What does the addiction mitigation merit do?

I assumed that if you had -2% battle stats, and you put one merit in, you'd have -0% battle stats?

"This upgrade will reduce the negative effects that addiction causes by 2%. Addiction will have less of an impact on your battle stats, employee effectiveness, and education / gym access."

[image: gyazo.com]

It seems to imply you will have less of an impact on your stats during cooldown, but this is not true.

It means IF you had high addiction (from repeated drug usage and not rehab, for example), you would normally see reduced battlestats even when you are not in drug cooldown.

This merits buff does not remove addiction, it only lessens the effects of addiction. So you can carry a higher rate of addiction without losing you education class, getting in trouble with your company director, or seeing a hit to your stats.


To prove it does NOT affect the reduction while under the effects of Xanax , here is my stats without taking a xanax (7 merits on addiction mitigation):

[image: gyazo.com]


And here, I took a xanax, and I have the usual 25% reduction due to COOLDOWN (not addiction).

[image: gyazo.com]



Here is the effect of the merits on ADDICTION EFFECTS (14%)

[image: gyazo.com]


this is similar to the ADDICTION side effects reduction you receive as a faction perk:

[image: gyazo.com]

It does NOT reduce your rate of getting addicted and it does NOT remove addiction you've already gained.

It only reduces the side effects.

As always you’ve got the best forum posts in town. Now just to make sure I’m not getting this wrong, the brain icon will still appear later with this perk than without, right? I think I’m not alone in the fact that I rehab every time I see the brain say -3% or so, this doesn’t mean less addition points per Xanax but it DOES mean less often having to fly to Switzerland to rehab?

Thank you.

Yes, you will still be addicted and if you continue to take drugs without rehabbing, the addiction will grow. But the EFFECTS of the addiction will be less.

If it gets bad enough, you can still be kicked from education, etc, but you'd have to get a higher addiction amount for the same effects.

Remember, that reduction by itself is small. Even ten merits only makes it 20% less, though stacked with a faction reduction as well, you should be able to go longer before needing to rehab.

Personally, I would see this helping after a xanax OD. When you OD on xanax, your addiction goes up by about 4 xanax at once. So if you already had some addiction thinking you had time to rehab, and THEN you OD'ed, your addiction would bump up all at once, perhaps higher than you'd like.

The addiction effects mitigation means you wouldn't abruptly get booted from education or get glass-doored at the gym, for example.

I've got the brain icon -1%, so that's the part I was trying to reduce. Had -1% (with a few merits), bought the next level, and still was on -1% battle stats. Since then I've taken more drugs, but I thought the brain icon would vanish by investing merits in it.

Much appreciated. Annoyed that I have 7/10 in addiction mitigation as I thought it meant much less having to go to Switzerland so I could go to more profitable flight locations instead. But it’s my own fault for not doing the math or asking a data nerd (compliment) like you before putting the merits in.

Actually, both will reduce the effects on battlestats. It says so right in the merit description:

Addiction will have less of an impact on your battle stats, employee effectiveness, and education / gym access.

However, faction mitigation is often stronger (up to 30%) so it may seem that it reduces the effects when the merits (up to 20%) don't. But it's just the impact of a greater reduction. The effects of the two are cumulative (up to 50%).

Also, the wiki says that exactly, and even compares the faction special to the merit buff (I only just looked it up there now).

https://wiki.torn.com/wiki/Addiction_Mitigation

I'm guessing a 2% increase in mitigation reduction wasn't enough to change it.

From the wiki:

The amount of Addiction required to reach each level of negative passive modifier is increased. This will be particularly noticed for higher levels - for example an 8% brain icon will be a 4% brain icon with max Mitigation.

Also, maybe you are seeing 1% with a few merits applied, but it would have been 2% without mitigation. It's hard to say.

It's also not clear if adding merits will immediately reduce existing addiction or if it will only slow the growth of addiction in the future.

Oh, so it's a max 50% reduction on the brain (addiction mitigation) with faction perks + merit (and 30% side effects). So the 2% per merit rather than 'removing' 2% of the stats debuff, instead 'removes' 2% of the total addiction that's used in the calculation. Massively different from what I'd hoped, guess I'm refunding said merits.

Yes, the stat reduction due to taking a drug (xanax) and the stat reduction due to being addicted are two different things. I spelled that out in my first reply.

If you look under your list of buffs, for faction buffs, you will see these two buffs are listed separately (and also a third one for reducing the chance of an overdose).

I always thought that addiction mitigation worked like cutting a x% of the addiction points that a drug gives you
for example Xanax give you 35 addiction points and I have 4% addiction mitigation then a Xanax gives me 33 addiction points

Yes, and the wiki supports that.

But if you add a merit, does it reduce addiction points already applied or only act on you accruing fewer points in the future?

I think it's the latter. Also, it's 4% reduction, not 4 points reduction. So if you should be gaining 35 points and you have a 4% reduction, that's 1.4 points reduced. So you would gain 33.6 points instead of 35 points.

Yeah got the same result but wasn't sure whether the system rounding up or counted 0.6, which was still my mistake because it would actually be 34

Would this be a good 10/10 merit to prolong the time it will take for me to have higher rehab bills?

No, it just means that you can go a bit longer between flying for rehab - you still have just as many addiction points to remove while there.

(For example, if you had 15 rehabs worth of addiction - it would still cost 15 rehabs to clear it all - you just wouldn't have as much of a penalty to your employee efficiency or battle stats when it got that high as someone without any of them)

Is addiction mitigation worth having? Would I be better off putting the merits I have in it into something else, (stats, life, crit)

[background color=var(--bbc-body-bg-color)]Thanks[/background]