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Stellaris Dev Diary #276 - Death is the Beginning

Greetings, ghouls and ghasts! Chief Reanimator Iggy here to report the most recent innovation in the field of necromancy. With the 3.6 update, we will bring you the Cordyceptic Drones civic! These delightful fungi will allow you to dominate the galaxy with zombie space fauna, as this is the third Reanimation civic! I know many of you have been enjoying this on the Beta, but if you give me a moment, I will have something new to show you!


Cordyceptic Drones

If you have been following how I made Permanent Employment, you would know that I want all these different reanimation civics to have access to the Leviathan Reanimation feature while still having unique gameplay. Cordyceptics follow this trend giving hives a much more biological reanimation method.

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Also including the new Hivemind Government Type Parasitic Overmind!

The civic can be incredibly powerful based on the space fauna you encounter. If you find Tiyana Vek early game, then you are in for a fun game while you have to restructure your entire economy to produce enough food to keep your dread fleet flying. Yet that is not all! Cordyceptic Empires are masters of all things biological, so your Amoeba Flagella will now be a force to be reckoned with in the early game. And if you happen to get the Prethoryn as your crisis, you might be able to use those missiles better than the Prethoryn themselves!

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Now, who would want to start with some boring old Corvettes?

As a final little flavor feature for you, I present you with the Cordyceptic Reanimation Facility, capable of resurrecting space fauna continuously for a food upkeep! However, it requires that you find systems rich in organic life.

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A new Tiyanki fleet is ready to be deployed!

The Other Thing

Back when Eladrin and I first introduced Reanimatable Leviathans for 3.1 “Lem” there was one piece of feedback we kept hearing internally. Will the Leviathans look like Zombies? While we couldn't deliver it back then. After much finagling, bartering, and pledging my soul to our Art Director, we are here to bring you Reanimated Leviathans as you have never seen them before.

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Someone call in the Fire Department ‘cos it’s SMOKING in here!

This collaboration required the cooperation of each discipline within our art team, with beautiful concept art, new shaders, and breathtaking VFX!

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What is Next for Reanimators?

Machines will repurpose dead organic matter.
Eventually…
Now go out and raise some dead!
 

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Neat.

I'd love to see a Voidspawn Colossus -- crack a planet and get a Titan-ish unit out of the rubble.
 
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Wait, so if all of the tyanki is dead in tyanki vek, it won't spawn new tyanki zombies from the reanimation facility?
 
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Brother, get the flamer. The XL-sized one.

P.S. Since we are now going into second half of the november, can we assume that next week will be full patch notes and 3.6 release?
 
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That is a step in the right direction, but... what about organic/regular civs who chose organic mastery and would like to assimilate/enslave pops with implants, as Assimilators do. Or they COULD CHOOSE not to the specific conquered races.
 
Spoiler for the machine version of the civic?

My guess for flavor would be Driven Assimilators (and you get Borg Tiyanki and Borg Amoebas), but they are already among empires the strongest in the game.
 
I've had quite a lot of fun playing around with Cordyceptic Drones in the beta. You made a fun Civic!
I hadn't even thought about being able to resurrect Prethoryn, haven't gotten that far in my games yet.
Those zombie Leviathans look amazing, too!
I just got one question: Does that mean we are getting zombie Prethoryn too, or is the team out of souls to give to the Art Director at this point?
 
We try to give them unique flavor in events where it would be thematic, like the Titanic Skeleton or the Rock Brain!




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Actually speaking of environmentally conscious machines, it would be cool to have a Gaia Seeders machine civic. Have them get unity or other goodies for terraforming planets.
 
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Whoooooo. I wish the Void Spawn would actually spawn for me for once, so that I could get that awesome undead dragonfly