How Panic ACTUALLY Works In Dredge

There are many mistakes you can make when it comes to panic in Dredge. The Causes and Effects of Panic are numerous. Do you know all of them?
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0:00 Intro
0:30 Panic Levels
2:24 Panic Causes
4:33 Panic Effects
9:00 Panic Reducing

[darkAwesome]

I love that the leviathan won't attack you unless you're at high panic, even if it appears. It feels like you're being judged.

[ProfessorNilo]

In my 100% playthrough I almost never encountered any effects of low sanity.

For example, the phantom shark, crows, tentacle and vines never showed up for me at all.
And I only encountered the leviathan once, which ironically was with next to no panic, I heard it was supposed to be a creature appearing at high panic and you can't believe how dreadful it was to encounter without manifest in the open ocean with low panic.
I managed to avoid it but that was scary stuff at the time. I suddenly felt like I could never be safe anywhere anymore.

A creature I saw surprisingly often was the monster ray but it was only bad in the very early game, for me it also only ever spawned during the day.

I think the reason I never really encountered many of the creatures is that I knew before playing the game how to counter miasma as I saw that in a review.

Overall I'd say sanity is a pretty easy to counter mechanic as soon as miasma is out of the picture.
It feels very unnatural when I suddenly watch playthroughs and people are constantly at high panic levels.

[monkreportervr]

3:58 the guy who gives you haste tells you that it increases panic, this is why you read about new skills before you use them

[ivaeeek]

I do wish Dredge had done more with panic later in the game, the ghost ships are such cool concepts as is the leviathan in open waters, but during/after the second area the game lost a LOT of its scare factor because there werent really any new mechanics beside the area monsters,
and lets be honest the only one that actually poses a threat to you is the one in the cliff region because you only have limited hull and are in a tight area without having good grasp of ship steering yet.

Or much rather Id have loved more fear of the unknown introduced later on, with progressively more varied monsters lurking in the night the more you progress the main story, this wouldve kept the game a bit more fresh and made the monsters outside the main area ones a lot more threatening/cool

I really like dredge it has a fun gameplay loop but I felt like it really didnt do enough with stuff it introduced, Id rather have 2 big areas with lots of lore/entities revolving around them than 4 that kinda just feel like a mario level

[reecyboyo]

I had no idea what the panic eye was about, but after this guide it makes so much more sense, thank you mate 🙏👍👍👍👍👍

[ultmateragnarok]

The Night Angler which roams the Marrows can also attack regardless of panic, though it is nearly impossible to actually encounter it without panic as it only roams in the night. Though I've heard tell of Night Anglers spawning beyond the Marrows at high panic, I've never actually seen it despite investigating the ghost ships which may have caused this rumor.
Another source of panic is also the mushrooms in the Twisted Strand - though usually merely bouncy and a little disorienting besides, when you are already somewhat panicked they will instead explode like jelly bombs when neared, with seemingly the same effects - infecting your catch, further raising your panic, or damaging your boat. This makes the Strand somewhat more dangerous at night, as you will always have some level of panic while night fishing due to the fog.
Interestingly, Abberant Waterspouts - the red tornadoes which hound you - can drop abberated fish onto your deck. This is an interaction also possible with the regular waterspouts, which will of course instead drop regular fish.
I find that with the use of haste and a highly upgraded boat, the tentacle can simply be dodged by continuing forward, and I don't think I've ever had to actually use banish on it, though of course early-game (insofar as you can consider having three artifacts the 'early game') it may be more necessary. I believe it does not need to be outmanuvered, as it rotates to face the ship, but simply out-distanced, as it does not move in the water. The sperm whale animation regarding it does only seem to play at non-zero levels of panic, and appears to imply that natural creatures do at times fight back against the various monstrous and abberated things in the depths.
The Leviathan is an interesting creature. It only has three attacks, and I believe - though it is somewhat difficult to test this due to its rarity - it may be able to kill regardless of panic level, but it never uses its instakill attack first. It simply passing by can happen any time you're in open ocean, regardless of panic, though it will certainly panic the player even if not the fisherman. The bite attack is always a followup to one of its other two, either the fin surfacing nearby you or the much more aggressive circling motion it can do, the latter of which only ever occurs at quite high panic. Either of these can be followed up by the instakill, and generally are.
I saw no mention of the 'ghosts' panic can cause. Despite the Night Angler's use of a ghost ship, these other ghost hallucinations are harmless, appear only at night, vary greatly in appearance, and invariably dissapate if light is shone on them or you get near enough to touch them, but reform once you move away (in the case of moving ones you can get into their path and they will dissapate and then reform on your other side). Some are familiar fishing boats passing by, others large sailing ships in the distance, these particularly common inside the Stellar Basin. Several locations have ghost islands, with a light shining near the silhouette of a dock, promising safe haven but failing to deliver - I know of at least one near a side entrance in Gale Cliffs, one near the temple south of Devil's Spine, and one near the southern outlying islands from the Twisted Strand, though it is likely there are more. They're quite a cool feature to stumble across, and I'm quite curious how many I don't know of. And there is, as many see and is visible in the video, the large shipwreck directly below Greater Marrow's lighthouse, though I don't believe it has any significance.

[Julian-rcxn]

Love the video! Even though i knew most of these things because ive been playing for a while, this is definitely gonna help so many people

[eerieghosts]

Nice, I never encountered the phantom ray as far as I can recall... thanks for the great video, keep up the great work :)

[amalaspina]

Using the anchor portal from the Pale Reach DLC will also spike your panic when you use it

[BentleyReese-nl]

I just got dredge and this cleared a lot up! Thanks!

[rogelioperez]

You know what, man? I love this game, and i like ze delivery of your videos, here's a sub and like. Danke schön.

[kubam]

i ignored panic and i didn't really had much problems, use horn on birds. rocks can be seen with light ( tungsten floodlight was enought for me for entire game) the red tornados can be easily dodged or just move near terrain as they get stuck on it. monster ray (or as i call him greg) is cool, can be annoying early game but with good enought engine he is more a friend than foe as he prevents tentacle and shark from appearing, tentacle is insta-banish or if you have good enought engine just run. sharks can also be banished but with haste and more than average engines they can be dodged. i have no major opinion on leviathan as he only killed me once when my engines were broken. i personaly think having high panic makes game fun in many ways

[Indoraptor_Gen_]

Actually, i often play with high panic... even it can turn to a true nightmare. Simply cause i like challenges... i often encountered the Leviathan on the open ocean, still he never ate my ship normally. Except when i once used the bannish ability, cause i wanted to try if it affect the Leviathan... well apparently it makes him kinda angry... well, i almost never use the manifestation to escape... but i have to admit that it looks pretty cool if the Leviathan does his insta kill animation, then the player uses manifest during the ship is between the jaws of the Leviathan. Sometimes i even follow this guy just for fun (but only on low panic like you said) then he really don't care about the ship at all, even if you annoy him by ramming into his fin, its pretty interesting to see how much panic changes the Gameplay actually.
But thanks for the accurate explanation video!

[greywolf]

Phantom stones have one main weakness... TURNING ON YOU DAMN LIGHTS!

[kingtorra]

I only got this game a few days ago but I’m near the end game now. As much as I love it. I do Kinda wish there was more to the panic and threats you face. I’ve come across the tentacle a single time and never once the sharks or the leviathan. I wish they made the seas feel genuinely dangerous to cross because it does such a good job at setting up the mood for it! I just don’t think there’s been a single time I was really worried that I would end up dying

[lexslate]

You may want to throw the package from the courier overboard. Might be better for everyone involved, and you still get the book.

Also, you may note that over the course of the game, the monsters get more manageable. The uncertainty fades, you find out that some of them can be killed, and you get more tools to deal with them. This allows you to feel more confident and in control as you follow the path laid out for you by the story, and crash at full speed in to an appropriate ending for this kind of story. [or you find the other ending and actually take control]

[lightborn]

The oil rig DLC has tea that can reduce panic highly. I also explains the story of this package with black goo from the sidequest. It's actually the blood from the main evil creature and the leviathan doesn't want it to spread further.

[sandro]

just for completing your guide for those who have bought the new iron rig DLC...
panic also grow slower when you use your light, at 4000 lumen you have the max panic resilience given by light (you can reach also 5600 but it will not change if you go above 4000), but if you upgrade your light with the ironheaven tecnology at the iron rig this bonus increase so much that you dont even need to mount the "Flame of The Sky" artifact to reach the lumen needed to have max panik resilience, you can simply use the 3x1 wide light and the 1x1 small light; counting this... with both books you can actually travel the whole night without reaching the max level of panik... (if you dont use haste or make other thing to increase it) ...
also, in the new iron rig DLC you will actually receive at the start a new consumable module 1x1 that can be put anywhere in the boat called "Soothing Tea", after that you can obtain it if you have the factory at level 3; by using it... your panik will drop to zero instantly and any paranormal event will end after a short while (WARNING: if a paranormal event such leviathan or any seamonster that is chasing you is already started... by using the tea after it started... it will not end the event instantly and prevent the damage!!!)
also... i want to correct one of your statement... monster ray and evil turbines dont actually end only if you go to a dock or use your abilities (the wiki is actually wrong), but also after a while if it dont catch you (idk exactly the time, i never counted it, but around 30/40 seconds) even if your panik dont change or increase... so... if you are far away from docks and a monster ray or evil turbine appears you should be happy, because already after the second boat engine space upgrade you should be able to outrun them easily!!
and guess what!!! if a paranormal event start any other paranormal event cant start till the previus one end!!! so its 30/40 second where you are totally safe from phantom sharks, leviathan and tentacle attacks! (any other biome related sea monster still can attack you).
hope it helps, thanks for the video, if you can manage to update it with both DLC it would be the perfect panik guide, its already well explained and helpful!!❤

[CoppermineTypeK]

I’d never know because I have better bedtime discipline in dredge than I do irl

[HitodamaKyrie]

Huh. I didn't even know there were panic based enemies. I finished the bulk of the game earlier and never saw anything beyond the map based enemies.