Suspicion is the game’s real health bar. Gold shortages cost you a week; a full suspicion bar costs you the attempt. It is worth knowing exactly which actions move it before a bar is at seven eighths.
Two bars, not one balance
There is no combined reputation score to keep level. Each guild watches the inn on its own, so a run can be perfectly balanced in profit and still fail because one side heard one story too many.
Two consequences follow directly. First, the bar you should be worried about is always the higher one. Second, anything that lowers “suspicion” only lowers the side involved — a backed fight, for example, drops the bar of the guild whose adventurer won.
What raises it
| Cause | Evidence | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Rival adventurers meeting at the door | In-game fight prompt and review | The visible, avoidable source |
| Event replies that go badly | Store description: choices can raise suspicions | Some replies calm the room, others do not |
| Black market offers | October 2025 update note | Money now, suspicion later |
| Same story spreading after a fight | In-game prompt | Repeated wins eventually cause trouble |
| The weekly suspicion event | Hotfix 1.0.0.261024.1 | Capped at once per week since that patch |
The developers were explicit about the direction of travel in 1.0. Their August 2026 devlog says suspicion now rises more frequently and by greater amounts during stages, and that Image Control was restructured because of it.
Three ways to bring a bar down
Image Control. From chapter 2 the lobby sells it for guild tokens. It used to be an in-stage purchase with gold and a per-chapter use limit; the 1.0 version is a lobby decision that competes with beds and know-how for the same tokens. It is the only repeatable lever.
Win a fight you backed. Backing a side and winning lowers that side’s suspicion. It is the cheapest intervention in the game and the reason a fight is sometimes worth accepting — but only when you can pick the winner, because a loss spends the wisps and leaves the bar untouched.
Volunteer work. The October 2025 update describes volunteer events as buying trust with money. It converts a strong cash week into a safety margin, which is exactly what a rich, crowded week needs.
What 1.0 changed about the balance
Three changes matter together:
- Suspicion rises more often and harder during stages.
- Image Control moved to the lobby and costs guild tokens, so it is now a planning purchase rather than an emergency button.
- The weekly suspicion event was capped at once per week by the 24 October 2026 hotfix.
The first two make the mid-game tighter. The third removes the specific failure mode where one bad event repeated and buried a week that was otherwise fine. If you are reading an Early Access guide that still describes buying Image Control mid-stage with gold, the advice is out of date.
Planning a week around the bars
Read both bars before you read the goals. If one is high, the week’s real constraint is not beds — it is which event replies you can afford to answer honestly.
- If a bar is high and cash is healthy, a volunteer shift is the least disruptive fix.
- If a bar is high and tokens are healthy, buy Image Control before you buy a facility.
- If a bar is high and neither is healthy, keep the two guilds apart this week and accept a slower goal.
- If both bars are comfortable, spend the week on beds and let the fights happen only where you can win them.
Failure and retry
When a bar fills, the run stops. The retry goes back to an earlier day of the same week, which keeps the chapter’s completed weeks and only costs the days you redo. It is worth knowing before you decide whether to gamble: the punishment for a risky week is a replayed week, not a replayed chapter.
What is not published
The exact numeric threshold on each bar is not in any material checked here, and neither is the size of each event’s suspicion step. The page therefore describes direction and priority rather than arithmetic. If a specific event’s value matters to your plan, the safe assumption is the conservative one: assume the higher bar takes the largest available hit.