Rimworld Anomaly: How To Get Bioferrite

The Anomaly DLC introduced a new material used as fuel. Learn everything about it in this guide.

Bioferrite is the fun new material introduced in Rimworld's Anomaly DLC. Almost everything is made of it, spread across new monsters, powerful weapons, and exotic technologies. Gathering the exotic resource can be a challenge until you have a handle on the DLCs new mechanics

If you want to kit out your people with the new incendiary weapons, power your base with the new fuel source, or keep your research subjects well-contained, you'll need to produce lots of bioferrite. This guide will explain where to get your first dose, and how to snowball that into a more sustainable amount.

What Is Bioferrite Used For

Bioferrite is made from Latin and Greek words. It stands for "biological" (living) and "ferrous" (iron). It's also psychic in nature, but splicing three words together would get a bit messy.

Application	Bio, Ferrite Or Psychic	Where to find	Example Use
New Drugs	Bio	The new Serum Lab production facility can create long-lasting concoctions that give your colonists assorted boosts and drawbacks.	The voidsight serum allows a pawn to see the new invisible enemies, and improves their dark research speed at the cost of a mood penalty.
New Weapons	Ferrite	The anomaly research Bioferrite Weaponry allows you to construct the new weapons at a Bioferrite Shaper.	The hellcat rifle doubles as both a traditional assault rifle and a tight-beam flamethrower, great for clearing out underground caves.
Ghouls	Bio	The new Ghoul Infusion research adds a new surgery option to the health tab, converting a humanoid pawn into a loyal ghoul.	A captive prisoner can be turned into a ghoul soldier, especially if they have the tough trait to improve melee fighting.
Psychic Rituals	Psychic	The new Psychic Ritual Spot has a lot of uses, many of which consume bioferrite.	The Chronophagy ritual allows a pawn to steal the youth of another, often killing them in the process.
Psycaster Equipment	Psychic	Selecting bioferrite as the crafting material for apparel produces equipment to improve psychic powers.	Psycasters from the Royalty DLC will gain a bonus to neural heat and psychic sensitivity if wearing armour made from bioferrite.
Old Weapons	Ferrite	Selecting bioferrite as the crafting material for melee weapons gives a quality level on par with plasteel.	Bladed weapons made from bioferrite have strong armour penetration, and are more renewable than plasteel.
Prisons	Psychic	Bioferrite floor plating is unlocked with the bioferrite shaping technology.	Bioferrite floor plates increase containment strength, reducing the escape risk of captive entities.
Power	Psychic	The bioferrite generator technology allows you to build a 4,000 Watt power plant using bioferrite.	The sanity damage from the active bioferrite plant can be circumvented by using lifter mechanoids to resupply it.
Terraforming	Psychic	The bioferrite heater raises the temperature of an entire region by ten degrees.	The heater can be used sparingly to negate cold snaps or extend growing seasons into autumn.

All these myriad uses add up to being rather expensive. The lump sum of bioferrite given by the Anomaly starting Scenario is a head start but not enough to match your eventual needs when the higher-level entities begin appearing.

Where To Get Bioferrite

Bioferrite is unlocked with the Anomalous research Bioferrite Harvesting. The anomalous research panel is only unlocked after you have activated the Fallen Monolith, enabling Entities from the DLC to attack your colony more frequently.

They can still appear in small quantities without activating the Monolith, but you'll be unable to research them or extract bioferrite.

Once you have the Bioferrite Harvesting research, you can build a Harvester. This requires a live anomalous entity to leech the material from. Build a prison room containing a Holding Spot and a Bioferrite Harvester. A captive entity placed in the holding spot will begin producing bioferrite, typically at a rate of one or two units per day.

The early game entities that are easiest to capture are Sightstealers and Shamblers. They'll also provide you with basic research to get access to more technologies that use bioferrite.

The Anomaly starting scenario gives you a lump sum of bioferrite to get you started, but requires you to activate the monolith much earlier than other starting scenarios.

How To Mass Produce Bioferrite

The first contained Sightstealer or Shambler will give you a rather weak trickle of bioferrite. To collect more you need to progress further, expanding your prison to contain more and stronger entities.

Bioferrite production scales from two factors. The first is the size of the creature. Big entities like Devourers and Nociospheres produce large amounts.

The other factor is called bioferrite density. This one you'll need to inspect the creature types to discover, but is also somewhat intuitive: The metalblood horrors, despite being the size of a person, are composed almost entirely of bioferrite so you can harvest more out of them. They give a healthy four units per day but are also among the hardest to contain.

Creatures with higher density and bigger size are also harder to capture and contain. Steel holding plates, plasteel security doors, and stone walls are enough to contain most creatures for a long time, even if you make them share a room for cheaper extraction.

A high-throughput bioferrite farm can go in two directions.

Large-Scale Bioferrite Farming

This approach centers around capturing and harvesting weak entities in large numbers. Shamblers and Sightstealers will functionally never break free from a strong prison and they need no wardening to be contained. If they do attempt a prison break (roughly twice a decade), you should have no problems either killing or recontaining them.

Expanding the farm or replacing dead entities is a simple process of using the Draw Shamblers Psychic Ritual. This will summon a decent-sized group of fresh Shamblers for you to contain. Draw Fleshbeasts is an alternative ritual with variable results: Larger fleshbeasts give better amounts of bioferrite but are harder to catch and hold onto.

The Toughspike is a good middle ground, giving more bioferrite than Shamblers but not posing any significant risk.

The downside is this takes a lot of space and construction materials. You'll need a large base with the prison towards the middle so sappers don't dig into your prison.

This will also give you plenty of basic research , as the study cooldown is tracked per creature and not by creature type.

High-Density Bioferrite Farming

The opposite approach is to go for high-value targets. These require strong containment cells, potentially needing you to invest some of your bioferrite into floor plating.

Unlike the low-density farm, you don't need to reinvest your bioferrite into rituals to summon more creatures. Higher-level creatures can be captured as they appear naturally or summoned forfree with the Void Provocation ritual.

You'll want a supply of existing bioferrite equipment, most notably Proximity Detectors and Disruptor Flare packs: Advanced entities make frequent use of invisibility and darkness.

An effective way of capturing high-density targets without killing them is with psychic shock lances. The Anomaly DLC lets you craft these with bioferrite and shards — previously they could only be found in Ancient Dangers and quest rewards.

The Nociosphere advanced anomaly can be contained without risk but damages the mood of nearby pawns and must eventually be released or it will turn hostile. Treat it as a special windfall rather than a regular source of bioferrite.

Injured entities will have their escape chance reduced . You can do this by incapacitating them with weapons that don't cause a lot of bleeding and then denying them medical treatment.