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As you acquire items in the world of Mortal Shell and start to use them, you'll notice that there is a mechanic to these items called 'Familiarity'.

Familiarity is a very crucial mechanic to the game and understanding how it actually works will help you out a lot in your playthrough of Mortal Shell.

To help you out in understanding how Familiarity works in Mortal Shell, we've prepared this guide to walk you through all the information you need to know about it.

Mortal Shell Item Familiarity
To put it simply, the Familiarity mechanic makes items more useful for you the more you use them.

When you pick up an item for the first time, you won't be able to see its effects until you use it. If you have played Elder Scrolls games you might be familiar with this system already.

After you use it and find out what the item does, the Familiarity mechanic will come into play. The more you use this item, the more useful it will become.

For example, when you use the Tarspore for the first time, it'll actually poison you for a while.

However, after you use it twice, you'll become a bit more familiar with it. So now, using this item will grant you poison immunity for two minutes.

Some items also grant bonus effects when you increase their Familiarity. Take the Effigy, which grants you a bonus at max Familiarity that reduces incoming damage from enemies.

For most of the items in Mortal Shell, you'll have to use them 10 times before you become completely familiar with them.

The exception are items like the above mentioned Tarspore because it'd be a bit too dangerous if you had to poison yourself 10 times to max out its Familiarity.

Likewise, there are a few items that need to be used more than 10 times to have their Familiarity maxed out.

Maxing out an item's Familiarity is not that hard to do as there's no cooldown to the items' usage. Meaning, you can just keep using an item to quickly max out the Familiarity.

Getting more familiar with an item will also add information to its description in the Compendium.

For example, if you increase the Familiarity of the Simple Lute, a new line will be added to its description:

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

If you don't know how to check an item in the Compendium, press 'I' and then select Compendium at the top and scroll through the items to find your desired one.