Sanity Modifiers (aka things that affect your sanity)
There are two types of sanity modifiers the player will encounter while playing with this mod – ‘passive’ and ‘instant’. Passive modifiers are constantly increasing or decreasing the player’s Sanity value in small increments, while the Instant modifiers are big one-time hits. Both types can be either positive or negative and are mostly based on player’s choices and playstyle.
Passive Modifiers
- Player Level - Starting at level 20, the player will be receiving a very small negative sanity hit. The value will slightly increase at higher levels. The idea here is that the higher the level, the more fucked up shit the Courier has seen/gone through, which would logically have a negative effect on their psyche.
- Karma - Evil karma makes your mental stability worse, while good karma makes it better. Neutral karma has no effect.
- Sleep Deprivation - The higher the player’s sleep deprivation, the worse the impact on their sanity is. And it doesn’t go away until you get some sleep. Player’s sanity also gets affected positively if their sleep deprivation is zero or very low.
- Hunger - Same as above.
- Thirst - Same as above.
- Crippled Head - When the player gets their head crippled, their sanity will be getting constantly worse until the injury is healed. It’s not necessary to heal the head all the way back to 100 condition, all that is required is to heal it enough for it to be no longer crippled.
- Health - If the player has very low health, their mental stability will be constantly worsening until healed. (this triggers when HP drops below 30%)
- Stealth Boy Overuse - If you use stealth boys too many times, you will receive a moderate passive sanity modifier. Since the Nightkin have developed schizophrenia from excessive use of stealth boys, it only makes sense that the player would also be affected. (this feature can be turned off)
- Alcohol Withdrawal - Sanity will be getting worse while suffering from alcohol withdrawal.
- Claustrophobia - If the player has the "Claustrophobia" trait, their sanity will be slowly getting worse in very small increments while indoors.
- Cyberware - After surpasing a certain threshold (configurable in INI), player's cybernetic implants will start worsening sanity.
- Location - Being in some unpleasant/depressing places will worsen your sanity and vice versa.
- Companions - Having companions very slightly improves your sanity.
- Various Quest-related Events
Instant Modifiers
- Antipsychotics - This is a new item added by MSS which greatly improves sanity and cures the effects of Stealth Boy overuse. It also stops “the voices” from talking until the drug wears off.
- Crippled Head - Aside from the small passive effect mentioned above, the player also receives a big one-time impact on their sanity when they get their head crippled.
- Drugs and Chems - Almost every addictive chem has an effect on your sanity. Most of them worsen your sanity in varying degrees (with Psycho and Slasher being the worst), but some (such as Mentats) have a postive impact.
- Stealth Boy - Using a stealth boy moderately worsens sanity. Use them too much and the player will no longer be getting this one-time hit, but the passive effect mentioned above instead.
- Alcohol - Drinking alcoholic beverages slightly improves sanity. Time to drown out the voices! Be careful not to get addicted though, because alcohol withdrawal will have the opposite effect on your sanity.
- Stimpaks - Using a regular stimpak (including the auto-inject version) will improve your sanity for a very tiny amount, while using a Super-Stimpak has the opposite effect.
- Companion Death - If one of your companions die, it will have a negative impact on your sanity. (only works with vanilla companions)
- Cannibalism - Eating human flesh greatly worsens your sanity. Sadly I couldn't get this feature to work with the animated corpse eating when you have the Cannibal perk, so this modifier will only trigger when eating the various human meat items in the game (Strange Meat, Strange Meat Pie, Human Flesh, Human Remains)
- Sex - Having consensual sex will moderately improve your sanity (currently only applies to vanilla encounters)
- Killing/Murder - Killing people will cost you your sanity. The amount is relatively small, but do too much killing without taking care of your sanity via other means might make you insane pretty fast. (This feature can be configured or completely turned off)
- Devil's Highway / Escalator to Heaven - Alongside resetting your karma, these perks will now also reset your sanity level. So if you take the Devil's Highway perk, you will instantly become Insane. And if you take Escalator to Heaven, you will instantly become Mentally Stable.
- Various Quest-related Events
How It Works
The system might seem relatively complex on the surface, but its inner workings are surprisingly simple. The player’s sanity/mental stability is represented by a number on a scale from 0-2000, 0 being mentally stable and 2000 being insane. The value of this number changes based on the various modifiers listed above and then the player gets assigned a perk based on their current sanity value. There are four perks in total, because the player’s sanity is divided into four levels. The levels are “Mentally Stable”, “Mentally Unstable”, “Deranged” and “Insane”. And it’s these levels that decide how often will the player hear voices and how intense will these voices be. Other than that, the perks themselves don’t have any real effect, they’re mostly just there so that the player can know what their current mental state is. Below you will find the default values for each mental state. They can be changed anytime in the config file, but I highly recommend keeping them as they are, since all sanity modifiers are balanced around these values.
Mentally Unstable: 500-999
Deranged: 1000-1499
Insane: 1500-2000
Sound Types
Just like modifiers, there are also two main types of sounds/voices – ‘Generic’ and ‘Specific’. Both types have their intensity and/or frequency determined by player’s mental stability.
Generic sounds/voices play randomly during gameplay and their content has usually nothing to do with what’s going on in-game. The frequency of these sounds can be tweaked in the config file.
Specific sounds/voices only play under specific conditions. These voices directly react to the player’s actions or to what’s going on around them. Things like visiting a specific location, completing a specific quest, killing a specific NPC, etc.
Can you get rid of the voices or completely disable the mod without having to uninstall it?
Yes! There are two options to achieve this. Option one is extremely simple, because all you have to do is set “bModOn” to 0 in the config file. The other option is more complicated, but also way more immersive. When I got to Old World Blues quests while working on various quest-related triggers and events, I realized that the Courier is missing their brain for basically the entirety of that DLC and it kinda wouldn’t make much sense for them to still hear the voices. I know, I know, tesla coils communicating with the brain and all that, but still, it got me thinking. So, what I ended up doing is that while you don’t have your brain attached (in other words while you have the Brainless perk), you won’t be hearing any voices and the entire Mental Stability System will be completely disabled, meaning you will lose all sanity-related perks and your Sanity value won’t be increasing or decreasing no matter what you do. BUT, once you put the brain back in its place, you will basically pick up right where you left off before starting the DLC, meaning your sanity can be affected again and you’ll get back any sanity-related perks you might’ve had. The effect of the OWB perks can be turned off in the config file.