Energy, Sleep and Insanity

Energy is spent on almost every swing of manual work: chopping, digging, crafting, autopsies. Insanity rises with grim work such as digging graves and cutting up bodies, and every point of insanity lowers your maximum energy by one. Both share one bar on the screen. You restore energy by eating and by sleeping; you lower insanity mainly with drink.

A new game starts you with 4 energy and 10 insanity. Insanity cannot go above 80, so your energy cap never drops below 20.

Energy

• Each swing costs a set amount of energy, shown in the crafting window. A swing only happens if you have enough for it; otherwise your character simply stops, with an empty-energy icon overhead. You never faint.
• Raising insanity cuts your energy at once. If insanity goes up while your energy is at the cap, the energy above the new cap is lost for good.
• Food and drink restore energy immediately, and you can eat at full energy; anything over the cap is wasted.
• Zombies use no energy.

Energy Potion I, II and III give 20, 50 and 100 energy at once, although their description talks about regeneration. The demo has none: nothing unlocks their recipes, no workbench makes them and no trader sells them.

Sleep

Sleep in the bed at home. You can only go to bed when your energy is not full (unless you are suffering from Lack of sleep). While you sleep the whole world runs 50 times faster, and you wake up as soon as your energy is full, not in the morning. Waking up saves the game; sleeping at home is the only regular way to save.

Sleeping from 0 to full takes about 6 in-game hours. Any tech points lying around the world are collected when you lie down (see Time and the Week for what else keeps running).

Lack of sleep

After two in-game days (15 minutes) awake, you get Lack of sleep. While you have it, every point of energy you spend adds 0.5 insanity, and anything that lowers insanity only works half as well. It goes away only when you sleep until your energy is full, and then your insanity drops by 20.

The debuff’s description says work “will waste more energy”. It does not: work costs the same energy, and the extra cost is in insanity.

Insanity

What raises it:

Activity	Insanity
Autopsy, including picking pockets	+0.3 per swing
Digging a grave, filling it	+0.2 per swing
Making gravestones and fences	+0.2 per swing
Exhuming a grave	+1 per swing
Eating Flesh, found in corpses’ pockets	+10
Eating Baked meat (not in the demo)	+10
Drinking Soldier’s ale (not in the demo)	+20

What lowers it:

Item	Insanity	In the demo
Beer	−12	Januarius sells it; one bottle in the chest in your yard
Croissant	−5, and 20 energy	Baked in the Kitchen Oven from Dough and a Chicken Egg
Berry Pie	−3, and 30 energy	Januarius sells it; baked in the Kitchen Oven
Chocolate	−20, and 50 energy	Not in the demo
Sleeping off Lack of sleep	−20	Yes

The Croissant recipe shows up after you bake your first Berry Pie, and eggs come from Herm once his shop reaches its second tier.

When insanity is near its limit, grim work stops. A swing that would push insanity past 80 does not happen, so you cannot do autopsies, dig or fill graves, or set gravestones until you bring it down. Nothing else bad happens at high insanity.