Bad Perk University: Calm Spirit Revisited

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. This is Bad Perks Revisited, a sub series where I talk about how a perk used to work, what it does at the time of writing, why it was changed in the first place, why it’s bad or worse than before, and what can be done about it to make it better. This time around, we’re going to look at the new Calm Spirit.

How Calm Spirit used to work is that you don’t cause crows to fly away when approaching them. This was technically the main use of the perk, but if any players ever used Calm Spirit, it was to mute the screams that survivors would make from various interactions such as getting injured, shocked, or to counter perks like Infectious Fright. For the longest time, this was all the perk did. It had a tiny niche, but I could definitely see why some people might use the perk.

What Calm Spirit does now is the same, only it now has an additional effect of making chest and totem actions (cleansing and blessing) silent, with the caveat that those actions are now done 30% slower.

Why was this perk changed? The intent of the change was to give Calm Spirit more utility and have it see more use. But looking at things more closely, you can come to the conclusion that the change is a bit of a net negative. Let’s break down every new aspect and reveal that this “buff” is not really worth it.

First, the totem blessing. There is no need for this action to be silent, because totem blessing is already pretty quiet as it is. Killers might hear it if they’re patrolling and listening very carefully, but they definitely won’t hear it in a chase. So while blessing totems silently is redundant, doing it slower is a detriment, made worse if the killer is using Thanatophobia or Thrill of the Hunt. The extra time it takes you to bless a totem makes running boon perks not as worthwhile, even if it’s Circle of Healing. At a certain point, you might be better off finding another teammate to heal up. Because of this, if you really want to run Calm Spirit, you have to accept that you won’t be able to run boon perks. Your other teammates are free to do so though, so long as they don’t also use Calm Spirit.

Next, chest opening. This one is just silly. If you’re opening a chest for any reason, you’re going to do it when the killer is far away, in which case the silent chest opening isn’t useful. And if for some reason you want to open a chest when the killer is nearby, you’d better make sure you’re not injured, or else it won’t matter how quiet the chest opening is. By the way, about that silent chest opening, it doesn’t mute the sound of the chest actually opening, so if the killer was nearby, they just heard you. Good job.

Finally, the totem cleansing. This aspect is probably the only one that’s actually worth something. Being able to cleanse a totem without the killer knowing is kind of cool, though you’d ideally want to attempt it when the killer is nowhere nearby. It’s nice if the killer is chasing someone nearby and you don’t want to alert them. The totem cleansing sound is just loud enough to hear in chase in close proximity. The problem, of course, is that slower action speed. And if the killer is using Thanatophobia or Thrill of the Hunt, it’ll be a chore. This is still the best part of the new Calm Spirit though, and one that I’ll lean into when I talk about how best to use it.

So how does one use this new Calm Spirit? Before, you could just throw on Calm Spirit as a sort of wild card perk, countering the occasional Doctor and Infectious Fright. If you don’t want to suffer through those slower action speeds though, you’re going to have to form a build around it. Yeah, this is by far my least favorite part about the new Calm Spirit, the fact that you kind of have to use other perks to offset the downsides, but here we are. First, just accept that boon perks are going to be harder to use now and that it might be better if you didn’t run them. 30% slower blessing speed can be endured if there’s nothing else in the way, but if the killer is using Thanatophobia and especially Thrill of the Hunt, just don’t bother. Suppose in the future, the devs will make a perk that makes blessing totems faster, but I don’t want to give anyone ideas.

For chests, Pharmacy is the only perk you can use to completely override the slower chest opening speed. Appraisal would work in theory, except rummaging isn’t silenced by Calm Spirit, so don’t use it. Anyway, Pharmacy only activates when you’re injured now. This is an unfortunate side effect of the fact that you can now get multiple green medkits instead of only one, and remember that even when opening chests silently, you yourself are not. So it would be a good idea to use a perk that silences your injured sounds. Off the Record would be my personal choice here. This is especially good because opening chests is not an action that disables the Endurance status, so even if you get caught out, you’ll be fine...unless you get grabbed or something silly like that.

For cleansing totems, Counterforce is excellent, and is the only way to increase your cleansing speed outside of another survivor running Leader or Better than New. Just cleansing a couple totems is enough to completely offset the slower cleansing speed.

Closing thoughts, what should be done about this perk? The new Calm Spirit isn’t entirely detrimental to use, as I’ve found playing around with it, but the problem is that it only has one real extra benefit, and comes at a cost that can cause problems in more heated scenarios. The best and only real use is the silent totem cleansing, and the other two benefits aren’t worth doing them slower. I understand that it’s meant to be information denial, and information is important to the killer, so it kind of makes sense to have a downside. That being said though, Calm Spirit is such a niche perk that doesn’t grant survivability like any Endurance perk, and I feel that even if you were to remove the slower action speeds, players still wouldn’t run Calm Spirit very often. I’d maybe decrease the slower action speed penalty to 20%, make the sound when the chest opens silent as well, but other than that, I can’t think of any other way to make Calm Spirit better aside from just changing what it does entirely. Are there better perks to run? Yes, absolutely. Is this the worst perk you could use? Not at all. There are so many other perks that do even less than Calm Spirit does. Those perks deserve so much more attention and help. For the time being, get out there and annoy some Doctors.