Ambrosia

Ambrosia is a raw social drug that . It can only be traded or harvested from ambrosia bushes that only spawn in ambrosia sprout events, but cannot be grown by the player. It provides a +5 mood buff, +50% recreation and is slightly addictive. Ambrosia does spoil if not refrigerated. Although it also provides 0.2 nutrition it is not a vegetarian food.

Acquisition

It is harvested from ambrosia bushes. They can be harvested multiple times before dying, each time yielding 4 fruit when fully grown.

A good way to harvest them is to draw a growing zone over them, but forbid sowing. Colonists will then automatically harvest the bushes when they are fully grown.

The event can only occur, and thus the bush can only be found, in the following biomes:

Summary

These can be broken into effects that occur:

Instantaneously and one time upon using the drug.
While high on the drug.
While having a built-up tolerance to the drug.
While addicted to the drug.
While withdrawing from the drug.

Upon ingestion

A pawn eating an ambrosia will look for a place to sit in a four tile radius first, but will also eat it while standing if it doens't find one. Eating an ambrosia takes 80 ticks (1.33 secs). It has the following one time effects:

+50% Chemical recreation
+12.5% to +50% Ambrosia high severity, depending on tolerance (see "Ambrosia high" below)
+3.2% Tolerance severity, divided by body size (see "Tolerance" below)
If the pawn has 15% tolerance already:
- 2.2% to 15% Addiction chance (see "Addiction" below)
If the pawn has an addiction already:
- +90% Ambrosia need (see "Addiction" below)
- −10% Addiction progress (see "Addiction" below)

Ambrosia high

"Ambrosia chemicals in the bloodstream. It lifts the mood."
— Ambrosia high description

Each ambrosia increases the ambrosia high severity by the following formula:

Increase in severity = 0.5 * (100 - (tolerance * 75 round 0))

Therefore with 0% tolerance the severity increases by 50%, with 100% tolerance by 12.5%. It decreases by 75% per day again, meaning that the high of a single dose lasts between 4 and 16 hours. The maximum severity of an ambrosia high is 100% which is reached with 2 to 8 ambrosia. Regardless of the ambrosia high severity, the effect is always the same. Only the duration changes accordingly:

+5 Mood (Ambrosia warmth: "That ambrosia makes me feel more relaxed, and gives me energy at the same time.")

Tolerance

Main article: Tolerance

"A built-up tolerance to ambrosia. The more severe this tolerance is, the more ambrosia it takes to get the same effect."
— Tolerance description

Each ambrosia consumed increases the tolerance of the pawn by 3.2%, divided by the body size of the pawn. Thus smaller or not fully grown pawns gain more tolerance per drug use then bigger or fully grown ones. A Human has a body size of 1. Tolerance decreases at a rate of 2% per day.

See sections "Ambrosia high" and "Addiction" for how tolerance affects ambrosia high severity and addiction chance respectively. Otherwise tolerance against ambrosia as no ongoing effects.

Addiction

"A chemical addiction to ambrosia. Long-term presence of ambrosia has caused neurological adaptations at the cellular level, so the brain can no longer function properly without the drug. Without regular doses of ambrosia, withdrawal symptoms will begin. However, extended abstinence will force the brain to adapt back to its normal state, resolving the addiction."
— Addiction description

Once a pawn has a tolerance of 15% or above, each dose carries a chance of addiction that scales with tolerance. Due to the minimum tolerance to addict, ambrosia can be safely consumed once every 1.6 days without risking addiction, so long as tolerance is not already elevated before starting the schedule.

The chance of addiction is as follows:

Tolerance	Addiction chance	Graph
0%	0%
15%	2.2%
50%	5%
80%	15%

The addiction progresses by 10% per day from the initial 50%. Once it reaches 100% the addiction is healed, meaning it takes about 5 days to overcome the addiction. Consuming ambrosia during an addiction will reduce the addiction progress by 10% again (see "Upon ingestion" above).

Developing an addiction means a pawn has an ambrosia need. The need for ambrosia falls by 50% per day, consuming ambrosia satisfies the need by 90% (see "Upon ingestion" above), meaning the pawn will need to consume ambrosia at least every 1.8 days to prevent withdrawal symptoms.

Withdrawal

"Because of an ambrosia addiction, this person needs to regularly consume ambrosia to avoid withdrawal symptoms."
— Need description

As soon as the ambrosia need reaches 0% the pawn suffers from the following withdrawal symptom:

−10 Mood ("I feel heavy and cold all the time. I never thought I'd want a piece of fruit so much.")

Analysis

Arguably, ambrosia is the best drug for early-to-mid games before food isn't a problem and beer, smokeleaf, and psychite tea is worth taking your farmers' time to farm. It provides a nice +5 mood buff for 16 hours, and addictions are generally no problem. Tell the non-addicted pawns to take 10 to their inventory, then box the rest into a small room. The mood debuff is negligible in the mid-to-late game. Each ambrosia sprout might provide 200-300 fruits, enough to last 5 pawns an entire year.

Since the addiction progresses faster, than the need for ambrosia falls it is possible to overcome an ambrosia addiction without stopping consumption and suffering from withdrawal symptoms.