Book: Ignorance Is Bliss: Happiness can regenerate above maximum for 31 days

For any book, it's always worth reading Knowledge is Power - Andyman's Torn Books Guide

Advice for using the book

For players with lower stats, this is one of the best books to help raise your stats. And even for someone with over 50m in each stat (the soft cap, using the book should give you roughly 20% extra gains.  EDIT : soft cap no longer exists, but the point stands.

Normally, happy resets every 15 minutes. You can boost it much higher than normal for short periods of time, but it doesn't last long. People use this to do happy jumps.

But while using the book, your happy will not reset every 15 minutes. You can push the happy up to 99,999 maximum and it will stay there. (Well, close to there. It will drop some due to training.) There is a merit for getting 99,999 happy, but the best benefit is the stat gains resulting from your ability to train with very high happy over and over. The benefit is best for people with lower stats; the lower your stats are, the bigger effect happy has on your trains.

You should be aware that if you OD, your happy will reset to 0. You will want to rehab, which will bring your happy back to your normal maximum, and then will want to build your happy up very high again, just like you did when you first started the book. Note that rehab will not take you to 99,999, just to your normal maximum.

The OD rate for Xanax seems to be around a 2.5% chance for most people. Faction perks can lower that chance by 30% (toleration branch), and the 7* Nightclub job special reduces OD chances by 50%. Ecstasy has a slightly higher OD rate, so it may help to use as little ecstasy as possible to push your happy up to the max. Even with that risk, Ecstasy is so effective at raising happy, it is worth the risk to use it to grow your happy quickly. You probably will OD at some point while using the book, likely more than once.

It is very important that you do not let anyone know you are using this book.

It's fine for close friends or your faction leader to know, as long as you trust them 100%. But do not post on the forums or Discord or anything like that. Probably not to your faction chat either, just to be safe. There are a lot of people who will enjoy destroying your happy (using dog poop, toilet paper, stink bombs, poison mistletoe, oil embargoes, etc.) when you are using this book. So don't mention in public that you are using it, don't let the word get out. You can talk about it after the book ends.

Due to the need for secrecy from people who would take great joy in destroying your happy, I recommend you do not post to this thread if you are planning to do a happy jump.   If you want to bump the thread or make a comment, wait until after you have used the book.

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There are basically two parts of using the book; one is pushing your happy up very high, and the other is training as much as possible.


Part 1: Raising Your Happy Quickly

To push your happy up, the most common ways are using erotic DVDs and Ecstasy. If you are living in a PI with 3,600 happy, and have hired full staff, you will have a normal max happy of 4,400 (note: a max-upgraded PI will yield 5,025 happy).

You can use at least 4 e-DVDs at once. The booster cooldown for each is 6 hours, so 4 of them equates to 24 hours. If your faction perks give you extra booster timer (via the Voracity branch), you may be able to use more. (You could use 4, wait a few seconds, and use a 5th. But for our purposes here, that really doesn't help and costs you an extra e-DVD).

4,400 happy + 4 e-DVDs (4 x 2,500 = 10,000) = 14,400 happy. Using an Ecstasy at this point will double your happy, giving you 28,800. The cooldown for Ecstasy is 200-220 minutes, so roughly 3.5 hours. When that cooldown ends, you can double your happy again with a 2nd Ecstasy, which would put you at about 57,600 (probably a bit less, because you've probably trained a little in the meantime, which would lower it some). Again, a wait of about 3.5 hours, then you can take one more Ecstasy, which should push your happy up to the absolute maximum of 99,999. This uses 3 Ecstasy, 4 e-DVDs, and about 10.5 or 11 hours.

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Optional method: If your faction perks give 48 hours of booster cooldown, you will be able to use 9 e-DVDs (use 8, wait a few seconds, and use #9). If so, this method is a little faster (but more expensive) than the 4 e-DVDs method shown above. It also uses 2 ecstasy instead of 3, which lets you move to Xanax a little sooner, and helps avoid a little bit of OD risk (Ecstasy OD rate is higher than Xanax OD rate).

4,400 happy + 9 e-DVDs (9 x 2,500 = 22,500) = 26,900 before your first Ecstasy, and slightly over 50,000 after it. And the 2nd Ecstasy will get you to 99,999. Only 2 Ecstasy needed for this, and less time before you can start using Xanax with your maxed-out happy.

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Optional method 2: If you have a fully upgraded PI, your base happy will be 5,025.  Using 3 edvds will add 7500, bringing you to 12,525 happy.  From there, three ecstasies will bring you to the cap at 99,999. 

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Once you reach the maximum, your happy is going to stay pretty close to that. It may drop some due to lots of training, but not a lot. If needed, you can use candy to push it back up again, but unless it drops a lot, I isn't important. And if you OD, you will lose all the happy. In that case you will have to start over again and build it back up, the same as the first time around. If that happens, you'll want your booster timer empty, so that's a reason not to get carried away using candy to keep it at max.

It is possible to jump to 99,999 happy all at once, but it takes money and planning. When I did it, I worked in a sweet shop for a month to save up job points for the jump. People often do that just to get the merit for 99,999 happy. Without the Ignorance is Bliss book, it must be done quickly or happy will reset. Using the book, those methods aren't necessary, but they are certainly an option.

There are at least a few other ways to gain happy. For most people, these probably won't help with this book, but I'll mention them.

You can pay someone in an Amusement Park job. Their 3* special is called "Free Ride" and gives their target 250 happiness. I do not know what this would cost, and obviously you would need a lot of them to help.

Using a poison mistletoe item will let you steal 25% of someone else's happy. This is most effective if you work something out with someone who is happy jumping, perhaps taking their happy right after they finish training.

Strippograms can be used to raise happy (each adds 2,500 happy). You need a friend to help out, because you can't use them on yourself, someone has to use them on you. However, they are fairly expensive, usually in the $17-20m range.

It is fairly likely that you will OD while this book is going. You simply can't expect to use 3 Xanax per day for a month without an OD, so you will probably need to repeat this process at least once or twice during the month, possibly more.


Part 2: Training

The second part is relatively simple. You want to train as much energy as possible while the book is going. That's always a good plan, of course, but even more so with the book, since you will be getting bigger gains on every train.

I do recommend stacking to 1,000e before starting the book, just like you would do with a happy jump. Train that energy as soon as you use your first set of e-DVDs and Ecstasy. After that, use the other options and try not to waste energy. Do not stack energy again if the book has already been going and you are rebuilding your happy after an OD.

Log in multiple times a day to try and avoid losing much natural energy. Try to train with all of your energy. You might consider skipping missions that require energy use (i.e., no attacking). You should probably try to time your use of the book so that your faction will not be chaining. I usually start using training books right after we have finished chaining, and I talk to my faction leader before I do to make sure they don't have another chain planned soon.

Also, you will want to use lots of Xanax (ideally, 3 per day). Xanax use is always beneficial, but especially so while using this book and getting much bigger gains when you train. The Xanax does have an OD risk, but it's by far the cheapest way to buy energy, so it's worth it. You should plan to do an energy refill once a day. That will cost 30 points in the points building.

The benefits of training with very high happy are greater when the stat you are training is very low, and the impact decreases as your stat increases (i.e., this book is most effective on your lowest stat). If you have one stat that is much higher and one that is much lower, then this book is best to use on the lowest stat. The higher stat would give you more total gains, but the lower stat will give you a bigger boost compared to what you would get without the book

If you have the book and are planning ahead, you might want to focus on just training your highest stat up until you start the book and then switch to training your lowest stat using the book. While using it, your lowest stat may grow enough that it isn't the lowest anymore, and you could switch to your new lowest stat.

If you can afford it, you could also use energy cans. Many can't afford this option, which is fine, you'll still get big gains. If you are considering using cans, try to figure out a budget and use the best cans you can afford to use consistently during the month. If you can't afford to use them consistently, then move to a cheaper can. It's better (financially) to use cheaper cans consistently than to use better cans for a few days and then stop. You get more bang for you buck by using cheaper cans the entire time. Again, using energy cans is not necessary, just an option if you can afford it. But do consider it. You will only be able to use this book once, so it's worth spending money to make the most of it.

I will show some math for using 10e, 20e, and 30e cans for a month. This is based on using 12 cans a day for 31 days, and assumes no faction perks. The Voracity special could give you up to 50% extra energy per can. Prices could (and will) change, but this gives you a rough idea:

10e cans: $700,000 per can ($260,400,000 total) = 3,720 extra energy.
20e cans: $1,450,000 per can ($539,400,000 total) = 7,440 extra energy.
30e cans: $3,400,000 per can ($1,264,800,000 total) = 11,160 extra energy.

FHC's can also be considered.  Depending on pricing, they may be a better deal than the high end energy cans, or they may not.  They are usually fairly closely priced.  Since prices will change on both cans and FHC's, and everyone has different financial situations, you should do some math to decide what is best for you.

If you happen to have the MCS stock block, it would be good to plan the timing so you can use an MCS payout within the first day or two of using the book and bringing your happy up. It pays out every 7 days, so over the course of 31 days, you could utilize 5 payouts if you have the timing right.

Company jobs which can help

Some jobs can help with happy jumps in different ways. These are in alphabetical order because I'm not trying to promote one over the other, just show you some options that may help with this book:

10* Adult Novelties - 100% bonus to Erotic DVDs
7* Candle Shop - 5 energy for 1 job point
10* Farm - 7 energy for 1 job point
10* Fitness Center - 3% gym gains and also 50% reduction of happiness loss in gym
10* Game Shop - 1 nerve, 5 energy, 50 happiness for one job point
10* Gents Strip Club - 10% dexterity gym gains
10* Ladies Strip Club - 10% defense gym gains
7* Nightclub - 50% drug overdose chance reduction
Furniture and Pub and Restaurant jobs all give 3 energy for 1 job point. Less than the others that provide energy, so probably not ideal.