What is Familiarity in Mortal Shell?

Mortal Shell has a number of unique aspects to it from the ability to harden your body to protect yourself to a system of Familiarity for the items that you use. If you’re new to Mortal Shell, you may be wondering what this is for and whether you really need to max out the Familiarity of each item. To help answer all of your burning questions, read on to find out what Familiarity is in Mortal Shell! 

What is Familiarity in Mortal Shell?

If you’re wondering what Familiarity is in Mortal Shell, the short answer is that it’s a system where the more you use an item, the more you learn and find out about that item and the more effective that item will be to you.

Each item has a Familiarity “punch card” so to speak. When you use that item, you’ll add to its overall Familiarity rating. To max out an item’s Familiarity, you’ll need to use it 10 different times (for most items).

In the Mortal Shell beta, you can do this with items over and over again, there’s no cooldown to it. For example, we sat and played the Simple Lute, then got up, and then played it again to max its Familiarity.

Once its Familiarity was maxed, new information was added to its description in the game’s Compendium. To view an item in the Compendium, press “I” to open your inventory. At the top, select Compendium, then scroll through the items until you find the one you want to view.

In the listing for the Simple Lute, you’ll spot a new entry after maxing its Familiarity which reads:

“The sheer audacity incites enemies to violence from a great distance.”

Testing this out for ourselves, we found that playing the Simple Lute a few feet away from enemies will draw them over to you which can be handy for things like fighting in a room with more space to dodge and avoid attacks.

Related: What Do You Use Tar and Glimpses For in Mortal Shell?

Note that for certain items like the Tarspore, you aren’t required to use it 10 times to max out its Familiarity. This makes sense as it’s an item that’s initially poisonous to you. Once you max out its Familiarity, it’s no longer poisonous and instead grants you immunity from poison damage for 120 seconds.

Handy, right? Similarly, you may need to use items more than 10 times in order to max out their Familiarity. Looking at our Compendium listing for the Weltcap, it states that we’ll need to use it 10 more times to reveal an additional detail about the item even though we’ve used it several times already.

As you play Mortal Shell, be sure to try out new items, and use them whenever you need to in order to increase your Familiarity with them. The greater your Familiarity, the more effective and helpful they’ll be to you later on.

Now that you know what Familiarity is in Mortal Shell, we have a few other guides we think you’ll be interested in!

• How to Get Into the Mortal Shell Beta
• How to Heal in Mortal Shell
• All Shell Types in the Mortal Shell Beta

What do you think of the Mortal Shell beta so far? Be sure to let us know on our Twitter or Facebook page!