Ambrosia

Ambrosia is a raw social drug that moderatly boosts mood and recreation at relatively low risk of addiction. It can only be traded or harvested from ambrosia bushes that only spawn in ambrosia sprout events, but cannot be grown by the player. 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

Ambrosia is a moderately potent mood enhancing social drug. Its effects 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 doesn'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 has 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

Ambrosia is easily the safest drug in the game. Each ambrosia sprout might provide 200-300 fruits, enough to last 5 pawns an entire year. A +5} moodlet for 16 hours every 2 days can be meaningful in the early game. Unlike beer and smokeleaf joints, ambrosia gives no work-related penalties. Eating the fruit also gives pawns an extra bit of nutrition. At the same time, ambrosia can be useless to a colony already in great spirits. At the very worst, ambrosia can be stored to help pawns in mood emergencies, or be sold immediately.

Whenever an ambrosia sprout is worth harvesting largely depends on how far away it is. It isn't worth it to constantly travel halfway across the map just a for a bit of ambrosia. Nearby ambrosia sprouts can be very valuable, however.

Trade

Ambrosia is a good supplemental source of money. When considering the raw numbers, ambrosia is superior to any other drug. However, it only appears from the ambrosia sprout event, meaning that quantity is ultimately limited.

Compared to flake, each ambrosia fruit is worth 1 silver more. Each bush has a base yield of 4 fruits - each psychoid plant gives only 2 flake. And there is no need (or ability) to process ambrosia any further. Of course, this is before travel time.