Overview
These are some very useful and helpful pieces of information to aid you in your escapes. This game has many things hidden and being fully aware can make the way you plan your escape much easier.
The Tips
1. In the renaming screen before you start a new game, the guards pop up in a certain order. This is for a reason. The first guard that appears in this screen will always hold a certain key. Here is a visual representation of this:
Because of this, it is wise to name the first guard that appears “Officer One”, the second one “Officer Two”, and so forth. This way if you are depending on keys to help you escape you know exactly which guard to take down for what key.
2. The Tower Guards/Snipers[theescapists.gamepedia.com] leave at approximately midnight. If you are out of your bed at night, and you are waiting for them to leave so you can start digging, cutting fences, or whatever it may be, make sure you wait until after midnight to do so.
3. This is relatively common knowledge, but if you do not attend morning/evening rollcall, the prison will go on lockdown[theescapists.gamepedia.com]. However, you do not need to stay there. If you have things to do, show up there for a moment, and then go off to do whatever you need to do.
4. Similar to tip #3 (although not as severe) there will be a good amount of heat drawn towards you if you completely skip a scheduled activity in your daily routine, such as Breakfast, Excercise Period, etc.
5. You can get your fellow inmates to follow you if you have a high enough reputation with them and you press Q on them. To my knowledge, it requires you to have at least 80/100 in the “Opinion” category with that prisoner. Once you successfully knock someone down with an inmate that is following you, they will no longer follow you. You can make a prisoner follow you an infinite amount of times, as long as you have the reputation required.
6. You can use Duct Tape[theescapists.gamepedia.com] or Rope[theescapists.gamepedia.com] to wrap someone up when they are knocked out. This significantly increases the amount of time they are knocked down. This is especially useful when trying to get someone fired from their job or during Riots when used on guards.
7. The Nunchucks[theescapists.gamepedia.com] are arguably the best weapon in the game. They are quite easy to make (Wire + Timber + Timber), and have 5/5 power, making them extremely accessible and powerful.
8. This is sort of a no-brainer, but if there are multiple favors available for the same objective, take them! For example: two guys ask you to beat up the same person, two guys ask you to create a distraction at the same time, etc.
9. While jobs may seem sort of pointless and a waste of time that you could be spending working on your escape, they are very important. They provide you with money that is extremely useful for buying supplies from other prisoners that can greatly help you in your escape, and some jobs even provide you with otherwise tricky-to-find supplies. Only quit your job if absolutely necessary. If this is the case, make sure you do enough favors to make a good amount of money.
10. If you’re looking for the best way to easily raise your reputation with someone, Cooked Food[theescapists.gamepedia.com] is actually a great option. I believe it raises your opinion with someone by 10 points for each Cooked Food and is extremely easy to get if you have a job in the Kitchen. Not to mention, it’s rather useful for replenishing drained energy when you’re not in a position to access the showers.
11. Always stick around rollcall at least long enough to see if your cell is being search.
12. In addition, always have a backup in the event that your cell is going to be searched. Try to find a secret area in the prison to store most of your contraband items, and try to keep less than 6 contraband items in your desk at all times (so you can fill your inventory with them if your cell is about to be searched).
13. Don’t rush! Play things safe. The Escapists is an extremely unforgiving game if you mess up and if you don’t plan your escape to near perfection, it will more often than not be reset entirely should you mess up (which you probably will).
14. If you finally get all the tools required for your plan to work together, make sure you save and attempt to escape the next night. If you attempt an escape on the day everything is prepared and then fail, you’ll have a lot rougher time trying again than if you just saved.
15. If it is simply impossible to pull off your plan in one day and it involves multiple days of progress, make sure you cover up your tracks. The guards will most likely find out what you’ve been up to and you’ll have to start from square one.
16. If your plan involves sneaking out at night, the Bed Dummy[theescapists.gamepedia.com] is absolutely essential and the Guard Outfit helps a lot if you must exit your cell. However, do not rely too hard on the Guard Outfit. It simply delays the amount of time it takes for the guards to find you out, rather than instantly sending you to solitary. It does not make you completely immune to detection by the guards.
Thanks for reading!
Thank you for reading the guide! I hope you have learned something from this. If there’s any errors with the guide, including typos, wrong information, or things that I should add in the guide, let me know in the comments!