Breaking Down the Mask System: Strategies, Combinations, and Tips
Moudi has recently provided an in-depth guide to navigating the mask system in a game that challenges players to balance strategy, skill, and resource management. The masks introduce varying levels of difficulty and gameplay modifiers, and understanding how to combine them can make or break your success.
Here's a detailed breakdown of the guide:
The Five Masks
The game features five primary masks, each adding unique challenges to gameplay. These masks are:
Burn Bridge – Spawns hazards (e.g., pools) under you.
Dark Imagination – Spawns an additional mob when your sanity reaches 50%.
Nemesis – Grants 150 sanity for every 25 mobs you kill, providing a resource benefit.
Vengeance – Adds a bolstering effect to mobs, making them tougher.
Daredevil – Increases sanity drain from certain mechanics.
The YouTuber explains that combining all five masks is the most challenging setup, but players can scale down by removing specific masks for lower difficulty levels.
Optimizing Mask Combinations
The guide emphasizes that the choice of masks depends on your playstyle, skill level, and ability to handle specific mechanics. The YouTuber breaks down the best combinations for different mask counts:
Five Masks:
Burn Bridge, Dark Imagination, Nemesis, Vengeance, and Daredevil.
This setup is the most difficult and geared towards experienced players. However, the YouTuber personally suggests replacing Daredevil with Multitudes for a slightly easier experience.
Four Masks:
Remove Daredevil. The recommended setup is Burn Bridge, Dark Imagination, Nemesis, and Vengeance.
This combination maintains a high level of challenge but removes the intense sanity drain from Daredevil.
Three Masks:
Keep Nemesis, Dark Imagination, and either Burn Bridge or Vengeance.
The choice between Burn Bridge and Vengeance depends on whether you can better handle hazards under you or bolstered mobs. Most players may find bolstered mobs easier to deal with, so Burn Bridge is usually removed.
Two Masks:
Stick with Nemesis and Dark Imagination.
Nemesis is a must-have due to its sanity benefit, and Dark Imagination is manageable for most players.
One Mask:
Nemesis is the top choice for its sanity bonus.
Avoid Long Night, as it introduces significant sanity loss and is the hardest single-mask challenge.
Key Considerations: What Should You Prioritize?
The YouTuber stresses that the choice of masks and combinations ultimately depends on your playstyle and ability to handle specific mechanics. Here are some key insights:
Nemesis is a cornerstone mask: Its sanity restoration at regular intervals makes it valuable in almost every setup. This is especially true for players attempting harder content or multi-mask runs.
Long Night should rarely be chosen: This mask is identified as the most punishing, making it unsuitable for most players unless they are highly skilled and well-geared.
Multitudes vs. One More Madness:
Multitudes adds more mobs during encounters, which can be easier to handle for players who are cautious and don’t pull too many enemies at once.
One More Madness introduces an additional madness effect, which can stack with existing ones to create challenging and sometimes overwhelming combinations (e.g., slowing effects, fear-inducing pools, etc.).
The YouTuber recommends Multitudes in most cases due to the unpredictable nature of One More Madness.
Sanity Management and Advanced Tips
The guide also highlights the importance of sanity management, especially as players take on harder challenges. Here are some advanced tips:
Sanity Reduction (Pain Mask): This mask reduces your overall sanity by 500-575, making it one of the hardest modifiers in the game. Avoid this mask unless you are confident in your ability to minimize sanity loss during encounters.
Combination of Madness Effects: Some madness effects (e.g., pools that fear you, slowing debuffs, or mobs spawning mid-fight) can make encounters exponentially harder. Players should carefully evaluate the madness effects before choosing masks.
Playstyle Matters: If you’re someone who pulls mobs in smaller, controlled groups, Multitudes becomes manageable. However, players who tend to pull large groups may struggle with the additional enemies.
The mask system offers a dynamic way to adjust difficulty and rewards, but success ultimately depends on understanding your strengths, weaknesses, and playstyle.For higher mask counts, the YouTuber recommends avoiding Long Night and carefully considering whether to take Multitudes or One More Madness based on the potential madness combinations. Nemesis remains a go-to mask for most difficulty levels due to its sanity restoration.
By mastering the combinations of masks, players can tailor their experience for the perfect balance of challenge and reward. Whether you’re a casual player or a hardcore veteran, this guide offers valuable insights to help you dominate the mask system.
