Laughless Saint Beginner Guide and Tips

Start here

This is a Morrowind-inspired RPG, which means it withholds a lot of what modern RPGs put on screen. If the island feels vague, these are the things that make it click.

1. Do these three quests first

2. Your build improves while you play

Skills rise through use — combat skills, but also sprinting, swimming and sneaking. You do not need to spend points to improve something you are already doing constantly.

The mistake is dumping points into skills that were climbing anyway. Instead:

Let frequently used skills grow on their own, then spend points where natural progression is actually costing you time.

There is even a deliberately silly option: repeatedly punching an early NPC grinds unarmed.

3. Read the perk trees that sound irrelevant

The best early quality-of-life perk in the game is +100 carry capacity, and it sits in the pickpocket tree — which fighters and mages skip on principle because they have no interest in stealing.

Inventory weight is a real problem here. Open every tree.

4. A blessing is not automatically a buff

Stone’s blessing reduces magicka regeneration by 50%. For a caster that is close to build-ruining. Read the entire effect before you take a permanent reward, not just the first line.

5. Spell crafting is a toolbox, not a damage upgrade

Once you can cast, resist the urge to only build bigger fireballs. Confirmed effects include fire, shield and paralysis. The better question is not “how do I hit harder” but “what part of this fight do I need to change.”

6. Rumours are the quest markers

Dialogue, overheard rumours and scraps of history are the navigation system. If somebody gives you a place name, a direction, or a suspiciously specific story — remember it. Waiting for a glowing marker to appear is how you walk past content.

7. Retreat is not lost progress

The island and the Tower feed into each other. If a section is suddenly far nastier than everything around it, the answer is probably not ten more attempts. Back out, follow another rumour, and come back with better gear.

Sometimes the smartest way deeper into the tower is to walk away from it.

8. Failure still counts

The Amphitheater fills its seats whether you succeed or fail — help someone and a trusted figure sits down, fail them and something darker does. The house fills either way.

So reloading every uncomfortable outcome until you find the “correct” ending is fighting the design. A bad outcome is often the game recording the story you actually made.

9. The game letting you do it is not permission

You can steal almost anything, interfere with NPCs, and kill people. Those actions feed the simulation — faction standing is genuinely tracked. Theft and aggression are not isolated mini-games.

10. In co-op, agree before you improvise

The host owns the campaign save, but consequences belong to the group. One player killing a quest NPC mid-negotiation becomes everybody’s outcome. See co-op and multiplayer.

Practical setup notes

Two things that cause crashes and are worth checking before you start:

• Update your GPU drivers. NerveLabs added a popup for Nvidia drivers below version 600, stating older drivers are the source of most crashes.
• Check your laptop is using the dedicated GPU. A fix went in for laptops incorrectly selecting the integrated GPU.

And two comfort settings from Update 7: you can now turn off shadows for significantly improved performance, and there is a Skip intro option.

Remember it is early access

The game launched on 17 August 2026 and shipped seven builds in five days, including over 40 bug fixes in a single hotfix. Reviews are Very Positive but reviewers are candid that it is rough — “a lot of potential and a lot of bugs.”

If something is broken, the developers have said they are on standby and monitoring reports. See FAQ for the official channels.

Sources

• “10 Things the Game DOESN’T Tell You” guide video for points 2 through 10.
• NerveLabs official announcements, RELEASED through Update 7, 17–21 Aug 2026, for driver warnings, settings and patch cadence.
• “Check Out” early access review for the overall assessment.
• Quest walkthrough videos published 19–23 Aug 2026.