Joywire

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Joywire

Joywire

A brain implant that stimulates the brain's pleasure centers. While it dramatically improves a user's mood, the blanket of happiness makes it hard to concentrate on anything real. Joywires are illegal on many worlds, and are known for destroying whole cultures.

Base Stats

Type
Medical ItemsBody Parts
Tech Level
Industrial
Market Value
220 Silver [Note]
Mass
0.2 kg
HP
50
Flammability
100%

Creation

Crafted At
Machining table
Required Research
Brain wiringTechprint
Skill Required
Crafting 5
Work To Make
15,000 ticks (4.17 mins)
Resources to make
Steel 20 + Component 4
Technical
thingSetMakerTags
RewardStandardLowFreq
techHediffsTags
Advanced
tradeTags
TechHediff


The joywire brain implant grants a permanent +30 mood boost. However, the bearer suffers a permanent -20% to consciousness. After implantation, it cannot be removed.

Acquisition

In the base game, the joywires cannot be crafted. Instead they can only be obtained via trade or found in ancient shrines.

With the Royalty DLC, joywires can be crafted at a Machining table once the Brain wiring research project has been completed. They require Steel 20 Steel, Component 4 Components, 15,000 ticks (4.17 mins) of work, and a Crafting skill of 5.

Summary

The joywire provides a permanent +30 mood buff at the cost of a −20% Consciousness malus, which is subtractive. The Consciousness penalty causes a decrease in most stats, directly impacting all of: Eating, Manipulation, Moving, Reading Speed, Talking. See those pages for details.

Installation

Installing the part requires 2,500 ticks (41.67 secs) of work, 2x medicine of Herbal quality or better, and a Medical skill of 5.

It cannot be removed once installed.

If the operation fails, the part is always destroyed.

Installing a joywire onto a guest is not considered a harmful operation.

Analysis

Due to its hefty conciseness debuff, it is generally a bad idea to install joywires on your colonists. While a substantial increase, the +30 mood buff can be achieved via many other ways and the Consciousness penalty makes the pawn significantly slower and/or worse at almost every task. Even cleaning, hauling, or simply walking is performed 20% slower. Conversely, a joywire can be installed into Royal quest guestsContent added by the Royalty DLC, keeping them happy even if you neglect some of their royal needs.

Joywires work best with the psychic harmonizerContent added by the Royalty DLC, especially on an already useless pawn. The harmonizer will spread the joywire's buff to other colonists. You can put one on a comatose pawn to make the mood buff stable; see this section for details.

Without the Royalty DLC, a joywire can be useful for colonists with Depressive or other traits that will cause mental breaks, who are not vital to your colony. However, these traits can often be handled by other methods, like a social drug policy, fine and lavish meals, or beautiful rooms. Failing that, it may be wiser to abandon that pawn and recruit another.

Luciferium can offset the stat penalty, bringing Consciousness to 95%. While it's still -20% Consciousness compared to an ordinary luciferium addict, note that certain stats (like Moving) only scale up to 100% Consciousness. Therefore, the penalty is somewhat smaller compared to a non-drugged pawn gaining a joywire. Of course, you should have some means of obtaining luciferium, like a reliable Outlander trade faction. A neural superchargerContent added by the Ideology DLC is analogous as a stat increase, though doesn't have the same costs as luciferium.

Trivia

The implant cannot be removed in the game, but according to the Joywire Addict and Addiction Counsel backstories and the fact the backstories appear on pawns without a joywire installed, this is not the case on other, probably more advanced, worlds.

Version history