Morale

Morale is how well you are feeling, and is the best way to generate experience. Your current mood is displayed as an emoticon in the lower part of the game screen. To view current morale modifiers press v.

It is important to keep your morale up as it affects how well you learn from actions, as high morale will increase your focus, which boosts experience gain. Increasing your skills increases your survivability, and there are several ways to do so.

Having a heavily negative morale gauge could be detrimental. At -50 it would be impossible to craft, to tinker with your vehicle, or to butcher animals or zombies. So you can become so depressed you can't cook food, or boil water. You can always read just for fun books, but not any others.

How morale affects you

Every minute, your focus is updated. Whether it increases or decreases depends mainly on your morale (pain is the other factor), and you can view the focus trend in the morale modifier menu using v. In some cases, the sidebar will also show an indicator for this trend next to the [focus] value.

Go out and spend that focus by using your skills!

In addition, if your morale is positive you gain a "happy/joyful/elated" status with bonuses to speed and stats per each 10 points of positive morale:

• .084 intelligence;
• .01 perception;
• .06 strength;
• .05 dexterity;
• 0.42 speed

The same also happens when you are in a bad mood, but instead of bonuses you will gain penalties and "unhappy/sad/depressed" state! Those penalties are mirrored negative versions of those stated above.

Positive morale effects

The Optimist trait helps keep your attitude naturally high, and Masochist balances pain effects by giving some morale bonuses- carefully managed, the latter can keep a demented :D going in all but the most dire situations. Plant and Elf-A mutants can activate their mycorrhizal communion ability in a forest, and spending enough time communicating with the trees this way will grant a substantial bonus. Spiritual characters have access to many ways to freely boost their morale, and Stylish characters can get a buff by wearing jewelry and fancy clothing.

Drinks, foods and drugs all have an "Enjoyability" rating. These tend to be short-lived, however, and foods are very minor, but variety is the key. Each individual food bonus is reduced by 2 every time it is eaten for 48 hours. You can eat individual flavors and get separate bonuses, such as flavors of potato chip or toastem.

Some books have a fun rating, providing a boost to morale when read. This appears on Just for Fun books and some low skill level books. A bit counter-intuitive as a source of morale as reading drains focus, but it's a bonus if you're reading the book anyway. Some books are sad or boring to read, and they can decrease your morale.

A great way to gain morale is to listen to music. Different sources give slightly different amounts of morale:

• Vehicle stereo max +30
• Tablet PC max +25 (may be lower depending on how many songs it has)
• MP3 player max +20
• Playing a musical instrument fun + fun_bonus * Perception.
  • The "fun" stat on musical instruments ranges from -5 to +2, and the "fun_bonus" from +1 to +4. So high perception characters will get a little more morale from +4 instruments than from car stereo. +4 instruments are trumpet, golden violin, tuba, and saxophone. Note that playing an instrument gives a speed penalty though.

The amount gained increases every turn until it reaches the maximum for the source. Different music sources do not stack.

Negative morale effects

Some foods and complicated books have negative "Enjoyability", and thus hurt your morale. It is worth noting that reading books does spend focus, so reading To Serve Man as a non-cannibal, for example, might put your morale negative and reduce your focus in addition to the focus cost if you have no other modifiers.

Many negative traits like Hoarder and Mood Swings can seriously harm your mood if not properly managed. Prozac is a popular thing even before the apocalypse, and especially after the apocalypse.

Killing zombie children at close range (5 tiles or less) can give quite large morale penalties. However, the penalty diminishes and goes away completely once the character reaches 100 kills. It's implemented by the "spell" Death Guilt, the penalty and duration decrease linearly in increments of 5 until 100 kills are reached.