Faking tasks in Among Us: Which are safe and which are risky
As an Impostor in Among Us, faking tasks can help throw off suspicion and avoid detection, but doing it wrong can lead to being caught.
Not all tasks in Among Us are created equally, and knowing which ones are safer to fake, and how, can help keep Impostors alive longer. Likewise, being able to identify when an Impostor is faking an impossible task can give Crewmates an edge when identifying them.
Tasks in Among Us have a lot more depth than they seem
Although a lot of the tasks in Among Us might seem random, many actually follow an internal logic. One of the most commonly encountered tasks, fix wiring, actually follows a distribution pattern that can be used to help identify Impostors. For each map played, each wire node has a percent chance of being chosen for the first, second, and third panels.
While there is some variance, certain locations have no chance of being selected for certain positions. For example, the wire node in electrical on The Skeld has a 50% chance of being the first node in the task and a 0% chance of being the second or third node. Likewise, the cafeteria and security nodes will never be the first node.
Therefore, if a Crewmate notices an Impostor faking the wires in the cafeteria at the start of a game in Among Us, they can be certain that no task is being done. If the Impostor states that he/she was doing wires at the start, then the Crewmate can be sure that they’re lying and vote them off.
So which tasks are safe to fake?
The wires example isn’t too likely to come up as Among Us players often won’t bother to memorize the wire distribution of each map, but other tasks are much easier to mess up. Additionally, if someone in the playgroup does know the wire patterns, then Impostors can simply avoid faking wires.
In general, any task merely asking players to stand at a location for a variable period of time, with no visual component, will be safer to fake. Some tasks lack a visual component but last an exact and fixed period of time.
For example, each half of the download/upload data task lasts exactly 8.7 seconds, the medbay scan takes exactly ten seconds, and the measure weather task lasts exactly five seconds.
As a result, if an Impostor is seen leaving the upload station in four seconds, witnesses can be reasonably confident that they faked the task.
Safe tasks to fake include things like emptying garbage chutes, cleaning O2 filters, the navigation tasks, and so on. That doesn’t mean Impostors can never fake the fixed duration tasks, just that doing so may be risky if they don’t count out the time.
A special mention, the MedBay scan
One thing to note about the medbay scan is that even with visual tasks turned off, Among Us will still force other players to wait for the scanner to be clear before using it. This effectively confirms that someone is safe even without visual tasks.
Additionally, because the medbay scan causes Among Us to take control of the player to position them in the right location, attempting to fake it requires pinpoint precision. As a result, even if no one can take over the scan position from the Impostor, it’s still possible to tell if someone is faking it.
Also read: Four movies that feel like Among Us
All this, combined with the fact that the medbay scan lasts an exact amount of time and that Among Us got a soft cap on the total number of players that can even have the task, means that there is no reason for Impostors to ever fake this task, and that doing so can be incredibly dangerous.