Caretakers Survival Tips: What Actually Helps in a Chase — and When It Fails

Most Caretakers players know the round rules — do the tasks, live through the survive timer, take the exit. Rounds still fall apart at the moment a pursuit starts: panic sprints, doors that don't hold, a locker the entity was watching. Recorded chases show a small set of responses that actually break pursuits, and just as importantly, the circumstances where each one gets people caught. If you still need the round loop itself, the beginner guide covers it — everything below assumes the entity is already on you.

The three responses that end the most chases

Break line of sight, then hide in a locker. A group that shook a pursuit puts it simply: "you can get him off if you go in the locker and hide until he gets away." Lockers have a limited air supply — "you have oxygen, dude... Hold your breath" — so this is a short hold, not a spot for the rest of the round. It only works if the entity lost sight of you going in. In the same recordings, a player pulled out of one concluded "lockers don't do nothing," and another survived a round only because "he was outside my locker." If it saw you enter, expect it to camp the locker — so break contact first, then hide.

Put the entity mask on before it reaches you. The mask is shop gear whose description says it banishes the entity — buy it and assign it to a gear slot before the round. Masked players escape on record: "put the mask on and run" precedes at least one clean getaway. Keep it in hand while tasking ("I'm keeping his mask out. I can't die"), but holding it is not using it — one player died mid-chase yelling "NO. I DIDN'T KNOW I had to put it actually on." Activate as it closes in, then move. How long the banish lasts is never shown in these chases, so treat it as a burst of safety, not a cloak.

Slide through a vent gap while it is still behind you. Standing players slide through vents and low gaps — "Why can't I just crawl in? Why do I got to slide?" is the game telling you sliding is the move — and a well-timed slide is the cleanest way to put terrain between you and a pursuer. Crawling through the same obstacles only unlocks when you're downed, which matters for reaching rescuers later.

Each of these also fails somewhere on record, which is why the conditions matter more than the actions. The same recordings show the locker hold, the mask deployment and vent slides happening under real pursuit:

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Read what the chase is telling you

• The entity announces itself. Footsteps, thumping and audible breathing all arrive before contact ("I HEAR FOOTSTEPS," "What's it thumping?", "I can hear it breathing"), so use the head start to pick a destination instead of freezing wherever you stand.
• Watch your own noise meter. A small meter sits in the bottom-left while you move — "You make noise when you step" — and tasks leak sound too. One player deliberately left an area right after finishing a repair "cuz that made noise." Completing a loud task and relocating beats standing next to it.
• Treat voice chat as a beacon. Unmuted mics show a voice meter, and players were found right after speaking — "You can see your voice meter, bro." Groups that last call for quiet, and one team watched the entity arrive because "he heard that coming." In one chase a group became convinced the entity was "using Tank as a disguise... using his talking," so a familiar voice alone doesn't guarantee who — or what — is talking.

Move with the map, not in straight lines

Straight-line sprinting is the most consistent way to die in these recordings. The entity is repeatedly described as faster than any player ("There's no out running him, I think, either"; "Yo, Bon is way too fast"), it cuts runners off by coming through windows ("HE CUT ME OFF"), and stamina drains mid-chase. Open ground is treated as a death sentence — "in the open. I'm dead" — and captures cluster in corners and dead-end rooms; one player described being herded into a room he couldn't leave and downed there.

Work the terrain instead:

• Slide vents and hop windows while standing; crawl only when downed. Players openly disagree about whether the entity can follow into vents — one argued "If he can crawl, I'm dead," another "No, he can't" — so take the slide, but don't assume a vent is a wall.
• Close doors behind you to buy seconds, never to stop the chase. A survivor who shut a door on the entity lived, and another player notes "if you close the doors, it does slow them down." But it opens doors near-instantly — "HE CAN OPEN THE doors immediately... He just goes straight through the door" — clicks sometimes fail outright ("I clicked it, bro. Why didn't it shut?"), and one jaded survivor calls doors "literally useless." Treat every door as a speed bump.
• Stay still only when it hasn't pinned you. Static hiding works when the entity hasn't located you — "Oh, you can hide. I saw him right there. I'm okay" — and players with no gear left choose to freeze. Once it's on you, stillness is just standing in front of it.

Gear that changes a pursuit

The shop sells most of your emergency buttons — assign them to gear slots before the round starts, and a purchasable extra slot lets you carry more than one. What each tool does, and the catch:

For the full shop lineup, see the gear list.

Keep the round winnable while you evade

The exit doesn't open because you reached it — the task list has to be done first, and the recordings show players caught with tasks still on the board, unable to leave ("I couldn't finish my task... I can't escape"). Two habits help: front-load tasks while the map is quiet, and use information tools — the scanner "scans all objects on the map and highlights them all," the Technician class finishes a task stage sooner, and knowing the layout pays directly ("the more you know the map, the easier it'll be").

Then comes the endgame. Once tasks are done you get a survive timer — recorded ones run from about sixty seconds ("we got to survive for like another 60 seconds") to "Survive for 3 minutes" — and you're a stationary target for that span. The most repeated positioning tip in the footage: "once you're waiting to survive, you should definitely just camp by... a bit you can slide through," ideally "right by the exit. You've got a door and you've also got an escape route." If you hear it coming, slide through to the other side — the player suggesting this adds "Or it might not work."

When the exit opens, don't improvise the route. Follow the on-screen arrow — one player escaped only after realizing "I didn't know that arrow took me to the goal... knowing that makes it a bit easier." Camera stations are the other information tool: checking them shows which corridor the entity is working while you plan around it ("WHERE THE CAMS AT?... I'm on them right now").

For both halves of the round in more detail, see the objectives guide and the escape guide; the map routes page helps with the layout knowledge.

Why your chases keep going wrong

If you know the rules and still die mid-round, it's usually one of these:

• You trusted a door to hold. It slows the entity; it doesn't stop it.
• You carried the mask instead of wearing it. Activation is the whole mechanic.
• You entered the locker it was watching. Break line of sight first, or it camps the spot and pulls you out.
• You sprinted open ground. Most recorded straight races are lost — one player insists "You could literally outun him," but the same footage mostly shows the opposite, so build your plan on terrain and gear, not footspeed.
• You talked on an open mic. The voice meter is real, and so is task noise.
• You saved tasks for last. The exit needs them done, and endgame chases are the least survivable.
• You read a lost camera signal as "it's close." The one player who suspected exactly that admitted he wasn't sure — treat it as an unconfirmed hunch, not a warning.

Teammates change outcomes more than any single trick

Revives turn captures back into rounds. Downed players "line up to get revived," one escape-win is credited outright — "down to my teammates cuz I got revived" — and a late revive sent another player straight to the exit. The window is tight: players were still petitioning for more time ("You need to up the time for revives. 30 seconds ain't enough").

Revive smart, too. Close a door for cover while you pick someone up ("I'm reviving like this. Close that"), skip saves that would cost the escape ("I would have saved that person, but I'm not risking it"), and never slam a door onto a teammate — one careless door shut killed two players at once. The Angel class "can see if anyone gets downed" to route rescues, and downed players aren't helpless: you can crawl under obstacles toward help ("Crawl to me. Crawl here").

Team size reshapes the round itself: "The more people you play with, the easier it is... if someone joins, I'm pretty sure they take a task off you." Near-solo lobbies get called impossible, while "with a good team, you could probably speedrun" rounds — and finished players become escorts ("I finished all my tasks, so I'm going to try and dedicate my time to helping you guys"). The multiplayer guide is where lobby play gets its own treatment.

Match the response to whatever is hunting you

Nearly every chase in this footage features Bon, so treat the locker, door and noise behaviors above as what's been observed in his pursuits — before assuming another entity plays the same, check its profile. The Bon guide covers him specifically, and the entities guide is where to look up encounter-specific behavior. All of this comes from chases recorded around the game's release (one video covers a later update), so re-test any tactic after a movement or AI change — the updates page is the log to check.