Food & Mood

Every settler has a Mood stat (the UI scale tops out at 30) that quietly drives the whole management layer. Mood above 0 makes Stress fall; Mood below 0 makes Stress rise proportionally. When Stress maxes out the unit suffers a Mental Break (Stress resets to 0); if Stress maxes out again while the Mental Break state is active, the unit dies instantly. Low mood also trips HUD alerts, and a squad whose average mood stays below -3 for a sustained stretch triggers the Growing Discontent morale-crisis event.

Meal classes and racial diets

Every edible item carries a food class in its ItemSubType: vegetarian (Food_Vegeterian, 13 items), carnivore (Food_Carnivore, 10 items) or omnivore (Food_Omnivore, 2 items), plus a few misc edibles. The class is what the racial diet rules read:

• Elves gain Carnal Guilt (Mood -2) when they eat carnivore food, and ignore the usual mood penalty for an all-vegetarian diet.
• Lizardmen gain Plant Rage (Mood -2) when they eat vegetarian food, and ignore the penalty for an all-meat diet.
• Humans eat anything - their racial mood quirk is Growth Fatigue (Mood -2) whenever their XP bar is sitting at max, so level them up promptly.

Cooked dishes also carry a mood value - guild quests literally ask you to stockpile "food with Mood 1+/2+/3+" - and where you eat matters: a meal taken in a proper dining room applies its mood effect for far longer than one eaten on the floor.

Other mood levers

• Sleep quality ladder: the comfort mood from sleeping on the ground lasts a fraction of the time a bed gives, and a real bedroom doubles the bed again (135 / 1,080 / 2,160-second effect windows).
• Treatment expectations rise with level: at Normal management difficulty a level-1 unit contributes +8 baseline mood, sliding to -4 by level 5 - veterans expect better rooms, food and pay.
• Expeditions drain mood: each in-game day in the dungeon steps up a Dungeon Stay debuff (see Time).
• Recreation buildings restore mood: the Dice Play Table grants Mood +3, the Dart Play Board +2 and the Card Play Table +1 per play session (about 40 in-game minutes); overusing the same game applies a Bored debuff instead.

Mood equipment

• Flower Necklace - Mood +2 while worn.
• Echo Flower Ring - Mood +2 plus +0.1% health regeneration.
• Forgotten Idol - the opposite bet: damage dealt increases as Mood gets lower, enabling a deliberate misery build.

The Inscription of Gloom tradeoff

The Rare Inscription of Gloom gives +20% to all six major stats in exchange for a permanent Mood -3. On a unit whose needs you can keep met it is one of the best stat sticks in the game; on a neglected one it feeds the Stress spiral described above (Inscriptions).