Phasmophobia Sanity Explained: How To Increase It And Prevent Drain
In Phasmophobia, keeping an eye on your Sanity level is critical, as it impacts important game aspects, including when a ghost can start hunting and whether you can safely use a cursed object. There are two measures of Sanity in Phasmophobia: a player’s individual sanity level and the average sanity level of your team. You can track each player’s Sanity level using the Sanity Monitor in the van, as long as you’re playing on a difficulty level that has it enabled.
Your individual Sanity level, which can be tracked via your character’s watch, affects whether you can use a cursed object, as you need to ‘pay’ a certain amount of Sanity per interaction, and having an insufficient amount to do so will result in a cursed hunt (a longer, more aggressive hunt). However, the average sanity level measures the mean sanity level of all the alive players on your team, so even if your Sanity level is high, your friend could have a much lower level, dragging the overall average down. This is important as each ghost has an average player sanity threshold that, when reached, allows it to attempt to hunt. This is typically 50%, though there are some exceptions, with the Demon able to hunt at 80% and Banshee hunts triggered by its target’s individual Sanity level.
So, if you want to delay a ghost hunt as long as possible and continue using cursed objects, you need to keep your Sanity level up. Unfortunately, that’s not so easy, as it can begin to drain from the moment you open the door to a property, with certain conditions, unique ghost abilities, and player deaths zapping your Sanity level even further. Below, we break down how your Sanity level is drained in Phasmophobia, how to increase it, and how to prevent drain.
How Sanity is drained
In Phasmophobia, Sanity is drained in one of three ways: passively, as a result of ghost abilities and events (including killing a player), or by using cursed objects.
How Sanity is drained passively
Passive Sanity drain primarily applies when you are inside the investigation area, with the main lights of your current room (any lights connected to a wall switch) turned off. The longer you stand in the dark, the more Sanity you lose. The drain rate depends on the size of the map you’re playing, the sanity drain percentage of the difficulty level you’re playing, and whether you’re in the set-up phase.
On smaller maps, such as Tanglewood, the drain rate is 0.09% per second during the setup period and 0.12% per second normally. On medium maps, like Point Hope, it’s 0.05% per second during setup and 0.08% normally. On larger maps, like Sunny Meadows, it's 0.03% per second during the setup phase and 0.05% normally. You must also account for the Sanity drain percentage speed of your difficulty level, with Insanity, for example, doubling how quickly your Sanity drains as the speed is set to 200%. In addition, if you’re playing a contract with the Blood Moon weather condition, passive sanity drain is increased by 100%.
Note that passive Sanity drain is paused when you're outside the investigation area, and inside the brightly lit van, but other drain effects can still apply.
How Sanity is drained by ghost abilities and events
Ghosts can also zap your Sanity level. If you’re targeted by a ghost event, such as a manifestation, and happen to collide with the ghost or a mistball, causing it to disappear prematurely, you’ll instantly lose 10% Sanity. If you’re unlucky enough to walk into a singing Banshee or an Oni during a ghost event, the Sanity drain is larger, with the Banshee zapping 15% and the Oni claiming 20%.
Certain ghosts can also drain your Sanity through their unique abilities. Below are the ghosts that can drain your sanity, how much they drain, and how they do it.
| Ghost | Ability | Sanity Drain |
| Poltergeist | When it throws multiple items, nearby players lose sanity. | Sanity decreased 2% x number of objects thrown. |
| Yurei | Closes an open door in its room and drains the sanity of all nearby players. | 15% |
| Phantom | Drains sanity if within 10 meters of manifested Phantom and within its line-of-sight. | 0.5% per second in its sight. |
| Moroi | Can curse players by successfully responding on the Spirit Box or Parabolic Microphone, or through a sound recording. | Doubles player's Sanity drain, which cannot be prevented by standing in lit rooms. |
| Jinn | Can drain a nearby player's sanity when the breaker is turned on. | 25% |
How Sanity is drained by cursed objects
Cursed objects can be very useful when trying to gather evidence or identify the ghost, but many of them negatively impact your Sanity level when used. While the Tarot Cards and Monkey Paw only have a possibility to drain your Sanity--depending on the Tarot Card you pull or Monkey Paw wish you make--the other five objects zap your Sanity with every use. For example, every successful Ouija Board question you ask (except “Hide and seek?”) drains your Sanity 5%-20%. Just make sure you have enough Sanity to perform these interactions, or the object may break, triggering a cursed hunt.
How to prevent Sanity drain--and when you shouldn't
The main way to prevent passive Sanity drain is to turn on the main lights in your current room, as this pauses normal passive Sanity drain—except for that caused by the Moroi’s curse. By main lights, we mean lights that can be toggled with a light switch, not table lamps, TVs, computers, or other small light sources. If you’re playing on a larger map, you cannot fully stop passive sanity drain in bigger rooms like corridors by turning on main lights, but the passive drain will be reduced to 80% of its usual rate.
Passive drain can also be slowed down by standing within two meters of a lit Firelight, with Tier 1 providing a 33% per second reduction, Tier 2 a 33% per second reduction, and Tier 3 a 66% per second reduction. Just remember to take a lighter with you and to relight the Firelight if the ghost blows it out or it burns out.
To prevent Sanity drain from cursed objects, you can simply avoid using them or use the Monkey Paw without wishing for a Sanity boost or weather change—though you’ll still have to deal with its other consequences.
Preventing a ghost from draining your Sanity is trickier, and we actually don’t advise it. That’s because allowing the ghost to drain your Sanity can actually be beneficial, as it can help you identify a ghost’s unique ability and therefore the ghost. For example, if a door in the ghost room slams shut, and your Sanity level suddenly drops 15%, you know you likely have a Yurei, or if you notice that your sanity dropped 25% when the ghost got near you, and the breaker is on, you likely have a Jinn.
How to increase your Sanity level
If your Sanity level is on the low side, there are a few things you can do to instantly top it up. The most obvious is using Sanity Medication, which increases your individual Sanity by a certain percentage. That percentage is determined by the difficulty level you’re playing on (higher difficulty levels offer smaller increases) and the Tier of the pills you have equipped. On standard 40% Sanity restoration settings, Tier 1 restores 40% Sanity in 20 seconds. Tier 2 and Tier 3 work faster, restoring the same amount in 10 seconds--with Tier 3 also providing a useful 10-second sprint boost.
However, you can only equip a maximum of four Sanity Medications to your team’s loadout (which works out at one each for a full team if you're keeping the overall average up), so you may need to resort to cursed objects for a Sanity boost. There are two cursed possessions that can boost sanity: the Monkey Paw and the Tarot Cards. The Monkey Paw boost is a double-edged sword, as you can wish for Sanity, which increases all players’ Sanity levels to 100%, but it increases the passive Sanity Drain by 50%. The Tarot Cards are also risky, as only two cards in the 10-card deck can increase your Sanity: The Sun (sets Sanity to 100%) and a green-burning The Wheel of Fortune (which grants 25% Sanity). However, if you draw The Moon or The Wheel of Fortune burns red, you lose Sanity, with the former dropping your level to 0% and the latter deducting 25%.
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