychofluid Pumps before entering Deathrest.
  
• Get a lover to activate Psychic Bond, granting even more psychic sensitivity.
  
• Use a Neural Supercharger (Transhumanist ideology) for additional consciousness and movement speed.
  
• Use Juggernaut Serums to further increase melee damage and movement speed.
  
• Use Void-Sight Serums for another boost to psychic sensitivity.
  
• The Psychophagy ritual can also increase psychic sensitivity.
  
• Get the Combat in Darkness Preferred ideology precept if you're running a darkness colony.

• Have Mind-Numb Serums ready to ignore psychic drones. Trust me, if this pawn goes berserk, it'll destroy the rest of your colony.
  
• Mind-wipe the pawn after becoming Void-Touched if you want to remove Inhumanization. This allows the pawn to be social again (for your Psychic Reader), although it gains the Disturbing trait.
  
• Use the Chronophagy ritual to make the pawn 18 years old if necessary. Remember, you can use it to make them older or younger.

• If you need silver to buy all these genes and Archotech limbs, remember you can "borrow" the pawn's liver and kidneys. They'll quickly regenerate them thanks to Void-Touched. They'll be understandably upset, so give them a Mind-Numb Serum.

This guide was written to create the strongest pawn possible using only vanilla gameplay mechanics and official DLCs. The end result is a pawn capable of soloing raids with 40+ pirates, clearing quest locations alone, and acting as one of the best traders and researchers in your colony.

If you think I've missed an optimization, or know of a way to make the build even stronger, I'd love to hear it in the comments.

Hopefully this guide helps you create your own Gojo Satoru/Frieren/Yujiro Hanma. Happy rimming!