The three dirty brown secrets of coffee

[Ajala 581]

Like many people I've been experimenting with caffeinated beverages since the recent patch. These are my fully subjective, partially speculative, non-peer-reviewed conclusions.

 

There are two things you're looking for in a caffeine buff: Duration and Power.

 

When you drink coffee or tea, you get a caffeine buff. If you hover over the buff icon, you'll see the duration of the buff timer.

 

The timer is governed by the QL of the beverage you just drunk, and seems to be pretty linear. You get 3 minutes buff for every 10 QL of the beverage, up to a presumed maximum of 30 minutes. A 10 QL coffee gives 3 minutes buff, a 90 QL drink gives 27 minutes. These values hold true whether you drink the weakest beverage (legacy camellia-based tea) or the strongest (kahvesi). The quantity doesn't matter.

 

You also see something like this:

 

• ~1.1x sleep bonus usage while boosting skillgain
• ~1.1x fatigue consumption rate while using sleep bonus
• 1.3x alcohol decay rate
• 10 Power

 

The values of the first three lines  are governed by the fourth. The Power is on a scale of 1 to 100.

 

The "sleep bonus usage while boosting skillgain" value ranges from ~1.1x at 1 Power to ~2x at 100 Power. 

 

The "fatigue consumption rate while using sleep bonus" and "alcohol decay rate" values range from ~1.1x at 1 Power to ~4x at 100 Power. 

 

I assume the "~" means there's some rounding going on behind the scenes.

 

The Power you get depends on a) what type of drink you drink and b) how much or how many times you drink it.

 

We know from DemonaNightshade that the caffeinated beverages in order of strength are: legacy tea, white tea, yellow tea, Oolong tea, green tea, black tea, cafe au lait, black coffee, fortified coffee, and kahvesi.

 

Each type of beverage seems to have a Power-per-sip value, from about 1 for legacy tea to 10 for kahvesi. I haven't exhaustively tested every type, but I haven't seen anything yet to dissuade me from this view.

 

You can increase the Power of your buff by either drinking more volume of the beverage, or taking more sips. 

 

If you take the volume route, your power will go up by the beverage's base per-sip value for every 200g (0.20kg) you drink. If you start drinking at 0% water, you'll only be able to drink a maximum of 2.20kg, or 11 sips, before you're too bloated to drink any more. So to get to 100 Power in one big gulp you'll need to be drinking one of the stronger beverage types.

 

However, and here's the first dirty brown secret of caffeine as implemented right now, drinking just 1g, as measured in a measuring jug, counts as a sip. 

 

So, if you drink 1g of kahvesi 10 times in a row, you get to 100 Power, saving yourself 2.10kg of drink at the cost of a couple minutes measuring out 10x 1g sips. A full 45kg barrel will get your buff to 100 Power 4,500 times. At 100ql and 30 minutes per buff, that's 2,250 hours or 93.75 days of buff per barrel.

 

But you can also get to 100 Power by sipping at the weaker coffees and teas. I hit 100 Power by drinking 1g of black tea, which has a 2.3 Power-per-sip, 44 times in a row.

 

Here's the second dirty brown secret of caffeine:

 

Drinking 1g of coffee is also sufficient to get you your daily 10 minutes of extra sleep bonus.

 

So if all you care about is your daily extra sleep bonus and you start sipping at a 45kg barrel (which has 45,000 sips in it) today, you won''t run out of coffee until Friday, January 22, 2145, which is almost 124 years from now. You, your kids, your grandkids, and your great grandkids will get a total of 450,000 minutes (312.5 days) of extra sleep bonus.

 

And finally, the third dirty brown secret of caffeine:

 

You can mix and match your bevs to get both the maximum timer possible and the maximum Power possible with the fewest number of sips at the lowest possible cost. Simply drink 1g of low-quality kahvesi 9 times, then top up the timer by drinking 1g of the highest-quality kahvesi you can get. You'll get close to the 30-minute maximum duration at the maximum of 100 Power.

 

As I said at the top, these are all my first impressions based on non-exhaustive, non-peer-reviewed experimentation. Your mileage may differ. I welcome comments and arguments.

 

 

EDIT -- From the Nov 16 patch notes "Bugfix: Using 1g sips of caffeine will no longer refresh the buff entirely." https://www.wurmonline.com/2021/11/16/patch-notes-16-nov-2021/

Edited November 16, 2021 by Ajala

[Spolmit 620]

Fascinating number crunching- thank you.

 

For me, beverages are increasingly a skill that I simply want to learn more about and build up my own village brewery / inn.

 

At only 45 brewing skill, I am no risk to those Sommeliers selling amazing barrels of liquid affinities but any help to get further in my skills / rewards is most welcome.

[Eyesgood 2,121]

Nothing gets past a Wurmian.

[Oblivionnreaver 5,174]

sounds like they tested the mechanics very well before releasing

[Galatyn 438]

These are good reasons not to buy a large amount of high ql right now.  Save your money and just buy a small amount.  Make some low ql khavesi, drink 9 x 1g sips, then drink 1 x 1g sip of high ql.  A single 2kg jar will provide 2,000 sips.  By the time that runs out (if that even happens), the market price should be significantly reduced.

Edited November 8, 2021 by Galatyn

[elentari 2,660]

Yeah...I hope it won't get patched (too soon). It's a nice trick. 

[Ajala 581]

Uh-oh...

 

Quote

Bugfix: Using 1g sips of caffeine will no longer refresh the buff entirely.

 

https://www.wurmonline.com/2021/11/16/patch-notes-16-nov-2021/

[Pantha 309]

11 hours ago, Ajala said:

Uh-oh...

 

 

https://www.wurmonline.com/2021/11/16/patch-notes-16-nov-2021/

Aww, this is disappointing. I was struggling to get 100 power with 1g sips due to water bar filling up to 100 too quickly. Now I cant even get 10 power unless my water is below 80% and no chance of getting 100 power.

[Ogare 74]

It seems caffeine power is scaled down linearly when we drink less than a 0.2kg sip.  Thus, we need 10 sips of 0.2kg Kahvesi to get 100 power.  I didn't think it was too much of a bother to make 0.23 kg Kahvesi batches. That means we will need 9 batches to get 10 of 0.2 kg sips. 

 

I was considering using this for meditation but I believe I'll need to do 9 batches per a mediation. If I can do 7 mediations I'll also need to fit in 63 batches of coffee, plus grow that many beans a day. Is that right? It's doable but I'm not sure if I want to do that much coffee work.