The age old question.... If I'm not mistaken, lighting torches/candles/etc will give a small sanity boost, but standing in light in itself does not replenish sanity.

There is a passive sanity boost thats always active while below half sanity, but it doesn't care about the brightness, it's just very slow.
There is also a somewhat unknown mechanic where being at 'low' sanity for long enough will reset your sanity to a bit above the 'low' sanity threshold.

So perhaps it's more accurate to say, it's not that standing in light gives you sanity, but instead it's not standing in darkness that does it.

Or is that still considered standing in light? Up to you, but you definitely don't need to stand next to a torch!

Edit: I elaborated on how these mechanics are implemented below if you're interested in technical details.

Staying in light does replenish sanity. It just takes a long time (~5-10min)

It's on the wiki[amnesia.fandom.com].

Originally posted by CookieDoodle:

It's on the wiki.

Yeah, the wiki does say that, but this is not entirely accurate. Because the game is now open source, we can now look at how these mechanics actually work.

There is always a small sanity regain active when you're at half sanity or lower, but this does not take light level into account. As long as you're not actively taking darkness sanity damage, you will get the passive increase of 0.075 sanity per second, which is about 1 sanity every 13 seconds (technically its always active, even when taking darkness sanity damage, but the darkness drain is significantly higher than the passive increase).
This is likely where the 'standing in light raises sanity' misconception came from: it's true you gain sanity while in light, but you also gain the same amount of sanity everywhere else too as long as its not dangerously dark.

I guess this can be interpreted as 'being in light', but I took the original question as asking if standing by a torch or having your lantern out itself increases sanity, when the actual behavior is the reverse: not standing in darkness is what increases sanity.

This passive sanity increase is in the cLuxPlayerSanity::UpdateInsaneEffects method (in LuxPlayerHelpers.cpp) if you want to check it yourself.
I didn't mention the passive sanity gain is my original post, only the following behaviors, so apologizes for forgetting about that.


There is also a 5 minute timer that resets your sanity when its very low which also does not take the light level into account.
If your sanity is below the SanityLowLimit (set to 30 sanity in the game config) a timer starts to increase. when it reaches SanityLowLimitMaxTime (set to 300 seconds, 5 minutes), your sanity is immediately set to the SanityLowNewSanityAmount value (set to 40 sanity).
Since this does not check for light level it means your sanity can actually be reset to 40 while actively standing in darkness, if you've been below the 30 sanity limit for long enough. This is all handled in cLuxPlayerSanity::Update, within the same file mentioned above.

Finally, the only true light related sanity increase comes from the act of lighting a torch/lamp (can be found in the the OnInteract function in LuxProp_Lamp.cpp). This gives between 0.1 and 5 sanity depending on what the current player sanity is when lighting the torch.

Hope this clarifies how sanity and light work. Unless you're doing a hard mode run and are already at dangerously low sanity (and are very low on lantern fuel), it seems to be more productive to keep going through the level instead of camping out by a torch as the sanity will reset to 40% just by playing the game for several minutes.

This is all also very customization for mods as these values can be tweaked in the game.cfg file to nerf, buff, or entirely disable the various sanity gain or drain mechanics.

Also apologies for the wall of text, I only recently learned about the low sanity 'pity' mechanic and the lighting lamp sanity boost so I was excited to share that information.

Originally posted by crater:

The age old question.... If I'm not mistaken, lighting torches/candles/etc will give a small sanity boost, but standing in light in itself does not replenish sanity.

It very much does restore sanity.
After i waited in the Prison area near a torch i lit with tinderbox near the Kitchen i went from "..." to "Slight Headache" by just afking.

Same thing in Transept i just waited in the lit study room to replenish sanity before proceeding to Choir and worked the same.

I've been playing Amnesia recently.

What i am unsure if it can go to "Crystal Clear" by just standing in light.
Probably not but i didn't afk that long so idk.

Originally posted by Alucard †:

After i waited in the Prison area near a torch i lit with tinderbox near the Kitchen i went from "..." to "Slight Headache" by just afking.

yeah, I forgot to mention the passive sanity boost in my first response, although it doesn't actually require standing by a torch or anywhere super bright to take advantage of it.

I've also been playing and modding the game a lot recently
I'll edit the response to clarify

Yes. Dim light seems to work too like from windows or ambient glow.
But in pitch black areas like the Prison that i mentioned manually lit candles and torches do restore sanity passively when standing near them. That i 100% know of.

Yup, you just need to be anywhere where you're not getting the spooky insanity screen wobbling. Although you technically do still regain the same about of sanity then too, but it only causes you to go insane ever so slightly slower since the darkness loss is significantly faster (you lose 1 less sanity every 13 seconds while below 51 sanity because of this, lol)

Originally posted by Alucard †:

What i am unsure if it can go to "Crystal Clear" by just standing in light.
Probably not but i didn't afk that long so idk.

Pretty much impossible to get crystal clear without completing sanity boosting objectives.
"Slight headace" is the max sanity you can get from standing near light