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You can set clever drug policy for that. Like "use when mood is 0% and carry 1"

@ahafee
There is no fun in journey. If you like encounters you can do quests. If you like traveling you better play Fallout)

Regarding drugs. Just control mood well and you won't need hard drugs.
My current run is with one pawn so even one usage of hard drug can be lethal. If you have several good doctors this offsets risks. But that only means that you should have reserve of go-juice for hard fights. If you are using other drugs then you can't safely use go-juice when needed (because of overdose).
So no matter how you play you shouldn't use hard drugs except go-juice.

@ashafee
Actually no, wealth management is enough for merciless, you don't need any other skill. I know finishing my Really Merciless Naked Brutality run and I don't use any wealth management techniques except "don't own useless stuff" and it's enough to keep wealth below 20k before making the ship. If I was fully using all the mechanics, I could make and launch ship while keeping raids at starting minimum (when there is one melee raider only). While keeping 2-years worth of food in storage, and all goodies that I want.

@ashafee
Why caravan when you can make drop pods and then launch yourself to the final destination?
Also I think that friendly AI quest makes it too easy.

Regarding managing your mood. Every drug except tea and beer has risk of disaster from every dose. And Murphy law says that if something bad can happen it will happen. Considering that you can have zero mental breaks by other means all other drugs seems unnecessary.

Then there is no solitary recreation type when you have room for pawn (until you get some are for viewing). Because outdoors recreations work only when they have no room. So if you removed those types of recreation you should also remove solitary recreation from availible recreation types for pawns. It just confuses when it says that this type is availible when it's not.

The danger of psychite is tolerance more than addictiveness.   If you use it occasionally to manage a random bad mood it's ok.

Why would anyone use it not for the mood buff when mood-depriving events stack? You have to have big stock of it to use it regularly and that just adds more raiders. Not worth, you can improve pawns mood by other means.

@Crow_T
Role-playing is only good reason to go for beer)
Also no drug production is really good money-maker. Best money-maker is to kill some big animals (like muffalos or megasloths), store their corpses, butcher them when bulk trader comes and sell meat and leathers.

It's very time-intensive. For the same work you will get 18 vegies instead of 5 on Merciless if you plant corn. It's pretty big deal (especially if you play solo naked brutality). I play on 20-day cycle and plant only corn from year 2. Plus corn lasts longer (that's a big deal, you can make yeraly stock of it).
I also plant potatoes when there is enough time for them to grow but not enough for corn. Only reason is because of work per tile ratio.

Min-maxers prefer beer I'm sure, zero risk even if more hassle. And those Hooligans will exploit any  mechanic or bug haha.

You are wrong on this one. First of all you have to research this. Secondly, you have to build brewery and fermenting barrels. Thirdly, it affects your stats. Compare this to just "grow and craft" for psychite tea. Psychite tea doesn't have drawbacks, increases mood for 12, gives you 40% recreation, 10% rest and reduces you tiredness level. Choice is clear for me.
Also "no hassle" is a big deal, I like to avoid as much as everyone else when possible.

Also you have distorted view of min-maxers. Using exploits or bugs is not related to it.

Smokeleaf has too much drawback, beer is too much hassle. Psychite tea is the way to go for smart players.

Hello, new acolyte of Wealth Control Religion. You can check my Holy Temple in my signature, you will find all what you need there.

P.S.: in my current Really Merciless Naked Brutality run (it's like normal merciless naked brutality but much more brutal) I don't use "hp control" at all, I play as if health of every item affect it's utility (and for weapons and apparel it is). So only wealth control that I use is "don't own stupid stuff". And I can say that it's enough for me, because I can launch a ship while staying in "low expectations".

Yes, hiding tens of thousands of silver from the wealth calculator, digging it up again whenever a trader showed up, was superfun. I hope they don't patch out intricately zoning your home area around art pieces so nobody will repair them, and then throwing grenades at them because that's the only fun left in this game.

It's good that they closed that exploit. And current mechanic of wealth is ridiculous. But you don't even need that to keep raids reasonably low. In my current game I don't only keep all buildings at full health, I treat all non-resource items as if health affect their efficiency. And it didn't really change much, raids are still so low that they are no danger. Only spike will be when I will be finishing and launching ship.

You could build all your silver into the floor so that doesn't add to your wealth, but to stop the invasion itself I am out of ideas.

Floors do count to your wealth.

So I played an ultra-low-wealth game and won it on Randy Savage with few (but existent) problems.
..
So while "Keep the wealth low" is great advice, it's not - in my opinion - the panacea that seems to be the trend in this forum. Yes it's better to not have a dozen sets of marine armor in storage, but I personally found it much easier to fight off raids of dozens of mechanoids with marine armor and charge rifles, than the few bandits that totally wrecked my guys that had leather clothes and poor quality autopistols.

You just played it badly, to be honest. If you play without realistic degradation mod you can have best weapons and marine armor without adding to wealth any substantial amount. Also you should have good defense. Your traps and walls and turrets add some wealth but they definitely worth it. If you didn't use that it's on you.

I'm finishing my ship research in my current run with 1 pawn without interest on merciless naked brutality without good events except caravans and I didn't passed 20k wealth threshold. And I don't even use tactics that I described (I don't even lower hp of food) because I don't need to. I just don't have anything that I don't really need. And I don't really micromanage anything because it's not worth it, only few things like killing predators etc.

For your point of mental breaks. Just remove all debuffs, make good sculpture to your big main dining/rec/working room to get buffs from that, create pekoe tea reserve for bad days and you should be good.

@zizard
It's excatly right.

@fritzgryphon
They add their value (price) to the wealth, it doesn't matter if they are equipped or not, even dead animal body on the other part of the map that was killed by bear is adding to wealth.
In vanilla you can lower that value by lowering hp if item without any loss of utility.

I made a nice guide that includes all tips to wealth management (see my forum signature).

In my current run I don't use any of that except "dont own anything you don't really need) and I'm finishing all research needed for ship and my current wealth it still hovering around 15k wealth. My wealth will spike when I build the ship, but those 35k wealth + ~5-6k for additional turret defense are not that scary, it will amount for ~6 people raids. For now I still have laughably easy raids (I play on merciless and my pawns hadn't been downed ever).

Regarding specific questions.
0) You can check your wealth in history tab in statistics section. For raids building wealth is halved. You can check how much each item is adding by looking for it value in description of the item.
1) Get hp of your weapons low and get better weapons. Longbows (even legendary) are crap, get some bolt-action for long distances and heavy smg's for medium ones
2) Muffalos contribute substantial amount to wealth. Do you really need them? If yes, do you really need that many?
3) Almost all things and buildings count to wealth (even corpses of animals). Just use wood floors and make some good jade sculpture to boost impressiveness of the room. You don't need anything else. You will also get good mood buffs from that.
4) Damage your furniture. If you don't want to do that, then use bad one. Only beds have to be as good as you can build.
5) Tolerance applies for different types separetly, so beer and pekoe tolerances go down simultaneously. But overdose summs all drugs used.
6) Traps increase wealth but not that much. You should definitely use them a lot, they are very good. They are even better if made from steel.

@Limdood
"use smooth stone floor" - bad advice. Smoothed floor adds to wealth too and not a small amount and you can't ever remove that wealth (you can't unsmooth it back like you can deconstruct floor).
@Hans Lemurson
Animal corpses add to wealth quite a lot, related how much meat in them.

Are you sure you researched them?