Mood

Basics Menus Game Creation Gameplay Pawns Plants Resources Gear Mods Pawns Menu Character Properties Character Types Character Properties Health Mood Needs Skills Thoughts Traits Social

---

See also: Thoughts

Mood is a game mechanic that describes a colonists feelings based on their environment and experiences, represented by a blue bar in the Needs tab tab ranging from 0 to 100%. Low moods cause mental breaks, while high moods may trigger inspirations. Mood is affected by game difficulty, a colonists traits and environment, and whether or not the pawn is assigned to work they have Passion for.

Prisoners with high mood are easier to recruit and less likely to break out or go berserk, colonists with a low enough mood for a long enough time may leave your colony.

Mechanics

The Needs tab.

Colonists have a "Mood (%)" and a "Mood Target", shown in the Needs tab. A "Mood Target", shown as a white triangle below the mood bar, is a representation of all the positive and negative thoughts held by a colonist and changes instantly depending on the colonists exact situation, while "Mood" is a blue bar that represents a colonist's mood in that exact moment. Pawns have a base mood of 32 and the baseline is affected by the Colonist Mood AI storyteller setting - note that the default difficulty options also change this setting.

The Mood bar moves towards the Mood Target indicator at a maximum rate of +12 per in-game hour when mood is increasing or −8 per in-game hour when decreasing. For example, when a Hungry colonist (-6 mood) eats a meal, you'll see the mood target immediately jump to the right as the Hungry effect disappears, but the mood bar takes some time to inch its way toward the triangle. When a colonist is sleeping or otherwise unconscious, the mood bar stays in place, and any risk of a mental break is paused.

Three dividing lines on the mood bar, called the Mental Break Threshold, represent mental danger zones- if the mood bar falls below these markers, there is a risk of a colonist having a Mental break, where you will lose control over them and they will wander around and act against their and the colony's best interests. For a normal colonist, these lines are placed at 5% for an extreme break risk, 20% for a major break risk, and 35% for a minor break risk, although these thresholds can be changed by a colonist's traits.

Difficulty

Mood as a percentage is calculated by adding the overall difference between positive and negative thoughts to the "Base mood", a stat which is defined by your difficulty. For example, a pawn with Low expectations (+18) and Hungry (−6) on Peaceful difficulty will have a mood target of 54%.

Difficulty	Base Mood
Peaceful	42
Community builder	42
Adventure story	37
Strive to survive	32
Blood and dust	27
Losing is Fun	22

The difficulty can be changed at any time during gameplay.

Mood management

There are various ways of increasing mood, which generally fall into two self-explanatory categories: Remove the bad things and add more good things. There are a lot of mood-influencing Thoughts.

Managing mood shows similarities to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs:

Basic needs

Keeping colonists fed, sheltered, well-rested, clothed, and as far from death as possible is the most important aspect of your colony. Nutrient paste is disgusting but the penalty for a hungry colonist is much greater, otherwise make sure your colony is more than a sleeping spot on an open field- walls and roofs are your friend. Be sure to pay close attention to the traits of your colonists, some hate being outdoors and would rather be kept in a small room, some demand the freedom of nudity, and some are just miserable people. Otherwise your own choices as a player can have a significant impact- making your colonists commit cannibalism, steal people's organs, or forcing everyone to wear cowboy hats made of human skin usually outweigh giving them an extra hour of rest every day.

Safety needs

Sickness and pain are going to be some of the greatest influences to the mood of your colony. Some colonist suffer from pre-existing scars or injuries which naturally lower their mood and you will have to overcompensate for these using other means. Providing clean, spacious, and well decorated bedrooms for each individual colonist, as well as a comfortable place to eat and spend time when not working or sleeping, are generally some of the best ways to provide positive mood. The difference between the best and worst of environments can be as much as 60 mood points.

Social needs

Having a lover or a pet, allowing colonists to socialize, and allotting time for recreational actives (time alone, entertainment, drugs) are all great sources of consistent positive mood. Beware that the death of a loved one, negative social interaction, and unfulfilled drug addictions can all result in negative mood. Providing beautiful work spaces with clean floors and quality furniture also passively increase mood. Consider spreading recreation time over the day to keep colonists' recreation need topped up at all times.

Passion

Assigning colonists to work they are passionate for will cause them to learn that specific skill faster and gain a significant boost to mood.

Investing in a large, comfortable and impressive combined recreation and dining room pays off dividends. For a relatively low investment, the entire colony can get a substantial mood boost from simply eating a fine meal at a table and playing some horseshoes. An impressive bedroom only benefits one or two people, but the mood effects are permanent.

Lavish meals, drugs or artifacts can greatly increase mood in the short term, which helps keeping things running during stressful times. They are generally a challenge to keep up in the long-term.

Extreme measures

Sometimes, an unlucky pawn has enough combined negative modifiers (scar pain, drug withdrawal, deaths of family members, psychic drone) that they'll still be in the extreme break risk zone even if given the very best. If you don't want to deal with constant mental breaks, you have a few options.

To have a mental break, a pawn must be awake and able to move. This yields these strategies to prevent a mental break by inhibiting movement:

• Assigning the pawn to go to sleep (works for some hours until the rest bar fills up)
• Knocking out the pawn through Anesthesizing, neural heat dump, Xenogerms or afflicting extreme blood loss with either Bloodfeeder or hemogen extraction.
• Putting the pawn in a cryptosleep casket (useful for events that inflict mood penalties, such as psychic drones, and various Anomaly Events)
• The famous/infamous "cut their legs off" approach (install peg legs, then remove them).

The Joywire implant gives +30 mood—at the significant cost of -20% consciousness, and it cannot be removed. Thus, it should be used as a permanent solution to permanent problems.

Notes

If a colonist is resurrected using a Resurrector mech serum, the various mood penalties from losing a spouse, friend, colonist and so forth are removed. If there were bonuses such as from a recent marriage, these will not return, either for the directly affected pawns or anybody else in the colony.

Version history

• 0.9.722 - Tattered apparel thought added.
• 0.10.785 - Pain now creates unhappiness.
• 0.12.906 - Crowded thought added. Added room quality related thoughts for doing Joy or Eating in them, and owning an impressive bedroom or barracks. Nuzzling added.
• 1.1.0 - Added ‘freed from slavery’ mood-boosting thought for pawns bought from a trader. Added mood boost when prisoner released.
• Between 1.2.2723 and 1.3.3087 - "Slave sold" penalty reduced from -5 to -3.
• 1.3.3117 - Fix: Selling prisoners doesn't trigger negative thoughts on selling to slavers.

References

---

Status levels

Needs

Beauty • Chemical • Comfort • Drug addiction • Food • Indoors • Outdoors • Recreation • Rest • Deathrest • Energy • Kill satiety • Learning • Play

Related

Hemogen

Other

Mood (Mental break • Mental inspiration)