Keeping slightly insane

There I was, keeping Nightmares between 2 and 4, nicely progressing in the various dream threads. Then a serious of unfortunate events pushed me to 8 and it was off to…well, wherever you go. Did it once before and as then, had to reduce Nightmares to 0 and lost all dream progress.

Should have deploy my faithful Goldfish sooner and I might have been able to stay just sane enough to not crack and have to lose it all. Any suggestions on how to keep the Nightmare balance and find out where the dream threads will take me?

To some extent it depends on your stats and which areas you have opened.

The social action in your lodgings is always useful. Also if you have wounds some of the actions on spending time in bed also reduce nightmares.

Playing the urchins option on the widow/urchins conflict card will reduce nightmares.

If your nightmares are at 5 always ignore the gentleman on his card.

If you have opened the labyrinth of tigers gawping at the hyena in the second coil will reduce nightmares (watchful challenge but does increase wounds)

Once you have opened the Nadir leaving reduces your nightmares though it does drop your stats depending on how long you spend in there.

If you do go mad it is a very good idea to have a Memory of Light, that takes you to a different menace area which only reduces Someone is Coming so your other dreams are safe.

Edit - BTW if you get the red bordered nightmare 6 cards do not play them as they only increase nightmares. That is a good time to equip your goldfish.
edited by reveurciel on 4/15/2015

As for where the dreams take you - only What the Thunder Said leads anywhere yet. You can become Stormy-eyed that eventually leads to a very interesting place.

If you want to keep ALL your dreams safe - not losing ‘Someone is Coming’ either - you might want to buy a bottle of Honeyed Laudaneum (costs fate) as a ‘buffer’. It’ll prevent any loss of dreams from entering A State of Some Confusion, turning a trip to insanity-town into a short, harmless diversion. (Mind, it ONLY works there - if you go to the Mirror-Marches instead, using a Memory of Light as mentioned above, it won’t trigger. Though you can cross from the Mirror-Marches to A State of Some Confusion with the right opportunity, I believe…)

Thank you all for your kind advice.

As I had at least 2 Memory of Light (which I lost upon exiting A state of some confusion), I had to delve into the Wiki, which also jogged my memory.

I’d Gazed into Dream’s Mirror in the House of Mirrors in Mrs Plenty’s Carnival. That sends you to A state of some confusion no matter what. Shan’t be doing that again.

I would definitely recommend not going to the House of Mirrors unless you need to go insane or to meet the Boatman :)