In the base game we are advertised on TV and radio throughout the game constantly about how there are "16 new flavours of Chromanticore... Mix it up!" over and over and over. However, in reality you can only ever get the exact same 3 flavours of Chromanticore in the game. The other 13 flavours simply are a lie that do not exist in Night City.

While wandering around V's original apartment in megabuilding H10 you can come across a Chromanticore vending machine that in a terrible low resolution texture does specify what all 16 flavours of Chromanticore actually are, however even in that machine you only get the same 3 flavours. These particular machines don't seem to be too common, but there are a number of them found throughout the city as well, and in all cases we just get the same 3 flavours each time.

Even if you were to mix the 3 flavours together in every possible combination you would only end up with 8 flavours total, so I thought of that already too due to the "Mix it up" marketing, but that does not add up anyway, plus the machines do specify the 16 flavours.

The best that I can come up with to explain this, is that the other 13 missing flavours never got delivered and are stuck in one of the DTR transports that are flying around Night City and never land anywhere or take off. Presumably they are controlled by rogue AIs.

Maybe this will play into the conspiracies revealed in Phantom Liberty and we can finally get to the bottom of the missing Chromanticore flavours.

Are you sure there's only 3 of them actually in the game? I am pretty sure I have found some rare ones throughout the game, but only in very small quantities, like 1 or 2. And they're just as useless as all of the other drinks.

The worst part about any drink in the game is that they have zero actual impact. Playing on Hardest difficulty for even a shred of challenge, I don't bother with drinks and food other than to occasionally spam-press them to quickly clear my inventory instead of spending time selling them.

I wonder if alcohol will ever have a use, such as slightly reduced fall damage and / or taking less melee damage when in a drunk state.

Yep, I'm absolutely sure. I've got 2900 hours of gameplay across 4 playthroughs. There pretty much isn't a grain of sand in or around Night City that I have not seen.

Food/drinks in the game give buffs that last for up to around 11 or so minutes depending on what skills/perks you've assigned etc. But I agree that they don't have a massively huge impact overall, and there isn't enough variety. You have like 200 different food/drinks that give only 2 buffs and cause huge inventory clutter.

Alcohol was even worse when the game first came out, because it only has a debuff so why would anyone want to purposefully drink it more than a few times to see the effects or in role play? But you used to be able to disassemble alcohol to get crafting supplies too, as well as with drinks, but game patches nerfed both of those.

Alcohol used to weigh you down too, so it basically acted as an object to weigh you down and debuff you if you accidentally consumed one. Basically an annoyance that you had to either avoid picking up (or see your inventory space gradually shrink over time), or drop or sell to get rid of to free up inventory. Like a punishment for picking it up. I guess people complained and they changed it as they nerfed the weight penalty later on too, so now it is just a useless item that takes up visual space, but you can still sell it so it is partially useful in the start of the game for making small amounts of money that are useful.