Death and Taxes looks simple: read a profile, stamp a decision, go home, repeat. The trick is that every day is also teaching you how the world reacts to your paperwork. A clean first run is less about finding a perfect moral answer and more about learning how Fate, profile clues, item feedback, and hidden world conditions fit together.
content warning: Death and Taxes centers on fictional life-or-death paperwork, dark comedy, alcohol/tobacco/drug references, mild violence, sexual themes, and existential themes.
Spoiler note: This is a spoiler-light tips guide. It explains useful habits for a first clear and repeat runs without listing exact profile solutions or secret-ending routes.
Essential Tips
1. Read Each Profile Like a Cause-and-Effect Puzzle
Every profile is more than a character blurb. Look for occupation, risk, public role, social influence, health implications, environmental impact, and whether the profile sounds like it will affect more than one part of the world. A single choice can help one hidden category while hurting another, so avoid making every call from personal sympathy alone.
On a first run, keep your thinking broad: does this person seem tied to peace, prosperity, health, ecology, or social disorder? You will not always know the exact effect, and that uncertainty is part of the game. The goal is to build a better instinct before you chase exact endings.
2. Treat Fate’s Orders as a Strategic Choice
Fate gives daily instructions, but obedience is not the only path. Sometimes you may follow the quota because you want money, stability, or a specific relationship with Fate. Other times you may bend the rules because the profiles in front of you point toward a better world-state goal.
The important habit is to decide why you are obeying or disobeying before you stamp. Random rebellion can get messy quickly. Deliberate rebellion, especially across repeat runs, is how you start learning which outcomes are tied to loyalty, insubordination, and the larger world.
3. Use Money for Information Before Decoration
Desk style and appearance options are fun, but your early purchases should favor tools that teach you how decisions work. The snow globe, lamp, and eraser are the practical core: one helps read world condition, one helps study profile effects, and one gives a backup when a choice goes against your plan.
Decorations and outfits are better once you already understand the loop or when you are doing cleanup runs. If you spend everything on cosmetics too early, you make the hidden-parameter game harder than it needs to be.
4. Check World Feedback Every Day
Because there is no clean meter for every world condition, you need to pay attention to indirect feedback. Look at post-shift consequences, phone updates, comments from Fate, and any tool-based world-state signs you have unlocked. The game expects you to notice patterns across days.
This matters most when you are trying for a better ending. If your choices consistently damage one area, you may not feel the cost until much later. Daily checking helps you correct course before one hidden category drags the whole run down.
5. Keep a Simple Run Goal
Do not try to get every possible outcome at once. For a first playthrough, pick a simple goal such as “keep the world stable,” “mostly follow Fate,” or “make the most humane calls I can infer.” For a later run, choose a sharper target: high ecology, low chaos, rebellion without immediate failure, or an achievement cleanup.
Death and Taxes is built for repetition. A run with a clear theme teaches more than a run where every decision is improvised and forgotten.
6. Use the Lamp as a Learning Tool, Not a Crutch
The lamp is most useful after you have already made or seen decisions, especially across repeat play. Use it to compare what you expected with what actually happened. If a profile’s effect surprises you, remember that kind of profile for the next run.
Do not wait for the lamp to make every choice feel certain. Some profiles are designed to make you infer consequences from limited information. The lamp helps turn those guesses into knowledge over time.
7. Read the Snow Globe Visually
The snow globe is not just a collectible. Treat its changing scene as a world report. Look for whether nature, buildings, people, and symbols of peace seem to be improving or declining. Those visual changes are easier to remember than raw hidden numbers.
If you are aiming for a positive ending, check whether every area is improving, not just the one you personally care about. A world that looks excellent in one category can still collapse if another category drops too far.
8. Save the Eraser for True Course Corrections
The eraser is valuable because it can help recover from a bad stamp, but using it casually prevents you from learning. Before you erase, ask whether the decision breaks your run goal or merely feels uncomfortable. Let some imperfect choices stand, especially during your first clear.
Use the eraser when you spot a clear mismatch between your objective and the profile effect, or when you are pursuing a narrow achievement and cannot afford a stray decision.
9. Separate Story Runs from Achievement Runs
A spoiler-light first run is better when you let the story breathe. Talk, listen, buy a few interesting things, and accept that your ending may be imperfect. Achievement runs are different: they reward controlled behavior, repeated choices, and sometimes deliberately extreme world states.
Once you switch to achievement cleanup, start each run with a target and avoid mixing incompatible goals. A run built for perfect balance is not the same as a run built for getting fired, maximum chaos, or a specific Fate-related outcome.
10. Expect New Game Plus to Be More Informative
Your first ending is not a verdict on your ability. It is a knowledge base. Repeat runs let you recognize profiles, compare earlier assumptions, and use tools with more context. The game becomes less about guessing and more about steering.
If you want a happier or more specific outcome, do not restart blindly. Carry forward what you learned about profile types, hidden world areas, Fate’s reactions, and which purchases made the biggest difference.
Profile Reading Habits
Start each day by reading the rule, then scan every profile before stamping anyone. If the rule asks for a specific number of deaths, identify which profiles seem most harmful or beneficial before you commit. If the rule is vague, decide whether the day is better used for stability, rebellion, or a specific hidden category.
When a profile mentions medicine, public safety, environmental work, finance, conflict, addiction, public influence, or dangerous negligence, slow down. These are the kinds of details that usually imply broader consequences. Marking a person to live may not always be good, and marking a person to die may not always be bad for the world-state you are steering.
Mortimer’s Tools
Prioritize information tools before optional flair. The snow globe helps you inspect the state of the world, the lamp helps reveal how profile decisions affect hidden categories, and the eraser gives you a limited way to correct mistakes. Together, they turn the game from pure moral guessing into a pattern-reading puzzle.
After buying a tool, build it into your routine. Check the snow globe before or after work, compare lamp feedback with your expectations, and save the eraser for decisions that clearly contradict your run goal. Tools only help if you use them consistently.
Ending Planning
For a balanced or positive direction, avoid letting one category fall too far while you optimize another. Peace, prosperity, health, and ecology all matter, and the worst category can pull the overall tone down. If you only chase one theme, the ending may reflect the neglected damage elsewhere.
For Fate-related or rebellion outcomes, be more intentional. Decide whether this run is about loyalty, disobedience, taking over, getting fired, or seeing a specific world condition. Then make the daily choices serve that goal, even when a profile tempts you into a more comfortable moral answer.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Do not stamp profiles one at a time without reading the full desk - The best choice often depends on the day’s total set.
- Do not treat Fate’s quota as the only objective - The quota matters, but world outcomes and run goals matter too.
- Do not buy cosmetics before learning tools on a serious run - Information is more useful than style when you are still confused.
- Do not ignore phone and world feedback - The game reports consequences through indirect signals.
- Do not assume every sympathetic profile should live - Some choices have wider effects than the profile’s tone suggests.
- Do not chase every achievement in one playthrough - Many goals require different, conflicting behavior.
- Do not waste the eraser on mild regret - Save it for choices that break your intended route.
- Do not judge your first ending as failure - The first run teaches the patterns that make later runs better.
Summary
| Category | Top Tip |
|---|---|
| Profiles | Read every profile before stamping the first decision |
| Fate | Obey or rebel with a clear run goal in mind |
| Tools | Buy information tools before desk cosmetics |
| World State | Watch indirect feedback instead of waiting for a perfect meter |
| Endings | Keep each run focused on one outcome family |
| Replays | Use New Game Plus knowledge to steer, not guess |
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8 checked for this guideEvery factual claim in this guide was checked against at least two independent sources before publication. These are the references used for Death and Taxes.
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