How Arousal Works¶
In 30 seconds¶
- Each actor has a single arousal number.
- It rises when arousing things happen: seeing nudity, having sex, wearing certain armor types, being trapped in devices.
- It falls passively over time, and drops fast after orgasm.
- Dependent mods react when it crosses thresholds.
In a bit more depth¶
- Each actor's number is the sum of all currently-active effects — both built-in (the Default plugin contributes nudity exposure, sleep decay, orgasm cooldown, denial buildup) and from any other plugin (SexLab, Devious Devices, OStim).
- Most timed effects use game days as the time unit (one in-game day = 24 in-game hours).
- The arousal value isn't clamped to 0–100 by default — it's just a float. The convention is 0–100 and most consumer mods assume that range, but individual effects can push outside it.
The formula
arousal = sum(static effects not in a group)
+ sum(dynamic effect values)
+ sum(effect group products)
The five built-in effect categories¶
The Default plugin ships five categories of effect, each with its own page under Plugins in the MCM. These are the knobs most players reach for:
| Category | What it represents | Climbs when… |
|---|---|---|
| Naked | Exposure from nearby nudity | A naked (or revealingly-dressed) actor is in view — optionally requiring line-of-sight |
| Timed | Passive "haven't had sex in a while" buildup | Time passes — this is the OSL-Aroused-style tick |
| Sleep | Morning arousal | The actor wakes from a long enough sleep |
| Satisfaction | Post-orgasm cooldown (a penalty) | Resets downward after orgasm, then decays back |
| Legacy | Boosts pushed by older mods via the ModExposure API |
Mods like SLEN / SL Survival fire exposure events |
Other plugins add their own effects on top when their host mod is installed:
| Plugin | Drives |
|---|---|
| SexLab | Per-stage arousal during SexLab animations, animation-tag scoring |
| Devious Devices | Device-equipped arousal, belt/plug denial modifiers, device-stacking multiplier |
| OStim | OStim NG (and legacy v<29) thread tracking, observer LOS arousal scaling |
To see exactly which effects are active on any actor and their current values, open the Puppet Master page — see the MCM Reference.
To change how fast any of these climb, see Tuning Recipes.