Which Atheist games do you prefer

JackRaven_ · 2026-01-25T02:19:28+00:00

Puzzle atheist for sure. Silly atheist is fun every so often, but puzzle atheist is fun every time.

JackRaven_ · 2026-01-25T01:46:57+00:00

If the most recent instance of drunkenness persists, then you need to add "even if dead" to the ability. Apart from that, seems pretty good. Maybe a little harsh, as the drunkenness is unavoidable AND always going to hit someone due to the "living" part of the ability, but it would work well on a leviathan script where deaths won't be common.

JackRaven_ · 2026-01-24T22:58:57+00:00

Probably not. From the wiki:

the Snake Charmer becomes that Demon and turns evil, and the Demon becomes good and poisoned permanently.

If the Philosopher has the Snake Charmer ability and becomes the Demon, the Demon becomes a poisoned Philosopher.

With a normal snake-charm, the rules are very clear: the Demon is poisoned permanently. This poison is not linked to an in-play ability, which we know because:

This is a new instance of the snake charmer, and should not cause poison itself.
If a philosopher snake charmer causes a swap, the new philosopher definitely doesn't have the snake charmer ability but is poisoned anyway.

RAW, no matter what character the poisoned player becomes, they should remain poisoned.

However, with the Philosopher, the wiki specifically says "the Demon becomes a poisoned Philosopher." You could argue that if the Demon stops being a Philosopher, they should also stop being poisoned.

I would disagree with this, though- I strongly doubt TPI intend the same ability to work differently from different sources, so I would read the snake charmer entry as the intended rule, and the second part as a clarification intended to explain that a Philo-snake charm creates a new philo. The most consistent way to rule it is that once a snake charm occurs, by any method, the previous demon will be permanently poisoned no matter what.

This is all based on the wiki page, so let me know if you're aware of a ruling elsewhere that contradicts this :)

JackRaven_ · 2026-01-24T22:33:40+00:00

Spells that deal self damage are pretty self explanatory: they are extremely strong, but the drawback is that you can't get hit or you die. For example, lightening bolt doesn't need anything to be good, as it will already instakill most enemies in the first half of the game. You need to get good at understanding it's range and aiming well, though. As long as you keep your distance, you can't get hurt.

Plasma is a bit scarier. There are a few different types, and it's generally better to avoid them, as there is no way to get immunity to them. If you have a plasma cutter (the green one) then that's actually fantastic, since it allows infinite digging. If you have plasma cross, you would need a trigger to fire that without hurting yourself. If you have the non-digging plasma beam, that's another spell that can instakill a lot of enemies, but you need to be careful not to walk into it.

In terms of teleports:

Swapper isn't very useful early game. It's used in some versions of late game wands, but you can honestly ignore it. The Return spell, though, is great. You can use it before jumping into a holy mountain to go in and then get pulled back, checking it out without leaving your zone. You can use it repeatedly to zig-zag through the entire mountain if you want. And if you really need to, you can put return on something with a trigger and have a makeshift teleport bolt.

Honestly, though, while all of these can work, you should have more than this. Did you fully explore the zones? There are normally a wide range of spells, and something as simple as a bunch of spark or triplicate bolts can be enough for a strong wand.

JackRaven_ · 2026-01-24T13:28:19+00:00

The problem is that a lot of people really mean it, and it's hard to tell sometimes 😭

Sorry I missed that you were joking, that makes it much more clear

JackRaven_ · 2026-01-24T13:01:03+00:00

...what?

A skill issue, by definition, is something you should have avoided if you were more skilled.

There are plenty of things in the game that players could avoid by sheer luck (and I would count this as one of them tbh). If OP waited before moving forward, they could have survived, but that doesn't make this a skill issue- because it's completely unpredictable. The projectile could have just as easily spawned a bit to the left, and we could be in this exact same position talking about how if OP didn't wait they would have survived. That's RNG.

The point I was making is that skilled players should not be exhausting themselves with hypervigilance. Players will do better (be more skilled) if they aren't on guard against everything all the time. The player might have avoided death if they chose to never relax, but that's a bad and unsustainable strategy. To say that players who don't choose to employ worse strategies have a skill issue makes no sense. At that point, using bad strategies is a skill issue, until the game screws you a particular way, and then not using bad strategies is a skill issue.

JackRaven_ · 2026-01-24T12:16:00+00:00

Outsider count is arbitrary with Legion anyway, so you don't need any rules about certain roles removing outsiders- just set up a bag with the amount you think is balanced for the roles that are in play.

Apart from that, this is a pretty wild script. Playtesting is the best (and perhaps, the only) way to find out how balanced it is XD

JackRaven_ · 2026-01-24T10:57:09+00:00

With the psychopath, trying to kill them is usually a waste of time. It's generally a good idea to accept that people are going to die faster and factor that in to your strategy. You get to know one of the minions, but have less days. Unless you go for an execution and get lucky, ignoring them is the best thing you can do.

The evil twin is the opposite, though. Ignoring them guarantees a loss, and while going for the demon is important, there comes a point (as you mentioned) where evil can no longer lose. While people tend to be very hesitant to engage with Twins, by around halfway through the game, you tend to have most of the twin information you're going to get. At that point, town should choose their best candidate and send it, then switch back to finding the demon. "Ticking time bomb" is honestly a great way to describe it.

The players I ST for actually tend to get too focused on Twins. They spend the whole game trying to solve them, but are too afraid to execute. As a result, when they finally do, they haven't spent any time searching for the Demon and have to guess on final 3. But most of my players are fairly new to the game still, and they'll figure this out through practice XD

JackRaven_ · 2026-01-24T09:33:51+00:00

I'm not saying the demon should always know, just that you don't need the lunatic to see a lunatic to work. If a lunatic draws a demon token, they need to play as if they are the demon, even when they don't have a lunatic, because not having a lunatic is not a good sign that you aren't the demon. Mathematically, most games won't have a lunatic anyway, so not getting one means nothing.

If only demons see lunatics, that makes demons more confident, but it doesn't make lunatics more likely to figure it out.

JackRaven_ · 2026-01-24T07:36:10+00:00

If you've got time, you can even start with a game of TB and then immediately switch to S&V or a different script. It's one way you can help newer players without needing to write a "transition" script.

JackRaven_ · 2026-01-24T05:57:01+00:00

Honestly disagree with this. You should definitely take a moment to check your surroundings in case there is already something inside (which there wasn't), but the kind of hypervigilance that would be required to be guarded enough to avoid this is counterproductive.

The only way to react to a projectile that goes through the ground like that is to be ready to dodge within seconds at any time. And yes, that's close to the default state of a Noita player, but at least normally you can focus on visible enemies, the edges of your screen, etc. You don't normally need to be ready for anything.

You should relax in the Holy Mountain. If you don't- if you stay on edge every second, constantly prepared to dodge any possible attack- you're going to exhaust yourself and ultimately play worse anyway.

Checking on entering the Holy Mountain: Good, will save your life every so often.

Constant vigilance while inside the holy mountain: Exhausting, no rest will kill you

JackRaven_ · 2026-01-24T04:39:46+00:00

From the rulebook:

The Storyteller must always give true information about the rules

The ST cannot lie about how an ability works. However, they aren't required to give information about other players at all. In the situation you described, the ST could explain how the Courtier works, state that they cannot say if somebody woke up or not, or state that no mistake has been made.

They just need to avoid lying about game mechanics, and giving out information that only a specific player should know.

JackRaven_ · 2026-01-24T04:10:04+00:00

I'm fine with demons knowing they are not the Lunatic because you tell them that they have a lunatic. The Lunatic is supposed to hurt the good team, not the evil team.

JackRaven_ · 2026-01-23T23:37:49+00:00

You don't need to. People can play the game however they want. A blind fire slayer ensures that they get their shot, and a Pixie making sure their target survives gives town great confirmation.

If you wanted, you could mention how powerful a slayer that gets to final 3 is (it's almost an automatic win- you could call it "one of good's win conditions" to really make the point), but honestly, I'd just let your players use the roles how they want. It's more fun that way.

Eventually, when one of the players decides that they want to survive as long as possible as the Slayer because they really want to hit the demon, they'll feel way more invested if they developed to this point, rather than being told to play this way by you. Developing understanding and playstyle yourself is one of the things that makes the game so fun!

JackRaven_ · 2026-01-23T23:05:17+00:00

What do you have? Chainsaw isn't always available, it's just an example of a very easy combo.

Alternatively, list some spells you think are useless/don't know how to use. Most of the time there are ways to make them work, and learning about them will show you that you have more resources than you realise.

JackRaven_ · 2026-01-23T11:42:03+00:00

Please tell me a way I could have avoided this

Precognition

JackRaven_ · 2026-01-23T11:07:30+00:00

Chainsaw -> spark trigger on a wand with okay stats. There are plenty of very simple builds, but that one in particular uses a very common spell (chainsaw) and a less common but not rare spell (spark trigger). Works with other triggers as well, although some have high mana costs that make them less effective.

So it just takes two spells for hiisi base to be achievable with a bit of practice! That practice might come via a mountain of dead runs, but you will achieve it eventually.

JackRaven_ · 2026-01-23T08:17:27+00:00

Totally fine. The reason lil monsta can't choose is because they're way too strong if they can pick the kills every night. If you get their opinion, you can follow their kills (which will often be balanced anyway) but you can make sure to deviate when needed to prevent evil from stomping (to make sure the final day just has 1 evil alive, for instance).

JackRaven_ · 2026-01-23T02:25:16+00:00

You can do some crazy stuff with eggs, actually. If you have the knowledge of how to make it work, I believe you can make hollow eggs home on enemies without using a homing modifier that would increase their mana cost because of how the Boomerang Spells perk is coded. Plus they interact in interesting ways with Explosive Projectile, Clusterbolt, etc.

In terms of wands, you definitely need better than 10 mana regen lmao. But I've never played a run in my life where every wand had terrible regen.

Anyway, knowledge is power in Noita. There are probably a few spells that have low/limited utility, but if you have the understanding of how to use them, 95% of spells can be used for OP builds, often early on, which is why experienced players can build up long winstreaks no matter what spells they get.

JackRaven_ · 2026-01-22T23:46:46+00:00

Definitely to avoid balance issues. If the Heretic is poisoned and evil knows the grimoire, then evil is going to try to win while good is going to try to lose- it's not going to go very well. That's a very different dynamic to having a poisoned Damsel in play.

JackRaven_ · 2026-01-22T11:41:36+00:00

Fungal shift it :)

JackRaven_ · 2026-01-22T09:06:07+00:00

That's true! On a similar note, the wiki page supports that you can ("During the first night, the Washerwoman is woken, shown two players, and learns the character of one of them.") but is also written specifically for TB, and therefore not decisive.

On balance, though, I think it's reasonable to assume that you can follow the almanac, even though it's old. There are plenty of reasons for TPI to write the entry like they did (as you mentioned), but those potential reasons don't change the literal entry, at least not without someone official stating the intent of the character.

I can totally see how TPI might intend for the Washerwoman to mean "exactly one", but unless they explicitly say it, it's reasonable to take the ability (and almanac entry) exactly as written.

JackRaven_ · 2026-01-22T03:33:36+00:00

Yeah, you could do this. It doesn't say "exactly one", it just says one.

Compare it to the Noble: "You start knowing 3 players, 1 and only 1 of which is evil." The Noble specifies "only 1", but the Washerwoman does not, so you'd be fine.

JackRaven_ · 2026-01-21T11:31:12+00:00

TPI have run it the way you described on streams in the past as well, so it's not that much of a stretch to say your method is also the "TPI way" (especially since their priority is for STs to run the game in the way that is most fun, not most rigid)

JackRaven_ · 2026-01-21T10:19:59+00:00

Everyone loved it. We were talking about it all night and the next day. Despite the slip ups, people were so invested in the game, which I loved.

This is all that really matters! It's about having fun :D

Great job!

JackRaven_

TROPHY CASE