ZERO PARADES wiki

Sturdy Pony

Heads up: Sturdy Pony is a consumable item, not a character. Fandom files it under Consumables. It lives in this folder for technical reasons.

Sturdy Pony is a brand of Portofiran cigarettes. Smoke a pack and you’ll take Delirium down 5 and Fatigue up 2. That’s a useful trade if your Intellect meter is the one closest to redlining and your Action meter has headroom to absorb the cost.

Effects

  • Delirium -5 — cools the Intellect-cluster stress meter
  • Fatigue +2 — heats the Action-cluster stress meter

How to use it

In Zero Parades, every stress meter hitting 20 costs you a skill point in that meter’s cluster, permanently. So the question with a consumable like this is never “is the trade good in the abstract” — it’s “which meter am I closest to losing on right now”.

A pack of Sturdy Pony is the right move when:

  • Delirium is creeping toward 15+ and you have a check coming that needs an Intellect skill (Records, Cold Read, Grey Matter, Poetics, Technoflex).
  • Fatigue is at 5 or lower and you can afford the +2.
  • You’re not in the middle of an Action-cluster skill run where +2 Fatigue would push you red.

If Fatigue is already at 13+, don’t smoke this. Drink a Wiśnia Brand Schnapps or chew a Wiśnia Hard Candy for the Anxiety drop instead and let the Delirium ride.

Where it sits in the Portofiran cigarette economy

Portofiro has several cigarette brands in the game, each with a slightly different stress profile:

  • Ouroboros Black — Luzian, heavy on the tar, Delirium -7 / Fatigue +3. The strongest Delirium hit, also the highest Fatigue cost.
  • Suprema 100s — Portofiran, Delirium -3 / Fatigue +1. Lighter.
  • Sturdy Pony — Portofiran, Delirium -5 / Fatigue +2. The middle option.

Sturdy Pony is the safe centrist pick. Ouroboros is the heavy hitter (and ties to the Tempo / Dante’s Exit Papers thread). Suprema is the chip away.

Acquisition

The Fandom page doesn’t list an acquisition path. As the wiki develops, this will fill in. Worth checking:

  • Vending machines (the standard channel for Portofiran consumables).
  • Carmuna Pessoa or the Bazaar GM’s office.

Source note: the acquisition gap and the cluster-meter framing above are reading on top of in-game numbers. The numbers themselves (-5 / +2) are from the Fandom page.

Ouroboros Black, Suprema 100s, Wiśnia Brand Schnapps, Quisach.