Noglin

The Noglin is a creature in Genesis: Part 2.

Dossier
"That critter might seem kinda cute at arm's length, but you shouldn't let it near your head. I think it might be an ideovore -- like a vampire, but for free will. Creepy little noggin-goblin... Wait, you could call it a 'noglin'! HLNA Noglin Dossier sound.ogg"

Behavior
The Noglin is capable of controlling the minds of Survivors and Creatures, such as a. Under the right circumstances, the Noglin can attach to said Creatures or Survivors, giving control over their minds to its owner.

Appearance
The Noglin is a small, bioluminescent Creature with pointed ears. It has a split jaw, which separates to reveal its glowing tongue and many jagged teeth.

Combat
This section describes how to fight against the Noglin.

If you are looking for a Noglin, do not bring large creatures capable of high damage, such as a Giganotosaurus, Rex, or Spino, especially if you bring more than one tame. If the Noglin controls it, it can devastate your other tames.

Bring a harpoon launcher with net projectiles, a weapon capable of killing it (a shotgun is highly recommended,) and a longneck rifle with tranquilizing darts. If you spot a Noglin, you can either net it and kill it, or knock it out to prepare any taming setups that you have brought. They're fragile and also don't have much torpor, though you have to be quick on your choice.

Dangers
Noglins are small and may not be noticed before they're capable of taking control of one of your creatures. Possessed creatures caught by Noglin lose health over time and can die if left on their head for too long. They seem to do a percentage of health as damage to tames while controlling it, so even high-health tames are at risk of death. Moreover, the creature will not be responsive to you while its possessing the mind.

If the Noglin mind controls you, it will make you punch yourself.

Weakness
Noglins have a long cooldown before they can repossess the same creature again, so if you've brought a solo creature and it gets controlled, you can kill it quickly afterwards. They also have low health so killing them is easy if you get the first move against it.

Taming
For general information about domesticating a wild creature see Taming.

Taming Strategy
Similar to the Troodon, you must offer your tames to the Noglin. Unlike the Troodon, the Noglin will instead mind-control your creatures, adding to its taming progress per full mind-control session. This is however, very inconsistent and can sometimes take a fairly long time before it will ever begin to mind control a tame. There is currently no known way to speed up the chances of a mind control session occurring, though if they refuse to attack your dinos, knocking them out can "reset" them and make them more likely to do so.

It is recommended to bring packs of relatively low-damage, durable creatures, to ensure that you will not die from your own tames, nor will the mind-controlled tame kill the others. Unless you're looking for 100% taming effectiveness (see below,) the Carbonemys is the best creature to have mind-controlled for all the above reasons. It's even quite slow so it won't run off.

Trapping Strategy
If you wish to contain the Noglin, search for a flat area as that will be necessary for constructing an area to tame it. You can knock out the Noglin with a tranquilizer dart from a Longneck Rifle, then create a small box with some fence foundations and 1-high walls around it. While it's knocked out, position up to 8 Carbonemys on passive around the box with their heads facing inwards towards the box, then surround them with a circle of stone dinosaur gateways and reinforced dinosaur gates. The gateways should be able to snap to one another to create the circle. The Carbonemys themselves should be leveled into health and not into melee since you want them to be as survivable as possible.

Once everything is set up, remove the box around the Noglin to set it free. Do not mount one of the dinos you want it to control. If this happens, it may try to go towards you as the player, get onto the creature, then bug out to where it won't attack any other creatures. If this happens, knock out the Noglin with another dart to reset it. Once it wakes up, you should be out of the box and watching from above. Let it mind control the Carbonemys one by one. While it's controlling one, you can cryo a Carbonemys it has already controlled since it takes an extremely long time before it will want to control it again. Bringing spare Carbonemys would be wise to deploy if needed.

If the Carbonemys' heads get to where the Noglin can't reach them, try to move them to where their heads are accessible by the Noglin, preferably with whistling so you don't risk yourself getting controlled. So long as you can supply the Carbonemys, you'll tame the Noglin quickly and safely in no time.

Voidwyrm Strategy
Every creature supplies a certain amount of taming effectiveness to the Noglin, though there doesn't seem to be a particular formula for determining what is best. If you are looking for 100% taming effectiveness, you need to use a maximum of 5 tames. If the Noglin mind controls more than 5 tames in the process, it will lose effectiveness. As of now, there are only 2 known creatures to work with this, and they are the Brontosaurus and Voidwyrm. The Voidwyrm has some advantages over using max level immunity


 * They're easy to transport across the map.
 * They don't lose health while being mind controlled. (Unsure if this is currently a bug or a feature.)
 * Despite being quite powerful, they don't seem to attack while being mind controlled. If they do manage to attack, it is infrequent.

This strategy doesn't require any trapping, though be mindful that the Noglin will run rampant with your Voidwyrm and you will need to have the others ready for it to control.

Utility
Noglin has the ability to temporarily mind control non-allied survivors and creatures within range for a limited time. However, these can't be used for taming other creatures as it kills the creature if either it runs out of time, or if the creature is knocked out from high Torpidity.

When controlling survivors the Noglin can interact with some of that survivors structures such as Doors or Generators. However the mind controlled survivors can not ride their own dinos.

Creatures that have bleed damage or increased stats only while wild, such as Giganotosaurus, have their stats brought in line with its tamed variant and lose their wild bleed ability, Additionally. Some buffs such as the Spino water buff also seem to disappear

The target needs to have at least 50% of their, and be a lower level than the Noglin, reducing it's effectiveness in the middle of a fight or against high-level hyper-mutated dinos.

Additionally, as Noglins can not be bred, once mutated tames reach levels higher than a max level wild tamed Noglin with 100% taming affinity, mutagem, and all levels applied can reach (>332 on official) they will be entirely immune to all Noglins from that point forward.

Certain creatures, in addition to creatures with drag weight lower than 50, all Bosses, Mission Creatures, Corrupted Creatures, Titans, Unmountable Creatures and Vehicles cannot be controlled:

Roles

 * Saboteur - The Noglin can be used to control the minds of enemy Creatures or Survivors and turn them against one another. By controlling an enemy survivor, you can lead them to turn off generators supplying power to turrets, allowing your assault to advance without resistance. By controlling enemy creatures, you can disrupt enemy formations or create take control of a support dino, such as a Yutyrannus, to further aid your other creatures.
 * Distraction - The Noglin is a small creature rendering it useful as a distraction for other bigger creatures. Their small size and nimble movement make them difficult to hit with firearms.
 * Wild Dino Surprise - By mind controlling wild dinosaurs, you can use them against unexpected foes. If one is daring enough and the conditions are right, you can take control of a wild Giganotosaurus to cause havoc against enemy bases that happen to be in the area. (Note that wild creatures controlled will be treated as tamed creatures, meaning any stat changes, such as the Giga's harsh health and damage nerf, apply. They will also not retain any abilities they had only in the wild. and they will not have any taming affinity making them weaker than a tamed 200+)
 * Assassin - Removing a Noglin from a wild creature appears to kill the possessed creature instantly dealing 10,000,000 damage. (Unaffected by Attack Damage). Holding Square (PS4) or X (Xbox) allows you to instantly kill a target and stay as a Noglin effectively allowing you to transport between creatures.

Notes/Trivia

 * The Noglin's code name is BrainSlug which may be a reference to the mind controlling slugs from futurama.
 * The Noglin bears a resemblance to the gremlins from the Gremlin franchise.
 * The Noglin is the third creature to have two eyes on each side, first being the Megachelon and the second being the Astrodelphis.
 * The Noglin cannot attach itself to any unmountable tame.
 * If you play on Creative, mind-controlled creatures can fly.
 * Do not attach your Noglin to an Arthropluera. The recoil damage from detaching will kill your Noglin.
 * The Noglin is not targeted by enemy turrets.
 * Noglins can be considered one of the smartest creatures due to having the knowledge required to control survivors efficiently and use their Weaponry/Firearms through their body in addition it can control several dinosaurs and retain their motor functions compared to the usual turning them into a stumbling zombie in other fiction featuring Mind Control.
 * Noglins cannot be cloned.
 * The way that the Noglin's mouth splits open and separates and the appearance of the tongue inside (minus the bioluminescent lights) bears a striking resemblance to the "Reaper" strain of vampires seen in the movie Blade II

Lore

 * The Noglin is one of Rockwell's creations since it revolves around controlling other survivors.
 * This is further supported by what Gabriel heard in his last note "It assured me I would go now to dig up more of the prima materia that belonged to him." referring to suggesting that the Noglin was created for slavery.
 * The Noglin plays a small part in the new Lore released with Genesis part 2. Gabriel’s last note depicts his encounter with Rockwell until a creature, assumed to be a Noglin, attaches itself to his head and starts taking control of his body, he eventually dies from the critters deadly bite.