South Hell How to Survive Cartman (HE)

Cartman — often called HE in South Hell — is the primary hunter on your escape run. He patrols the school, reacts to sound, and ends your life count when he catches you. This guide focuses on staying alive: hearing rules, movement discipline, safe rooms, hiding lockers, decoy items, and what changes when you hold all four keys. Use it beside Key Locations and the Full Walkthrough.

New to the game? Read Getting Started for crowbar, lives, and spawn flow. Input reference: Controls. All tutorials: Guides Hub.

How Cartman pressures you

HE is not a scripted hallway puppet you can ignore. Running is loud. Microphone and voice noise can draw attention. On busy 24-player servers, someone else’s panic sprint can pull Cartman into your wing. Your job is to manage information: where HE is, how loud you are, and which closed door or locker resets the chase.

You have three lives. On catch, a carried key drops at your body and you respawn in the basement with the Kenny line. Surviving is not only about ego — it is about not dumping Blue or Green in the worst possible corridor.

Video guide

Noise discipline

• Prefer walking when HE audio is close.
• Sprint for short commits: into a safe door, into a HIDING PLACE locker, or during the final RUN alert.
• Use headphones. Visual-only play misses footsteps and shouts.
• Treat open mics as a liability near HE. Coordinate with short calls, then go quiet.
• Opening lockers and prying boards make noise — clear the hallway first when you can.

If your lobby uses voice chat for callouts, agree on a “silent near HE” rule. Useful info whispered after the threat passes beats constant chatter that paints the whole floor.

Safe rooms that actually work

Two spaces matter most:

1. Basement — your spawn, EXIT DOOR, and primary reset.
2. Red-lit maintenance room — secondary safe room.

Cartman cannot enter these if the door is closed. An open door voids the protection. Habit check every time you pass through: close it. Teams wipe more often from forgotten open doors than from missing a key room.

During the late RUN phase after 4/4 keys, the fantasy of infinite camping ends. HE pushes the endgame hard — commit to the exit instead of testing safe-room edges.

Green HIDING PLACE lockers

Lockers marked HIDING PLACE are your mid-hallway panic button. Press E, then click the shrinking circles to stay hidden. Fail the QTE and you get exposed. Practice the click rhythm once in a quiet moment so panic does not empty your accuracy.

Do not confuse hiding lockers with key lockers. Key searches use the jingle cue; hiding lockers are survival UI. Details on key rooms stay on Key Locations.

Ike is not Cartman — but he still ends runs

Ike is the darkness entity tied especially to the Yellow key scare in the LOCKER ROOM. Rule that belongs on every survival page: do not shine the flashlight on Ike. Light mismanagement kills carriers who otherwise outplayed HE. Keep beam control as part of “surviving the school,” not a separate trivia fact.

Decoys, bait, and traps

Survival tools change chase math:

• Alarm Clock — roughly ten seconds of decoy distraction. Drop it to break line of interest when HE is locked on your path.
• Fried Chicken — bait to pull HE down a side route while a key carrier slips toward basement.
• Bear Trap — punish a chase path you just vacated; best at chokes near nurse or locker approaches.
• Flashlight + batteries — information tool; never a reason to beam Ike.

Rankings and loadout opinions: Survival Tools Tier List. Cash for shop buys: Codes. Optional Night Vision / Boombox: Game Passes.

Spend decoys to save a carried key. Hoarding an Alarm Clock until you die with Green in hand is a failed economy.

Chase patterns that work

Early game

Learn one safe loop: classroom wing → basement door → maintenance fallback. After each key pickup, ask “bank now or continue?” If HE is loud on your route home, bank.

Mid game

Split the lobby so not everyone stacks in one hallway. Stacked noise plus stacked bodies makes HE’s job easy. One player can act as a recovery runner near basement for dropped keys.

Last life

Play boring. Walk more. Hide earlier. Let teammates take contested Yellow if Ike plus HE is overlapping. Last-life heroes who sprint for style drop the run.

RUN alert (4/4 keys)

Cartman shouts for the keys. Nowhere feels safe. Stop looting. Sprint as a group to the basement EXIT DOOR and press E. If someone dies on the last key, nearest player recovers while others hold the approach. If the door jams, switch immediately to crank parts — Jammed Exit — instead of re-peeking HE for no reason.

Team communication that helps survival

Call HE direction, not novels. “HE nurse hall” is enough. Call dropped key colors and locations. Call when a safe door is open. Do not spam after someone is already hiding — extra mic noise can still matter.

Mindset

South Hell rewards calm routing. Cartman wins when you panic-sprint with no destination. Pick a door, locker, or decoy before you run. Every chase should end in a plan, not a hope.

Return to the Full Walkthrough when you need the escape sequence, and keep this page bookmarked for the fights between objectives. Survive first, bank second, Escape third.