As a warning upfront, Fear & Hunger is a survival horror game with lots of adult content. It's possible to come for the adult content but tolerate the survival horror, or to come for the survival horror but tolerate the adult content, but your enjoyment of the game, while pixelated, does rely on how much you tolerate or enjoy those 3 things. There will be blood, there will be prehensile wangs, there will be sa, a child character that has no plot armor or protections besides your own choices, self harm actions, drug use, gore, cannibalism, etc. For a general idea of the content shown, Berserk is a good reference. If you're not familiar with that, something like Game of Thrones. Do not play this expecting a Halo 3 M rating. "Anything goes" helps with the horror and grimdark feel but don't expect many discretion shots or kid gloves.

On the gameplay side, it's a survival horror roguelite. You're going to fail repeatedly. Sometimes it'll be from your end, a skill issue, sometimes a game mechanic will happen at the worst possible time, there's limited saves, there's a greater than 1% chance a crash can occur, and while playing on anything besides the lowest difficulty, you might have a perfect multiple hour run but be forced to restart solely because you run out of torches and the screen goes jet black in a complicated cave system.

The enjoyment of Fear & Hunger is very similar to a Souls game. At first and for some time it will be incredibly difficult and annoying, you will probably get very unhappy more than once, you might even regret getting it early on. However, if you stick with it, if you learn (generally) what to do, (generally) what not to do, and how to minimize luck's involvement, if you get immersed with the world, lore and art, and learn how to get the most out of your inventory, it steadily gets more and more fun and gives a great feeling of personal achievement. To maximize enjoyment, remember that you will fail over and over and over again, but you only lose if you give up, and each run is a learning experience you take with you, not a waste of time.

With this guide my primary goal is to give newer players as good a fighting chance as possible, to make the game more approachable, and for myself to remember general notes, while it's fresh on my mind. Some guides are already available, and they're helpful, no insult meant, but they're mostly focused on people with a pretty good amount of experience ready to speedrun straight through the thicket and place 4 tactically placed blood portals etc. As a warning I'll probably not use screenshots, a good chunk because I'm lazy, but also because there's a lot of dongers and I'm not sure about Steam's rules on dongly bits screenshots every 5 seconds, and I'm far too lazy to censor every single image as well beforehand. I will try to be as detailed as possible to make up for it however. Also, many locations and items are semi randomized, so you will have to do some stuff differently depending on your unique area designs.

So anyway, starting from the ground up...

Difficulty options are Fear & Hunger, Terror & Starvation, Hard Mode, and an unlockable meme mode. I'll abbreviate from here on. I highly recommend sticking to T&S or higher. It adds in a lot of small extra features and threats, an end game boss, and is the baseline for Hard Mode, which is the ultimate challenge of the game with perma death, no extra party members, and allows you to get each character's s ending. It is more challenging but most of the additions are fair and add spice to the game. The most annoying feature, although it's also more immersive and can also make it spookier, is the addition of lighting levels. Where on the easiest mode you always can kinda see what's there no matter what, on T&S or higher, there's lit, low visibility, and pitch black with no vision. You can still move around and even progress, but you have no visual, so torches and torch management becomes useful to the point of being it's own resource meter besides Hunger and mind.
Generally however, if you really like the game and want to play it long term I recommend sticking to T&S minimum to learn the base ruleset for more content and in case you ever want to attempt hard. It's up to you, but imo F&H mode isn't easier to the point of being worth sacrificing features. The primary thing is learning how stuff functions, don't be afraid of difficulty settings besides Hard Mode, primarily because of perma death and party restriction.

Starting off, we have "Mercenary", real name Cahara.

Cahara is a thief, or, well, fighter/thief. I highly recommend him to begin learning the game with, in particular with the intro choices
"Become a burglar."
"Abandon your comrades."
"Run straight for your mission."
This controls what your character starts with and allows him to start with lockpicking, an increased success rate for fleeing, and increased movement speed on the map. Lockpicking is very handy, particularly when starting out. Most zones have a door/doors that are locked and hold either several items or hinder progress. Normally you have to find either Small Keys or quest items to unlock them, Red Vials to burn the lock off, or have to "fight" the door and have your party do a set amount of damage with 1 turn each to destroy the door outright. Lockpicking bypasses the majority of these, with only a set few not having that option. Pay attention to where you find small keys and vials while playing with lockpicking to learn how to get by with other characters and skills.

On top of that, increased success for fleeing is an incredibly boring but incredibly useful skill. With nearly every enemy having some form of long term status effect attacks and usually no rewards, some surprise encounters, and with how well it synergizes with other abilities he has and techniques you can do, it makes Cahara one of the smoothest starting characters and one of the least frustrating. Later on, he can also learn to steal, which is very risky but can get you decent items if you can minimize risk of enemies attacking or kill them outright afterward. He also can learn En Guarde, which is one of the most fun, useful and simple abilities available; while on the field with it learnt, you press shift, and he pulls out a weapon. Run into an enemy while the weapon is out and you get an entire round free to attack. You can combine this with fleeing to attack a round for free and then flee, then shift and run at the enemy again, for particularly dangerous encounters.

Finally we have Dash. Dash is honestly one of the main things that's a bit of an obvious problem; it's near mandatory. The sequel addressed this, however in this game, you always want dash, on every main character. Each character has the option to start with it, however it requires sacrifices in other skills for some, like Enki, which make the beginning or longer feel worse than it should, and reduces variety. At the end of the day though it's all good, just make sure you have dash. You have multiple resource bars ticking down at all times, enemies have different speeds, and you will sometimes have to backtrack or cover large distances within a time limit. It starts off useful and gets more and more useful the longer the game goes on and the more resources you're having to use; you really don't want to have to use double the amount of resources for 4 party members moving long distance and be unable to easily maneuver around enemies.

Next we have "Knight", real name D'arce. The tankiest starting option. Her first choice gives you fast stance or defence stance, I recommend fast stance, "Quickly stepped aside and dodged it."
I do so because early on, like solo, when you use fast stance you get another turn at the end of you round, defence doesn't, which leaves you vulnerable to enemies attacking at full strength. Defence stance is good but it's good later on or endgame, where you have methods to focus attacks to her, and other party members to attack limbs or heal her. On the next choice, choose "Break ties with your family and run away." this leads to learning Dash. Next I recommend "Spearhead the coming assault." solely because you get arm guards. Some of the most common enemies can dismember your arms by the first turn. Arm guards prevents this. You want these, particularly when she has less chance to flee. Finally, choose "Rush straight after him." to learn Dash.

She can eventually learn leg sweep and counter, both good but mostly when you have more party members. Leg sweep, if it hits, can damage both legs of enemies leaving them vulnerable the next turn, and counter, well, counters whenever an attack hits her. Only recommend it when you have defenses and healing and know what enemies are capable of. Overall, she's the "Ole Bessie". Starts off ok, and gets better as the game progresses. With guaranteed skills like fast stance, even alone late in the game, as long as she has enough defenses she can easily get a high crit chance and wreck face real well. But... she's not as good for learning the game, and her start isn't particularly noteworthy in letting her gain exclusive stuff. Bluntly, unless you like the character a lot, I recommend not playing as her, instead, if you like her, prioritizing her as a party member. (All characters can be acquired as optional party members throughout the game). She starts off then with fast stance and defense stance, is troublesome to get to but not to recruit afterward, and you can tailor your starting character to another role. One final note on her is that another story important party member starts with leg sweep, and her skills have a high chance of appearing from scrolls off bookshelves. While some like fast stance can be used just as well by Cahara or Outlander as her, imo she's the most replaceable of the main cast. She's also the easiest of them to recruit.

Next, "Dark priest", real name Enki, something like a jack of all trades/ red mage. I recommend him only when you're comfortable with the game, he has equipment limitations, his start if you get dash is rough, and he focuses on magic but likely doesn't start with direct damage spells which requires you to know where to go to boost affinity with gods to gain the privilege to learn them, and until then he's weak in combat, can't flee as well, and has none of the utility of Outlander. He is distinctly "the mage" of the group however, and is a solid pick for a long term character because "spank n tankers" are very common, mages far less so. He begins with counter magic, which tbh information is limited about. However it's an attempt to undo magic, known examples are in encounters with ghouls, counter magic insta kills them, dispelling the necromancy. He can dispel some enchantments. It's something you just have to kind of experiment with yourself, if anyone knows examples feel free to share them. It's very risky to experiment with it not knowing what it can and can't do, and research seems to be minimal. Most likely however, it's just a "neat" starting skill. The primary draw of him is his ability to learn Greater Blood Magic, which makes blood magic straight up better and/or cheaper. He *can* start off with necromancy, which allows you to raise skeletons or ghouls as semi disposable party members, or pyromancy trick, which is your standard fireball, which can be aimed at the heads of many enemies for better accuracy than melee weapons for a insta kill (although it's been nerfed since and accuracy is something like 70%, which makes it risky and not as good of a "Enki solos the beginning areas" spell). But if you want Dash... congrats, here's a book of advanced crafting and the ability to talk to cockroaches that will most likely be rendered completely useless a choice later, and the ability to make a enemy type far later chill out which is *ok*. Your choices to do so are "Accept your defeat" "Quietly leave and run away without revenge" "Pray to God of the Depths" and "Rush straight after him". An explanation is needed for the prayer; each one boosts affinity for a god to max. This means you can get a spell of your choice early on in exploration. However, god of the depths is the best choice, because otherwise the dark priest cannot max it, because the final level of affinity requires killing the dark priest. However, the ability to talk to bugs' main benefit is progressing the god of the depths affinity, which leads to enki's start feeling really awful.

Finally, Outlander, real name Ragnvaldr. I recommend starting with a bow, weapons and shields are easy to find, some being guaranteed, while you can go a great amount of time or even a playthrough without normally getting a basic bow, which also allows you to fire iron arrows on the field to wound enemies outside of combat. Don't worry, they're not required to use a bow in combat, they just function as a handy "bonus" consumable feature. Next up, "devour" or "don't give in". This is honestly just a choice between 2 skills that can be ok but aren't too super. Devour lets you consume some enemy corpses to reduce your hunger, but not all, and some enemy types are poisonous to eat. I can't find knowledge of what's safe, if anybody would like to share feel free to do so. Eventually I might experiment myself and post results but don't hold me to it. Anything that helps a resource meter is great but it's a bit too random. Don't give in gives bloodlust, which is another skill that is better with a party. For a mind cost you get an attack boost, however you target randomly. You might hit a good part, you might hit a bad part, or the only one you didn't need to hit, but you at least need a party that can make sure dangerous limbs are taken down, so his powerful attacks are able to be used safely. It also has a mind cost however, so it limits use even further, especially when that mind could be used for damage or healing spells. So imo they're both kinda bad, but devour's probably the better option. You can always learn bloodlust later, or get another skill or spell instead.

Next we have one of the dumbest creation choices that's a blatant beginner trap. "Take souvenirs from Vinland" should not be chose. Ever. Not only do you lose Dash, but if you choose to take souvenirs, you do a coin flip. If it succeeds, you get a soul stone. This is not a bad thing, each soul stone can be used later to learn skills, spells, or upgrade weapons, and they're fairly limited. BUT. If you fail, you still get a soul stone... and you also get Panophobia. I'll explain the fear system within a few sections, but Panophobia is one of the most crippling things in the game besides becoming a potato. You do not want it at all unless you are doing a challenge run. To give a quick explanation, you risk learning one extra skill or spell for doing less damage and taking more damage to nearly everything in the entire game. Next choose "Rush straight after him." for Dash. Ragnvaldr can eventually also learn war cry, a taunt (all enemies target him), and marksmanship, which gives a chance to insta kill some foes when you use iron arrows on the field.

Overall, Cahara is the most beginner friendly while also having skills good when you learn it, D'arce and Ragnvaldr are a bit harder, but have their uses, and Enki has the roughest start but is the best option very long term as a mage when you have knowledge of the game. They can all get the job done, and if you like one or their design there's nothing stopping you from starting them and learning with them, just don't be afraid of needing to learn and solve problems with their skill sets.

Here on, I'll be making references based on T&S mode to simplify. Thank you for your understanding.

As you begin the game, the very first thing I recommend checking is your fear. Each character has one, randomized. It is on the menu, underneath your name. These can be:

Necrophobia - Fear of death, dead and corpses.

Nosophobia - Fear of Life-threatening diseases

Phasmophobia - Fear of ghosts and ghastly figures.

Rhabdophobia - Fear of magic and otherworldly powers.

Erotophobia - Fear of sex and genitals.

Zoophobia - Fear of animals and beasts.

Teratophobia - Fear of monsters and malformations.

(Gained from other causes besides start (excluding outlander)) Panophobia - Fear of everything.

These are, essentially, forced game long debuffs to an enemy type. You deal less damage and take more from enemies it lines up with. I can't find information on specifics but it's not too difficult to see yourself, although I'm unsure if some enemies would match multiple. I'd assume so but not for sure. This is mostly something you just have to deal with; however, I recommend a couple things. I personally recommend rerolling if you get Erotophobia. Some of the most common, and also some of the most dangerous enemies have wangers out. Each category has something you really would rather not deal with, but Erotophobia, for me, is the surest way to maximize your chances of getting past the early-mid game, and to maximize your chances for survival until you reach equipment and skills that can overpower your debuff. There is one other thing, but it may require a bit of cheese. Party members also have random fears, and I highly recommend making sure each member at least has a unique one. It's not the end of the world if so, but say for an extreme example your entire party had the same fear. If an enemy matches it, your entire party would deal less damage and take more. If your entire party has a unique fear, then one may be debuffed, but the others can pick up the slack and/or support the vulnerable member. This is primarily important to ensure you do enough damage to sever limbs; sword hands for instance. The debuff can make the difference between it or not, which can make the difference between losing your own arm or not.

After your fear, we have your 3 resource bars; Hunger, Body (Hp) and Mind.

To minimize confusion or worry, it's easiest to think of them mostly as soft "time limits". Bluntly, the more you find yourself having to worry about them, the more you're doing wrong. Or rather, they're not something to worry about as long as you are moving promptly zone to zone. Of course, when learning the game or exploring, you probably won't. This is part of the learning process, but they're less scary than they look.

Starting with hunger, I highly recommend one thing in particular; learning or testing the food restore amounts, and using them appropriately. There is a problem with this though, it does require your discretion. The issue with waiting, sometimes until you're at 87 hunger, is that each time you get a "hungry" debuff, your hp is cut slightly until fed. This part is ok. With at least 1 stack of the debuff, your damage is halved. This is not ok. The solution to this problem, ideally, is when exploring, to avoid all combat, wait until your characters are hungry enough, then feed them. However, for bosses, or for area clearing, or tough fights, it's in your best interest to feed them until they no longer have the hungry status effect before fighting. (Keeping in mind even when they're fed enough at once it can take a few seconds in game to recover from it). This is something that has to be up to the player, their party, and their resources.

Some tips to deal with hunger are also to only use, or to use first, food items that are not involved in crafting dishes (which amplify their hunger restore a great deal) or cause illness or worms (which almost assuredly harm more than help, and if you get worms, will increase the hunger drain by double unless cured). These are

Moldy bread - 30 (yes, really, trust me my brother)
Cheese - 7
Salami - 30
Arm - 30 (Eat the limbs and think of England)
Leg - 30
Blueish arm - 30
Blueish leg - 30

In the area north of the start, you can find a stove you can light with a tinderbox. This will be your point to return to for grilling steaks. You may also find a recipe book from bookshelves, you use this by going into the crafting menu from anywhere, not the stove. These will serve as the nukes of hunger. There are other methods, like devour and the wolfmask cult hidden deep in the mines, but generally these are your weapons against hunger. Although, in the area you can find Moonless, past the prison and the hole, you can find a chained up, leaky thing. Filling glass vials with it can restore 30 hunger.

Next, Mind. Mind is sanity. You want to keep it above 50 generally. It serves double duty as your mp or energy, for some skills or spells. Low sanity can lead to party members leaving, new fears, but it also drains fairly slowly. Make sure you limit spell usage to particularly deadly or risky encounters, or when you need them, or when you have items or accessories that restore it, and it shouldn't be too bad. You will most likely have problems with hunger before mind. Mind restoration items are more straightforward than hunger, just make sure you don't overkill restore. The only real item that does this is when using the pipe, make sure you save opium, if you find any, for emergencies. It restores 100. Also of note, if you find elixirs of mind, and fancy being a good person helping characters out, save at least one of them, it's required to restore the mind of one of Buckman's companions. One other thing for mind, if you find any glass vials and are having issues with it, go to the basement, where the Manebas (human jellyfish) are. In that area you'll find casks, and can fill vials with them. The casks are limited but each use restores 40, and there's several casks. It's good to keep in mind.
Item of note is
the sorcerers stone ring, 10 mind every turn.

Hp is fairly obvious, fastest way to a game over, although odds are high you'll probably lose limbs before full hp loss. Healing is fairly rare though, of note
Blue Vials - 20
Light Blue Vial - 64 or so
Elixir of Body - 64 or so

Although, other items of note are
Water Vial - stops burning, small recovery
White Vial - cures poison
Cloth Fragment - stops bleeding
green herb - cures infections
You also restore health of your party to full by going to the bunny mask cult, hidden to the left in the courtyard where the white statue, a dagger, and if you don't choose him, you meet the Outlander. You ""participate"" by talking to the lone dude (poor guy, and poor me) The first ""participation"" is "free". Free meaning you don't become an addict basically. Afterward, each time is a coinflip. You can actually cheese this by saving somewhere beforehand, whether you do this is up to you. In addition, the wolf cult works this way too, except there's also a cannibal chick this time, and it's far harder to get to safely.

There is one other primary resource: light. Can't see, can't easily explore. Can't explore, can't get light, can't see. On T&S or higher, light can go down to jet black, this means you always want to keep one torch if at all possible. This sounds very annoying, and is, however the tactics to deal with it is to only use them when necessary; avoid using them in lit areas or low light areas. You will obtain tinderboxes throughout the game; they can light up torches, braziers or campfires. These can be limited or common based on rng, I recommend only using these on areas where otherwise it would be pitch black. A easy way of telling this, if you already have a torch out, is to walk away and watch the light. If the area near a unlit brazier etc becomes black when you walk away, it's a good idea to light it, particularly for more important or travelled areas. If it's just low visibility, it's best to just squint a bit tbh lol.

Of note, if you say, have only one torch, and light it, as long as you're looting stuff you haven't before, rng seems to highly favor giving you another one. So as long as you're being prompt and minimize backtracking, it's generally not an issue. It's a good idea however to keep at least one stick, cloth and tinderbox to craft a torch. Preferably more. Don't keep a surplus of crafted torches, only keep one if you can help it, but keep the ingredients to craft another for emergencies.

Now, we begin. Upon starting, in the opening field, make sure to search every box and barrel. 2 of the closest barrels are flavor text, however feel free to click on everything to know what's useful or not for future runs, and read lore. You may see and hear "dogs barking"; consider this a time limit, and for T&S mode or higher, a limitation. If you take too long in the starting zone, dogs will appear. This is, essentially, a death sentence. If you get caught or begin an encounter with them, there's 2 of them, they deal good damage, are fast, cause deadly status ailments, have a 50/50 chance attack of outright killing you, and even if you kill them, drop no loot. If you get into a fight solo, flee. While on the subject of fleeing, you can press x while in combat to go back a menu and have "fight" (which takes you back to the combat menu) or "flee" (which makes your whole party attempt to flee). I recommend never using this flee, and instead using the per character skill. Cahara's flee boost seems to not register when using the global option, and using it per character allows you to issue commands to other members, so if the flee still fails, you can minimize damage taken.

Anyway, after you've looted everything in the field, you have 2 choices. Note if on T&S mode or higher, your choice is semi made for you. You can go west, which goes down to the basement (you will have to use a torch if it's too dark and you don't know where to go), or north, which leads into the main entrance. north appears to be the most straightforward option at first, however on T&S or higher, the dogs follow you in, and they'll either get confused in the entrance, or they might chase you the entire zone, which could cause you to get into encounters with others while running, and after fleeing might get into another encounter with the dogs. With or without high fleeing chance, to minimize frustration, on T&S or higher always go west, to the basement, first. Dogs don't follow you in, and while it takes longer, you can still loop around to the entrance for loot and valuable spots there later, while removing the dogs. I'm unsure of the exact time frame, however by the time you loop around, you should also be able to go back outside with no dogs nearby, letting you move around easier.

So with that said, let's assume we go west, to the basement. A note; along the ground there will be weird looking brown things, these are mushrooms. pick em all up, save them. if you get lucky or game the system and find a recipe book, 3 of them can be crafted to a stew that restores 90 hunger instead of their normal amount. There are various useful items that can be found like this, in particular look out for red, green or blue grass that sticks out. Books can also be interacted with and occasionally give items.

It might be information overload, and there shouldn't be any in the basement, but another thing, keep an eye out for boards with a single nail sticking up, or what looks like buttons on the ground. the pixellated boards might be difficult to spot, but you will definitely remember them the first time you come upon one. These are no joke, one of the deadliest things in the game, outer gods included. if you step on them, they give bleeding, which requires cloth fragments, but also infection, which unless you have green herbs, requires you to amputate the leg, find green herbs, or lose the character, if main, game over. an additional "feature" they have is that multiple party members can run over them, which can lead to your entire party each having bleed and infection. this is essentially a playthrough restart because green herbs aren't that common. Buttons on the ground are triggers for arrow traps, much more straightforward but needed to remember and be cautious. on arrow traps, if you get to holes in the wall, don't stick your hand in. there's no disarm feature or anything like that.

Apologies for information bloat, but warnings are important. Anyway, the basement itself. You will see what look like "human jellyfish", these are Manebas. I recommend avoiding them, they give no loot and a simple but very annoying and problematic debuff. They are slow, but they will head towards your part member. They move up and down slowly as well, so you have more opportunities to move around them. mostly, they are easy to avoid, but there is an area you might find that's an armory, with a chest at the end that has a guaranteed small key (to open doors), which if not playing Cahara you may need to progress. problem is, there is usually a Maneba in the hall, and it gives very little room to maneuver. If possible, make it move to a spot where it can move up or down and you still have room to move around it, then run past. It mainly presents the biggest issue if you try to loot everything there, which is possible while avoiding it but much more spooky. if doing so, lure it as far away as convenient then loot a item, repeat if needed. remember this location and the large iron door that talks when interacted with.

If you get in a fight with a Maneba, you *can* solo them reasonably easy, but the danger is if they use "inject", which give parasitic worms. this increases hunger drain by double, and can only be cured with worm juice, which gives poison on its own at the same time. it's also harder to flee from them in general because they can "stop you with their tentacles". they give no loot, and are easily maneuvered around, so i highly recommend leaving them unless you have a "purge team" party that can kill them before they get an action off.

2 other important notes for this zone; one is that near the end, you can go down a path which has herbs and may let you open a iron door that can function as a shortcut. the other, more important thing is you may stop, and get sucked into a dream like zone. don't panic if so, but you need to be very prompt. if you stay too long you get into a encounter that is mostly a game over solo. in this zone, there will be small "doorway" like squares, you can go in them and continue straight to get to another area. continue this, search the boxes and barrels if you can, but go into the door of light asap. if the witch circles you about 3 times you get into the encounter, if you reach the light, you return to the normal zone without danger.

afterward, you can proceed to the next zone, which starts with a graveyard. this area is relatively straightforward, and has few enemies, although the enemies are to be avoided at all cost. if you get in a fight with any right now, it's mostly a game over. if you take a torch, you can find quite a bit of loot in the dark. in the open area with large braziers, be careful of the golden enemy's patrol route. off to the sides, you can find a wounded friendly knight in an armory, or a bed with a statue. i recommend lighting the campfire when you have a tinderbox for ease of returning without torch use. this bed is the only guaranteed save in the game, however, there is a big catch. first one's free, afterward, you do a coin flip, if you get unlucky, you get in an inescapable fight with a (cheeseable) superboss. you can actually do this fight, with some luck and very specific items, (preferably good armor for your character, red vial to his face to blind, throwing darts to his body to poison, guard every turn after and pray) around now, however I wouldn't unless you're confident and got lucky with items. it is important to note however that if not on hard mode you get a free save beforehand, eventually it starts appearing at random in each zone, which can lead to annoying moments where it pops in right as you're about to exit a zone, it's almost unavoidable in combat with it to get broken bones, which is a near permanent but minimally impacting debuff to hp, and the fewer characters you have when fighting it, the more you limit who gets them.

Regardless, after you visit there, north takes you into the prisons. WARNING: this area also has nail boards commonly. This is one of the more dangerous and random zones, sometimes you get a layout where you can easily sprint east and exit, sometimes it becomes a series of complicated catwalks. If you have a mind to, this is another location where tinderboxes can be handy; in areas that are pitch black. if you are getting quite a few tinderboxes, helps to light up black areas so if you ever need to backtrack it's less of a hassle. also i have a bit of ocd or something and it really revs my harley to "change" the environment, might rev yours. but anyway, in this zone, you encounter your first normal prison guards. if you want to avoid sa scenes, close the window if you lose to them. you might have been unfortunate enough to run into an elite last zone, but the ones here are more manageable. something very important; whether you choose to fight them or not, they are some of the most worthwhile enemies to actually seek and fight, because if you learn them, they're low to no risk, and they drop loot ranging from a better weapon than you most likely have, to good food items. personally i'd avoid the ballista one though without insurances; kinda obvious but he's the one behind a ballista model, otherwise he looks the same. he's just a bit more finnicky.

prison guards: so these are actually incredibly scary at first but have a reliable method of killing. generally, i recommend having multiple party members just to be safe, or if cahara, learning en guarde and getting an extra turn first (which technically is still a bit too much risk, because if you are unlucky af solo and miss, then fail fleeing, your limb or hp is in danger. making sure rng has as little room as possible to f you over is key to maximize enjoyment). but however you choose, his knife arm has to go asap. if you don't have erotophobia you have a chance of doing it solo within a turn, but if you don't have en garde or multiple party members, if its still there after your turn, he'll strike with it, if it lands, a limb is most likely gone. this is (mostly) the sole danger of them. if you dismember that arm, guard next turn. you do this because his other arm triggers a coin flip attack, if you get unlucky, he smacks you several times and early on, even later, it's very deadly. if you guard, you automatically stop it. next, if you're lucky, his wanger just twitches. if you're not lucky, he slaps you with his wanger for decent damage, but if you're guarding it pulls double duty to mitigate this. so now, since you blocked or got through his coin flip, you have around 3 turns before it does it again. if the fight lasts that long, block for the same defense for it. while you have free turns, you want to first dismember the wanger. this blocks his only method of guaranteed attack left. afterward, i find the most reliable choice is to attack his torso until he dies. we leave his arm that does the coin flip attack alone, because as long as he has it and no wanger, he does nothing else. if you remove it, he tackles every turn for decent damage.

for a tl;dr, dismember knife arm by first set of your turns. guard. dismember wanger. leave other arm. target torso until death. repeat for every normal prison guard. other options, like hitting his legs then his head, are less efficient without consumables.

Fun fact in combat, if you have a party, and an important limb needs to be destroyed no matter what, attack it with your entire party. whenever the limb is dismembered, the other attacks will target the torso instead, very useful for some enemy types that have a good limb to attack but something other than the torso that needs to be left alone. this ensures max accuracy from the torso being easy to hit, direct enemy damage, and that whatever limb is a threat is guaranteed to be removed unless you're unlucky af no cap for real.

if you find a doll on the ground in a cell, don't pick it up. it has no use by itself, there is a girl you can recruit however. if you do so, return to the doll and choose to give it to her. this makes her happy and is the only known use of the doll. one thing of interest in this zone is you can find a lever that enables an elevator in the next zone. avoid going down it for now unless you're confident. after you progress through here, you should be in a red, meaty tunnel. there may or may not be a lizard man walking around. avoid them at all costs at this point, they have 30 ways to yeet you solo. DO NOT SEARCH THE MEAT. this starts a fight with a god, you can't beat him, you can only convince him to aid you if you choose later on under specific circumstances. if for some reason you engage with him, your only option is to flee or scream until becoming blood for the blood god.

anyway, other than those 2 things and the elevator, this area is one of the most short in the game. just sprint straight through, don't touch anything, don't look at anything. next you'll be behind a torture room gate; open it. don't forget to search the tables with torture equipment. this zone is where buttons are on the ground, be careful. you also may randomly need to do a coinflip. if you lose, don't panic, you get dropped into the prison. this lets you run back to a cell, open the door, and continue back to the torture rooms and hall. this also lets you loot stuff you couldn't otherwise. anyway, upon exiting the torture room you start out in, you get a notification.

this is a harder choice than it appears. so you can ambush him; this leads to a fight. you take his sword arm and then he's useless basically. you kill him, you save a npc in the cells, happy day. this npc goes to the basement with the other knight. here is a fork; DO NOT TALK TO HIM AFTER HES DOWN THERE. this leads to him derping out and becoming an abomination, instead you progress through the game, rescue his friends, then go from there. this is the good boy, save people path. your final reward is a good ring that restores hp, but also can be found otherwise. now if you're a bad boy, you can instead hide from him, find buckman, then talk to trotur to rat out buckman, find one of his other party members later, rat her out, then you get a vault key. with the vault key, if you light every torch in this zone where trotur is, you reveal a doorway. with the vault key, you can access the penance armor. if you're going to use the penance armor, a ring of the still blood or a salmonsnake soul (using a soul stone on a late game enemy) is necessary because otherwise you permanently have bleed. this armor has a lot of pros and a lot of cons.

Pros:

Protects the player from limb loss or being beheaded and, most likely, some other injuries in battles. The player can still cut them themselves or lose them in cutscenes.
Player gets resistance to confusion.
Reduces damage from slashing and piercing attacks by half to the body and slightly less to the head.
Cons:

There are small spikes covering its insides, so after dressing the armor, it causes permanent bleeding. Cloth fragment stops it for a short time. Ring of the still-blood or Salmonsnake Soul stops bleeding while equipped.
The character loses the ability to evade attacks.
The armor cannot be removed.
The player can no longer participate in the the Bunny Orgy, the Feast or form a Marriage.

frankly i don't like it. bunnies and wolfmasks on difficulties below hard can be cheesed by saving beforehand to use them safely repeatedly. personally i'd recommend forming a marriage (find a ritual circle, love a party member, lose the party member to become one with your soul and remove your fears, restore your body, get other bonuses) over penance armor too, if you're going to do one or the other. consider though that it is a unique set of armor the player can wear, so if you can handle it, that frees up other equipment for the party. buckman n co are cooler than trotur tho

Fears do seem to have overlapping enemies, as in you can have one enemy that triggers multiple kinds. I saw someone mention it and after thinking about it myself, in my opinion I agree that in this and the sequel Phasmophobia is probably the best to have. Ghost types are rare and rely on and/or have specific mechanics, like needing cursed weapons or magic, they don't really rely on damage numbers. they're also very rare, and overlap is most likely small. all that said, you can only really control the main character's fear, and it can take a while and be very annoying to reroll until you get a specific one. if you're patient enough for it and want that little bit of extra edge though, doesn't hurt to keep rerolling and saving the character start, and then when you finally get it, just keep that save for future runs as them. party members seem to have randomized locked fears each run though (can't save and reload, recruit to manipulate them), and it'd be near the point of lunacy to force all of them. best to just have the main character with it and deal with the rest the best you can.

Hunger

Moldy Bread - 30
Cheese - 7
Salami - 30
Arm - 30
Leg - 30
Blueish arm - 30
Blueish leg - 30

Mind

Pipe with Opium - 100
Sorcerer's stone ring - 10 each turn in combat

Body

Blue Vials - 20
Light Blue Vial - 64 or so
Elixir of body - 64 or so

Ailments

Water Vial - stops burning, small recovery
White vial - cures poison
Cloth fragment - stops bleeding
green herb - cures infections

Become a burglar.
Abandon your comrades.
Run straight for your mission.

Quickly Stepped aside and dodged it.
Break ties with your family and run away.
Spearhead the coming assault.
Rush straight after him.

Accept your defeat.
Quietly leave and run away without revenge.
Pray to god of the depths.
Rush straight after him.

Choose bow & arrows.
Devour your fallen comrades.
Don't touch anything and flee back to your ship.
Rush straight after him.