Filled with creepy horrors and paranormal activity, Phasmophobia has players taking on the role of paranormal investigators as they search through haunted locations. The main objective is to determine what type of ghost is haunting a location, but there are also several side objectives that the player can complete.
One of the game major features is sanity. Determining how stable or unstable a player’s mind is, sanity determines how likely a person is to experience supernatural phenomena. This sanity level can be seen by anyone who is inside the van and looking at the team’s sanity level chart.
How Sanity Works in Phasmophobia
There is a multitude of factors that can decrease the player’s sanity levels. This can include actions like standing in darkness, witnessing ghost activity, or using items like the Ouija board or voodoo doll. Certain ghosts, such as demons and yurei, can also drain sanity extra quickly by using their respective abilities. The yurei in particular has a passive sanity drain that can affect any nearby players who are in its vicinity. It should also be noted that the rate of sanity degradation can also be affected by changing the game's difficulty.
Losing sanity is an inevitability that everyone has to contend with. But the kicker is that aside from taking sanity pills, there is no way to regain sanity. The most players can do is slow down how quickly their sanity depletes. Sanity loss can be slowed down by staying in lit areas, using candles, and avoiding the ghost as much as possible. This effectively means that if players really want to keep themselves sane, their best bet is to stay inside the bright van.
Sanity Effects in Phasmophobia
But while the player can slow down their sanity level, the sheer amount of factors that can decrease it all but ensures that the player will have to deal with low sanity. And the lower the sanity, the more likely it is that the player in question will experience ghost activity. This can take the form of:
- Flashing Lights
- Deactivating Fuse Boxes
- Physical Manifestations of the Ghost
- Making Sounds
- Interacting with the Environment
The type of effects the player is likely to see is highly dependent on the type of ghost and how high its aggression is. For example, a poltergeist is more likely to throw around objects as a form of ghost activity, while the wraith may opt to teleport and manifest itself in the ghost room.
Low sanity may also encourage the ghost to enter a hunting phase, which will lock all of the exit doors while the ghosts begin hunting down and killing players. This is especially true of ghosts like Oni, Demons, and Jinn who tend to be highly aggressive.
If the player is at 0% sanity, the player won’t die right away but they will become the ghost’s primary haunting target. That means hunts, physical manifestations, and other forms of ghost activity are almost guaranteed to happen in the player’s vicinity. This makes them ideal beacons for any group who wants to capture photo evidence or witness paranormal activity.
Phasmophobia is available on PC