Home Sweet Home Survive Noob's Guide To Getting Started as Specter

Introduction

Hello. Mediocre player here, bringing you a guide to get you started on your experience as a killer in HSH:S. This guide was created for Early Access Version 0.3.0.06, and due to the nature of this game, information in here may become outdated/irrelevant in future builds of the game.

In this guide, I will cover the basics of playing as the Specter that should see you through the early stages of learning the game. The hope is that these tips will help teach you how to play to an extent that you are not feeling like a punching bag.

This work has been abandoned. I hope you find the contents useful, but there is no plans to continue this working on this guide.

Understanding Your Specter

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This section may be updated later to include information on the other specters, but for now it will only include information about Belle, the only specter you can play at the start of the game

Belle

Stat Score Strength 2/4 Speed 3/4 Sneak 3/4

Belle excels at starting and maintaining hunts against the survivors. While not as physically intimidating as other specters in the roster, the ever-present nature of Belle makes her a deadly opponent for any group of survivors. Your goal as Belle is to always be pressuring survivors. The faster the pace of the game, the less time the survivors have to acquire the resources required to turn the tables on you.

Your Abilities And You: Invisible Form

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Invisible Form will be one of your most used tools as a specter. It has three major uses: scouting, movement, and hunting. Similar to your active perk, this ability will be on cooldown for the first 60 seconds of the match.

ScoutingOne of the most powerful aspects of entering into Invisible Form is the aura reading properties you acquire while in this form. Upon entering Invisible Form, and periodically while within Invisible Form (indicated visually as a color change on your screen), you will see the outlines of all survivors. This is an incredible tool, as it allows you to keep tabs on the locations of all survivors, and allows you to pinpoint who exactly you want to target for your next hunt.

MovementInvisible Form is an incredible tool for moving around the map while not currently engaged in a hunt. The increased movement you get while in Invisible Form makes it an extremely valuable tool for keeping pressure on the survivors. While you will have decreased movement while within close proximity of a survivor, running past a survivor while in this form is still faster than trying to walk past them normally.

HuntingWith the increased awareness given to you by your aura reading, combined with your increased movement speed, Invisible Form is an extremely powerful tool for both Target Selection and Initiating a Hunt. Seeing the silhouette of the survivors allows you to pinpoint the survivor you want to kill from anywhere on the map. This elevates your target selection capabilities higher than any other part of the game. Further, by leaving invisible form just before a survivor enters your sneak radius, you can follow the uncloak with an attack for some quick damage to survivors, and initiating a hunt with that survivor. Do note, uncloaking provides nearby survivors a clear audio queue that gives them time to try to react to your uncloaking. Also, uncloaking with a survivor inside of your sneak radius causes you to go into an animation lock preventing you from using an action (including attacking).

How not to use Invisible Form With only a couple of exceptions, Invisible Form should not be used during a hunt with a survivor. This is because Bloodseek is reset upon entering Invisible Form. Considering Bloodseek is how you will score hits on survivors, resetting it is less than ideal. As you play, you'll learn when you should use this during a hunt.

Your Abilities And You: Immunity

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Immunity is your defensive cooldown in HSH:S. The main purpose of this ability is to ignore stun effects of survivors. On a 20 second cooldown, this ability gives you 5 seconds of immunity to stuns. This can be useful in many circumstances:

A doorway contains a trap (indicated by white thread around the door frame)

Survivors are trying to stop you from hunting your preferred target

Survivors are trying to murder you.

When intending on destroying a locker a survivor jumped into.

When turning a sharp corner you expect a survivor to try to stun you at during a hunt. (Especially if you see their weapon sticking out from around the corner)

On a side note, more skilled survivors will attempt to bait out your Immunity by faking an attack on you in order to burn the cooldown, and then stun you after it fades. As you start off playing, let yourself be baited. As you get more experience with the game, then you can start trying to dodge highly telegraphed attacks instead of using immunity.

Your Abilities And You: Blood Portal (Belle)

Blood Portal, like Invisible Form, starts the match on cooldown for 60 seconds. This ability enables you to teleport to a random survivor. This incredible ability will not score you a hit, but it does escalates Belle's ability to pressure survivors.

Useful times to use Blood Portal:

After killing a survivor

A survivor has locked you in a room or area using a sigil.

A survivor has used a powerful drop that does not have a good follow-up path

To initiate a hunt while Invisibility Form is on cooldown.

You have completely lost the survivor you were trying to hunt.

Advanced tip: Some Animation locks, including Blood Portal, grants the user invulnerability frames. This means you can use Blood Portal during a brawl in order to buy yourself time while your Immunity is on cooldown. This can be especially useful during an end-game brawl.

Your Abilities And You: Blood Trail (Belle)

The most powerful part of Belle is her passive perk Blood Trail. It turns this ever-present hunter into a ruthless predator. There are two parts of this ability, each are extremely beneficial for you as a Specter.

While in a hunt, you will see a red mist that lead to the closest survivor.

While in a hunt, you will gain Bloodseek at an accelerated rate compared to other Specters.The first aspect of this perk allows you to keep track of survivors during hunts that successfully utilize Line of Sight to obstruct your view of their pathing. This is why it is extremely hard to lose a Belle that is chasing you, as she will always have a line drawing her towards your location.

However, the second part of this perk is what makes Belle terrifyingly powerful. Bloodseek is how you get hits on survivors. As you spend time in a hunt, Bloodseek gives you an increase in your movement speed. Bloodseek resets when you use an action (except missing with an attack). Belle's Blood Trail increases the rate in which Bloodseek increases!!

Hunting: The Basic Steps Of A Hunt

(Note: This is a breakdown of how I view hunting in HSH:S, not official terminology for the Hunt)

One of the main gameplay loops as a Specter is hunting, your primary method of dealing damage. Underlying this loop, there are three main phases of a hunt: Stalking, Engaging, and Extension. All hunts will go through these three different phases, and it is important to understand them as a Specter. An understanding of the structure of hunts will lead you to more successful hunting attempts.

StalkingStalking is the very first step of every hunt. The stalking phase is the initial stage of most hunts upon a survivor noticing you. During this phase, you have no Bloodseek and the survivor has most of their stamina. In this first stage, the survivor will make distance against you, and attempt to use the terrain and items to lose you. Getting a hit during this phase is really only possible against brave and foolish survivors who run at you. Your job during this phase is to force the survivor to use all or most of their stamina while not losing them.

EngagingAfter the survivor has used the majority of their stamina, you now have the advantage in terms of movement speed as the specter. This is the stage where you close distance on the survivor and score a hit. During this phase, survivors will attempt to use items and perks to stun you, as well as utilize portals in order to enter an extension phase. Your goal is to prevent extensions until you score a hit on the survivor.

ExtensionAn extension is the third type of phase that occurs in a chase where a survivor gains a brief respite from an engage which is used in order to either escape the hunt altogether, or delay the engaging phase of the chase. Extensions can occur due to blindness, stun, obstruction, drop, or the use of a portal. Unless the survivor is able to completely lose you, this results in increased distance and stamina for the survivor and is a delaying tactic that forces you to spend more precious time. Extension also occurs upon successfully hitting a survivor, and your job as a specter is to avoid as many extensions as possible.

Hunting: The Different Types Of Extensions

As stated in the previous section, an extension is a term for both the respite phase for survivors during a hunt, as well as the tools the survivors have to create this respite. There are four main tools for extension that the survivors have against you: environment, portals, drops, and items.

EnvironmentsEnvironments are a large category of extensions. This type includes doors, holes, and lockers. What all of these have in common is that they are breakable. Once a survivor utilizes one of these extensions, if destroyed, that tool becomes unavailable for the rest of the game. Lockers and doors can stun you if the survivor has the correct perk, which is only a minor inconvenience. As stated before in the overview of the Immunity ability, you can Immunity before breaking a locker to prevent the survivor from stunning you upon exit.

Another important note about Environments, you can break these before they are used against you. This means that going around breaking powerful environments at the beginning of the game can gain you large advantages during hunts.

PortalsPortals are usable extensions that teleport the survivor to a paired portal. In the Hospital, these are air vents, and in the Swamp, these are urns. These cannot be destroyed, but there is a cooldown on how often a survivor can use each pair of portals. This means that once a survivor locks into the animation of entering, they will end up at the paired portal, and cannot reactivate it to double back.

When hunting, it is important to know that portals act differently in the two different maps. In the Hospital, portals help break line of sight and only moderately extend the hunt. In fact, a lot of portals just delay a hit, and survivors can be easily bodyblocked/cornered at the other side. This will either result in a hit, or possibly a drop.

In the Swamp, portals create loops for the hunt, where a survivor may use the same portals (and other extension tools) continuously in order to extend hunts far greater than any portal in the Hospital. A low health survivor with Adrenaline (a survivor perk that increases movement when below 50% health) can continuously loop you between some of these portals and drops for a very long time.

DropsDrops are an unlimited environmental interaction for only survivors that cannot be destroyed by the Hunter. The only limiting factor on drops is that they deal minor damage to survivors upon use. However, even this can be negated by the survivor perk Superhero Landing, which negates fall damage on a 60s cooldown.

Like portals, drops act differently on each map. In the Hospital, drops are the survivors way of taking minor damage to immediately end a hunt. On the Swamp, drops act like portals, creating a loop that the survivor will take you on. Some of the Swamp drops put them into the water below, which is a death sentence to the survivor. However, survivors already know this, so these drops are almost never used.

ItemsItems are a consumable way of extending a chase. From hitting you in the face with a stick, throwing holy water in your eyes, to blocking or trapping doorways. These can also be used to try to kill you, later on in the game. For facing items, I recommend playing a game or two as survivor, reading the wiki about each item, or both. Importantly, survivors may try to stock up items in key areas around the map in order to continuously extend hunts to the best of their ability. Hitting hard and fast will prevent survivors from getting a decent supply of items to use.

Hunting: Target Selection

Target Selection is one of the most important aspects of playing Specter. There is no universal answer as to how to select targets. This is something you, as the Specter, need to analyze mid-game in order to excel.

While there is no universal rule, there are some important pieces of information you can use to decide who you should be targeting.

The worse the survivor is at the game, the higher priority they are for your target selection.

A survivor with a worse hunt power will be higher priority. For example

WIP

Hunting: Getting 4 Kills (Eliminations)

The highest level of achievement for the Specter is the 4K (or 4 Kills/Eliminations). Because of the way the postgame animation describes the match, it feels bad (in my opinion) to absolutely destroy a group of survivors, and the last survivor getting out because of how easy it is to escape as the last survivor.

This caused me to devise a concept for securing a 4K. (For those familiar with Dead By Daylight, this is HSH:S's version of slugging for 4k) The idea is to select a "Protagonist" who you do not touch for 95% of the game. This can either happen naturally, or you can choose the hardest player to chase, or a survivor based on the character they are playing. The idea is to not kill this player until there are only two survivors left. When there are two survivors left, you then hunt and kill the "Protagonist" leaving their soul on the ground, preventing the end game collapse from starting. This gives you a few minutes to hunt down the last survivor, greatly increasing your ability to get 4 kills.

Importantly, a player only drops their soul on their first death, so not selecting a survivor to be your "Protagonist", and having a kill on each remaining survivor, will enable the last survivor to leave almost instantly upon the 3rd player elimination.

Changelog

04/09/21 - 07:29 - Posted initial guide

04/09/21 - 08:07 - Fixed broken images

04/13/21 - 11:55 - Started hunting section

05/04/21 - 22:04 - Added hunting subsections of extensions and 4k

05/06/21 - 08:54 - Started target selection subsection

06/23/21 - 08:55 - Guide officially abandoned

Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2451044464

Noob's Guide To Getting Started as Specter