Ever since I started climbing the challenge ladder in Dupery: A Game of Solo Deduction, the quirk system has been the thing that decides whether a run feels fair or falls apart in front of me. This tier list is my attempt to sort every quirk I have actually played around with — rated on version 1.0.7 — so newer players know what they are picking and veterans have something to argue with me about.
I want to be upfront about where these ratings come from. Right now I am sitting at T8 of the office under challenge, but only T3 in the other regions, so most of my judgement leans on office play rather than the rest of the game. The wiki is also missing a chunk of the dock quirks, and I am not familiar enough with the Casino and Docks (some of the traitor designs there rub me the wrong way), so I am only covering the office quirks here. Everything below assumes Challenge difficulty — easy mode has smaller boards and fewer people, so your mileage will differ.
Before the actual rankings, here is the scale I use: Dead means picking it will kill you (or nearly always kill you), and I avoid these whenever I have a choice. Bad is just plain bad. Neutral covers quirks that mostly do nothing or cancel their own positives against their negatives. Good is genuinely positive. That gives 7 dead, 11 bad, 6 neutral, and 7 good.
The Dead Tier: Quirks That Will Kill You
Ticking Clock costs you 4 reputation if you hit the 24th hour without solving the case. Four reputation is effectively death — take that hit twice and you are done for. In later rounds solving under 24 hours is brutal, and it becomes straight-up impossible when certain roles you cannot investigate or that eat your extra time are in play.
Anti-authoritarianism taints 2 Innocent roles whenever your reputation is not excellent. Let me translate that for you: if your reputation is not excellent, you die. If you do not yet appreciate how nasty two random bad taints are, picture how much you hate the Barkeep when a suspicious guy you found turns out to be a drunk — now imagine two of them. Every round turns into a guess unless you get lucky.
Mortal Dread makes you lose 1 reputation whenever someone dies, provided your reputation is not poor. Translation: if you run into several Hitman, Serial Killer, Mole, Surgeon, or Sawbones roles, do not guess, or you die. There are so many killing roles out there, and they will usually drag your reputation down to 2 or 3 in later rounds — then a single forced guess finishes you.
Silent Accomplice turns one Innocent evil. If you hate the conman, good news: this is a better conman, because it does not share a role with an innocent. The catch is that it is genuinely hard to tell where that innocent role was hiding.
Perfect Crime starts your suspect list empty, and it only grows as you investigate new roles. Now you will never know whether a drunk, copycat, conman, poisoner, maid, or similar is present — better hope luck is on your side. Honestly I have no idea how this survived the demo; it is just really, really bad.
Evil Suspects starts your suspect list with only evil roles, again growing as you investigate. It is a better version than Perfect Crime, but missing meddler information is already bad enough to force guesses in plenty of games.
Broken Radio makes every category in the ratio incorrectly read as 0. It is a worse Radio Interference, and I do not think I need to explain why — most of your logic collapses unless you somehow know the exact number of each type.
Bad Quirks Worth Avoiding
Hidden Smirk makes the Scoundrel lie and pretend to be a suspected role. It hides information, but really it just turns the Scoundrel into a Mobster you cannot arrest directly — and Mobsters are usually not a big deal, so neither is this.
Misty Streets starts each case with an obscured role. Obscure information is bad, and random obscure information is worse. You can try to remember how each role’s info looks, so it will not always kill you, but I still dislike it.
Radio Interference incorrectly reduces one ratio category by 1 and increases another by 1. This is bad because it makes it harder to spot a meddler, and sometimes the only way to confirm a drunk or copycat is by checking the meddler count — this quirk breaks that logic and pushes more games toward guessing.
Setup makes the Fall Guy pretend to be a playable Innocent role. Effectively the Fall Guy becomes a Mobster you cannot arrest, and there is usually no way to tell the difference since everyone else reads them as an evil underling. All you can do is pray you do not meet a bad Fall Guy — and if you get this early, you are bleeding extra reputation fast, which usually means death.
Dirty Cop taints the Partner if they are surrounded by an evil role. It ruins some information while handing you a bit of extra info in return. The trouble is that the Partner might be tainted or disguised for other reasons too, so it becomes hard to tell which case you are looking at, and you will end up guessing.
Outsider Loyalty makes you lose one more reputation when you arrest a good role on the edge of the board. It is the sibling of Insider Loyalty, but there are far more edge roles (12 in a 4×4) than interior ones, so it mostly means a wrong arrest costs you -3 instead of -2.
Unholy Land makes the Priest lie and pretend to be a Skeptic. I have never run into this while choosing the quirk, so I cannot say how a disguised Priest plays under it, but even without that wrinkle it is bad enough — you will struggle to tell whether a lying Skeptic is bad, a meddler, or just a priest.
Haunted keeps traitors functioning while arrested or dead. Depending on which traitors you have, that ranges from meaningless to devastating, and you may get to ban or choose your traitor for the last round. Still, if you are unlucky enough not to lock in an easy traitor, you are in trouble.
Broken Clock always incorrectly reads time passed as 0, while Faulty Clock offsets the clock by somewhere between -2 and 2. Neither is devastating, but both are annoying — especially the first. Only a limited set of roles fiddle with your clock, so it may not matter unless you meet them, but you end up noting the time down yourself, and that boring extra bookkeeping is something I hate doing.
Neutral: The Ones That Cancel Out
Visible Justice gives you +1 reputation for arresting a Traitor while your reputation is poor. That is far too many restrictions for a recovery quirk: it must be a traitor, and it must be while poor. It is positive on paper, but it usually does nothing, and whenever I actually need it I am already in serious danger. A +2 might buy an extra guess; +1 does not.
Swift Justice adds +1 reputation if you solve a case within 12 hours. This is the weakest of the reputation recoveries. If you can solve within 12 hours you probably do not need it, and in later games when you are forced to guess and actually need recovery, you will never solve under 12 hours anyway.
Deadly Aim makes the Hitman kill only good roles. Some players call this bad; I lean neutral. If a Hitman is present, you can sometimes just let them kill and know the survivors are more likely evil. Whether it helps or harms more is a coin flip to me, and since you can ban the Hitman in the last round anyway, I would rather call it a soft negative — not an outright bad one.
Bad Influences transforms 1 Meddler role into a not-in-play Underling when at least 2 Meddlers are in play, and if none are found, nothing transforms. Whether an extra Underling or an extra Meddler is more annoying really depends on the roles — turning a drunk into a mobster is a plus, but turning a Chatter Box into a Spectre is bad. So, neutral to me.
Paranoia means truthful Skeptics announce nothing unless your reputation is excellent — in other words, Skeptics act like priests. Skeptics are good, slightly better than priests in my view, but I still rank this neutral since it is not as punishing as the rest, and I pick it fairly often for that reason.
Insider Loyalty loses you one more reputation when you arrest a good role that is not on the edge of the board. It is fully negative, but interior roles are scarce (unless you are on a 5×5), so it rarely triggers — just be careful around the middle ones and you will survive.
Shrink makes the Therapist consider Meddlers evil. I once lost a run because I forgot I had this. Still, I call it neutral: some meddlers are hard to separate from evils (drunk, Wannabe), but the upside is it helps you verify whether a Therapist is truthful. Positive or negative mostly comes down to the actual roles.
That Smile makes the Idol taint all innocent surrounding neighbours. Another soft negative, but it also makes the Idol easier to spot — a square of weird people means there is an Idol. Plus you can just ban the Idol so it means nothing.
Good: The Quirks I Actually Want
Evil Gaze guarantees at least 1 evil role surrounding the Crime Scene. It is basically free information. Usually it means nothing because probability puts one there anyway, but occasionally it rescues you from a pure guess.
Good Intuition makes the Partner more likely to announce the address of an Underling role. Since winning means catching every evil, that extra evil-targeted info is genuinely useful compared to a random announcement.
Dark Whispers makes the Gossip choose a Traitor if possible. This depends on what the traitors are, but for some of them knowing where they are is very valuable — you want to arrest them as early as possible, more so than an underling. That is a clear positive for me.
Public Favour gives you +1 reputation from solving a case. Nothing beats this outside the very late rounds. Over a full game it usually means +2 or +3 reputation, which is perfectly fine, and compared to the other options it is the best recovery quirk going.
Shot in the Dark grants 1 reputation the first time you arrest an uninvestigated evil role that case. Its value shifts with the evil roles present — if there is a Fugitive, it mostly acts like Public Favour.
Jealousy makes the Romantic turn evil if the Casanova is in play. A free evil is a good thing — free evil usually beats a free innocent, which is part of why I consider the Recruiter one of the easiest traitors to handle.
Medical Breakthrough makes the Surgeon always kill when they are not lying or tainted. For me, a known exact role is worth more than a potential living body: with this quirk, a kill at the 12-hour mark tells you there is a good Surgeon and that the person killed was innocent. That is a lot of information, and it is worth sacrificing a random life to get it.
That covers the office quirks I have worked through on 1.0.7, and I will update this if the balance shifts or I get deeper into the other regions. If you think I have misjudged one of these — especially the borderline neutral calls — I would genuinely like to hear it, because the quirk system is exactly where this game still has the most room to grow.