I can't understand Delirium

The map layout is a huge factor for your success with delirium. When you go through the mirror pay attention to the direction the fog "flows". Always try to move in the direction the fog is flowing and walk over the slightly denser white "nodes" to spawn delirium monsters. Those will spawn additional monsters that will count towards the loot reward and also prolong the time before fog clears (see bottom left of screen there will be a reward icon with progress towards next tier).

Some times you will encounter delirium bosses like Omniphobia. You will then see the boss hp bar appear and you will have to search the fog until you find him. Currently the hp bar shows a bit too early so it is very common to not find him in time before he despawns.

In general if you start in-map events like breach and ritual will pause the delirium fog dissipation until you move away from the breach circle or ritual circle. However they might not have tuned that as well in PoE2 yet.

Don't be shocked/discouraged if you "fail" to complete it before map is cleared. It usually takes a very good, speedy clear build and some luck with layout to ever do that. Just try to get the reward number as high as possible and collect the reward when it dissipates. At higher tier you start getting Simulacrum splinters that you can collect and use for the pinnacle content of delirium :)

If you want to you can walk past the mirror in the start and plan out a route before running back to the mirror. You would still have to be somewhat lucky with the direction it flows though in some map layouts.

The “emotions” you get can be used to instill a notable??? passive on an amulet. Right click on an emotion to bring up the crafting sub menu.

I came here trying to find answers as well as Delirium is the only thing that still baffles me as of 92 level ( first timer of PoE also ).

I do see that you're mentioning staying "within the fog" but to be honest at least on my end, everything is a fog and grayish so I don't really understand if I went out of it or not.

To put it on a perspective, a breach has a clear indication about it's boundaries as it expands etc. Delirium on the other hand changes the hue of the whole screen so I've got no clue personally when is this "fog" supposed to be ending so I can stay within it's limits.

So is the timer dependent/refreshed according to the mirrors we break? Or do we just follow a supposed 'border' that doesn't have that clear indication ( not yet at least ).

I'm also still confused if the point of it is to 'break' as many mirrors as possible for better rewards, or still kill as many mobs as possible similar to a breach.

And in terms of better rewards to be precise, I haven't gotten any of the 5 bottom distilled stuff ( I don't even know how they're called as there's no tooltip if the tab is empty ). I guess my timer ends earlier than it should be.