South Hell Survival Tips: How to Survive When Cartman Hunts You
What actually works when Cartman hunts you in South Hell: hiding in green lockers, safe rooms, staying quiet, managing the dark, traps - and exactly what a catch costs you.
Quick answer
When Cartman hunts you, hide in a green locker marked HIDING PLACE (press E to Hide) and click the shrinking circles, or reach a safe room - the red-lit maintenance room or the basement - and close the door. Cartman cannot enter safe rooms, and a clean locker hide ends with him walking right past you. If he does catch you, you lose one life, respawn in the basement, and drop any key you were carrying exactly where you were caught.
- Stay quiet: running is loud, walking on glass is loud, and Cartman can hear your microphone.
- A catch costs one life and drops your key where you fell - one recorded Medium run was caught once and still escaped.
Decision guide
South Hell hands you its survival rules before every round: four tutorial cards - GET OUT, HE HUNTS YOU, THE DARK and SAFE ROOMS - that you page through with NEXT before pressing START. Everything below follows from those cards plus what actually happens in recorded rounds. (If the whole round loop is new to you, the South Hell beginner guide covers the basics first.)
What happens when Cartman catches you
Getting caught hurts, but it does not end the run by itself. In the recorded run, Cartman caught the player in a corridor just outside the NURSE room while they were carrying the third key. The screen went black and showed “2 LIVES LEFT” - the run had started with 3 lives. The player respawned in the basement with the message “Oh my God, they killed Kenny!” and a new objective: “Pick up the dropped key.” Back in the corridor, “A Red Key” was still lying exactly where the catch happened; the player picked it up and unlocked the red padlock at the exit door like nothing had happened.
So a catch costs three things:
- One life, out of the 3 you start with.
- Your position: you restart from the basement.
- Any key you were holding - it drops at the spot where you were caught, and your objective becomes picking it back up.
The same recorded round later finished “You Escaped - MEDIUM” with “Times caught: 1” on the results screen. Treat lives as your real health bar: you can absorb a mistake, but every careless catch burns one.
Hide in a green locker to break a chase
Lockers showing the “HIDING PLACE” prompt are your bread-and-butter answer when Cartman closes in. Walk up, press E to Hide, and your character parks inside. The game then gives you a shrinking-circle minigame, and the tutorial's instruction is simple: click the circles to stay hidden. Do it, and the chase ends quietly - in the recorded run, Cartman closed in, the player finished the circle minigame inside a green locker, and he walked straight past without noticing.
One warning sits on the same tutorial card: Cartman can hear your mic. The circles are what keep you hidden; your voice is a separate channel he can pick up - more on that in the noise rules below.
Safe rooms: doors Cartman cannot open
The SAFE ROOMS card is blunt: the basement and the safe room are safe because Cartman can't come in. Recorded gameplay backs that up. When a large, deformed Cartman charged the player down, the player ran back into the red-lit maintenance room and closed the door with E Close. Cartman reached the door but could not enter, and the player took no damage - a closed safe-room door is a complete answer to a charge.
Your spawn room counts too. In one co-op session, players confirm right away that “Cartman can't come in here” and treat the spawn room as a save point. The habit worth building: before you wander off to search lockers, know which direction the nearest safe room or the basement lies, because that door is your fallback whenever no locker is in reach. The one exception comes at the very end of the round - once you hold the fourth key, the game itself says nowhere is safe. The South Hell basement guide covers the basement in detail.
Noise is what turns a hide into a hunt
The tutorial warns about three noise sources, and they are how Cartman finds you:
- Running is loud. When he is close, walk.
- Walking on glass is loud. Treat glass like running: keep off it while he is near.
- Cartman can hear your microphone. In one co-op session, a player hiding in a locker was pulled out anyway, and his partner's explanation was that he was “breathing too much.” That is player commentary rather than an on-screen rule, but it matches the game's own warning - stay quiet inside the locker, and mind your voice chat while he is on you.
Keep the dark managed - and your light off Ike
Insanity climbs in the dark; the tutorial says it plainly: “The dark makes your insanity go up.” You carry a flashlight and batteries from the start of the round, so use them. When the warning “The dark is getting to you” appears, the game's advice is “Turn on your flashlight or stand in the light” - your flashlight and lit areas are the two fixes it names.
There is one more light rule: don't shine your light on Ike. The tutorial says don't, and it does not spell out what happens if you do, so treat it as a rule to follow rather than a risk to test. For more on Cartman and Ike themselves, see the South Hell monster guide.
Traps found in lockers are free defense
Some lockers hold something other than a key: “You found a trap! Take it out (5), aim at the floor and click to place it.” That is the whole instruction - switch to slot 5, aim at the floor, click. The recorded player placed his trap on the hallway floor outside the red-lit maintenance room's door, and that round's results screen credited “Cartman in your traps: 1,” so the placed trap caught him at some point during the run.
You will open plenty of lockers while hunting the four keys anyway, so a trap you find costs nothing to take. Take it out and place it instead of leaving it behind.
Carrying a key changes what a catch costs
The key pickup message warns you directly: “You got a KEY! Take it to the EXIT DOOR in the basement - it GLOWS. If Cartman gets you, you DROP it.” Holding a key means a catch costs more than a life: the key returns to the floor where you fell.
The counter-move is to bank keys quickly. Carry each key to the glowing exit door in the basement and unlock its matching padlock with E. Keys come color-named, and each opens its matching padlock - the recorded blue key opened the blue padlock and raised the exit counter to 1/4, and the red key later unlocked the red lock. A key already unlocked at the door is a key Cartman can no longer make you drop. The South Hell keys guide covers the key hunt in detail, and the school locations page helps you learn the layout you will cross while carrying them.
The fourth key: nowhere is safe, so run
The rules change when you find the fourth and final key. The screen flashes red with “RUN”, Cartman shouts “CARTMAN: GIVE ME THOSE KEYS!!”, and the game tells you: “HE KNOWS YOU HAVE THEM ALL. NOWHERE IS SAFE NOW - RUN TO THE EXIT!” Until that moment, lockers and safe rooms are your tools; from that moment on, the game itself says the map is no longer safe and the round becomes a footrace.
The recorded player ran it down successfully: through the corridors and the gym, down to the glowing exit door in the basement, unlock the final padlock, press E Escape. Knowing your way back to the basement before you grab key four makes that sprint very winnable - even the recorded run, which included one catch earlier, ended in escape.
What a survived round looks like
The results screen tallies exactly the survival tools above. The recorded Medium escape listed “Keys you found: 4”, “Times caught: 1”, “Cartman in your traps: 1”, “Ike screamed at you: 1” and “Times you hid: 1”, plus a Roblox badge popup: “Badge Awarded - Escaped!” Note what that line-up means: a run with one catch, one hide and one trap catch still escaped. Getting caught is a cost the game counts, not an instant failure.
For the full start-to-escape route, see the South Hell walkthrough, and when the basics feel comfortable, the South Hell solo guide covers running the school alone.