Talk:Dark Sword/@comment-99.121.4.209-20130520163918/@comment-75.139.97.206-20130603124226

I've always thought of hallucinations as being real. There is no imagination to them. Rabbits actually turn into beardlings when Wilson goes insane, the night hands are actually stealing your fire, etc. I'm not sure how to make it work, logically (but then again, what in the Don't Starve 'verse IS logical?), but I think that's how hallucinations work.

I've thought about insanity and fear being some kind of conduit to allow the hallucinations into the Don't Starve world (like the person above me said), but my favorite theory so far is that the hallucinations are always there and that going insane isn't really going insane, but opening your mind to how things REALLY are.

That, in reality in Maxwell's world, terrorbeaks and crawling horrors are normal monsters like spiders or treeguards and they're always there, but because you're closed off (sane), attached to YOUR reality and not their's, they can't touch or hurt you and you can't see them.

It's why the Grue doesn't attack pigs or bunnymen-- they are naturally closed off and don't even have the capacity to reason that there might be a different level of existence on Maxwell's world. If an insane Wilson were to describe a hallucination, they'll become open to that hallucination and be able to attack it, but on their own, they can't. The reason that the pigs are so afraid of the dark is (of course, werepigs, but also) because a few rather clever pigs have been torn apart by the Grue before, because they had gained the ability to reason its existence. The first time the player character is left alone in the dark, they wonder if there's anything out there that they can't see. That's more than enough thought for the Grue to be able to affect and attack them.

The reason insane items still appear after you stop being insane is because you've reasoned and accepted their existence. They aren't out to hurt you, items like Nightmare Fuel can be very, very helpful... so there's no reason to WANT to reason useful items away. But then you reason away the hallucinations themselves as tricks of the mind, as being insane, as magic-that's-gone-now and you effectively close yourself off, become sane again.

The reason nightmare fuel and night lights and the like drain sanity is because you're forcing yourself to realize-- ''oh wait, something dropped by hallucinations (in my MIND) actually made this... and if this is made out of hallucination stuff and I'm sane right now then that means that the hallucinations are real but they can't be real because there not here... ''And forces your character to start to reaccept those halluncinations are reality.

But even that doesn't really explain how or some of the game mechanics. I don't think the question of hallucinations in Don't Starve CAN be answered. It's really neat.