Insect jelly

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Insect jelly is a type of food that periodically appears near insect hives. It fills the recreation meter of colonists by 8% when eaten raw. Note that it is considered raw food, and so has the same 2% food poisoning chance when consumed by humans. It can also be used as a cooking ingredient, substituting meat.

Acquisition

Insect jelly is produced by insectoid hives, including both those that spawn naturally in caves, in ancient shrines, or during infestations. Each hive spawns 20 jelly every 26,000 ticks (7.22 mins) to 30,000 ticks (8.33 mins), or 10.4 to 12 in-game hours, so long as there are is less than 40 jelly in adjacent tiles. An additional 30 jelly is generated when a hive is destroyed.

Insect jelly can be selected as an ideology ritual reward if your ideoligion has the Tunneler meme.^{[Detail needed]}

It can also occasionally be bought from traders.

Summary

As a raw food, insect jelly can be be eaten raw, with a flat 2% chance of giving food poisoning, or cooked into a meal with a food poisoning chance dependent on the skill of the cook and the cleanliness of the kitchen. Animals are immune to food poisoning from raw food but not from meals.

Eating insect jelly directly does not result in the −7 Ate raw food mood penalty, unlike most raw food. In addition, eating a single portion of insect jelly refills the recreation meter of colonists by 8%, providing "Food Consumption" type recreation, and the saturation meter, providing 0.05 nutrition. Cooking insect jelly into a meal loses its recreation bonus.

Unlike most other foods, it does not rot. While it will still deteriorate if left outside and/or unroofed, it will not spoil even if left unrefrigerated.

Despite being a raw food, insect jelly does not receive the 180% nutrition bonus given by the Robust digestion gene.

Analysis

Both insect jelly and chocolate can be used as a source of recreation in caravans. In a caravan, recreation is otherwise limited to some social activity when stopped and drug use. It could also be used in emergencies, where colonists need to do work but are recreation-starved. It is also a decent trade good, separate to its use by the caravan itself, as it is valuable, light and it is easy to get a lot of it when facing late game infestations, or can even be farmed.

Insect jelly and chocolate are the only nonperishable foods that high-ranking conceited nobles are willing to eat. They can act as a sort of "lavish survival meal". (Beer is technically nonperishable, but you can only drink so much before blacking out or getting addicted)

Compared to chocolate

As a food item, chocolate provides 10% Gluttonous recreation, provides 0.1 nutrition per unit, and will not cause food poisoning. This makes chocolate a superior all-round recreation item when no other factors are in play. But insect jelly is lighter, with 1/3 the weight per unit. Overall, jelly has 66.7% the weight per nutrition and 26.7% weight per recreation %. The lighter weight may be useful in longer caravan trips, though with sufficient pack animals you may have enough carrying capacity for chocolate. Insect jelly is also more valuable - in the event that you need to sell things to a faction base, then jelly is superior.

However, the biggest difference between chocolate and jelly is means of acquisition. Chocolate requires both Tree Sowing and Cocoa to be researched. But once researched, it can be grown at will. Meanwhile, insect jelly requires an infestation. This first requires that an overhead mountain tile is available, and then you'll have to fight and/or farm the infestation in the first place. But larger infestations can result in massive quantities of jelly.

Ultimately, which option is preferable will depend on the circumstances of each individual colony, as well as player preference. A colony in a mountain will accumulate lots of insect jelly, but find it harder to grow cocoa trees. A colony in a flat map is unlikely to face an infestation, but can grow chocolate.

Farming techniques

Insect jelly can be farmed by first defeating an infestation. Don't destroy the hives, as they are the things that spawn the jelly. Build a structure around the defeated hives, with a mini-killbox. The hives will slowly start recovering, and they will spawn new insects. Periodically, trigger the insects and kill them to stop them from consuming the precious jelly.

If you have a surplus of power, you can attach another structure to the insect box, connect the two with vents, and install heaters in the attached structure. Set the temperature on the heater to heatstroke* levels and cook 'em. Depending on the temperature achieved*, the insects will die a few hours or days after being spawned, while the insect jelly is not affected. Once it's safe (or after repeating a few times), you can open the vents and (after things cool down) send someone in to haul the jelly. Forbid the entrance to prevent pawns from foolishly entering without you noticing.

(* All Insectoids have a comfortable high temperature limit of 60 °C (140 °F), so you have to get things pretty hot to knock them off in less than a day, higher than 85 °C (185 °F), and 160 °C (320 °F) will still take over 6 hours, after it gets that hot. See Heatstroke for details.

Note that the reverse tactic, dropping the temperatures severely, does not work as neatly for several reasons. First, insectoids do not die from hypothermia, but only suffer hypothermic slowdown, so the very best you can achieve is sleeping bugs that will quickly reawaken if temperatures are not maintained. To add to the fun, different bug types have different minimum comfortable temperatures, but you'll have to aim for lower than -100 °C (-180 °F) below your target's minimum range to effect them in ~4 hours. See hypothermic slowdown for details.)