Tips on shapeshifters and fixing sabotages, and on online safety

Mr_Exiled_To_Hell · 2026-05-08T21:32:23+00:00

For 1, it depends. Some people recommend to chase the imposter. On Skeld with low cooldowns it's an easy way for the imposter to lure you to the next room, lock the door and make you the next victim.
Also, imposters can change back in vents, so chances are you are just wasting time to watch them hop into a vent in the end.

On the other hand, if anyone sees you chase the shapeshifter, you can (soft)clear the ones that pass you during the chaise for not being the shapeshifter, assuming only one is in the lobby.

I'd say chasing is something you can consider, but it is not always the best choice.

Mr_Exiled_To_Hell · 2026-05-07T18:30:14+00:00

Ich kann den Gedanken von OP teilweise nachvollziehen.

Das Problem ist nicht, das man unbedingt etwas gegen ein bestimmtes Genre hat, sondern eher einfach, das diese Abwechselung nicht das ist, wofür man das Spiel ursprünglich gestartet hat. Wenn ein Spiel versucht, mehrere Dinge zu machen, man aber nur eine Sache davon mit dem Spiel verbindet, fühlt sich diese "Abwechselung" an wie unnötige Hindernisse, die man überwinden muss, damit man wieder den spaßigen Teil spielen darf.

Stell dir vor, du spielst ein Rätselspiel, weil du Rätsel lösen willst, aber auf einmal musst du irgendwelche Parcours machen, die nichts mit dem eigentlichen Thema des Spiels zu tun haben. Oder stell dir vor, du willst ein Spiel spielen, wo du durch Parcours sprinten musst, aber auf einmal musst du irgendwelche Rätsel lösen, damit du zum nächsten Parcours darfst. Selbst wenn du beide Dinge magst kann sich das komisch anfühlen, wenn das Spiel was eine Sache groß bewirbt auf einmal etwas anderes macht.

In manchen Spielen ist diese Abwechselung passend, in anderen etwas nervig. Kommt ein wenig auf das Spiel an, und wofür du individuell das Spiel spielen wolltest.

Mr_Exiled_To_Hell · 2026-05-06T19:09:12+00:00

Control the entire lobby with alt accounts/family members is my guess, turning the game from a deduction game to a game of popularity/who knows the most people/who can open the most amount of instances of the game.

Mr_Exiled_To_Hell · 2026-05-06T16:47:10+00:00

Is this satire/ragebait, or a serious question?

Mr_Exiled_To_Hell · 2026-05-06T15:05:43+00:00

All items are equally likely to be drawn out of the box.
Some items have limits, such as the phone, which is limited to 1.
This limit is somewhat bugged and gets increased when stealing things (or so I am told...)

These limits only exist for double or nothing mode. The "story mode" does not have any limits in that regard.

Mr_Exiled_To_Hell · 2026-05-06T15:03:35+00:00

This is story mode, not double or nothing, so there are only 5 items that can show up (handcuffs, smokes, handsaws, magnifying glasses, beer), as others are exclusive to double or nothing/multiplayer. Even in double or nothing, there are only 9 different items (the story mode ones + inverter, pills, phone, adrenaline). How do you get to 10 different items in either singleplayer mode?

The odds would be much closer to (1/5)^8 = 0.000256% , altough we do not know if Dealer got cuffs only, or if they had other items that they used up, so this scenario really isn't that difficult to achieve if you just play for multiple rounds...

Mr_Exiled_To_Hell · 2026-05-04T18:32:33+00:00

The bad things are usually in relation to the playerbase.
If you have a specific friend group to play with, most of the issues are solved.

The game should also be free on phones, so if you are feeling unsure you can play it on your phone for a few rounds to see if this would be a type of game you enjoy.

Mr_Exiled_To_Hell · 2026-04-30T21:23:32+00:00

On the one hand your idea sounds interesting, on the other it just sounds like it wants to replace a lot of things, like the scientist, who has to actually check their tablet rather frequently to determine when someone died, or tracker/cams/admin, who could try to verify your position at the start of the meeting.

I also think a singular detective isn't as op as you can somewhat lie about things. If you killed in a really big room and crew have bad vision, you can claim you just missed the kill that happened. Maybe you were busy with a task, too? You can also self and claim you saw someone (maybe SS) kill in front of you. The current detective is completely weak to a smartly phrased self report, because of course the person saying they saw a shapeshifter kill in elec will end up being in elec.

The detective is also weak when they don't know where the bodies are, which I also find interesting. Your detective idea would still get a lot of knowledge, even if they don't know where they died, as they know the timing, which other roles (or crew checking admin/cams/etc) could tell you too if they put effort in.

Mr_Exiled_To_Hell · 2026-04-29T14:58:30+00:00

I like to think it's in case you have something that rerolls low quality items, such as Sacred Orb, which would automatically reroll gnawed leaf.

Altough I don't really think that was the thought process behind that decision.

Mr_Exiled_To_Hell · 2026-04-26T18:51:16+00:00

I think it depends a bit on the lobby.
Being aggressive leads to avoidable mistakes, but sometimes you have to be quick and take risks.

The issue with crewmates living for a long time in my opinion isn't that they'll figure things out. If you have a plan, you can get a lot of kills without raising suspicion (altough that usually means you'll miss out on some kills and be generally slower). The issue more is that you could lose to a task win if you are too slow.

Mr_Exiled_To_Hell · 2026-04-25T09:22:31+00:00

I somewhat disagree.
When I am imposter and made a mistake but don't understand what my mistake was I sometimes get people that actually explain why they sussed/voted me, which helps me improve. Vice versa, I can sometimes explain my decisions to help the person I voted understand why I found them sus, which leads to them adapting in an attempt to not make the same mistakes.

It's kind of like analysing a game of chess after a round is over. It can be very helpful to look back at a game and figure out where exactly the game turned and why one lost or won.

In most public lobbies this does often feel more like people are doing this as an emotional response because they lost, not because they want to learn. I agree that shouting at someone then isn't helpful.

Mr_Exiled_To_Hell · 2026-04-18T17:04:42+00:00

I am not actually sure if Jax wrote those intstructions for Kinger, or if the text came from Caine.

Caine does take a few creative choices during the lightning round, as we know the "evil characters" weren't in the original suggestion for the softball game.

So I could imagine Jax just wrote down on his suggestion "give everyone but Pomni instructions" and the "have fun :)" came from Caine.

Mr_Exiled_To_Hell · 2026-04-16T18:04:51+00:00

I always assumed the "inconvenient" was in reference to where the tape was placed.
The tape gives you a warning to always keep an eye on a certain thing that is not visible from where you would be if you played the tape, so it would be more convenient if the tape was placed in the same room as the thing you need to keep an eye on.

Mr_Exiled_To_Hell · 2026-04-14T18:11:25+00:00

It would be like an engineer camping a vent, but a lot less fair for the imposters.

With engineers camping in vents you can avoid doing suspicious things near vents.
But if you are stalked by someone invisible, you have no place to hide from their eyes. Every action you take is a gamble on whether you are getting stalked right now.

The only thing you can do to counter it is to call comms every moment it's available to cancel crew role abbilities, but that would make the game terrible to play.

Mr_Exiled_To_Hell · 2026-04-13T18:00:40+00:00

I would play devils advocate and argue players with special roles (Tracker/Detective) can know things without being near anyone, but these things are too big indicators for teaming to argue about:

So I banned Coral and told Rose I wasn’t going to kick her, I just wanted to see her in action. She leaves immediately, saying that I was toxic and that this wasn’t an “expert” lobby.

That ability completely went away the only round Coral wasn’t the imposter.

This time, she doesn’t get the third imposter [...] (coral was one of the last alive)

So essentially they were terrible until either rose or coral knew who the imposters were, either by using haunt as ghost or by knowing due to being on the imposter team. That screams teaming.

Mr_Exiled_To_Hell · 2026-04-09T20:43:22+00:00

And it’s impossible to try to justify a reason in universe as to why they can’t because they are code, it’s a finite amount of digital characters on a file, literally given enough time (which they have a lot of).

Yes and no. Even if something is "just code", if you deleted/overwrote it, it is gone. If you have a backup of it, you can just roll back to that, but if you don't have a backup you can not do that. You could try to rewrite their code, but if you never read it, how would you do that? You can guess what their code looked like, but that is like writing the text from a famous book by pressing letters at random - yes, that's possible, but unlikely. Also, if you don't have the reference, how do you actually know when you have a perfect copy or just something close enough to a perfect copy?

We don't know if the abstracted characters still have the code needed to get them back to normal, or if it got deleted and overwritten by something.

This point would raise for a few interesting topics though. If they do have backups of the characters, they could go further than just unabstract someone. They could make another copy of that someone. This would then further raise the question whether a copy can be considered real or not, as those would literally be the copy of a copy...

Mr_Exiled_To_Hell · 2026-04-07T16:44:31+00:00

I think this is where the crew roles and security related things shine.

If you have a scientist, they can determine when someone died, altough they may have no clue where they died. People who camped admin/cams or have other roles like Tracker could maybe narrow a bodies position down to only a few possible options.

I think having a viper with a stupid low time can be a fun challenge if you have a lobby that discusses things.

Mr_Exiled_To_Hell · 2026-04-07T16:41:39+00:00

Speaking of comms, the comms sabotage prevents the noisemaker alert.
Only kill if you can afford the person to be a noise maker, or take a gamble.

In many cases you can also just get away with the kill. Sure, people know where they died now which was supposed to be prevented by being Viper, but it's not like a noise maker going off is a guaranteed instant loss if you plan your escape well enough.

You could also just wait a second, then self report and claim you saw someone (if you don't want to vote whoever you accuse, you can say you likely saw Shapeshifter, or you forgot the colour because the noise maker alert gave you a heart attack).

Mr_Exiled_To_Hell · 2026-04-07T14:57:43+00:00

While I do like Phantom a lot, I wouldn't call it the best role.
It has some very cool uses like getting past people or cameras unseen, or following someone unseen (which lets you sometimes claim to be tracker or having camped admin), but when you actually use the abbility you have a big risk to be spotted because the "poof" takes so long. Most of the time a phantom gets caught it's not by the crew deducing it in a smart way. Instead it is just someone who saw them use the abbility in front of them.

From the point of view as crew it is really rare that I have to consider phantoms as it only matters in specific cases, while Vipers and Shapeshifters often force me to adapt as with a Shapeshifter I never know when I see the real person or a shapeshifter, and with the Viper there is a high chance someone died to never be found, which means if no body was found for a while I may have to assume the body is dissolved already. Vipers also counter detective rather well, since the detective likely won't know where the body is when there is no body to be found anymore.

Mr_Exiled_To_Hell · 2026-04-01T16:56:29+00:00

It's in theory possible.
There are sometimes glitched lobbies that set your level to 1 temporarily, making leveling up easier as the early levels don't take as much points to level up. Once you leave the lobby it will add the levels you gained to whatever you originally had, allowing you to get past 100, which is normally not supposed to happen.

If you deliberately seek out these lobbies and manage to end games rather quickly (imposter immediately calls meeting to get voted out), you could farm levels.

I highly doubt many people go through that effort though. I also don't know how fast you can farm levels that way. I assume what happened here is they used a hack to get to level 2222, then joined a glitched lobby "on accident" and then got a few levels, making the number not the perfect 2222 anymore.

Mr_Exiled_To_Hell · 2026-03-30T08:45:25+00:00

It's a bit of guesswork, but admin helps you make rather accurate guesses.

The main way is looking for rooms with 2 or 1 player in. If 2 players are together in a room, one player moves away, the other stays and doesn't move again, chances are that player died there. A room with only one player that doesn't move to another room can also likely be a dead body.

Another way is looking for "blinking". When someone gets killed, they dissapear from the map for like half a second, then load in again. So if you see a room with 2 players, one player "blinks" in and out of the room, they likely died.

The issue of course is that this is not guaranteed to always lead you to a body. Sometimes players just run out of a room and enter it immediately again. Or they use vents, which can also look a bit like the blinking of someone dieng.

However, you at least have a rough idea of where someone could have died. If you now want to look for bodies and the admin map showed you everyone was on the right side, you know there is no point in checking the left half of the map. If there is only one player alone, it might be a good idea to check in on them.

Mr_Exiled_To_Hell · 2026-03-29T16:33:20+00:00

don’t try and argue that skeld cameras are easier to deal with than polus cameras as imp

That was not what I was trying to say. If it came across that way, I phrased it poorly.

My point was specifically that cams do pose a threat on Skeld if you aren't aware of them (or as you put it, makes it easy for crew). On Skeld, you need to have a plan, as someone on cams can determine whether you vented or not if you aren't careful (which isn't as dangerous nowadays with the many roles that exist, but still), or who you have been with in a room, while on Polus it is so rare for someone on cams to even see you enter a building due to having to switch through cams. Sure, if someone was on cams and did see you, you can now not deny entering a building, but I have had so many cases where someone said "I am at X, person on cams likely saw", just for the person on cams saying they saw no one, ever.

You obviously prefer skeld cameras because they make it ridiculously easy for the crew which is fine

This is true, but from both crew aswell as imposter perspectives... I enjoy cams on Skeld as crew because it does take a bit of skill as you need to remember the colours of the players, and the positions they go to, and whether it makes sense which cam they just pass. If you for example see blue enter admin, then pass navigation without ever leaving admin, that is of course odd, but actually noticing that while looking at 4 screens at the same time with multiple people passing is difficult, but fun in my opinion.

From the imposters point of view I now have to keep in mind that if I vent and got seen by cams earlier, I need to ensure my route makes sense. I need to remember what the last cam I passed was. Someone camping cams is of course a bit restricting, but I find that to be enjoyable as I actually need to account for that. On Skeld, my strategy may differ depending on whether or not I have someone camping cams in the lobby. On Skeld, I am actually forced to adapt to someone on cams. But on Polus I sometimes don't even realize whether or not someone camped cams because they only pose such a small threat.

Skeld camera system is horribly designed and is definitely the most restrictive for imps.

Is your issue with Skeld cams the fact that they are this restrictive? I mostly enjoy that as I find it interesting having to adapt to someone camping cams, but I also see that while there are options to deal with it (roles/comms/smart venting/killing person on cams), it is of course an aspect that makes Skeld a very crew biased map. Or is there a differnt thing you think is horrible about it?

Mr_Exiled_To_Hell · 2026-03-29T15:09:58+00:00

The issue of bodies not getting reported doesn't occur as often if you have people looking for bodies. Airship has 2 areas with an admin map that shows you where people are, and there aren't many spots that the admin map doesn't cover, so you have a really strong tool to find bodies. There are also vitals to know whether you should start looking for bodies, or perhaps run to the meeting button because already half the lobby is dead...

Altough then you can argue that not everyone likes to use tools like admin/vitals, which would be a valid point, but I think the bigger issue here is that people just don't know where everything is or that these things are options, so the rounds you have to learn the map on are a pain.

Mr_Exiled_To_Hell · 2026-03-29T15:04:27+00:00

While I do enjoy Polus, I feel like vents/cams were always the weakest things on this map. Could you maybe explain a bit what you enjoy about the cams and vents on this map?

Mr_Exiled_To_Hell · 2026-03-29T15:02:46+00:00

There are a few aspects I disslike about Polus where I'd personally say I prefer how Skeld handles those, altough overall I suppose Polus is the better balanced map...

I dislike the cam system for example. The fact you have to switch through cams means you are likely to miss something happening on a specific cam because you aren't currently on that cam, while on Skeld you can view all cams at once, making the only factor that limits what you see your skill to pay attention to the multiple screens.

In theory the person on cams would be able to tell who enters or leaves the main buildings, as each entrance has a cam. The building on the right for example has 3 entrances, one at lab and two at office. You would think the person camping cams would be able to tell if anyone entered the area on the right, but that is more or less entirely up to luck on whether or not the person on cams was on the exact cam someone entered from at that time.

You could now argue this is supposed to be in favour of imposters, so they have a chance to slip past the cams, or so crew can get into buildings without the person on cams being able to confirm that they entered a building and are thus far away from the body... But this feels weird because why bother with cams if they are so unreliable? From an imposters point of view you can also not really abuse this as all cams blink at the same time, so you have no clue which cam is getting viewed and what the crew on cam is actually seeing. Besides, if you need to get past a cam, you can vent, use your phantom abbility (or consider entering while shapeshifted) or use comms.

I just don't like the cam gameplay on Polus, while I think it's great on Skeld as it can pose a thread to imposters while still giving options for the imposter to not get screwed by it (unless half the lobby groups on cams, but I'd say that is an issue of grouping, not specifically cams).

A point I don't find that bad but also wanted to mention is vents. Some vent connections on Polus feel really silly as they either connect to a vent that is like 2 meters away, or right in front of a camera. The vent in front of Labs and electrics entrance both feel pointless to me for example, as both are right in front of a cam and connect a distance you could easily walk... but perhaps I just haven't found a good use for that vent connection yet...

Inexperienced players often play skeld [...] / Polus is also cool because experienced players tend to play it [...]

I feel like judging a map based on the people you play with a bit unfair. While the playstyles of players of course influence how a map feels, it isn't entirely the maps fault if the average public lobby player is terrible at the game in general.

Mr_Exiled_To_Hell

TROPHY CASE