Caffeine or Cocaine for Bionic Removal?

[mentos046]

In what is arguably the best situation I have ever stumbled upon in this scenario, I picked a Broken Cyborg in the wilderness and spawned one overmap tile away from a house that contained not only a First-Aid Kit, but also a Steak Knife and a stack of Caffeine Pills.

Things is, there was also a bag of cocaine in the house, and now I’m not sure which one would be better to use for the removal of the Leaky Bionic. I’ve never used cocaine before, and I think it would produce more stimulant effect, but there’s also the risk of overdose, addiction, the health damage, and the fact that it might not be that much more than 2-3 Caffeine Pills, maybe not enough to be worth the aforementioned risk. So which one would be better to use?

[Serkas]

Don’t you need painkiller effect? I don’t think it will work with a stimulant, since its another effect type. Stimulant just raises stats.

Weed, alcohol or meds would help. Heroin too, but cocaine should not.

[psyxypher]

Caffeine. Caffeine raises intelligence, which is utterly vital.

[mentos046]

Don’t you need painkiller effect? I don’t think it will work with a stimulant, since its another effect type. Stimulant just raises stats.

You need painkillers to install BIonics, true. Removing them only requires a First-Aid Kit and an implement with Fine Cutting 1, though. Scalpels are best, obviously, but X-Acto knives and Steak Knives also have the effect, albeit with worse odds of success.

Caffeine. Caffeine raises intelligence, which is utterly vital.

Does cocaine raise it more though? I ask because I’ve never used it before so I don’t know how much stimulant effect you get from it, how many charges will kill you, and if the loss of health, addiction risk, and risk of overdose are worth the possible extra stimulant effect.

[psyxypher]

Not sure.

Personally, I’d just take 2 Caffeine pills to get Stimulants 25 rather than risk it.

I snorted some cocaine in game to get you this answer (no need to thank me, it was my pleasure ) and I got Stimulants 24.

[mentos046]

Thanks for the investigation. Is 25 the highest you can go on Stimulants without the Stimulant Overdose debuff? And what are the odds of one charge of cocaine killing you?

So 2 Caffeine Pills will produce basically the same result as 1 cocaine, but without the hazards. I’ll just stick with the Caffeine, then.

[Coolthulhu]

Cocaine won’t kill you, you need 200 (or 250?) stim to die.
Cocaine causes a “high” debuff (-1 int and -1 per), so only use it if you are stacking stim.