Stim Chip MillIn Pardus, both drugs and stim chips (all varieties) give additional action points – and as covered in the article on Stims and their various uses, coloured stim chips offer skilling, movement and trade benefits as well.

Whilst you are under the effects of either drugs or stim chips, consuming the other yields no benefit, preventing the combination of coloured stim chips and drugs.

In reality it is actually possible to combine the effects of coloured stims and drugs!

How Drugs And Stims Work…

Both drugs and stim chips have a limit on the number that can be consumed with any benefit, designed to cap the amount of action points you can obtain in one go. Without advanced skills, for both drugs and stim chips this number is 25 tonnes per 25 hours. With advanced skills, the number of drugs that can be consumed is 30 tonnes per 30 hours.

It used to be believed this quota was timer-based, with one tonne of your quota decaying each hour after you took the initial drug or stim chip.

If you were to take 10 tonnes of drugs at 08:33, your drug level would reduce by one at 33 minutes past each hour, until it got to 18:33 when you would no longer be under any effects of drugging.

Recent developments have discovered the decay of drug and stim chip levels is not timer-based, but is instead tick-based!

It has been observed that the decay in drug and regular stim chip levels happens at 59m03s past each hour in Artemis and at 29m03s past each hour in Orion (and Pegasus). The decay in coloured stim chip levels happens at 29m03s and 59m03s past each hour (across all universes).

Orion & Pegasus:
If you were to take 1t of drugs at 08:26:00, at 08:29:03 you would be considered undrugged again.

Artemis:
If you were to take 1t of drugs at 08:56:00, at 08:59:03 you would be considered undrugged again.

Crucially, the decaying of the effects of coloured stims is still timer-based (lasting 15 minutes from the point of taking them). This opens up the possibility (with careful timing) to leverage both coloured stims and drugs at the same time.

If you were to take 1t of a coloured stim chip at 28m or 58m past the hour, after one minute and three seconds (when the time becomes 29m03s or 59m03s past the hour respectively) the game would no longer consider you to be stimmed up and would allow you to consume drugs without issue. However, the effect of the coloured stim would remain for a further 14 minutes, whilst you are still able to consume drugs.

Here is a handy summary to show exactly how you should plan your combined stim and drug use…

Skilling guide:

  • Take 1t of crimson stims at 28m or 58m past the hour
  • Skill away
  • Take drugs after 29m03s or 59m03s past the hour (depending on universe)
  • Continue to skill away under the effects of the crimson stim

Moving guide:

  • Take 1t of amber stims at 28m or 58m past the hour
  • Do your thing
  • Take drugs after 29m03s or 59m03s past the hour (depending on universe)
  • Continue to move at a reduced AP rate under the effects of the amber stim

Trading guide:

  • Take 1t of capri stims at 28m or 58m past the hour
  • Trade away
  • Take drugs after 29m03s or 59m03s past the hour (depending on universe)
  • Continue to trade at a reduced AP rate under the effects of the capri stim

A big thank you to Tro who took the time to bring all this together into a handy guide.