Amnesia: The Dark Descent – General Guide

Overview

A general guide grasping the essentials of Amnesia: The Dark Descent. Providing useful hints and insight into the game obtained after playing the game thoroughly.

Introduction

Amnesia: The Dark Descent is a first-person horror game that tests your nerves and patience as well as make you think under pressure.

You may find another of my guides for the sequel of this game, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs below.

Read on, if you’ve already finished the game on normal difficulty and plan on playing through it again on hard difficulty, you may still find useful tips and advices. This guide comes handy being read before playing through the game on the first try, too. All story-related spoilers are warned beforehand, therefore worry not.

Let’s get into it!

Story

The game begins with you waking up from unconsciousness, roaming through the castle, mumbling something. You and your protagonist are on the same boat; neither of you knows much at that point.

The story aspect in this game is truly amazing as it slowly uncovers what’s going on. However, at times it’s better to know the story early on as it allows you to see and understand the background more clearly. The choice is yours.

Amnesia is played through first-person perspective, you play as Daniel, a young, british member of an excavation group.
Daniel suffers a fear of the dark, which helps integrate the sanity level mechanics into the game and fits the horror theme perfectly. He was lead to Castle Brennenburg to seek help of the local baron, Alexander. It seems something is hunting Daniel and the only help he can get is from Alexander. Throughout the game Daniel will get memory flashbacks that will inform him of his doings in the castle and activities with Alexander. How Daniel worked for the baron, what he did but also why he did what he did.

In a nutshell, Daniel is not your typical hero character, he is, as most horror-themed protagonists, a survivor.

The game takes place in a Castle Brennenburg, where our protagonist is invited by the baron, Alexander. The castle itself is vast, it reaches far underground as well and you get to visit a lot of locations throughout the game. Each location is unique, interesting and feels entirely new. Some games tend to stick to a singular point of view in terms of levels layout, Amnesia takes a good, different approach.

The memory hallucinations will, as the game goes on, explain more and more about the relationship between Daniel and Alexander, whose portraits can be found throughout the castle.

You’ll soon notice that this whole castle is fairly empty, no servants, no guests, nobody is around, really. The Brennenburg castle is also reasonably modern, having its own elevator that functions purely on steam, without any “human”, physical work.

You can truly unveil the background of what’s happening through notes and memory flashbacks. Notes can be found at specific locations. The memory flashbacks are automatically triggered after entering a specific area. During those, you hear noises and voices that happened in this area some time ago.

The game slowly unrolls after a little bit, as you go through a so-called tutorial chapter, more on that in the next section.

Surprisingly for a horror game, there is more than 1 ending. There aren’t, however, really choices through the game that will influence the final outcome, rather the very final decision you make. Except for one ending, where you need to help someone out, for if you don’t, you won’t have access to that ending. Each of these conclusions are also a single achievement.

Collectibles

There are several collectibles in this game that can be found and two of them count towards two achievements.

• Tinderboxes
• Oils
• Notes
• Laudanums

Tinderboxes are found throughout the game in great numbers. In total, there are 151 Tinderboxes in the whole game, they can be used to light up areas combined with torches or candles, which stops you from losing your sanity due to the darkness. However, there are WAY less tinderboxes while playing on the hard mode. Apparently, there are something between 20-30 tinderboxes that spawn in the hard mode, enabling you to save 5-7 times through the whole game.
Collecting all tinderboxes unlocks an achievement called “Illuminatus”.

Oils are only used to refill your lantern that runs out fairly quickly, but oils aren’t the only source of “fuel” for your lantern. You can also find oil barrels, some are full, therefore provide a lot of oil, some half empty. Oils are fairly scarce but if you utilize it well enough, you can make do with the few you find.

Notes, as told before, unveil the story for you. Great majority of them is located so that you can easily find them without any struggle, unlike tinderboxes, that are often hidden. Collecting all notes unlocks an achievement called “Master Archivist”.

Laudanums are small potions that heal your physical wounds. There isnt’s as many of those as there is of tinderboxes, oils or notes, altough luckily, you won’t use them as often if played stealthly.

Gameplay Mechanics & Tips

Sanity – A unique and a very appropriate form of obstacle that is placed upon the player – to watch his own sanity. Daniel suffers nyctophobia, fear of the dark, and thus naturally starts going insane when either spending too much time in the dark or watching enemy monsters or other unsettling events, like doors opening on their own and such. This can be prevented if the player is on the lookout for tinderboxes to light up the path or uses the lantern often but a more plausible solution is to solve riddles and move on with the storyline as that pleases Daniels conscience and increases his sanity.

When your sanity reaches dangerously low levels, it will only display as “…”, instead of a description such as “Hands are shaking” etc. Lowest sanity means you’re only moments away from dying on the hard mode. Also, having low sanity makes you dizzier, move around slowly and especially start imagining things that aren’t really there. Such as this fountain with half of body in it.

Usable objects – You can pick up a lot of objects lying around; such as boxes, chairs, barrels or other, smaller objects. It’s often required to support self-closing or broken heavy machinery doors, break progress-related barricades or to get to otherwise unreachable places.

In relation to usable objects, those can not only be thrown at monsters or barricade doors but also throw at distant areas to distract the monsters as they will follow the noisy area.

• If you know you’ll stay in a specific area for a longer period of time, solving a puzzle for instance, light up some torches or candles to keep your sanity up.
• Pickable items can be thrown at monsters to slow them down pressing the right mouse button.
• It’s best to put barrels or crates behind closed doors to slow the monster down a bit if it’s chasing you.
• If you have been spotted by a monster there will be a change in audio and a specific theme will start playing, signalizing you have been seen and have to run. On hard mode, there is no such “notification”.
• Most monsters despawn after a short period of time, they never stay around. There are spawn points for them to appear after you enter a specific place. If they don’t see you or you run from them and hide for a minute or two, they will give the chase up, stop lurking about and disappear.
• The first “chapter” of the game is purely tutorial, therefore no real danger is present up untill entering the Back Hall, so long as you wait once the monsters spawn. Most of the first monster encounters are purely cinematical, so just wait till they go off your screen and they’re gone.
• You can hide in a closet, behind a stack of crates or barrels.
• Search every area thoroughly, open every drawer and look in all shelves, collectibles lie everywhere.
• For a good measure, it’s better to close doors behind you.
• Always maintain your lantern half empty, you may find an oil barrel and therefore refill your lantern, instead of wasting some oil.
• Make sure to utilize leaning, you are less likely to be seen while leaning using Q or E and you get a good vision of the area, instead of walking up

Leaning behind a corner, observing the monster trying to breach the doors. (left)
Hiding in a closet while the monster breaks in. (right)

Monsters

The first and most basic enemies you encounter are the servant ‘Gatherers‘. Those twisted beings are, according to in-game notes, former soldiers, deserters that turned into these things.

These basic Grunts lurk around but aren’t really a major threat, just something to slow you down, unless you play on a hard mode. They make their first appearances early in the first hour of the game but these encounters are mostly just cinematic, unless you’re in the Wine Cellars and begin to chase the just spawned Gatherer that then turns on you, otherwise they despawn even after giving up chase on you.

Something else are the servant Brutes. These servants are much rarer in the game but never appear more than one at a time so them being a “higher class” monsters, it’s arguable that there may be just one Brute, being the leader of the rest. They are significantly stronger, faster and more menacing. However, they only appear very late in the game and only in a couple parts. Like the Choir.

Kaernk is a somewhat of a mysterious water monster. It can only attack you while you stand in a water but once you jump on even a little crate, it ceases movement and any aggression. Also, it’s invisible, it’s not some sort of “fish”, even though the original concept art pictured it as a piranha-like fish.

You’ve surely wondered what is the “red plague” following you around, which when stepped on or gotten closer to it, it wounds Daniel. This is the Shadow‘s vanguard. It’s been following Daniel and it’s what he seeks help with.
The Shadow relentlessly chases Daniel through the castle and wherever the red meaty, organic material appears, the Shadow is getting close. Try to not step on it if possible to avoid potentional physical damage.

(Kaernk concept art image source: amnesia.fandom.com/)

Achievements

A great deal of achievements is progress-related, meaning you can simply complete them by just finishing the game itself. The exception being, as mentioned above, the Illuminatus (collect all 151 tinderboxes), Master Archivist (collect all notes – base game + Justine) and NOPE.

Fairly amusing, the ‘NOPE‘ achievement. It can be obtained by exiting the game early on, preferably in the first minute of playing.
Ideally, you’d want to play the game twice – first time on the normal difficulty and follow a guide or pay very close attention and collect all tinderboxes and notes. Then, once you’d go for the hard mode achievement, you could just focus on the game itself. Also, since there is only around 20-30 tinderboxes on the hard mode, means you cannot get the Illuminatus achievement, only Master Archivist.

(Collectible guide by: PureRuby87)

All in all, there aren’t that many achievements that would be far too difficult to obtain, you simply need to play the game twice and get all the collectibles, provided you’re into achievements in the end.

Hard Mode

As the game blatantly says:

• No auto-saves
• Death is permanent
• Saving costs 4 tinderboxes
• Tinderboxes and oil are scarce (20-30 tinderboxes)
• Monsters are faster, stronger, no audio plays when they’ve noticed you and they stay around longer
• You can die from low sanity (“…”)

It’s a proper hell. Considering this should be your second playthrough, you know best when to save. For example, first best save spot where you should have at least 5 tinderboxes is right after entering the Back Hall, since the Storage is the first really dangerous area. You could also turn your gamma up a little, provided you don’t consider that ‘cheating’.

The key to hard mode is both patience and swiftness. When possible, move quick, in safe areas, waste no time, when sanity is getting low, move quickly, make progress, because it will kill you if you don’t. Remember that you can enter the ‘loading screen’ doors that load you into a different area even while being chased.

A guide I’ve read before plunging into this madness was the guide below, done by @Yazite.

Amnesia: Justine [SPOILERS]

Amnesia: Justine is a short expansion that takes place well after the events of Amnesia: The Dark Descent, approximately a few decades.
Amnesia: Justine takes a different look at the game – you get to play as Justine, a sadistic and manipulative girl, known for her “relationship” with her 3 suitors. In this expansion, you get to make decisions about who you spare and who you decide to kill. There are overall 3 people whose fate you will decide, but beware. For each person, there’s a suitor, Justine’s suitor.

All of Justine’s suitors have been driven mad by her, doing anything to prove their loyalty, but to her, they were just toys.

They now haunt the corridors of this presumably French palace. So that you are not confused, the whole “game” has been set up by Justine herself who then drank the Amnesia potion and went through this process. Without a doubt, this wasn’t her first attempt, according to what she says at the end.

Suitors are the only enemies in Amnesia: Justine, however, compared to servant brute or grunt, they possess much more strenght. Luckily, they are blind so use that to your advantage and sneak around.

It’s important to note that there is no saving mechanics in Amnesia: Justine, you have to play through in one go, it’s fairly short playthrough, though. I suggest paying close attention to the notes laying around. They reveal the story more closely so that I don’t spoil the story for you.

There’s also a secret reference to the Portal franchise under the achievement “Still Alive“. It is obtained once reaching the room with the second person whose fate you are about to decide. Look into bookshelves, remove a book and collect the note. You’ll also get a new line spoken in the ending of Amnesia: Justine.

There are multiple endings to this expansion, depending on how many “participants” you choose to save or kill, so prepare yourself to go through the game more than once, provided you are after the achievements.

Personal View

Amnesia: The Dark Descent was done exceptionally well. Not only how it captures the atmosphere of a vast, cold and empty castle Brennenburg but also making you be your own worst enemy. What am I talking about? Watch the video below, which is quite interesting. Provides some look into the sanity aspect.

It was my second time playing this game and trust me, had I not considered this game a truly good experience, something worth playing even after the 8-9 years I played it originally, I would not come back to it.

Closure

Thank you for reading my guide and remember…