HUNTRESS Hiding Guide: How to Hide in Vents and When It's Safe to Come Out

You can't outrun the spider in HUNTRESS — the game's own instructions say so. When a hunt starts, hiding is the survival method: crouch into a metal duct, stay put, and wait for it to leave. The tutorial adds one warning: "just don't push your luck." Here's how to get into a vent in time, which openings actually work, and how to tell when it's safe to come out.

Watch for the warning signs

In normal mode, watch the lamps. When the lights on your floor start flickering, the spider is on your floor and getting close. That flicker is your cue to stop searching and head for cover immediately.

In the Nightmare (lights-out) mode there are no lamp cues — the lights are off and only your flashlight works. There, the sound of its footsteps is the only warning that it's on your floor and closing in, so it's worth playing with sound on.

How to hide in a vent

1. As soon as you see the flicker (or hear footsteps in Nightmare), go to the nearest duct — don't try to run from the spider in the open.
2. Crouch into the metal duct.
3. Stay there while it hunts your floor. Don't pop out early or "push your luck."

Before a hunt ever starts, learn where the enterable ducts are. Not every vent-looking opening is a real hiding spot: players have found plenty of grilles that turned out to be "just decorations," and some rooms have no vent at all — a bad discovery mid-chase. Our HUNTRESS vent locations page and building layout overview help you pick working hiding spots on each floor ahead of time.

One recorded run shows the search in action: spotting a vent mid-chase, crouching in while the spider passes, and picking the moment to move again.

When is it safe to come out?

The game's guidance is simply to wait in the duct until the spider leaves. In practice, players read the situation with a few floor cues:

• The spider's footsteps fade or move off your floor ("his little pitter-patters are gone").
• The lamp flickering stops.
• A teammate confirms its location — "He's on the top floor, so you're good."
• Your radar shows it on another floor.

One thing that catches players: the spider can come right up to your hiding spot. In one recorded hunt, it sat and looked at a player who stayed inside the vent — and the player survived the encounter by staying put. If it peers into your duct, staying calm and still beats bolting into the open.

Let the radar do some checking

The radar item shows you where the spider is for 20 seconds, then needs 120 seconds to recharge — and once you've obtained it, it's yours permanently. A ping at the right moment tells you which floor the spider is on, so you can decide whether to keep hiding or get moving again.

Once surviving hunts feels routine, put those hiding skills to work on the run itself — the HUNTRESS escape walkthrough covers the full escape from start to finish.