Flake

Flake is potent mood enhancing hard drug that significantly improves the mood of a pawn and provides additional bonuses, at the risk of addiction and overdose. It is cheaper than yayo, but comes with additional maluses.

Aquisition

Flake can be synthesized at a Drug lab once the Psychite refining research project has been completed. Each dose requires 4 Psychoid leaves and 250 ticks (4.17 secs) of work. Its synthesis speed is dependent on the [[Skills#|]] skill.

It can also be found on raiders and purchased.

Summary

Flake is a highly potent mood enhancing drug that has a variety of effects. These can be broken into effects that occur:

Instantaneously and one time upon using the drug.
While high on the drug.
While addicted to the drug.
While withdrawing from the drug.

Upon smoking

A pawn taking flake will do so right where it stands without looking for a place to sit first. Flake is smoked, taking 650 ticks (10.83 secs). It has the following one time effects:

+70% Chemical recreation
+75% Psychite high severity (see "Psychite high" below)
+20% Rest
5% Addiction chance
1.5% Chance for a major overdose
+18% to +35% Overdose severity (same across all hard drugs)
If the pawn has an addiction already:
- +90% Psychite need (see "Addiction" below)
- +30% Addiction severity (see "Withdrawal" below)

Flake high

"Active flake in the bloodstream. Generates an intense euphoric, debilitating high."
— High on flake description

+35 Mood ("So good, so good.")
×50% Pain
×33% Tiredness (rest fall factor)

Tolerance

"A built-up tolerance to psychite. The more severe this tolerance is, the more psychite-based drugs like yayo or flake it takes to get the same effect."
— Tolerance description

If a pawn has a visible tolerance to psychite, they will develop chemical damage in the kidneys in a mean time of 120 days.

Addiction

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

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

Withdrawal

"Because of a psychite addiction, this person needs to regularly consume the drug to avoid withdrawal symptoms."
— Need description

As soon as the psychite need reaches 0%, the pawn will develop a psychite withdrawal. From then on the addiction severity falls by 6.66% per day from the initial 50%, meaning it takes about 15 days to overcome the addiction. Consuming flake during a withdrawal will increase the addiction severity by 30% again (see "Upon smoking" above). During the withdrawal the pawn suffers from the following symptoms:

−35 Mood ("God I'm tired. Everything's so slow and boring. Especially me.")
−20% Consciousness
−20% Moving
−20% Manipulation
+30% Rest fall factor (meaning the pawn needs to sleep about a 30% sooner)
Mental break chances:
- Hard drug binge: on average every 40 days. This averages to 0.4 hard drug binges during each withdrawal.
- Psychotic wandering: on average every 10 days. This averages to 1.5 psychotic wanderings during each withdrawal.

Analysis

Flake is one of three drugs that can be produced from psychoid leaves, the others being psychite tea and yayo. Go-juice is a derivative of yayo.

Drug

Drug	Mood Buff	Moving	Pain	Tiredness	Counsciousnes	Sight	Global working speed
Flake	+35	-	x50%	x33%	-	-	-
Yayo	+35	+15%	x50%	x33%	-	-	-
Go-juice	+5	+50%	x10%	-	+20%	+35%	-
Wake-up	-	+10%	-	x80%	+10%	-	+50%

For use as a mood control drug, yayo is far preferable to flake, with stronger effects and only one fifth as addictive (1% vs 5% addictiveness). Psychite tea is considerably weaker, but it is much less addictive than either of the other two and, unlike them, has a safe usage interval. It is thus a significantly safer option than either. This makes tea far more useful for regular use, while yayo is more appropriate for mood emergencies. Though there is no minimum tolerance to get addicted to Flake, it still contributes to tolerance to Psychite tea.

Trade

On the market, flake is worth 2/3^rds the silver of yayo, requires 80% of the Work To Make, and 50% of the ingredient costs. The most economical option depends on which is the greater bottleneck: converting the leaves to the drug, or producing the leaves in the first place.

If converting the leaves into drugs is the bottleneck then there are two options. The psychoid leaves could be turned into yayo, however converting as much as possible to flake and then selling the remaining psychoid leaves themselves is even more efficient. For example, a pawn requires 35,000 ticks (9.72 mins) of work and 800 psychoid leaves to synthesize 100 yayo worth 2100. With the same amount of work, a pawn could craft 140 flake worth 1960 and consume 560 of the 800 psychoid leaves. The remaining 240 psychoid leaves are worth 456 for a total of 2416. This is not without its downsides however - fewer traders accept psychoid leaves than accept drugs and without refrigeration, the leaves will eventually rot away. Thus, if the player is likely to caravan to a settlement or receive a relevant trader before they rot entirely away, or can accommodate the refrigeration of leaves long term, converting to flake and selling the remainder of leaves is ideal. If they cannot, converting to yayo for storage may be necessary. If psychoid leaf production is the bottleneck and there is insufficient leaf supply to fully occupy your drug synthesizers' time, producing flake is the optimum as it produces more value per leaf at the cost of more work.

If caravan weight is a limiting factor, yayo is worth more proportional to mass, however the low weight of all the options mean this is unlikely to be relevant as a single muffalo can carry almost 20 stacks of flake worth over 20,000 silver.

Psychite tea is economically inferior to both; its primary advantage instead lies in its use by colonists. It is produced at a campfire or stove with the Cooking skill and only the Psychoid Brewing research however, and thus may be a more accessible in the early game.

Version history

0.15.1279 - Added.
1.2.2719 - Reduce flake new addiction chance from 20% to 5%. Reduce flake tolerance gain from 4.5% to 4%

Drugs

Social drugs: Ambrosia • Beer • Psychite tea • Smokeleaf joint

Hard drugs: Flake • Go-juice • Wake-up • Yayo

Medical drugs: Luciferium • Penoxycyline

Serums: Ghoul resurrection serum • Juggernaut serum • Metalblood serum • Mind-numb serum • Voidsight serum