Mentats

Mentats are a chem in Fallout, Fallout 2, Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas, Fallout 4, Fallout Tactics, and Van Buren.

Background
This pre-War chem was created by Med-Tek. They were designed to increase memory related functions and speed up other mental processes. These chalky red pills were a popular party drug once favored for the boost it gave to creativity - turn on, tune in, drop out.

Mentats were sold in both cardboard and tin packaging, the latter a bit more likely to survive the nuclear holocaust. They are, of course, highly addictive, with regular Mentats at a 5% chance of addiction, and Party Time Mentats at a whopping 15% addiction chance.

Mentats


Mentats are most useful for characters with low Intelligence and Perception, as they grant a useful bonus for both these SPECIAL stats. The downside however, is that they are addictive.

Grape Mentats


These Mentats do not increase Intelligence and Perception, instead, they increase Charisma only.

Berry Mentats


Notably, Berry Mentats do not have the Perception bonus that normal Mentats bring, only increasing Intelligence and in Fallout 4 provides enemy highlighting.

Orange Mentats


Notably, Orange Mentats do not have the Intelligence bonus that normal Mentats bring, as they only increase Perception.

Party Time Mentats


Party Time Mentats are a crafted variant of Mentats made by the Courier, requiring a Science skill of 50, and can be produced at any campfire.

Behind the scenes

 * The name Mentats is a reference to Frank Herbert's Dune, where, in the wake of humanity rejecting artificially intelligent computers and robots, Mentats are humans trained for computer-like mathematical and logical computations. Also of note is that the pills are colored red. Red-stained lips are a distinguishing characteristic of a Dune Mentat.


 * Besides being a cultural reference to Frank Herbert's "dune", Mentats could be a secondary cultural reference to both "smarties" and "Tic-Tacs" which could make sense due to the fact that "Mentats" are a type of candy that makes you more intelligent and the name "Mentats" sounds loosely like "Tic-Tacs", although this may be just a coincidence.