Insanity

**Insanity** is one of many survival related gauges in the game, and for long-term survival is the most important to maintain, as it is directly tied to the game's perma-death mechanic.

## Maintenance

### Losing Sanity

Sanity is lost through many sources, such as:

* Dying (-15%).
* Slaying passive mobs and Tarnished (-3%).
* Witnessing the death of another player (-20%).
* Being in the presence of certain Derelicts (passively drains sanity over time).
* Anomalous Mushrooms (Sets sanity directly to 10%).

As your sanity gets lower, you begin to experience hallucinations that generally hamper your ability to play the game until it recovers.

Running out of sanity completely is one of a few ways to experience a true-death, wiping your character completely.

### Gaining Sanity

In order to prevent yourself from succumbing to madness, certain things may be done to maintain your sanity, such as:

* Passively, sanity is restored over time, albeit slowly. Extreme insanity tiers will slow and even drain your sanity recovery.
* Resting will boost sanity recovery slightly, however just like above, extreme insanity tiers nullify this.
* Striking down Anomalous Derelicts will restore your sanity, directly correlating to the power of the derelict slain.
* Blessed Mushrooms will restore a bit of sanity as well as halt all insanity effects for a few minutes. At extreme insanity levels, they will only hold back the illusions to allow you to actively restore your sanity by other means.

## Insanity Index

### Phase One - Onset Insanity (83 to 67%)

* Onset Insanity is the first stage of insanity with the least severe hallucinations, and is otherwise not much of a change from mental stability.
* Faint, gray text will occasionally appear on screen, and the game's music shifts to have a second, quiet eerie tune playing under the usual music.
* Starting from this level, you may rarely experience the 'help me' event, an event shared by all insanity stages telegraphed by the text 'help me' appearing in the middle of your screen.
	+ Turning around during the 'help me' event will reveal a translucent figure that fades out of view the moment you spot them.
* Your character's skin becomes slightly pale and they gain eyebags.

### Phase Two - Intermediate Insanity (66 to 51%)

* Onset Insanity is the second stage of insanity. While the hallucinations you witness are more noticeable, there is not yet a significant impact on gameplay.
* The eerie undertone of the first stage's music is now much louder, with the game's normal music being drowned out.
* Whisper text from the first stage becomes more frequent and lingers for longer, and very subtle color shifts may happen. The game also takes on a slight grayscale, leaving everything desaturated.
* The 'help me' event will now reveal a figure of yourself that fades out of view when you spot them.
* Your character's skin becomes more pale, and they gain a disheveled beard.

### Phase Three - Malicious Insanity (50 to 34%)

* The third stage of insanity, at this point the hallucinations will begin to impact gameplay.
* The game's normal music is completely gone, entirely overtaken by eerie, unsettling music backed with the sounds of faint screaming.
* Whisper text takes on a red tinge and becomes more assertive, as if someone is speaking to your mind. Your vision is darkened and completely desaturated.
* Occasionally, everything may turn bright red and grainy for a short time before fading away. Shadow people will also randomly spawn around you and fade away, telegraphed by a sudden darkening of the surroundings.
* The 'help me' event will now immobilize you if you turn around, with your character in shock from an apparition of themselves. Your camera will also begin to turn around by itself during the event.
* You will begin to rarely experience the breakdown event, where your character is stuck holding their head with their hands for a short time.
* Your character becomes very pale and gets bloodshot eyes.

### Phase Four - Unstable Insanity (33 to 17%)

* The fourth stage of insanity, and the point where you must act to not lose your character if you fall further. That might be difficult however...
* The music becomes lower pitch and begins to echo, backed by more noticeable screaming and a constant thumping heartbeat ambience behind it all.
* Whisper text is fully red and begins to demand you to give up and surrender your soul, with it occasionally flashing red and obscuring your screen. Redshifts become more intense and shadows become more numerous.
* The 'help me' event now shows your character's apparition collapsing, damaging your sanity and leaving your character in shock for longer.
* The breakdown event will now leave your character on their knees and immobile for longer.
* Your character starts to smile, while their eyes are completely red and their skin is ghostly white.

### Phase Five - Anomalous Insanity - (16 to 1%)

* The fifth stage of insanity, with your character clinging to the last shreds of their mind to not succumb to the madness. Your sanity will slowly drain at this stage, so act fast.
* The music becomes a crescendo of screaming, eerie tunes, echoing hearbeat and glitching sound effects, as broken and chaotic as your character's mind.
* Whisper text becomes as frequent as it can get and flashes will cause it to greatly spike in frequency and linger for a long time.
* Redshifts become more intense, hundreds of shadows will watch you and even the world itself will be bathed in a purple flame.
* The 'help me' event will show the apparition of yourself transform into a lost shadow, before lashing out at you, damaging your sanity and giving you a glimpse of the end.
* The breakdown event will cause your character to collapse on the floor, leaving them vulnerable to the elements.
* Your character gains a toothed grin, a sickly purple tinged-skin and a precarious cloud of anomalous haze following them at all times.

### The End - Hollowed Insanity

* Upon reaching 0% sanity, your character collapses on the floor and the crescendo ends, with everything fading to black and a flood of voices welcoming you.
* Dying to insanity will wipe your character and transform them into a Lost Shadow where they last stood. There is almost nothing that can reverse the incursion of the Echoes.
* Even a Blessed Mushroom will only hold back the Echoes for not even a minute, however they will grow restless and angry if you try to resist them.

## Trivia

* The main tune that can be heard in all insanity stages is this song, albeit at later stages it is edited and mixed in with various sound effects.
* The deep buzz that plays in the middle of the insanity death screen's 'soundtrack' is a heavily edited version of a soundbite taken from the ending of YOASOBI's song 'Halzion'.
* "Screamers" (the red flashing text that covers the screen at Unstable Insanity and beyond) turn purple if the text displayed happens to be "Let the Echoes in". Notably, as you get closer to 0% sanity, the "Let the Echoes in" screamer will become more frequent, replacing all other screamers.
* Insanity being directly tied to permadeath was a near-last minute idea before the Alpha was finished. Before this, the sanity system was "just kinda there".