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.

Acquisition

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 having a built-up tolerance to the drug.
While addicted to the drug.
While withdrawing from the drug.

Note that psychite tolerance, addiction and withdrawal are shared by psychite tea, flake and yayo.

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
+20% Rest
1.5% Chance for a major overdose
+18% to +35% Overdose severity
+18.75% to +75% Flake high severity, depending on psychite tolerance (see "Flake high" below)
+4% Psychite tolerance severity, divided by body size (see "Psychite tolerance" below)
5% Psychite addiction chance (see "Psychite addiction" below)
If the pawn has a psychite addiction already:
- +90% Psychite need (see "Addiction" below)
- −30% Addiction progress (see "Withdrawal" below)

Flake high

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

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

Increase in severity = 0.75 * (100 - (tolerance * 75 round 0))

Therefore with 0% tolerance the severity increases by 75%, with 100% tolerance by 18.75%. It decreases by 300% per day again, meaning that the high of a single dose lasts between 1.5 and 6 hours. The maximum severity of a flake high is 100% which is reached with 1.3 to 5.3 flake. Regardless of the flake high severity, the effects are always the same. Only their duration changes accordingly:

+35 Mood ("So good, so good.")
×50% Pain
×33% Sleep Fall Rate

Without any tolerance, a dose of flake will last for 6 hours.

Psychite tolerance

Main article: 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

Each Flake consumed increases the psychite tolerance of the pawn by the following formula:

Increase in tolerance = 4% / body size

Thus smaller or not fully grown pawns gain more tolerance per drug use then bigger or fully grown ones. An adult human has a body size of 1. Psychite tolerance decreases at a rate of 1.5% per day.

See sections "Flake high" and "Psychite addiction" for how psychite tolerance affects Flake high severity and psychite addiction chance respectively.

If the psychite tolerance is above a certain thresholds it imposes a chance over time to gain the following ailment:

Chemical damage (severe) Tolerance above 45% imposes a chance proportional to the tolerance held to get chemical damage (severe). Chemical damage (severe) gained this way will affect only kidneys and only one kidney at a time.

Tolerance Chemical damage (severe)
average interval Graph

45% 99999 Days

50% 180 Days

100% 135 Days

Psychite 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

Each dose of Flake carries a 5% chance of a psychite addiction regardless of tolerance. There is therefore no safe dose interval.

The addiction progresses by 3.33% per day from the initial 50%. Once it reaches 100% the addiction is healed, meaning it takes about 15 days to overcome the addiction. Consuming Flake during a psychite addiction will reduce the addiction progress by 30% again (see "Upon smoking" above).

Developing a psychite addiction has the following one time effect:

15% Chemical damage (severe) chance

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

Psychite 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 suffers from the following withdrawal symptoms:

−35 Mood ("God I'm tired. Everything's so slow and boring. Especially me.")
−20% Consciousness
−20% Moving
−20% Manipulation
+30% Sleep Fall Rate (meaning the pawn needs to sleep about a 30% sooner)
300% Social Fight Chance Factor (Note: This factor is not added or multiplied, but set.)
Mental break chances:
- Hard drug binge: on average every 40 days. This averages to 0.8 hard drug binges during each withdrawal.
- Psychotic wandering: on average every 10 days. This averages to 3 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. In general, flake is better for selling, not using.

Drug

As a mood control drug, flake is generally inferior to yayo. Yayo is safer: it has a much lower addiction chance (1% vs 5%), a lower major overdose chance (1% vs 1.5%), and each unit of yayo lasts twice as long as flake, meaning there are less chances to overdose/become addicted. They both give +35 mood and x50% pain, but yayo also gives +15% Moving. Flake's only real advantages as a taken drug are 1.) the increased chemical recreation per leaf, and 2.) flake's smaller discrete doses. Yayo is worth two flake and each high lasts twice as long, but it has to be taken all at once. You can "split up" flake for 2 separate mood emergencies.

Psychite tea only gives +12 mood and ×80% Sleep Fall Rate, but is considerably safer than both flake and yayo. Adults can safely drink tea once every 2 days without getting addicted. This makes tea far more useful for regular use. However, all 3 psychite drugs contribute towards the same tolerance, so tea's safe usage interval does not apply if combined with either of the other two. Yayo is more appropriate for mood emergencies. In absolute emergencies, you can take yayo, flake, and psychite tea simultaneously for a +82 mood buff.

For the Psychite dependency gene, flake is often superior to the other psychite drugs. As dependency eliminates regular addiction and overdose, the regular safety advantages of yayo/psychite tea are negated. Flake is cheaper than yayo and satisfies the dependency for the same amount of time. Flake costs the same as psychite tea, but flake has a much greater mood increase, and restores more Rest. But if psychoid cost isn't an issue, then yayo is likely preferred due to the increase in Moving.

Drug comparison table

Drug	Mood Buff	Moving	Pain	Tiredness	Consciousness	Sight	Global working speed
Flake	+35	-	x50%	x33%	-	-	-
Yayo	+35	+15%	x50%	x33%	-	-	-
Psychite tea	+12	-	x90%	x80%	-	-	-
Go-juice	+5	+50%	x10%	-	+20%	+35%	-
Wake-up	-	+10%	-	x80%	+10%	-	+50%

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. Flake gives 33% more silver per leaf for only 7% more work, making it always superior if you are able to use all your psychoid leaves.

If the work required to create drugs is a bottleneck, then flake still remains more efficient when you sell the remaining leaves raw. 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 use 560 leaves to craft 140 flake worth 1960. The remaining 240 psychoid leaves are worth 456, for a total of 2416. However, psychoid leaves will eventually rot away without refrigeration, and fewer traders accept raw leaves. Therefore, if long term refrigeration is an issue, then yayo may be necessary.

If caravan weight is a limiting factor, yayo is worth more proportional to mass, however the low weight of all the options means 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 yayo and flake; 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.
Compared to smokeleaf joints, flake takes less work to harvest, flake takes much less work to synthesize, and flake is worth more per unit. Smokeleaf's major advantage is that smokeleaf plants grow faster than psychoid. If colonist work time doesn't matter, then smokeleaf can be worthwhile. Also, creating joints requires Cooking rather than Intellectual.
Compared to beer, flake is more efficient for overall value / work. Flake takes much less grower work, and it's worth more per unit. Like smokeleaf, hop plants grow faster than psychoid, and use Cooking rather than Intellectual.