Psychite tea

Psychite tea is a relatively safe social drug that greatly improves mood, slightly reducing pain and the rate in which pawns get tired, at the risk of addiction. It is relatively very easy to research compared to other drugs, especially for Tribal colonies who suffer a speed penalty while researching more advanced drugs.

Acquisition

Psychite tea can be cooked at a Campfire, Fueled stove, or Electric stove once the Psychoid brewing research project has been completed. Each dose requires 4 Psychoid leaves, 400 ticks (6.67 secs) of work, and a Cooking skill of 2. Its cooking speed is dependent on the Cooking skill.

It can also be purchased from Tribal traders, especially Shaman Merchants who commonly stock it, as well as Tribal faction bases. Tribal visitors and raiders will also occasionally carry them.

Summary

Psychite tea is a moderately potent social 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 drinking

A pawn taking psychite tea will do so right where it stands without looking for a place to sit first. Psychite tea is taken by drinking, taking 210 ticks (3.5 secs). It has the following one time effects:

+40% Chemical recreation
+10% Rest
+18.75% to +75% Psychite tea high severity, depending on tolerance (see "Psychite tea high" below)
+3% Psychite tolerance severity, divided by body size (see "Psychite tolerance" below)
If the pawn has a 10% Psychite tolerance already:
- 3.6% to 30% Psychite addiction chance (see "Psychite addiction" below)
If the pawn has a psychite addiction already:
- +90% Psychite need (see "Psychite addiction" below)
- −15% Psychite addiction progress (see "Psychite addiction" below)

Psychite tea high

"Active psychite tea in the bloodstream. Generates a mild euphoric effect."

Each psychite tea increases the psychite tea 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 100% per day again, meaning that the high of a single dose lasts between 4.5 and 18 hours. The maximum severity of a psychite tea high is 100% which is reached with 1.3 to 5.3 psychite teas. Regardless of the psychite tea high severity, the effects are always the same. Only their duration changes accordingly:

+12 Mood ("Drinking that tea made me feel great. I love having this energy!")
×90% Pain
×80% Rest fall factor

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 psychite tea consumed increases the psychite tolerance of the pawn by 3%, 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. Psychite tolerance decreases at a rate of 1.5% per day.

See sections "Psychite tea high" and "Psychite addiction" for how psychite tolerance affects psychite tea 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

Once a pawn has a psychite tolerance of 10% or above, each dose carries a chance of psychite addiction that scales with tolerance. Due to the minimum tolerance to addict, psychite tea can be safely consumed once every 2 days without risking addiction, so long as the pawn has a body size of 1 or higher and their tolerance is not already elevated before starting the schedule.

The chance of addiction is as follows:

Tolerance	Addiction chance	Graph
0%	0%
10%	3.6%
50%	10%
80%	30%

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 psychite tea during a psychite addiction will reduce the addiction progress by 15% again (see "Upon drinking" 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 drinking" above), meaning the pawn will need to consume psychite tea 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% Rest fall factor (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

Psychite tea is much less addictive than flake or yayo. Adult colonists, 18 or older, can drink it every 2 days without becoming addicted. Tea decreases the need for rest, thus increasing a colonist's work time, while providing a greater mood buff than a dose of ambrosia or beer. Psychite tea can be consumed on a daily schedule to increase worktime, or saved for combat situations where you need pawns to stay happy.

The main risk of psychite tea is addiction from unintended use, whenever from a drug binge or from a pawn with chemical interest. Psychite withdrawal is harsher than smokeleaf, much harsher than ambrosia, and it is noticably harder to get addicted to beer. If these factors can be handled, then using psychite tea is a net positive for the colony. Of these, drug binges can be avoided by keeping mood up. Pawns with chemical interest will respect allowed areas, so restrict them from areas that create or store drugs.

Work analysis

The Rest need falls by 95% per 24 hours when not already tired. Psychite tea provides +x80% to Rest Fall Rate for 6 hours, or −20% fall rate on a base pawn. This equates to +4.75% Rest need, in addition to the instant +10% Rest from ingesting the drug. This results in a net boost of +14.75% Rest, or 3.73 hours of immediate awake time.

Actual time saved will almost always be lower, as sleeping increases Rest faster than it falls. On a normal quality bed / bedroll, a dose of tea equates to 1.5 hours of sleep, or 3,750 ticks (1.04 mins). With healthy pawns at the lowest possible skill, it takes 480.5 ticks to sow a psychoid plant, 769.2 ticks to cook a dose of tea, and 210 ticks to drink it, for a total of 1449.8 ticks per dose. Note that this is before travel time.

Time savings decrease as Rest Rate Multiplier increases, such as with better beds or the quick sleeper trait. However, psychite tea also increases the Recreation meter, which saves time recreating. Short of a circadian half-cycler or the Never sleep gene, creating psychite tea with perfect travel time is always a plus on work.

Trade

Flake costs the same amount of psychoid leaves, takes less work, and is worth 4 silver more per unit. Therefore, psychite tea is a completely inferior option to both flake and yayo once Psychite refining has been researched.

Smokeleaf plants grow faster than psychoid, and give +112.5% more drugs per plant. Smokeleaf joints take 50 ticks (0.83 secs) longer to create in a drug lab than psychite in a electric stove, but gives 1 more silver per unit. Note that both crafting spots and campfires double the work for their respective drug, while fueled stoves require constant wood. Therefore, smokeleaf is the superior cash crop if you have a drug lab, or if you don't have a stove.

Regardless, psychoid may be grown in a colony for drinking - any excess tea can be sold for good money.

Gallery

One tea
Partial stack
Full stack

Version history

Beta 18 - Added as Psychoid pekoe.
Beta 19 - Renamed from Psychoid pekoe to Psychite tea. No longer made at a crafting spot.
Beta 19/1.0 - tolerance gain 0.02 -> 0.03, market value 14 -> 10, restFallFactor 0.9 -> 0.8

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