Lot's of misinformation in this thread. Probably worth watching the VOD of the live stream as they explain it and show it in action (starting around 1:38:30 is a good place to start for mask discussion). The biggest point is that the mask grants you the races skills and abilities AND
can be used by anyone, not just undead.
Key points:
- Knowledge of how to make the mask comes from Fane, so it appears you have to do a bit of his story to get access to it.
- Mask is made through a crafting recipe
- Requires getting a special tool to steal faces (found on or around the torture in fort joy)
- You have to steal the face from a fresh and intact corpse (on the stream they accidentally turned the first dwarf they murdered into ash and so had to kill another)
- You have to steal a face from each race to unlock that races shapeshift
- You can make the mask without having collected all the faces (but will only work for the ones you have so far - on stream they only stole a dwarf face and made a dwarven mask of shapeshiffting)
- ANY character can use the mask (not just Fane as PC or companion, not just custom undead). This may have been stated in the chat only. VOD @ about 1:42:00 - 1:42:20
- When you choose your race with the mask you gain access to that races racial traits (e.g. corpse eater for elf) and class skills (e.g. Metamorph for dwarf, see this example on the livestream)
- Characters will treat you as the race you are.
I think the purpose of the mask is to ensure that you can access more of the games content with a single playthrough, whether that means being able to not terrify people as undead or not miss out on corpse granted skills if you don't have an elf in the party, or access quest lines that are gated behind races.
Opposite of what a lot of people have said in the thread, the mask means you aren't forced to play or include any race in your party comp. Instead, it opens up more freedom.
Here is the VOD of the livestream for reference:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/171233930[Edit: for clarity, cut some erroneous examples from alpha that may not be in game anymore, and link to VOD]
