Lavish meal

A lavish meal is an extravagant meal.

Acquisition

Lavish meals meals can be cooked at a fueled stove or electric stove. A lavish meal requires 0.5 units of nutrition from vegetarian items, 0.5 units of nutrition from meat or animal products (milk or eggs), 800 ticks (13.33 secs) of work to make, and a cooking skill of 8.

Summary

A lavish meal can be eaten by humans or animals for 1 nutrition. As it takes 1.0 nutrition of raw food to create, lavish meals provide 100% nutrition efficiency, so preparing one does not make any more food. Note that, because pawns will automatically eat when they are hungry (0.25/1 nutrition), some food is usually lost from overeating.

Eating a lavish meal or its variants gives the +12 Ate lavish meal mood for 1 day. This replaces the +5 Ate fine meal mood for 1 day from fine meal if present. If the meal was made out of insect meat or human meat, their respective moodlets will be applied. If Ideology DLC is active and the meal was made out of raw fungus, its normal moodlet will also be applied.

Lavish meals will also satisfy the food requirements of any conceited noble.

Analysis

Lavish meals consume twice as many ingredients and require 75% more work than fine meals to produce one meal. Most of the time, you should wait to switch to lavish meals until the mid-late game, when food is rarely an issue and your cooks are more proficient in their duties. The mood boost lasts for 24 hours, so colonists can be manually directed to eat one per day.

Lavish meals can be prepared and reserved for emergencies, such as a psychic drone, in order to avoid mental breaks. Colonists can eat meals even if they are at full saturation, so lavish meals can be used like a drug. Wealthier colonies can use them to encourage mental inspiration, or help mood during the ship launch.