Forsaken Beginner Guide: Your First Ten Rounds

What a round of Forsaken is

One player is the killer. Everyone else is a survivor. A round starts with a four-minute timer, and the two sides want opposite things from it: survivors want it to reach zero, the killer wants everyone dead before it does. The server caps at nine players.

That is the entire game loop, and understanding it changes how you play immediately — survivors do not win by fighting, they win by making time pass.

The only objective: generators

Generators are the sole public objective. Five spawn on every map, and repairing them is what cuts the clock.

• Up to three players can repair one generator at once, from the front, left or right side.
• Repairing opens a 6x6 wire-connection puzzle — connect matching numbered dots without crossing wires. You do not need to fill every tile, only to connect the colours.
• Each puzzle layer completed removes 3 seconds from the timer. A full generator is four layers, so 12 seconds off, and finishing all five removes 60 seconds in total.
• Each generator pays 5 Player Points and 15 EXP (18.5 with VIP).
• Taking damage ejects you from the repair, and puzzle progress is not saved — you get a fresh puzzle when you go back in.

That last point is the one new players get punished for. Do not start a generator with the killer’s music audible.

Learn one number: terror radius

Every killer has a terror radius measured in studs — the distance at which you start hearing their chase theme. It ranges from 60 studs (John Doe) to 112.5 (Guest 666), and it is the single most useful stat in the game because it tells you how much warning you get.

Against a wide-radius killer you will hear them coming from a long way off and can leave a generator early. Against a narrow-radius killer, the music is already a problem by the time you hear it. The numbers for all eight are on the killers page.

Which character to start on

You get free options and they are genuinely fine:

• Survivors: Noob, Shedletsky, Elliot. Shedletsky and Elliot are rated difficulty 2, the lowest in the game. Noob’s kit is three consumable items rather than a timed ability, which makes them the simplest to hold but the lowest ceiling.
• Killers: Slasher and c00lkidd. Slasher is also difficulty 2 and has a small terror radius.

Everything else costs Player Points, earned from objectives and match results, spent in the in-game inventory. The full price list is on the characters page. The one exception is Jane Doe, who is unlocked by completing her quest rather than bought.

Malice: how you become the killer

Malice is one of the four core stats, and it is what decides who plays the killer next round — the highest Malice gets picked. There is a Disable Being Killer setting, and it is worth knowing exactly what it does: it stops you gaining Malice, but it does not protect you if you already hold the highest value. It is a brake, not a shield.

Items are survivor-only

Killers cannot pick anything up. Survivors can, and items spawn at fixed points on every map:

• Bloxy Cola — Speed II for 10 seconds, after a roughly 4-second drink animation. Drinking a second one within 30 seconds only gives Speed I, so do not chain them.
• Medkit — heals.
• Flashlight, Epicsauce (bigger speed boost, burns you), and several weapons.
• Fake Bloxy Cola and Fake Medkit — do nothing, and look identical until used.

To drop an item: Backspace or double-click the icon on PC; double-tap the icon on mobile. Learn that input before you need it. The full list is on the items page.

Five mistakes that cost new players rounds

1. Starting a generator while the chase music is playing. Damage ejects you and the puzzle resets.
2. Fighting the killer for no reason. Survivor health is around 100; killer health is in the thousands. Stunning to save a teammate is a plan. Trading hits is not.
3. Muting the game. The audio sliders go to zero and the terror radius is an audio cue. Turning the music off removes your early-warning system.
4. Chasing milestone skins on four characters at once. Levels are per character. Milestone I is level 25 with that character — see milestones.
5. Ignoring status icons. Bleeding, Vulnerable, Blindness and Helpless each do something specific and stack differently. Two minutes on the status effects page is the cheapest improvement available to you.

Where to go next

Read the survivor stats to pick who you are buying with your first thousand Player Points, then the tier list for what each character is actually good at. If you want the long unlock, the Jane Doe quest guide takes about ten rounds.