Mortal Shell guide: How to fast travel

A lot of Mortal Shell is about fighting your way back and forth across Fallgrim and its Outskirts. For much of the game, your options for fast travel are limited.

In this Mortal Shell guide, we’ll talk about the two items that allow you to kind of fast travel, and show you how to find the item that lets you actually fast travel.

Tarnished Mask

You’ll start the game with an item called a Tarnished Mask. At the cost of all of your Glimpses, this item will return you to the last Sester Genessa you visited. Once you become familiar with it, it will only (“only”) cost half of your Glimpses.

This is a great item for early in the game when you get in over your head. It’s useful to return you to Fallgrim Tower in the hours before you reach any of the other temples. However, it doesn’t always help.

Once you head into the other temples — Seat of Infinity, Crypt of Martyrs, and Shrine of Ash — using the Tarnished Mask gets a little trickier. It only returns you to the Sester you most recently visited, though. It is a good way to reset a run and get you out of trouble, but it won’t help you if you want to get back to Fallgrim unimpeded.

Untarnished Mask

The Untarnished Mask is a consumable version of the Tarnished Mask. This one doesn’t cost Glimpses when you use it. When you become familiar with it, you’ll earn Resolve when you use it.

You’ll only find a few Untarnished Masks as you play and explore, so use them sparingly. You’ll find a couple of them in chests around brigand camps in Fallgrim.

Again, though, the Untarnished Mask only returns you to the most recent Sester you visited. Gaining Resolve and paying for it in Glimpses makes it better than the Tarnished Mask, but it’s still not true fast travel.

Ornate Mask

The Ornate Mask is the unlimited use item that lets you fast travel between any Sesters you’ve visited. It doesn’t cost anything to use. When you’re familiar with it, you’ll get a boost to the Tar you earn for one minute after fast traveling (or astral traveling, as the game calls it).

There is only one place to buy an Ornate Mask, and you’ll have to put in a lot of work first. You need to unlock all of a shell’s abilities, which requires a ton of Tar and Glimpses. After that, Sester Genessa will become a merchant (but only for shells that are fully upgraded). She’ll sell you the Ornate Mask for 30 Glimpses.

With the Ornate Mask, you are free to fast travel.