Word of love
 | This article relates to content added by Royalty (DLC). Please note that it will not be present without the DLC enabled. |
Word of love
Speak about someone's romantic virtues while using psychic suggestion to implant romantic desire in the listener. For days afterward, the listener will feel psychically-induced romantic attraction towards the other person. This greatly increases opinion and makes them much more likely to attempt romantic advances and marriage proposals if they get the chance. This power can be used to connect two other people, induce love for the caster, or force oneself to love another.
Base Stats
- Type
- Psycast
Ability
Word of love is a level 3 psycast that increases the likelihood of romance between the two targets.
Acquisition[edit]
There are two ways to acquire the word of love psycast:
- Upon reaching psylink level 3, a random psycast of level 3 is granted regardless of how this level up is achieved. This won't apply if the psycaster already knew one or more level 3 psycast.
- Word of love can also be acquired from a psytrainer naming it. See the psytrainer page for further details.
Summary[edit]
Upon casting, Word of love will grant the Psychic Love hediff to a target pawn for 480,000 ticks (133.33 mins), or 8 in-game days, increasing romantic compatibility with another pawn for the duration. Before casting, the player will be prompted to select a pawn to grant Psychic Love to, followed by a second pawn as a target for the initial pawn's Psychic Love. Valid targets for Word of Love include any conscious, non-hostile, psychically sensitive pawn including the caster, but disqualifying those below the age of 16. The Psychic Love hediff affects several romance-related stats, including:
- +40 opinion of the second pawn.
- Grants a ×1000% multiplier to Romance chance for the second pawn, drastically increasing the chances that romance attempts succeed.
- Multiplies RomanceChanceFactor (a hidden stat) by 10x, ostensibly increasing the chances of the pawn initiating a romance attempt or marriage proposal towards the second pawn, though not yet directly confirmed.[Detail needed]
- Reduces the pawn's MTB for Lovin' by 0.25x, causing them to engage in Lovin' roughly 4x as often.
Note that Word of love can be self-cast, as either the target for or of Psychic Love, and can only be cast in compatible orientations - A female pawn with the Gay trait cannot be selected to be granted Psychic Love for a male pawn with no attraction-related traits, for example. However, the same male pawn could be granted Psychic Love for the same female pawn, as only the orientation of the first pawn relative to the second is taken into account when casting. Additionally, a pawn can only be affected by one instance of Psychic Love at a time, and subsequent casts will replace any active instances with the new one. Lastly, like all the other "Word of" psycasts, the caster must be directly adjacent to their target to cast Word of love.
Analysis[edit]
Word of love does exactly what it says on the tin - creates romances between two pawns, with all the associated upsides and downsides. Pawns in a relationship will receive large opinion boosts towards each other, and benefit from minor to major mood increases from said opinions of their lovers, as well as any mood boosts from Lovin', which they will do more much more frequently while under the influence of Word of love. On the flip side, these relationships have the potential to be torn apart, either by choice or death, causing massive mood debuffs that persist for egregious amounts of time. Whether or not this is a worthwhile proposition is up to the player's discretion if intending to use Word of love to foster these bonds between their pawns. It should be noted that casting Word of love twice - once on each pawn targeting the other - can virtually guarantee a romance chance will succeed, barring cases where a romance is almost guaranteed to never occur naturally in the first place, such as extreme age differences between the two.
Beyond creating romantic relationship between pawns, Word of Love has a few other uses besides. Firstly, once two pawns are romanced, Word of Love can be cast freely as a small mood booster for the both of them, as pawns receive a scaling mood boost based on the opinion of their lover, up to +10 at 100 opinion, as well as the mood gained from the increased rate of Lovin'. However, the effects of the opinion increase are dependent on their current opinion of each other, and the overall rate of Lovin' between two pawns is dependent on several others factors besides - see the associated page for the full list of modifiers.
Secondly, Word of Love can be used to mend a broken relationship, as while pawns will have a massive opinion malus for an ex-lover or spouse, casting Word of Love on both parties can be enough to overcome it. However, in situations where a romance was unlikely to have occurred in the first place, such as between a misogynist and misandrist, Word of love can fail to raise opinion high enough to allow a romance attempt. Additionally, in such situations, even if one succeeds in repairing their relationship, it is unlikely to survive long-term, and thus may be better to allow to end regardless. On the flip side, the opinion boosts from Word of Love can reduce or eliminate the chances that relationships result in a breakup or affair in the first place, though the limited duration of the effect would require repeated casting in order to maintain it, and relationships generally tend not to have to rely on micromanaging to maintain in the first place.
Lastly, Word of love can be used as a temporary opinion booster in order to increase the odds of a Moral guide's
Counsel ability succeeding, as the success chance is affected by the opinion of the target for the user. However, the requirement for a compatible orientation between the two, as well as the chance of a possibly unwanted relationship forming as a result make this a fringe benefit at best.
Bedroom efficiency[edit]
 | This section relates to content added by Ideology (DLC). Please note that it will not be present without the DLC enabled. |
If the colony has an ideoligion with precepts allowing multiple spouses for either gender, then word of love can be used to create polycules that will consider what would otherwise be considered a barracks as a bedroom. The resulting room can contain all the wealth that would have previously been spread around to improve individual bedrooms, making for a very high impressiveness and corresponding mood buff at minimal cost. With sufficient patience or psycasters, an entire colony can be happy sharing one room.
Version history[edit]
- 1.2.2719 - Added.