DOORS guide: how to survive every entity in the Hotel
Rush, Ambush, Seek and the rest. What each entity does, the warning sign before it arrives, and exactly how to survive it.
5 min read
DOORS is a horror game about opening numbered doors in a hotel while things try to stop you. Almost all of it is learnable: every entity announces itself, and once you know the tells, a run stops being luck and becomes execution.
The rule that keeps you alive
Find the hiding spot in every room before you move through it. Wardrobes and beds are your only defence against several entities, and the moment you need one is the moment you do not have time to look. Players who die repeatedly in the Hotel are almost always players who walk into rooms without checking.
Rush
The most common entity in the Hotel. The lights flicker and you hear a distorted scream approaching. Get into a wardrobe or under a bed before it arrives. It charges through the room, breaks every light source, and leaves. One pass, then it is over.
Ambush
Looks like Rush and behaves very differently, which is what kills people. Ambush bounces back and forth through the hallway several times instead of passing once. Leaving your hiding place after the first pass is the mistake.
The complication is Hide, who ejects you if you stay in a wardrobe too long. So Ambush becomes a timing problem: step out between passes, get back in before the next one. Patience alone is not enough here.
Seek
Seek is a chase rather than a hiding sequence. It starts in the Grand Hallway and pursues you for six rooms before giving up. Sprint, take the obvious route, and dodge the obstacles it throws in front of you. Slowing down makes it faster, so hesitating is the worst possible response.
Do not try to hide from Seek
Hiding does nothing during a Seek chase. The only answer is forward, and the chase ends on its own after six rooms.
Floor 2, the Mines
The Mines are considerably heavier than the Hotel, with larger rooms and more going on in them. If you were comfortable on Floor 1 and started struggling here, the game got harder rather than your setup getting worse.
Why delay kills runs
DOORS gives you a small reaction window on purpose. The server decides when Rush spawns and where it is, so if your connection is slow you are told late, and part of the window you were meant to have was spent in transit. Players describe this as dying through a closed door, and what actually happened is that the door closed later on the server than on their screen.
Illustrative. Your actual numbers depend on where you are and which Roblox data centre you land in. The ping test measures both.
The hitch as a new room loads is a different problem, and that one is your PC rather than your connection. Lower your graphics before a run rather than during one, because a stutter while hiding is a death.