Bad Perk University: Calm Spirit

Hello class, welcome to Bad Perk University! I'll be your professor for today, and we'll be going over the worst perks The Entity has to offer and see how to make the most out of them. Today’s perk is a bit of a weird one, because while I can’t exactly say it has a bad effect, I also can’t really say it’s a good one either. I’m talking about Calm Spirit. Calm Spirit is a very unusual perk, in addition to being one of the oldest perks in the game. It makes it so Crows do not fly away when you move near them. It also has the additional effect of making it so you do not scream from injuries or any Killer powers that make you scream, hiding any Loud Noise Notifications they may have. You could make the argument that this is the “true” effect of this perk, since players mostly use it for that aspect.

So why is this perk bad? Niche doesn’t begin to describe this perk. Both effects of this perk have so few applications that most players won’t bother with it. Suppressing screams only really makes any difference with two killers in the game: Clown and Doctor. In Clown’s case, if he tosses a bottle over cover, he won’t hear you scream from the gas, kind of denying him of information. Doctor is a similar case, when you scream from Static Blast, or otherwise having Madness tier up, he won’t hear you scream or get a notification. However, if he’s using the Restraint addons, he’ll still see your aura when that happens. These are probably the two most common use cases for Calm Spirit, because it seems players who use this perk despise Clown and Doctor so much that they’ll handicap themselves with this perk just to make sure they deny these two of precious info. As an interesting side note, you also don’t scream when triggering Hag traps, but she sees the trap go off anyway so it doesn’t matter.

Let’s talk about that crow part now. Crows are a mechanic that have been in the game pretty much since the beginning, and not much has changed about it. As a brief breakdown, if you move too close to a crow, it will fly away and make a cawing sound, and then come back after 15 seconds. This applies to both Survivors and Killers. If you’re crouching past a crow, they’re less likely to fly away. Crows don’t give a noise notification to the killer, unless they’re using Spies from the Shadows (I’ll talk about that perk someday as well, don’t worry), however the killer has eyes and can see crows flying off. If they see a crow flying off in the distance, they can be sure a survivor ran past there. It’s yet another layer of tracking that killers have access to, but only the most experienced killers may make use of it when all else fails. So Calm Spirit makes it so you don’t have to worry about crows anymore, right? Unfortunately, it isn’t that sample. See, Calm Spirit will make it so if you run or walk past crows, they won’t be disturbed. However, if you touch a crow, or more specifically get within 0.6m of them, they’ll still fly away even if you have this perk. So you’re not immune to crows, you still have to worry about crows that happen to be on the ground or hiding in cornfields. It’s worth noting that this perk completely counters Spies from the Shadows because you pretty much don’t disturb crows anymore, but when was the last time you saw a killer using that perk? So long story short, these two niche effects aren’t even completely foolproof, because killers don’t necessarily need screams for information and you could maybe argue that crows aren’t completely necessary for tracking either.

So how do we make the most out of this perk? Well this is clearly meant to be a stealth perk, so it will get the most mileage when used with other stealth perks. Iron Will is really a no-brainer here. Aside from being obnoxiously strong on its own, it covers a weakness of Calm Spirit in that Calm Spirit will almost certainly not help you when you’re injured. I suppose not stirring up crows is nice as you’re running away to find healing, so muting your injured noises helps to not give you away. Quick and Quiet works nicely with Calm Spirit. Since you don’t disturb crows by running, you can throw in quiet fast vaults and lockers into the mix. This also helps to counter Doctor further, more specifically Doctors that use the Restraint addons. You can more effectively use lockers to avoid getting shocked and be revealed by the addon. Urban Evasion sees Calm Spirit as a quality of life buff. Crows have a lesser chance to fly away when you’re crouched, but Urban Evasion will make it so you can crouch past crows in peace, and do it quickly. Above all, what I’m trying to say with Calm Spirit is that it works best in a full stealth build, so any perks that revolve around stealth can utilize Calm Spirit to cover gaps in stealth. But Calm Spirit is fine enough as it is that it can even just be used as a wild card to throw off some killers. While it counters Doctor and Clown specifically, it counters one particular perk beautifully: Infectious Fright. Infectious Fright is a snowballing perk that relies on screams, and Calm Spirit, when played right, can stop that snowball in its tracks. This is the one situation that comes up often enough that Calm Spirit would be worth taking just to occasionally counter it. Oh I guess it’s good against Deathbound and Eruption as well to not give away your location, but you’d still be Oblivious and Incapacitated respectively. Again, it works great as a wild card perk, just in case.

Closing thoughts, how do we make this perk better? You could honestly leave the perk as it is, because the effect it has isn’t bad, just extremely niche. The only killer perk that has anything to do with crows is Spies from the Shadows, and that one is also rather niche. Maybe not as niche as Calm Spirit, since it’s a form of tracking that can catch survivors off guard, but still. I personally see this as an Iron Maiden situation. Not a bad perk in its own right, but made better and more applicable the more perks are made that revolve around it. Iron Maiden sees more use now due to perks like Flashbang, Red Herring, and Inner Strength. Calm Spirit should have the same treatment, have more killer perks that revolve around screams, or more importantly around crows. What might those perks look like? I don’t have a clue. Maybe that would require making crows more interesting, like making them attack survivors. Maybe a new series is in order: Niche Perk Night Lessons. Ha. Thank you for coming to my lesson, see you next class!