Willpower Stat Guide: How No Means Nothing Tracks Your Resolve

Willpower Is the Stat the Game Refuses to Show You

Of the six hidden stats No Means Nothing tracks behind the dialogue UI, Willpower is the one the entire ending tree pivots on. The HUD never displays it. There is no level-up screen, no journal page, no post-mission report that names it. The protagonist just walks into a conversation and certain lines are simply available, or simply not, depending on a number the player cannot see.

This page is the field guide. Every threshold, every cause, every effect below is reproduced from the same in-game config asset and choice-marker table the game itself ships with — Level A verified, no community estimates. If a number appears here, it is the number the engine reads.

What the Six Stats Are, and Why Willpower Sits on Top

The shipped stats configuration defines six stats the engine tracks across the entire run: Anger, Willpower, Submissiveness, Stamina, RadekRelationship, and Coin. Three of them — Willpower, Anger, and Submissiveness — form the triangle that decides which endings are reachable. Willpower is the resistance axis. Anger is the aggression axis. Submissiveness is the compliance axis.

Every choice the protagonist makes nudges one or more of those three. The game does not label them. It just remembers. By the time the route forks at the bath scene, the engine has been reading those numbers for hours, and the gates it checks are the gates you will see on this page.

The Five Verified Willpower Gates

The choice-marker table inside the shipped string bundle marks twenty-six dialogue options with a ||Required= ...|| expression. Five of those gates test Willpower. They are not estimates and they are not community lore — they are the literal text the engine parses before showing the option.

Willpower ≥ 1 — The First Refusal

The earliest Willpower gate in the script is also the gentlest. ||Required= Willpower >= 1|| shows up on the first dialogue branch where the protagonist can push back against a small ask. If you have been complying up to that point — saying "okay" to everything, accepting every offer — Willpower is still 0 and this option is invisible. The first time it appears is the first time the game tells you it has been counting.

Willpower ≥ 2 — The "Respect My No" Beat

The line "NO. Respect my no, or I'm leaving" ships with the marker ||Required= Willpower >= 2, Stamina >= 1||. This is one of the most consequential single gates in the run, because it is the first time the engine lets the protagonist issue an unconditional refusal. Note the Stamina rider — the engine is willing to let you say no, but only if you still have the physical resource to back it. Willpower and Stamina are not the same axis, and the game is honest about that.

Willpower ≥ 4 — The Boundary Without Apology

At Willpower 4 the script unlocks a tier of boundary lines that no longer hedge. No "maybe later", no "I'm sorry". The protagonist stops softening the refusal. This is the tier where the route fork toward 92_Ending_Willpower becomes mechanically possible, even though the final gate is still ahead.

Willpower ≥ 5 — The Unconditional Walkaway

Five is the threshold where the script stops requiring a Stamina rider on certain refusal lines. The protagonist can refuse on willpower alone — which, in the engine's own logic, means the boundary has stopped being a negotiation and started being a position.

Willpower ≥ 9 — The Final Gate

The decisive gate. The choice-marker table lists ||Required= Willpower >= 9|| on the line that routes into the Willpower ending. Nine out of ten. The engine is asking for near-maximum resolve before it lets the protagonist walk the route that ends in 92_Ending_Willpower. If you arrive at the fork with Willpower 8, the option is invisible — and the run forks elsewhere.

What Raises Willpower, What Drains It

The same choice-marker table lists forty-eight options that carry a ||Stat[+-]+|| effect. Willpower appears in many of them. The pattern is consistent across the script: refusal and boundary-setting raise Willpower; compliance and resignation drain it.

Lines that raise Willpower (verified + markers)

• "Get up" — ||Stamina-, Willpower+||. The first beat of the game. Choosing to get up, over sleeping in, is the engine's first Willpower increment.
• "I'll help more, just... give me a little more time" — ||Stamina-, Willpower+||. The boundary-with-concession line. The engine still credits Willpower because the protagonist is naming a limit.
• "I meant what I said. Respect my boundaries, or I'm done" — ||Stamina-, Willpower+, RadekRelationship-||. The flagship boundary line. Willpower goes up; the relationship goes down. The game is honest that setting a boundary has a cost.
• "NO. Respect my no, or I'm leaving" — ||Stamina-, Submissiveness-, Willpower+, RadekRelationship-||. Four simultaneous stat writes. Refusing beer on a hard line is the most Willpower-dense single choice in the script.

Lines that drain Willpower (verified - markers)

• "Fine. One beer. Then I'm done" — ||Anger+, Submissiveness+, Willpower-, RadekRelationship++||. The capitulation line. Willpower goes down, compliance goes up, and the relationship with Radek goes up twice. The engine is rewarding the compliance and charging you for it in the same beat.
• "I'm tired, Radek. Can we just drop this?" — ||Stamina+, Anger+, Willpower-, RadekRelationship-||. The disengagement line. Willpower goes down because the protagonist is asking for the conflict to end, not for the boundary to hold.
• "Okay... mom" — ||Stamina+, Anger+, Submissiveness+||. No Willpower cost listed, but no Willpower gain either. Compliance in the domestic register.

The arithmetic is unforgiving. A single "Fine. One beer. Then I'm done" undoes two or three "Respect my boundaries" lines. The game does not punish compliance with a cutscene — it punishes it with arithmetic, and the player does not see the arithmetic until the gate they wanted fails to fire.

Willpower and the Endings

Six endings ship with the game. Willpower is the decisive stat for one of them and a contributing stat for two more.

• 92_Ending_Willpower — gated by Willpower ≥ 9. The Willpower ending. The flagship "best outcome" route.
• 93_Ending_Anger — gated by Anger, but the script's path to high Anger runs through low Willpower lines. Drain Willpower by complying, and the Anger route quietly opens.
• 90_Ending_Bathroom_RanAway and 91_Ending_Bathroom_GotCaught — gated by the bath LockDoor QTE, but the dialogue fork that routes into the bath runs through Willpower gates.

Planning a Willpower Run

To hit Willpower ≥ 9 by the finale, the engine needs to have credited you for refusal lines on at least nine distinct beats, minus any compliance lines you took. The script gives you roughly a dozen chances across the run. There is room for one or two compliance lines; there is no room for three.

The two highest-leverage beats are the "Respect my boundaries, or I'm done" line and the "NO. Respect my no, or I'm leaving" line. Both ship with Willpower+ markers. Both also cost RadekRelationship, which is the engine being honest that setting a boundary has a relationship cost — the boundary still pays out in Willpower.

The single highest-leverage beat is the beer refusal. "NO. Respect my no" writes four stats at once, and one of them is Willpower+. If you are sketching a route, anchor the beer refusal first and work backward.

Verify It Yourself

Every threshold on this page is reproducible from the shipped choice-marker table. The Stat Threshold Query tool on this site reads the same markers and shows you, in real time, which dialogue options your current stat profile unlocks. Slide Willpower to 9 and watch the final gate light up. Slide it to 2 and watch the "Respect my no" line appear.

If you want to plan the route from end to end instead of testing thresholds in isolation, the Route Composer pulls the same verified markers into a step-by-step plan you can export as Markdown or BBCode for a Steam guide.