The Mimic

The Mimic
Strength	Mimics other ghost types one after another for brief periods of time
Weakness(es)	Will always produce false ghost orbs
Evidence

„The Mimic is an elusive, mysterious, copycat ghost that mirrors traits and behaviours from others, including other ghost types.”

—The Journal

The Mimic is a type of ghost in Phasmophobia. They are known for mimicking the traits of other ghosts.

Behaviour

The Mimic is able to imitate any type of ghost, and inherit all of its features and abilities:

• Interaction and ghost event rates and preferences
• Hunt thresholds
• Hunt movement speeds
• Various forms of special abilities (e.g. Poltergeist multi-throw, Demon ability hunt)

When imitating a type of ghost, The Mimic will not copy its types of evidence, and will not necessarily provide its guaranteed type of evidence on reduced-evidence difficulties such as Insanity, but can copy features related to evidence. For example, it is able to copy the Obake's six-fingered handprints or the Deogen's breathing, as The Mimic has Ultraviolet and Spirit Box as evidence, but it cannot copy the Goryo's trait of only appearing on a Video Camera when interacting with a D.O.T.S Projector, as The Mimic does not have D.O.T.S Projector as one of its types of evidence.

The Mimic will change the ghost type that it chooses to imitate every 30 seconds to 2 minutes, but cannot change during hunts.

Aside from the 23 other ghost types that The Mimic can imitate, it can also mimic a "blank" state (in which it essentially mimics itself). When this is the case, it will act as a default ghost and have no special abilities. The Mimic will always start in this "blank" state at the beginning of each contract before changing after a random amount of time.

The Mimic provides "evidence" of Ghost Orbs in addition to its three main evidence types, which also appear on difficulties with reduced evidence, including zero evidence. These Ghost Orbs, along with the other types of evidence if none are hidden due to the difficulty, will always exist regardless of the type of ghost that The Mimic chooses to imitate, and will behave in exactly the same way as those produced by other ghost types and will only levitate in the ghost room.

The Mimic, when imitating some specific ghost types, will have some specific behaviours, listed below:

• If The Mimic imitates a Thaye, a fixed age between 0 and 10 is randomly selected, and it will imitate another ghost using its own timer instead of the Thaye's ageing timer.
• If The Mimic imitates a Moroi, and curses the player through the Spirit Box or Parabolic Microphone, the curse will disappear when The Mimic switches to another ghost type, returning the cursed player to normal sanity drain speeds.
• If The Mimic imitates a Banshee, a target is randomly chosen; if it changes to another ghost type then imitates a Banshee again, the target will be randomly chosen again and may not be the same as the previous one.

Evidence

• Spirit Box
• Ultraviolet
• Freezing Temperatures

Though Ghost Orbs are always present, this is not considered by the Journal when inputting evidence. Whether Ghost Orbs is selected does not affect your payout even if the ghost is blanked out when selecting the ghost.

Strengths and weaknesses

These are the strengths and weaknesses as listed in the journal:

Strength: We're unsure what this ghost is capable of. Be careful.

Weakness: Several reports have noted ghost orb sightings near mimics.

Strategies

The Mimic's fundamental nature means that it is extremely unpredictable, and depending on what ghosts it mimics, its difficulty can vary wildly between contracts; It might mimic a Shade or old Thaye and be scared to hunt the whole contract, or it could mimic a Moroi and rapidly drain everyone's sanity then turn into a Revenant and wreak havoc with a surprise early hunt. It can theoretically have the powers of almost any ghost type at any time, most notably ghost abilities that could enable early hunts by having a high hunt threshold and/or draining sanity quickly. In theory, the absolute safest way to handle a Mimic is to treat it as if it had every potential modifier that could increase its aggression/drain player sanity faster than usual, and utilize all tactics that would be used to dissuade attacks from other ghost types:

• Aggression-related:
  • Try to minimize speaking when near the ghost (Yokai)
  • Turn off electronics that are no longer needed (Raiju)
  • Make sure to have active sources of flame in the Ghost Room (Onryo)
  • In general, be prepared for the possibility of early hunts (Demon/Thaye)
  • Turn the lights in the ghost room and nearby rooms on (Mare)
• Sanity-related:
  • Avoid colliding with the ghost during an event (Oni)
  • Avoid using the Parabolic Microphone/Spirit Box after the first response (Moroi)
  • Turn the breaker off (Jinn)
  • Avoid being in pseudo line-of-sight of the ghost (when the player hears their own heartbeat) (Phantom)
  • Remove items from the ghost room (Poltergeist)
  • Closing doors in the ghost room (Yurei)

In practice, however, it is oftentimes overkill and a great annoyance to perform all of these at once, with some even conflicting with each other, and most of the time it's simpler to just bring in Crucifixes early to stop any surprise early hunts and/or take Sanity Medication to refill sanity as needed.

Additionally, it is prudent to have Incense handy, as The Mimic may imitate fast ghosts such as the Revenant or Thaye, catch players by surprise by starting a hunt from an unexpected location if it imitates The Twins or a stalking ghost (Wraith, Phantom and Banshee), or most dangerously imitate the Deogen and require players to completely change up their strategy from hiding to looping between hunts, potentially after everyone is already situated at a hiding spot.

The presence of Ghost Orbs with The Mimic means that players have to take care when trying to identify the ghost with three types of evidence, including Ghost Orbs, if there is a potential overlap between The Mimic and another ghost. In particular, players have to be careful if a Hantu/Onryo is identified through evidence. Identifying Ultraviolet, Ghost Orbs, and Freezing Temperatures usually indicates a Hantu, but as The Mimic creates orbs, Spirit Box evidence has to be definitively ruled out before a Hantu can be confirmed; similarly, identifying Spirit Box, Ghost Orbs, and Freezing Temperatures can lead to a mistaken identification of the ghost as an Onryo if the Mimic's Ultraviolet go undiscovered. Players should go further in confirming or eliminating the presence of a fourth type of evidence for these two ghost types, or check if the ghost's behaviour actually matches the identified ghost (though this is not always reliable, as The Mimic can just happen to be imitating that ghost type, and give the correct behaviour when checked.)

On reduced-evidence difficulties, however, this can cause The Mimic to be very simple to identify, as The Mimic always produces these orbs, and will appear to go over the set maximum amount of given types of evidence; especially on difficulties with all three evidences hidden, The Mimic is extremely easy to identify as Ghost Orbs will appear when there is supposed to be no evidence. On difficulties with all three evidences, identifying Ultraviolet, Spirit Box and Ghost Orbs also definitively indicates a Mimic, as no other ghost has this evidence combination.

Concerning evidence, if the player notices behaviour that normally points to a specific ghost type, but getting types of evidence that they do not have, can bring The Mimic into suspicion, allowing for more focused evidence-gathering, or even give away its identity outright. For example, if the player hears a Banshee's distinctive scream on the Parabolic Microphone, but also gets a Spirit Box response which Banshees do not have, then it's guaranteed to be a Mimic.

Even without evidence, ghost behaviour is also a relatively easy, if somewhat luck-dependent way to identify The Mimic; if the player spots conflicting ghost behaviour throughout the contract that seems to indicate different ghosts at different times, it is most likely The Mimic changing between different ghost types. This is most obvious in the form of ghosts with special hunt speeds, when the ghost changes speeds between different hunts in a way that shouldn't normally be possible, but it can also manifest outside of hunts, for example if the ghost first performs a Poltergeist multi-throw, then a Yurei door close; this can also manifest in a ghost doing things it normally shouldn't be able to do, when the Mimic stops imitating that ghost type after the player identifies it as a specific ghost, such as a Banshee chasing/killing players that aren't its target, a Hantu turning on the fuse box, or an Oni performing the airball ghost event. Intimate knowledge of the other ghost types here is crucial, as some ghost behaviour are quite subtle and difficult to spot, so knowing them off the back of your head and being able to instinctively apply them is a great help here!

Trivia

• The Mimic is the only ghost that can leave handprints on the Exit Door: it must be mimicking a Yurei, it must use the door-closing ability on the exit door, and the Ultraviolet evidence is not hidden. Hence, this occurrence is very rare.

History

Early Access
0.5.0	Added The Mimic.