Keeping Morale up when the food runs the same

Open the supplies list Every supply with its Morale, its Satiety, its price and the food type it is filed under, which is the column the variety rule is planned on. This opens on Watermelon, the largest Morale in any food in the game.

Morale rarely falls from the clock. At 4 points a day it is the slowest drain in the game, tied with Fitness and Life. What empties the bar is eating the same type of food twice inside 24 hours, which the game calls Appetite Loss. This page covers how that rule works, what the Depressed state costs you once Morale drops below 30, and what puts the bar back up.

Why the bar falls faster than the clock

Morale drains 4 points a day on its own. From a full 100 that is 25 days to empty with nothing else happening, a quarter of the 100 days a run lasts. Every fast drop you see comes from something you did.

The largest of those is repetition. The game states the rule in its own tutorial: "Eating the same thing twice in 24 hours causes Appetite Loss." The counter tracks the food type, not the item name, so two differently named products of the same kind still collide.

The tuning table carries what a repeat costs and how long the window is.

The cut is the half that hurts. 2 Morale is a rounding error against a day’s drain of 4, but a meal returning 50% less Satiety means eating twice as often, which means repeating a type again, which is how the spiral starts.

The food types variety is measured against

Every food in the game is filed under exactly one of these 11 types, and the recipes ask for ingredients by the same list. Spreading meals across it is what avoids Appetite Loss. 16 different snacks all count as the same type, so eating three of them in a row is three repeats.

2 of the 11 have nothing worth eating for Morale at all: the best you can buy in Fish and Mushrooms still costs you Morale. Those are ingredients, not meals, and what a dish is worth is where they earn their keep.

What Depressed costs you

Gain 10% less Satiety and Stamina. Occurs when Morale is below 30.

The penalty applies to what you gain, so a low bar makes every fix slower. A meal eaten while Depressed returns 10% less Satiety than the same meal at 30 or above, and Stamina takes the same cut. Left alone it compounds with Appetite Loss: less Satiety per meal means more meals, more meals means more repeats, and each repeat takes another 50% off.

Furniture pays every day

Food is spent when you eat it. Furniture is not: you buy it once and press it every day for the rest of the run. There are 20 such buttons, spread across 44 pieces of furniture you can buy.

The two cheapest per point are furniture you were going to buy for another reason. The generator is there for power and the reinforced window is there to keep the horde out, and both pay +10 on the side. They are not the same deal, though: the generator’s press charges you 10 Satiety and 20 Stamina and takes 60 minutes, against 5 Stamina and 10 minutes for the window.

Reinforced Wooden Window Reinforced Wooden Window Package Furniture Packages 2000 g 2×2 cells Keeps indefinitely is the one to know about. Throw Paper Airplane pays +10 Morale in 10 minutes for 5 Stamina, and the game puts no daily limit on it. 3 of the 20 actions are unlimited, and the other 2 pay +3 and +1. Everything else on that table is once or twice a day.

2 actions pay Stamina rather than charging it, and both are free otherwise. Massage Chair Massage Chair Package Furniture Packages 2000 g 2×2 cells Keeps indefinitely is the better of the two on Morale and the dearer to buy; Beanbag gives the same +10 Stamina for $60. 7 of the 20 actions cost you nothing to press at all. If you are short on Stamina, those are the ones to reach for.

What Morale above 50 is worth

Past 50 the bar starts paying you. The daily log converts every 5 points of Morale above that line into a survival point, and survival points become the Planning Points that buy the talent tree.

Ending days at 100 rather than 50 is 3 times the income for the same run length, so money spent on comfort comes back over a long save in a way that hoarding it does not. Where Planning Points come from has the rest of the daily log.

Two things follow. Push the bar in the evening rather than the morning, because the log reads it at the end of the day. And treat anything that holds Morale above the line as paying for itself.

Food that pays in Morale

Some food is worth buying for the Morale rather than the Satiety.

Watermelon Watermelon Food · Fruit Satiety +60 Morale +30 Life +5 4000 g 2×2 cells 15.0 Satiety/kg $120 10 d shelf life Waste at day 30 Fruit Cut and ready-to-eat. Sweet and thirst-quenching. is the largest Morale in any food in the game, +30 on top of 60 Satiety, and it is a crop rather than a purchase: a planter grows it, so a stocked garden makes it free. What to plant has the growing side. The catch is the shelf life at 10 days, so it is a thing to grow and eat rather than a thing to hoard.

Alcohol is the other pattern worth noticing: it pays Morale and no Satiety at all, so it never competes with a meal for stomach space. Craft Beer Craft Beer Food · Alcohol Morale +10 Stamina +2 1000 g 1×2 cells $40 90 d shelf life Waste at day 225 Fuel 300 Alcohol Reduces greasiness and adds aroma to stewed meat. Also a perfect thirst-quencher. is the cheapest of them worth drinking. What none of the table shows is that 4 drinks carry the Intoxicated effect on top of the number in the Morale column: Gain 3 Morale per hour for 12 hours. Common Alcohol Common Alcohol Fuel · Alcohol Morale +6 Stamina +3 Life -8 1000 g 1×2 cells $40 Keeps indefinitely Fuel 6000 Alcohol Intoxicated , Gain 3 Morale per hour for 12 hours. Drinkable or flammable. Harsh and throat-burning. Can burn through the night, or get you drunk for a night. at $40 is the cheapest one you can buy, and it charges 8 Life for it.

Two foods hide their Satiety the same way. Giant Sub Sandwich Giant Sub Sandwich Food · Staple Food Satiety +60 Morale +10 Life +5 1000 g 3×2 cells 60.0 Satiety/kg $150 7 d shelf life Waste at day 21 Staple Food Giant Sub Sandwich , You won't need to eat anything else for the rest of the day. Gain 5 Satiety every 2 hours for 12 hours. Looks filling just by looking at it; irresistibly Gourmand, continuously increases Satiety and Jumbo Beef Noodles Jumbo Beef Noodles Food · Staple Food Satiety +70 Morale +5 Life +3 1000 g 3×3 cells 70.0 Satiety/kg $150 90 d shelf life Waste at day 360 Staple Food Jumbo Beef Noodles , You're gonna need to loosen your belt after that. Gain 5 Satiety every 2 hours for 12 hours. Max Satiety Heaven of fats and carbs; irresistibly Gourmand, continuously increases Satiety, Max Satiety +2 both list 60 and 70 Satiety, and both then apply an effect that pays more of it on a timer: Gain 5 Satiety every 2 hours for 12 hours. A table that ranks food on the Satiety column alone understates both of them.

Things that are not food

Morale also comes from what you do between meals, and none of it touches the Appetite Loss counter. The column that decides these is not the Morale one. It is the number of uses in a unit: most of them are worth their Morale several times over before they are gone.

Toothbrush Toothbrush Household Morale +3 20 g 1×1 cells $20 Keeps indefinitely Fuel 300 Brush your teeth, takes 5 minutes is the best Morale a dollar can buy that costs you nothing else. It restores +3 a use and holds 8 of them for $20, which is 24 Morale in one unit and 1.20 per dollar. Read from the Morale column alone it looks like the weakest thing on the shelf.

Playing Cards Playing Cards Household Morale +10 200 g 1×1 cells $20 Keeps indefinitely Fuel 1500 Have some fun, takes 10 minutes is the one most players buy, at $20 for +10 a use over 2 uses. That is 1.00 Morale per dollar, and it never spoils, but it is not the best rate on the shelf and it is not reusable without limit either.

Inspirational Story Inspirational Story Books Morale +10 Stamina -10 500 g 1×2 cells $120 Keeps indefinitely Fuel 3000 Max Morale Read for 1 hour; gain a large amount of Morale instantly, Max Morale permanently +2 is the only one on that shelf that moves the ceiling rather than the bar. It restores +10 like the rest, and each of its 3 readings also raises your maximum Morale by 2 for good. A higher cap raises what the daily log can read at the end of every remaining day, which is the one Morale purchase that compounds. It charges 10 Stamina a reading.

Medication is the emergency option rather than a plan. Tranquilizer Tranquilizer Meds Morale +30 Life -10 500 g 1×1 cells $50 100 d shelf life Morale +30, Life -10. restores 30 Morale the moment you take it, for $50 and 10 Life a dose. Keep one for the day a crisis lands on top of an empty bar.

What to do

1. Plan meals by food type, not by item name. Every supplies row carries the type it is filed under, and there are only 11 of them.
2. Do not repeat a type inside 24 hours. A repeat costs 2 Morale and 50% of the meal, and the window stretches towards 48 hours the more you do it.
3. Press the free buttons in the evening. 7 of the 20 actions cost no stat, the log reads the bar at the end of the day, and every 5 points above 50 is another survival point.
4. Buy uses, not Morale. Toothbrush Toothbrush Household Morale +3 20 g 1×1 cells $20 Keeps indefinitely Fuel 300 Brush your teeth, takes 5 minutes is 1.20 Morale per dollar against 1.00 for Playing Cards Playing Cards Household Morale +10 200 g 1×1 cells $20 Keeps indefinitely Fuel 1500 Have some fun, takes 10 minutes , on a smaller number in the Morale column.
5. Grow Watermelon Watermelon Food · Fruit Satiety +60 Morale +30 Life +5 4000 g 2×2 cells 15.0 Satiety/kg $120 10 d shelf life Waste at day 30 Fruit Cut and ready-to-eat. Sweet and thirst-quenching. rather than buying it. It is the largest Morale in any food at +30, and at 10 days it is worth planting rather than stockpiling.
6. Fix the bar before it reaches 30. Below that, Depressed cuts what every meal gives you, which makes the climb back slower than the fall was.

The talent that changes this

3 permanent talents name Morale in their own effect text: some slow the decay, some raise the ceiling, and one only applies during a cold snap.

Which talents to buy covers what the tree costs as a whole.

Quick reference

• Natural drain: 4 Morale a day, tied with Fitness and Life as the slowest in the game.
• Appetite Loss: the same food type twice within 24 hours costs 2 Morale and 50% of the food. The window reaches 48 hours.
• 11 food types, one per food, the same list the recipes ask for.
• Depressed applies below 30 and cuts what you gain by 10%.
• Largest Morale in a food: Watermelon, +30, and it grows.
• Best non-food buy: Toothbrush, 1.20 Morale per dollar over 8 uses.
• Best furniture button: Throw Paper Airplane on Reinforced Wooden Window, +10 with no daily limit.