The Ditch Hotel Beginner Guide: Tips to Survive Every Run

The Ditch Hotel is a knock-and-run survival game on Roblox: you knock on hotel doors to earn Cash, sprint away before the angry guest inside bursts out, and escape down the stairs once you hit your door goal. Every room hides one of six guests, from Grandma to BIG EARL and his machine gun, and getting caught ends your run unless you spend a Revive. This beginner guide walks through the full loop, every guest, and the tips that keep your first runs alive.

How a Run Works: Knock, Run, Hide, Escape

Every run follows the same four-step rhythm, and understanding it is 90% of the game:

1. Knock on doors. Approach any hotel room door and knock. Every successful knock earns you Cash, and each knock counts toward the door goal for your run.
2. Sprint away immediately. The guest inside does not appreciate being woken up. The moment you hear or see the door latch start to give, you should already be moving — the door flies open seconds after you knock.
3. Hide when you’re spotted. If a guest spots you or starts a chase, duck into a linen locker, get in, and hold your breath until they lose interest. Lockers are your only real escape from a committed pursuer.
4. Escape down the stairs. Once you reach the required number of doors, make for the exit stairs to clear the level and cash out.

Getting caught means your character goes down on the spot. A Revive brings you straight back into the run so you can keep going; without one, the run is over. That is the whole penalty loop — knock, survive, escape, and spend the proceeds on getting better at all three.

Every Guest Behind the Doors

Six different guests can be waiting behind the doors, and each one changes how you should react the second the door opens:

The practical takeaway: not every door is equal. Grandma and Screaming Dad are survivable with sharp movement, and they are great teachers for your first few runs. The Gunman and BIG EARL punish standing in open hallways, so the moment their doors open, your priority is cover — which usually means the nearest linen locker. Bruiser the Dog is the fastest thing in the hotel, and a long straight corridor against him is a losing race.

Essential Beginner Tips

These are the habits that separate new players who survive from new players who get caught:

• Never linger at the door. The single most common beginner death is watching to see who comes out. Knock, turn, and sprint. Curiosity has a Cash cost.
• Learn the locker layout first. When you arrive on a floor, note where the nearest linen lockers are before you start knocking. When a chase starts, you want to be running toward a known locker, not scanning the hallway for one.
• Start on Easy. Easy difficulty is the right place to learn each guest’s behavior and how the chase rhythm works. Step up to Hard, Difficult, or IMPOSSIBLE only once guests feel predictable.
• Save your Revives for the hard stuff. Revives are most valuable on the higher difficulties and against the nastiest guests, where a single mistake would otherwise end a strong run. Don’t burn them on floor one.
• Put early Cash into Speed and Stamina. Cash buys permanent upgrades, and movement stats are what keep you alive against Bruiser and BIG EARL. Flashy knock styles are fun, but survival upgrades first, spectacle later.
• Queue with friends. You can ride the elevator up with up to 4 players total, and the chaos is far more forgiving — and fun — when it’s shared.

Difficulties and Playing with Friends

The Ditch Hotel offers four difficulties: Easy, Hard, Difficult, and IMPOSSIBLE. Higher difficulties bring faster and more persistent guests, and the game expects you to climb this ladder as your permanent upgrades stack up. A brand-new player should treat Easy as the tutorial, Hard as the first real test, and Difficult and IMPOSSIBLE as goals to work toward.

Multiplayer is built into the structure of the game. You gather in the elevator area with up to 4 players total, pick your difficulty, and ride up into the hotel together — servers hold up to 16 players. The game supports voice chat and camera, so coordinating mid-chase is genuinely viable. One extra feature worth knowing: you can pull out your in-game phone and film your best ditches, which is exactly as dangerous and hilarious as it sounds.

Spending Cash: Upgrades and the Knock Shop

Everything you earn feeds two progression systems. First, Cash purchases permanent upgrades that stay with you across runs — core stats like Speed and Stamina, passive perks, and equipment. These are the quiet power curve of the game, and they are what eventually makes IMPOSSIBLE feel fair.

Second, the Knock Shop sells 9 knock styles, ranging from a simple tap up to the Sledgehammer and the legendary FLYING KICK, which sends you straight through the door. Knock styles change how each knock looks, sounds, and lands, and collecting them is the closest thing the game has to a cosmetics wardrobe — pick a favorite and make every knock a statement.

If you want to accelerate, the Gift Shop sells gamepasses: 2x Speed, 2x Stamina, 2x Closet Hide, 2x Money, and VIP. None of them are required — the game is fully playable for free — but doubling Speed or Money compounds with your permanent upgrades over time.

Start with Free Codes

Before you grind your first floor, claim the free codes. The Ditch Hotel currently has 6 working codes worth a combined 9,000 Cash and 5 Revives — see the full list and redemption steps in All Working The Ditch Hotel Codes. That is more than enough to buy your first meaningful upgrades and step into harder difficulties early.

The game is brand new — created on October 31, 2026 by @javonthekid412 under the Jayqui Studios group — and had already passed 612,000 visits as of early November 2026, with the developer shipping updates and milestone codes steadily. New codes drop in the official Jayqui Studios Discord, so a game this young is worth checking back on.