South Hell Basement Guide: How to Get Out of the Starting Basement

Quick answer

Pick up the crowbar between the green electrical cabinet and the toilet in the starting basement, then go to the BOARDS and press E five times. The way up is then open and your objective changes to 'Find the keys 0/4'.

• The crowbar is required: the boards will not come off by hand
• Each press of E pulls off one board; the counter tracks it as 'Pry the boards off 0/5'
• The crowbar stays at the boards once the fifth board is off

What you wake up to

A run opens with the player waking up in the school basement. The doors are locked, the LIVES counter reads 3, and the objective listed on screen is "Find a way out of the basement." The exit is not hidden: it is the boarded opening above you, and the game points straight at it.

Two lines of on-screen text lay out the whole basement task:

• "The way up is boarded shut. Go look at the BOARDS."
• "I need to find the crowbar. These nails won't come out by hand."

The second line is the important one. The boards cannot be pulled by hand, so the crowbar is a prerequisite rather than an optional pickup. The basement therefore resolves in two moves: collect the crowbar, then use it on the boards.

Pick up the crowbar

The crowbar sits in the basement at a spot between a green electrical cabinet and the toilet. Stand close enough for the interaction prompt to appear — it reads "E Pick up crowbar" — and press E. That is the only tool the basement escape asks for.

Until you pick the crowbar up, the on-screen text itself tells you the tool is missing: 'I need to find the crowbar. These nails won't come out by hand.' appears alongside the boards line before you have it.

Pry the five boards off

With the crowbar in hand the objective switches to "Pry the boards off 0/5", and a prompt tells you "Now go to the BOARDS and press E to pull them off." Each press of E removes one board and advances the counter; when a single board remains it reads "Pry the boards off 4/5."

When the fifth board comes away, the game confirms "The way is open. I'll leave the crowbar here." That same message explains why you will not be carrying the crowbar out of the basement: it stays at the boards. There is no reason to go looking for it in your inventory after this point.

What the objective changes to

Opening the boards does not finish the basement task — it replaces it. The objective changes to "Find the keys 0/4", which is the same job the GET OUT tutorial card describes: find the keys in the lockers and unlock the exit door in the basement. The South Hell keys page covers the key hunt, and South Hell locked doors covers what those keys open. The practical result is simple: you can now leave the starting room and start searching the lockers for the keys.

The four tutorial cards before you wake

Four cards appear before the basement, paged through with NEXT and dismissed with START. They are worth reading once, because two of them describe conditions the basement depends on:

• GET OUT — "Find the KEYS in the LOCKERS. Unlock the EXIT DOOR in the basement." This is the larger goal the basement objective belongs to.
• HE HUNTS YOU — "Cartman is coming? HIDE in a locker. Running is LOUD." The card establishes hiding and noise as the two things that matter while you are being pursued.
• THE DARK — you carry a flashlight and batteries, with the warning "DON'T SHINE YOUR LIGHT ON IKE."
• SAFE ROOMS — "The BASEMENT and the SAFE ROOM are safe. Cartman can't come in." The room you start in is one of them.

The last card matters for the escape: the basement you are prying open is a room Cartman cannot enter, so the boards are a tool problem rather than a chase problem. The danger starts once you are up and moving between rooms.

A locker find just outside the basement

After leaving the basement, a locker in the hallway outside the basement section can give you a trap. The pickup message reads "You found a trap! Take it out (5), aim at the floor and click to place it." Open slot 5, aim at the floor, and click to set it down. The demonstrated placement is on the hallway floor outside the red-lit maintenance safe room.

The trap is a find, not a requirement: leaving the basement itself needs only the crowbar and the boards. Treat it as something to pick up on the way rather than a step that blocks the exit.

Where to go next

Once the boards are off, the basement is behind you and the objective is "Find the keys 0/4" — the same key search the tutorial promised. If the pursuit is the part you are still learning, the South Hell survival tips and the South Hell monster pages explain what is hunting you and how hiding works, while the South Hell beginner guide covers the opening of a run. For the full route from here, the South Hell walkthrough continues past the basement.