White Day: A Labyrinth Named School – Janitor and Hell Mode Tips

This guide contains general information about Janitor behavior and AI. Tips to understand and trick him.

Tips to Janitor and Hell Mode

Сrеdit gоеs to Kasiornis!

Janitor AI Patterns

Janitor can be in three possible modes:

Patrolling – he’ll be walking around, checking rooms at seemingly random pattern. On higher difficulties this pattern becomes more and more chaotic. Sometimes stops and looks behind him, so being behind him in the long coridor without any cover is not a good idea.

During his patrols he closes the doors behind him.

Alerted – something attracted his attention yet he didn’t see the player. Or he saw the player and tracked them up to some place, but lost them. He’ll run towards that something, that alerted him. He’ll investigate and how thouroughly – depends on player’s actions. If he just saw the opened door – he’ll make a short run to it, stand in doorways then walk away. If he tracked player up to some room – he may and often will walk in and patrol inside it. Being inside a small room with the only exit behind his back – is not a good idea.

After his investigation ends he closes the doors behind him and turns off the lights in the room.

Chasing – he saw the player and running after them to teach the importance of avoiding the cursed schools at night. His alertness will rise, meaning he’ll see and hear you from much bigger distance. Breaking the line of sight and hiding is the only valid option.

Things That Alert Janitor

Visual Triggers (things that alert him when he sees them):

• Player – Max detection distance. Hee-Min’s sheer handsomeness infuriates Janitor, so if you enter his visual detection radius – he’ll initiate the chase. Do also know that he looks around and has 180 degree vision, so you’re only safe if you are behind him.
  • He can see you in the darkness (he has flashlight after all).
  • Difficulty affects player detection radius – he only sees you like 5 meters away on Very Easy but he’ll see you from the other side of huge coridor on Hell.
• Lights in the Rooms – Max detection distance. Being a nocturnal creature Janitor is instantly triggered by the lights turned on, which will cause him to forget everything, run towards the room and investigate it, with high chances of walking inside and patrol it.
• Opened Doors – Small detection range, almost point blank. He’ll make a short run for it, stand in doorway looking around and go outside. Be aware that even with lights turned off he actually can investigate certain rooms in some few, very specific cases.
• Lighter – Very small detection range, almost non-existent. Yet if you pull it out while hiding behind the desk or inside toilet stall – yeah, he’ll notice.

Audio Triggers (things that alert him when he hears them):

• Player Movement – Distance depends on type of player movement and difficulty. Running is the loudest, it’s radius is a bit smaller than visual detection, but it’s still quite big. Walking has the relatively short detection distance, just few meters away. Crouching\Stealthing is completely silent and he can’t hear the player at all.
• Single Doors Being Opened or Closed – Medium detection radius. When you open a single door, like those in the toilets or in the Principal Office in MB2, for example – there is a good chance he’ll hear that and rush to investigate. Most common reason of alerting the Janitor. And yes, hearing the door being opened triggers him from much bigger distance than just seing it already opened.
  • Difficulty affects the detection radius – on Hell he’ll hear you running from the other side of the building and will never lose you yet he’s basically deaf on Very Easy.

Important to know:

His hearing radius – is a sphere, meaning he’ll hear you running or opening the doors above or below him. Always keep that in mind so he won’t jumpscare you with seemingly random detection.

Bugs: Sometimes the game bugs out and he’ll rush at you without you seemingly doing anything at all. Be warned about that and be ready to react. Same may happen when you backtrack and enter another building – he’ll rush at you without even knowing about your presence at all.

There is also a bug, when you save the game, close it completely, then launch again and load your save, and few moments later Janitor is rushing at you from whereever he was before that and he’ll run directly at you, no matter where you hide.

Rushing towards the toilets or starting a chase and losing him is the only valid option.

As another bug he can hear you running in the roof pool of NB, he’ll clip through the floor and attack you, which can be quite a unexpected jumpscare. This is especially noticeable on Ji-Min’s route, again – be aware.

Things That Do Not Alert Janitor at All

• Double sliding doors – while it seems logical that since opening single doors alerts him this should alert him as well, but no, it doesn’t. Most of the rooms in MB1-MB2 have this kind of doors, as well as two exits, which allows you to safely move around him. Do know that seing an opened door still alerts him from close distance.
• Toilet stall doors – he doesn’t care at all, never hears them and never reacts on them being opened.
• Picking up items or interacting with puzzles – again, he doesn’t care if something is missing.

How to Dominate Janitor

While he’s all-hearing and all-seing God of the School, he’s also quite dumb and easy to trick.

So here are the tips how to do that, in no particular order:

• Hiding in the toilets is one of the safest ways of loosing the chase. He will never check it even if he heard you running towards it. He will only open it if he actually saw you entering it, so don’t try to hide there if he’s really close.
• Hiding behind furniture is another valid option. You can hide behind small school-desk and he won’t see you, even in well-lit room. It may seem dumb, like – you can see him clearly and he’s right in front of you, but as long as there is some furniture between you – he’ll never see you at all. Imagine a big, 2 meter high solid cube – that’s how it looks for him. And yes, if he saw you walking behind the furniture then trying to stealth – this won’t work. Always break the line of sight first.
• On lower difficulties you can outrun him. While your stamina is quite limited on higher difficulties, only your fear of him stops you from alerting him and leading him away from puzzle objectives.
• Always have somewhere to run and avoid being cornered. You can’t clip through him, which means that if he corners you – he kills you.
• Janitor can hit you and kill you during non-cutscene interactions. “Inserting a glyph” as example, so if you are planning to quickly put it in when he’s right behind you – don’t. The very first glyph is an exception since it launches the cutscene which resets the Janitor. As another example – “ghost interactions”. As example – I’ve triggered Library Ghost and she has like 10 second long animation which locks you in place, during which the Janitor walked into the Reading Room, noticed me, ran to me and killed me before she even reached me.
• Use his AI patterns against him. You can open all the doors in the coridor and turn the lights on – when he arrives there he’ll spend some time investigating. As another example – in MB2 he may patrol a specific floor you’ll need to access and even if you alerted him and ran towards toilets – he still returns to the same coridor. Try opening the stairs door, alert him and hide in the toilet again, he will notice the stairs being opened on his way back and investigate, with a big chance of going towards staircase and other floors as well.
• Cutscenes reset him to a pre-determined position, you can use this by running from him towards cutscene trigger and after that he’ll be moved away on patrol as if he never saw you at all.
• At some points he’ll disappear from the level completely, this is refered in Full Guide as “downtime” or safe time. More info about it in the next section.

Important to know: It is often that you can’t see him, often to hear him outside the room. Listen closely and be aware what he is doing. If he’s really close – a very specific “menacing” music will start playing, and it will keep playing until its end, even if he’s already walked away. His footsteps may also hint the direction of his movements. If he’s been alerted by an opened door, he says something like “Grr?”, so you can picture in your head which door he just closed and what he’s doing now. Also pay attention on his flashlight, sometimes you can hide from his sight yet still be able to see the direction of his lights.

There are actually two Janitors:

• Janitor 1: bald one, limping, has metal bat and emits a specific “keyring shaking” sound when walking. Even more specific sound of “keyring shaking menacingly” when he’s running. This helps tremendously in detecting his general position around you as well as his alertness status. Patrols MB1 and MB2.
• Janitor 2: wears a hat, has wooden bat and is whistling while on patrol. This one doesn’t have any keys, so if he heard or saw you yet you’re too far to start a chase – he’ll run at you silently. Which makes him far more dangerous than the first one. A good way to check if he will hear you opening the door is to do that while he’s mid-whistling – he’ll instantly interrupt himself. Patrols NB only.

Safe Time (No Janitor Around)

There are few very specific points in the game when Janitor is not present at all. Plan ahead and use these moments in your advantage.

• Any Timed Events (boss fights) – devs realized that it would be ridiculous to solve puzzles in the very limited time while also hiding from this guy, so any timed event is completely safe. If you have some spare time – you can use it to pick up some items, open some doors, even find some Ji-Min’s doodles.
• Any Girls Events – any time you walk-and-talk with someone like So-Young – he won’t be around. In general any moment when he can realistically harm a girl when he’s around – he won’t be around. Again – use to your advantage.

More specific examples:

MB1

• At the very start of the game he’s not present at all.
• When you open the coridor with the key you got from Seong-A, it will trigger a cutscene and he’ll spawn outside the room you’ll find yourself in. You can safely run outside and activate the glyph, this will launch another cutscene and reset him.
• If you completed the game at least once with any So-Young endings, activating first glyph completely despawns him and spawns Ji-Min and her first interaction. He won’t be around until you pick up the Janitor Notice from the mailbox, after that Ji-Min disappears and Janitor is back on the level.
• Defeating the boss despawns the Janitor. Since now you have MB1 Master Key – you can enter almost every room and get all the items you can. Just be sure that 2nd glyph will be the last item you’ll pick up.
• When you pick the 2nd glyph and walk outside the classroom – this will start the cutscene, after which the Janitor is back. If you collected all 10 Ji-Min doodles and chose her route (investigate the crying sounds) – you can run outside then towards the staircase, completely ignore the Janitor nearby and it will trigger second Ji-Min cutscene, teleport you at the toilet room with the Janitor patroling outside. If you didn’t collect the doodles before picking up the glyph – this cutscene will never happen.

MB2

• At the very start of the level he’s not present at all.
• If you open Lost and Found room and trigger second baby interaction – this will spawn him.
• If you open the Principal Office and watch the camera feed – this will spawn him right outside the office. If you also left the door open he may come in and investigate it.
• Defeating the boss of this level will despawn him too. Again, use this time to check any rooms for the items you may missed then pick up the 3rd glyph and go to NB.

NB

• He is always around from the beginning.
• Dying to a 2nd boss in NB reloads you at the entrance to her room and the fight won’t start until you walk towards her, with the Janitor despawned. Which allows you to explore the building and pick up any items you want, while also allowing to turn on the lights for the lights puzzle without painfully stealthing to them. Extremely useful on Hell Mode.
• After defeating the last boss (running sequence) – Janitor is despawned and the building is yours to explore.

Floating Head Ghost

Floating Head Ghost – initially it’s not in the game and she starts harassing player after 2 hours of your current playthrough (midnight in the game time). You will hear a loud clock ringing and she will spawn together with it. Your vision will become distorted, like with some white noise and you start hearing very distinctive sound with “scratches”, which will become louder as she’s getting closer to you. You can’t see her if you’re looking directly at her, but if youre looking around you’ll be able to spot her with the corner of your eye. When she reaches you she’ll give you a jumpscare and damage your stamina. You can actually run away from her and despawn her, yet there is little sense in running around and risking alerting the Janitor.

She will come back each 20-30 mins at random. On Hell her first spawn starts after 1h of playtime.

Just remember – apart from being creepy and hitting your stamina – she’s not really damaging your health and is basically harmless. Her purpose is to unnerve you, the player, make you panic and do stupid things. Just lower the sound of your speakers or pull off your headphones for a couple of seconds if she really creeps you out.

Oh and she can spawn outside level borders, after that she flies through floors and walls directly at you and if you rush to the corner of the building and think that at least with a solid wall behind your back you’ll be able to see her and she won’t hit you from behind – she may actually do just that.

Hell Mode

The Hell Mode is the most difficult mode in the game, where not only everything hits you harder and you can’t save the game manually, yet your biggest friend, The Janitor, also receives a very noticeable AI upgrade. So here are few tips in no particular order to make this more manageable:

• Janitor kills you in just two hits. If you drink just one Soy Milk after being hit – it’s already three hits, which may make a huge difference.
• He also hears you from very far, sees you from very far and chases you relentlessly. Staircases in MB1-MB2 are particularly dangerous, since they cut off the sounds and you cannot be sure if he’s still be able to hear you or not. It often locks you in the toilet, which you cannot leave since you need to open the door, which he hears and runs back. A good strategy is to open the door and wait 3-4 seconds before moving outside, if you hear him running – close the door and rush back into toilet stall.
• He also almost stops walking away and tends to patrol around your objectives, refusing to leave some places at all. If alerting him is inevitable – think ahead which room to use for hiding.
• If you are being chased – put as many closed doors between you as possible, each will noticeably slow him down and give you precious seconds to hide. Learn to close them behind you while running.
• Remember to close the Principal Office door in MB2 behind you before touching anything. Leaving it open is the easiest way to be cornered and the dumbest way of dying on Hell.
• Avoid being cornered at all. Learn the layout of the rooms around you with furniture you can hide behind and have a plan where to run. This is especially important in NB, since walking into wrong classroom will make you a lovetoy to your friendly neighboorhood Spidergirl Ghost – you obviously can’t hide there, so if noticed – open the map (The Janitor will kindly wait) and see which is the closest and safest room to run for.
• If you hear a weird sound like a door being closed – it’s not an ambient sound, its Janitor right above-below you just closed the door. Good reminder not to run.
• Avoid running unless absolutely sure you can get away with that. Walking and crouching is your choice, especially around staircases. Nothing better than run into a Janitor, get a hit, panic and die.
• Remember, darkness can’t hurt you, doesn’t affect Floating Head attack chances so just sitting there with your lighter off may be unnerving, but safe. Ambient sounds also cannot hurt you. Again, unnerving, yet safe.
• Since you need to complete the game on Hard to unlock the Hell, use this to discover all of the ghosts, learn their spawn conditions and avoid them. Some like Window Girl in MB1 or Grandmother in NB are harmless while Library Ghost or Housemistress can hurt you quite hard and make you waste your limited healing items.
• Speaking of these – there is no point in hoarding these coins, use any opportunity to buy more heals.
• Tranquilizers – useless on Normal and below these are insanely valuable on Hell due to your limited stamina. There is nothing better than losing your stamina mid-chase or during Timed Event. I can’t stress it enough, but collect as much as possble if not every single one of them. You can’t buy them in the vending machine either, so each one is precious.

• If everything fails, you can always use an exploit – backup your save file.
• The path to savefiles is:
  • \LocalLow\ SONNORI\ White Day_a labyrinth named school
• And the file you need is autosave.wdf

Pay attention to lower-left corner of the screen. Each time you see the flashing red “W” symbol – the game just made an autosave, which you may use do backup your game. As well as use such files as your “hard saves” for different endings.

One Last Thing

It’s not that hard as it may seem. As example I’ve completed my White Chrysantemium Hell Run and died only twice. First time I left Principal Office door opened. And the second one on purpose, to Hiding Face Ghost to make light puzzle easier. I finished the game with like 18-19 spare pens without needing to use backups at all.

And I’m far from being a pro-player, so if a random generic guy could do that – you can do that as well.