In real life, ghost hunting is easy: you just walk around a house for a while and pretend to be spooked by your mate shutting doors upstairs. In Phasmophobia, however, there’s a much higher risk of being killed and losing all your expensive gear. Identifying ghosts isn’t easy either, with each holding specific characteristics you need to uncover. To help newbie ghost hunters learn the ropes, we’ve put together a list of seven key Phasmophobia beginners tips that’ll have you snapping images of spooky events and, hopefully, surviving to bring home the bacon afterwards.
Phasmophobia beginners tips
© Kinetic Games
Understanding sanity
Sanity is pretty important in the real world, but in Phasmophobia that runs doubly true. Spending too long in the dark, witnessing spooky events, and interacting with the ghost through questions with the Spirit Box or a ouija board will cause your sanity to take a hit. Let it fall too low and you’ll make yourself a target for the ghost’s hunts.
The simplest way to keep your sanity topped up is to spend time in well-lit spaces. However, if you turn too many lights on in the house, you’ll cause the breaker to trip and plunge the house into darkness. Keep a few key spots well lit for players to return to as you head through the house. Oh, and keep an eye out for that pesky ghost switching them off on you.
Tracking down the ghost room
The spirits you’re after will wander through the halls of the houses they haunt, but one room in particular is likely to be their home. Finding this ghost room will be the key to your early actions in each level, as it's there that you’ll be best prepared to collect evidence.
Spooky as it may be, you’re safest early on. Split your group up with thermometers and EMF readers in hand to sweep through the house, looking for signs like footprints, lights switching on or off, and so forth. Only once you reckon you’ve found the right room should you start deploying cameras and other gear.
© Kinetic Games
Get salty
Salt is your friend when hunting ghosts, as it’ll cause them to start leaving footprints if they pass through it. Use it sparingly, placing piles in the doorways and other chokepoints near the ghost room. If you really want to get next level, drop a UV flashlight on the floor so that it faces towards the pile. That’ll let you see the footprints as soon as they appear, so you can track the ghost quickly.
Items work when dropped
To gather evidence and identify your ghost, you’ll need to make use of various bits of equipment such as the EMF reader, Spirit Box and Ghost Writing Book. A key system in Phasmophobia is that you don’t need to be holding these items for them to work. If you think you’ve found the ghost room, feel free to switch on various evidence collection tools and place them around the room. If they’re in the path of the active ghost, you’ll be able to get them to work. While keeping your hands free for a camera, torch or general panicked waving.
Read more: How to change difficulty in Phasmophobia
Learn your hiding spots
If you alert the ghost enough and your sanity drops low, you may initiate a ghost’s hunting mode. At this point the tables are turned, and the ghost is out to get you. You can flee out of the house to escape (provided the door hasn’t locked), but often hiding until the hunt ends is your best bet.
It’s easy to get into a panic and make a run for the door, but if you’re upstairs or a long way from the door, you’d do well to leg it to the nearest cupboard instead. Get inside, don’t make a sound (that includes not speaking through your microphone), and switch your flashlight off. Not easy to do in a panic, sure, but keeping a cool(ish) head is how you survive a paranormal assault.
It helps to have a code phrase here to shout to your team when someone spots a hunt starting. If someone sees the lights start flickering rapidly, they should call something to everyone else, warning them that it’s time to get out, or get hidden. Wait for the hunt to end before you make any more noise.
© Kinetic Games
Toss a crucifix
You might think you know the gist of crucifix use – wave it at the big mean spirit to get it to go away – but Phasmophobia does things a little differently. Rather than keeping it on your person, crucifixes are best tossed onto the ground when you think you’ve found the ghost room. If the ghost is nearby, this should stop it from starting a hunt, though these things are far less reliable than you’d really hope. If the hunt does kick off, you’ll need to run, so forget about waving that thing in its face.
Cameras make the cash
Each job you take will have specific objectives to complete with evidence to collect, and those will form the bulk on your income if you manage them. However, you can also earn plenty of extra money by taking pictures of other spooky items in the house. Snap photos of voodoo dolls, ouija boards, footprints, and bone DNA to get extra money on the side. Just make sure the rooms and items are lit and activated where possible before you snap a photo.
Those are our beginner tips for Phasmophobia. Follow them closely and you’ll be bringing in hordes of haunting house money in no time. Provided you survive of course. Discovered any other useful tips? Share them with us in the comments below so others can learn from your expertise! For more tips and tricks, click here to visit our Phasmophobia hub page.
