When it comes to The Outlast Trials, there’s no shortage of disturbing mechanics and hostile encounters, but nothing quite tests your patience like the enraged Witnesses. If you’ve faced these unpredictable enemies, you know what I mean: everything you thought you understood about AI behavior? Throw it out the window. The enraged Witnesses aren’t just a challenge—they’re a full-on horror experience, mechanical chaos included.
Let’s break down what makes them tick, what’s changed recently, and how you can (sometimes) beat them.
“Yo, Who Brought All These Bricks?” – The Witness Struggle Begins
It starts like most chaotic stories: bricks are flying, panic is rising, and the Witness is already halfway across the map before you even line up a microwave hit. As absurd as it sounds, it’s a genuine experience. Enraged Witnesses are not just standard trial enemies with more aggression—they behave in ways that feel deeply unfair.
When not enraged, a Witness will hear a noise and merely turn toward it. If they spot you, they sprint off. That’s it. But once the Veror system activates their enraged state, all logic collapses. An enraged Witness can detect you from a noise alone and immediately bolt to a safe door, forcing a despawn and respawn elsewhere on the map. No visual contact required.
This shift in behavior transforms what was once a predictable threat into something borderline unmanageable. Worse yet, these enemies now react to noise in brand new ways. Throw a bottle? They might relocate. Slam a door near them? They might wander to another corner before snapping back to their original path. This appears to be a recent change, likely an AI adjustment introduced quietly in an update, and it adds yet another chaotic layer.
Understanding Their Behavior (Or Trying To)
If there’s one word to describe enraged Witness AI, it’s volatile. Regular enemies have a clear pattern: hear a noise, investigate; see a player, attack. Witnesses are different. Their default behavior is passive until seen. But once enraged, everything shifts to maximum sensitivity. Noise detection becomes instantaneous. Visual range increases, even in darkness. Movement speed skyrockets.
This change doesn’t just make them fast—it makes them erratic. You could be setting up the perfect hit, only for a slight footstep or sound trap to send them sprinting to another part of the map.
This unpredictability makes standard strategies obsolete. You can’t simply bait them like normal enemies. The usual stealth patterns crumble under their hypersensitive behavior. And since you need microwave hits to kill them—hits that require you to get close—this becomes a game of risk, resourcefulness, and praying to RNG.
How to Actually Fight Them (Sometimes)
Let’s be honest. Fighting enraged Witnesses often comes down to improvisation and luck. But a few strategies can help you tip the odds in your favor:
1. Absolute Silence
The number one rule when approaching an enraged Witness? Don’t make a sound. If they hear you, that’s enough for them to flee. Don’t sprint. Don’t throw items nearby. Avoid noise traps. The closer you can get in silence, the better your shot at a microwave hit.
2. All-In Chaos
Alternatively, if quiet fails, go loud—but go all out. Use everything at your disposal to slow them down: throwables, closing doors in their path, rig abilities, teammate coordination—anything to hold them still for one precious moment.
3. Hope and Pray
It sounds like a joke, but some of the most successful hits come when the AI bugs out. You will have runs where the Witness stands still, glitches in place, or behaves inconsistently. Don’t question it—take the hit.
The Jammer Strategy – A New Hope?
With the introduction of the Jammer Rig, there’s finally a tactical way to handle Witnesses that doesn’t just rely on brute force. Here’s how it works:
- Jamming the Witness causes them to puke three times, each vomiting animation briefly stunning them.
- However, as soon as the jamming completes, the Witness bolts. So, you must act fast.
- While they’re stunned mid-puke, stack throwables or combo with teammates to try for a stunlock.
While it’s situational and timing-heavy, the Jammer can work—especially when paired with other tools. It’s not a guaranteed win, but it buys you windows of opportunity.
Trap Synergy – Jammed Grounds and Shocked Souls
Want more consistency? Lead the Witness into traps you’ve rigged with the Jammer. If a Witness steps on:
- A jammed floor trap
- A jammed bomb trap
- A jammed door trap
…they’ll slip, fall, and stay down long enough to get a clean hit. It’s a puzzle to execute and depends heavily on map layout and timing, but if done right, it’s one of the most reliable ways to land damage.
Pro tip: Use the microwave trigger’s sound to lure them into the trap. It’s risky—but rewarding.
Stun vs. Jammer – Pick Your Poison
If you’re debating which rig to take, Stun still holds the crown for reliability. But Jammer opens a new toolkit with interesting trade-offs. Jammer’s real strength lies in trap interaction, not direct confrontations. So if you’re planning a methodical approach—setting up the battlefield ahead of time—Jammer might be your best friend.
The Problem with “Pleasure” – Lazy Design or Tactical Shift?
Here’s a hot take: the inclusion of Witnesses in the Pleasure to the Prosecutor trial feels… lazy. In Vindicate the Guilty, Witnesses had build-up. The trial introduced them with dramatic cutscenes and story relevance. The objective was clear: sabotage the courtroom by eliminating them.
But in Pleasure? They just show up. No intro, no narrative tie-in. You walk out a door, grab the trigger, and boom—they exist now. There’s not even an objective marker explaining what to do.
It feels like a copy-paste job, and it dilutes what was once one of the most memorable parts of the game. Vindicate’s court sequence remains one of the best cutscenes in the series. Why reduce that to background noise?
Final Words (and Mild Conspiracies)
Look, this was partially a joke guide—but everything said here is functionally accurate. Witnesses are a mess. Enraged ones are worse. Their mechanics are frustrating, their AI unpredictable, and their inclusion in certain trials questionable. But there’s also a strange satisfaction in managing to kill one, especially when everything aligns just right.
If you’re struggling, remember:
- Stay quiet
- Use your tools
- Embrace the chaos
And hey—maybe someday, Courthouse won’t be nerfed into the floor. But until then… bring bricks. Lots of bricks.
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