Flake

A flaky substance that can be smoked to induce a short but powerful euphoric state. Flake provides +70% to recreation and an incredible +35 mood buff while it remains in the user's system. It is a cheaper and less powerful version of yayo but has a significantly higher addiction rate which makes using this drug impractical in the long term and therefore risky in the short term. Excessive consumption of flake within a short timespan, or consumption in combination with other hard drugs may result in a drug overdose. Furthermore, each dose has an unavoidable 1.5% (about 1 in 67) chance of instantly causing a major overdose, regardless of previous drug consumption.

Crafting

Flake can be manufactured at a drug lab using 4 psychoid leaves. Its synthesis speed is dependent on the Intellectual skill.

Detailed effects

Upon smoking

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

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

Flake high

"Active flake in the bloodstream. Generates a euphoric, debilitating high."

While each flake dose increases the severity of the flake high by 75% (see "Upon smoking" above), it decreases by 300% per day again, meaning that for one flake the high lasts 6 hours. The maximum severity of a Flake high is 100% which is reached with 1.33 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
×50% Rest Fall Factor

Tolerance

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

Withdrawal symptoms

Like Yayo and Psychite tea, Flake can cause psychite addiction. Withdrawal lasts for 30 days and causes the following symptoms:

Mood: -35
Consciousness: -20%
Moving: -20%
Manipulation -20%
Rest Fall Rate +30%
Hard drug binges (mtb of 40 days)
Psychotic wandering (mtb of 10 days)

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