Tier list: what actually keeps you alive

Seen working from both sides of the round, and the failure to do it is a death you can watch happen.

• Leave the TV before the round starts

  Walk away from the television during the countdown. Anywhere is better.

  Seen —

  The monster spawns inside the TV and breaks out of it. Recordings show whole lobbies standing around the screen and being opened up the second it comes through, and the same thing narrated from inside the monster, watching people gather.

  Limit —

  It only saves the opening seconds. Everything after that is the rest of this list.

• Make the chase long instead of fast

  Break line of sight, keep moving, let it spend itself. Do not pick a direction and commit.

  Seen —

  From the monster's side: after a sustained chase it simply stops being quick. The energy runs out and it becomes very slow. That is the window survivors keep stumbling into by accident.

  Limit —

  You have to survive long enough to reach it. In the open, on flat ground, you will not.

Works on camera, repeatedly, with a limit that is also on camera.

• Get high early

  Take a roof or an upper floor before you are being chased, and know your way down.

  Seen —

  A group of five held the top of a building while the monster circled underneath for most of a round.

  Limit —

  It climbs. Slowly, but it climbs. Height is a timer you are winning, not a place you have won.

• Use a vent to break contact

  Drop into one to kill line of sight, then leave once the chase resets.

  Seen —

  Players tell each other to hide in vents mid-round, and a separate run has the monster finding somebody in one.

  Limit —

  They get checked. A vent is a place to disappear from, not to sit in.

Real and repeatable, but it does not decide a round on its own.

• Move on the heartbeat, do not look

  When the heartbeat starts, relocate. Do not spend the second turning around to confirm.

  Seen —

  The cue fires in recordings exactly as the monster closes, including when it is on the floor above.

  Limit —

  It tells you near, not where. Moving blind is sometimes moving towards it.

• Pick up keys on rounds you expect to loseUnverified

  Grab them in passing. They carry over between rounds rather than resetting.

  Seen —

  One run accumulates fourteen across several rounds without ever being told what they do.

  Limit —

  Nobody outside the developers has demonstrated what they buy. Never detour into open ground for one.

Every one of these is visible in recordings, being attempted, failing.

• Waiting for the sheriff

  Do not. There is no sheriff and nothing in the round can kill the monster.

  Seen —

  Two separate runs have players hunting for a sheriff before working out there is not one.

  Limit —

  None. This is simply not in the game.

• Shutting a door behind you

  Do not build a route that depends on it.

  Seen —

  A player tries to close doors on camera and reports the button does nothing.

  Limit —

  Pre-alpha, so this may change. Until it does, doors are scenery.

• Out-running it in the open

  Straight lines lose. Corners and floors are what work.

  Seen —

  The first reaction in every recording is how fast it is and how impossible a footrace looks.

  Limit —

  None. It is faster than you.