In this guide, I would like to introduce Metaphysical to completely new players. It is an amazing game that just needs its community to grow – and that includes having more guides and discussions here on Steam. I myself am currently only something over twenty hours in, so I cannot claim to know this game perfectly. I am still learning and testing things (and adding them here as I go). If you find anything in this guide is wrong or if you think something is missing, let me know.

In each mission, you have to figure out the type of the creature haunting the place. Then, if you have the necessary tools, you have to destroy it. You must do at least one of these two to get a monetary reward! (yes, you can actually in some cases destroy the creature while getting the type wrong)

The goal of the entire game is to destroy each type of creature multiple times to unlock more information about them, customizations and roles.

The game is made in such a way that you have to climb your way up. You do not have access to everything at first, you cannot destroy every creature. It might even be hard to identify the creature correctly at first, due to lack of equipment and experience. But getting over these initial difficulties and becoming a capable hunter is very satisfying as a result! Persevere!

First thing you want to do is probably checking your settings and keybinds. Change anything if necessary.

Walk to the trunk of your car and by clicking on the shopping magazine, you can buy your items. If you did a tutorial, you should already have all the most basic equipment. If you didn’t – make sure to get one of each of these basic items – Flashlight, EMF device, Thermometer, Shovel, Gasoline, Disposable Lighter, Ghostbox and (as much as the money will probably pain you) the Motion Detector. Additionally, get at least one Salt and one Chalk – the first one can be needed to kill some creatures and the second one is a vital means of protection during hunts. I suggest always keeping one chalk on you.

Extremely important – if you die, you lose all items that are not placed in the trunk (so either in your hands or placed in the house). So especially at the beginning, it will be a very good idea to not walk around with many items in your hands (and you have five slots for them!). You have infinite sprint, make use of it and keep bringing your items back to the trunk as soon as you are done using them. If you normally finish a mission without dying, you do not lose the items in your hands, they will stay there.

Also notice that you can use your flashlight in your off-hand while holding other equipment by pressing the flashlight button.

More items will be unlocked as you progress in the game, and they will allow you to destroy more types of creatures and offer you more means of protection.

Choose the contract by clicking on the steering wheel of your car. A newspaper with various contracts (and other news) will appear and you can choose a map to go to. The newspaper has three pages. The contracts are random and sometimes you will not have many options. Hopefully that will be adjusted soon.

At the bottom of the newspaper, you can choose the difficulty. It is always set to Rookie when you start up the game. Aside from Rookie, there are two higher difficulties that give you a little bit more money at the cost of higher danger of death.

There are small, medium, large and huge maps. Try one of the small maps at first. Trumbo Street 14 and 13 are very small and great for a beginner. Salisbury street is very good too. Stretford Isle is a slightly bigger small map. If you choose Bradfordshire Street, you will need to find the correct appartment (the one that is unlocked) in the appartment building, it is not a normal house - so don't go looking for the creature in the entire place!

If you want to play multiplayer, you have to go online by clicking on the passenger seat!

This game also has a fuse box mechanic. Some creatures can directly interact with it. If there are too many lights on at the location, the fuse will be blown and you will have to start it up again. Four lights are the limit - for all sizes of maps, from small to huge.

Staying in the light keeps you protected longer from hunts and hallucinations. But it also means it will take longer for some types of evidence to appear, since they are linked to the creature's aggression.

Werewolf only hunts if it is dark.

Grieving Gargoyle is very special in regards to light. It cannot move in rooms with light. This is including outside hunts. This means that if you keep lights on and it is this creature, it will just become trapped somewhere and nothing will be happening. If you start feeling like the creature is broken, not doing anything, try turning off lights. Might be this poor guy stuck somewhere.

There are currently 22 creatures in the game (+ seasonal ones that appear only for holidays, like Krampus), so quite a few!

You can identify a creature by what evidence it exhibits (or doesn’t), by the behavior towards defense items during hunts, by the unique models of creatures you see during hunts (and sometimes they show up for a moment even outside hunts, if they are triggered enough) and later on from other behavior patterns (this knowledge you will only unlock after destroying enough creatures of that type – see ‘Expert points’ in this guide).

I usually start the game by trying to get as much evidence as possible. Then, if I am still uncertain about the creature type, I have to trigger a hunt to get a look at the model and get EMF (this happens a lot, you are either uncertain if you can cross out certain evidence or in some cases creatures can even have the exact same set of evidence!).

The creatures in this game walk throughout the entire place. They do not seem to have one favorite room, so you should be checking the entire place for evidence.

MOTION DETECTOR
It’s by far the easiest evidence to check (together with ghost orbs). Great to do first! Take it to the house and place it wisely on a wall - so the creature is very likely to walk through the laser beam (the stairway, the main hallway…). If placed well, you will usually get the motion sensor within half a minute. If it still doesn’t sound after one or two minutes, it is highly likely NOT motion sensor and you can cross it out confidently. As soon as you are done with motion sensor, bring it back to the trunk – it is expensive and you do not want to lose it if you accidentally die! Note that the motion sensor is also triggered by players going through the laserbeam. You hear an obvious sound when the motion detector is triggered.

GHOST ORB
Second easiest to find or cross off. Unfortunately, you need a camera for it, which is only unlocked at level 2. Buy it as soon as you can. With turned off lights and the flashlight (to improve your vision), walk throughout the entire place. A ghost orb is a very obvious ball of light just floating about eye-level. It's movements seem to be tied to the creature - if you happen to have a creature that has both motion detector and an orb, you can notice the motion detector goes off whenever the orb floats through it.

FINGERPRINTS
Put your flashlight in your main hand and toggle it to UV by pressing right mouse button. Check the doors (both sides). Fingerprints are very obvious big green handprints. Even if the creature has fingerprints, it does not always leave them after interacting with doors! Don’t get baited into crossing them off! I would suggest NEVER crossing fingerprints off, in fact! Sometimes you get them fast, but other times you need to keep checking for a fairly long time to see them.

COLD SPOTS and FREEZING TEMPERATURES
Obviously, you need to use the thermometer for this. You can just walk around the place while watching the device. No need to point it at the ground, it measures the temperature around you, not the object you point it to. Normal temperature is around 15-17°C. If it drops about bellow 12°C, you are having cold spots. There is now a sound clue from the thermometer, so it is less likely to miss it. If you notice cold spots, walk around a bit more and watch out for temps bellow 0°C. When it is freezing, you can sometimes also see your breath. You may need to wait some time (and perhaps needle the creature a little bit with words) before the cold spots start showing up, so don’t give up after one check of the place – go try looking for another evidence and return back to checking temps later. Freezing usually shows up relatively fast, so after some time, you could cross it off. But if the creature has only cold spots without freezing, they can be really elusive, so I wouldn't cross off cold spots.

GHOSTBOX
Relatively hard to reliably get. I don’t recommend ever crossing it off. Just turn it on and start saying phrases and asking questions. It does not matter if the light is on or off for this game. For example: “Are you friendly?”, “Where are you?”, “Are you here?”, “Are you old?”, “Are you female?”, “Are you pizza?”, “Are you French?”. Fairly often, it will mishear you and you will find that you have instead said some expletive… Anyway, if you get lucky, the creature will give you an answer (both verbal and written on the ghostbox). If the ghostbox is not hearing you, try pushing windows button twice (if you have windows) and/or check you microphone setting (do you have push to talk or open mic? is the game using the right microphone?). If nothing works or you don’t have a mic at all, you have an option to use a button to ‘speak’ for you.


EMF and EMF5
The only truly reliable way to get and possibly cross off EMF: The creature must materialize and you have to walk up close and personal to get the EMF reading. EMF can also show up when the creature is already very riled up but not visible, again on top of it. You can trigger a hunt (see the Hunt section), lock the creature in or behind a chalk pentagram and walk close enough to get EMF without getting hit. The creatures sometimes show up for a moment even outside hunts (if they are at least a little 'riled up'), but I have not had much luck in catching them with EMF in hand. Relatively newly, you can get EMF from interactions - for example from the door being opened by the creature. This might not be 100% reliable, the creature might have to first be a bit riled up to give a reading.

After marking and crossing out evidence in the journal, you can see what creatures it can be on the right side of the journal (the impossible ones will be grayed out). If there is still more than one option, look at their pages, check their information and decide based on the model you see during hunts, its behavior towards pentagrams (gets trapped in or walks around), salt etc. The model in particular is very useful - 7 of the creatures have completely unique models and the rest can be divided into small groups (the three Japanese creatures have a common model of which one is invisible unless you drink sake, two have a demonic model and again one is invisible when sober, one creature is fully invisible and the remaining five have a basic humanoid model). This allows for fairly consistently speedrunning this game without evidence by trigerring a hunt immediately while holding a variety of protection items.

There are five ways to destroy creatures based on their type. When you first start the game, you can only do one of them, so all other creatures, you will just have to identify and leave the mission. As you get more money and rise in levels, you will be able to buy more equipment and destroy more creatures.


BURNING THE HUMAN REMAINS
Works on Spirit, Revenant and Phantom. If you put salt into the grave first, you can also get rid of Poltergeist or Buruburu. For this type of exorcism (only for this one), you need to find out the name of the creature. Look around the house for notes. They can be on the ground, on tables, shelves or in some drawers. Pick them up and look at the name on top. Mark the name in your journal on the Evidence page. There are (or should be) five notes on each map. Some spawn spots are a bit tricky to find, so at the beginning you might think you only have four notes sometimes. It's usually just because it was in a super sneaky spawn spot. The name that shows up three times is your creature. You can look for these notes while you are checking temps for example, even if you still don’t know whether you will need the name or not.

After getting the name, take a shovel, gasoline, disposable lighter and salt (if it is needed). Somewhere outside nearby the haunted place you will find a small cemetery. Find the grave with the corresponding name. Use the shovel on the ground in front of it, then again to break open the coffin. If it’s a Poltergeist or Buruburu, now is the time to apply the salt (right click). Pour in the gasoline (right click). Now take the lighter, turn it on and drop it. The grave will catch on fire and you should be hearing a scream from afar.

Notice that this exorcism is quite costly – you will have to buy new gasoline and lighter (and salt).



SHOTGUN WITH SILVER OR SALT AMMUNITION
At level 3, you unlock a shotgun. You can now kill four more creatures – Shapeshifter, Ghoul, Arachne and Werewolf with SILVER ammunition.

The shotgun is loaded with salt bullets on default, you have to load it with silver first! (unless it's the Grieving Gargoyle) In the trunk, click on the silver bullets it to change it. Whenever you toggle to the shotgun, it will tell you what it is loaded with in the left down corner. You only have TWO BULLETS at a time. Then you have to go reload.

If you are dealing with Arachne, you need to first be transported into her temple by touching her during a hunt. There, you can start shooting her. On higher difficulties, take some additional protection (holy water) because your two shots might not be enough to kill her. You might have to do it in two hunts. Btw, Arachne is very special – she can actually trap you in webs around the house that you can only see with a camera and be destroyed with a lighter.

For Shapeshifter, Ghoul and Werewolf, you need to first let them walk into a chalk pentagram. Once you shoot them, the will be free from the pentagram (stand far away!). Shooting them again outside the pentagram will end the hunt, but the creature is still alive. You need to recapture it in another pentagram and repeat the process (reload !!!). It takes more shots on higher difficulties. They are dead if they burst in flames. Werewolf only hunts in the dark.

At level 6, you can exorcise Grieving Gargoyle: you need to use SALT ammunition, but also you must first lure it into a pentagram covered with a carpet (unlocked at level 6) IN THE DARK, then TURN ON THE LIGHTS and then shoot it. Once is enough. You have only one carpet, which means you have only one chance to do it right. If you put the carpet in a room with destroyed lights, you cannot finish the exorcism.


EXORCISM
The exorcism book is unlocked at level 5. You can now exorcise 4 more creatures. Once you get a carpet at level 7, you will be able to also exorcise the Demon, the Wendigo (+ seasonal Krampus).

Demon, Krampus, Nightmare, Banshee and the Nun can be exorcised by catching them in a pentagram and saying the Latin phrases in the exorcism book. Demon, Krampus and Nun will not walk into a pentagram if they can see it – you have to cover it up with a carpet (at level 6).

However, you can exorcise the Nun at level 5, because it can transport you to a church if you touch her. Once there, you can do the exorcism without a pentagram. Just start reading from the book. Only problem is that the lightning there is bad at the moment, so you may not see the lines. You might have to copy them on a paper and read them out from there until it is fixed.

Baba Yaga is also exorcised this way, after she transports you into her forest. On harder difficulties, especially Winchester: bring in holy water into the forest. Read one line, end the hunt with holy water, then go again and again until you kill her. Do not run, she starts also running and she is faster. One touch from her in the forest and you are dead, which makes this one of the hardest creatures to deal with on Winchester.

Wendigo must first have its remains burnt (without salt) before you trap it in a pentagram (with carpet) and exorcise it.

Successful exorcism leads to a creature swallowed by flames and a lot of screaming.

About the exorcism – if the book can hear you, the line will shine red for a moment. If it was at a valid moment (= worked on the creature), the line will be crossed out. The lines will stay crossed, even if the hunt stops midway, so you can just continue later where you left off.

The voice recognition is sometimes tricky. Practice a bit heading into action, make sure it is hearing you right. I had troubles with the first line, it just wouldn’t recognize it. I had to change from push to talk to open mic and also change my windows setting to use the in-built-microphone instead of default (even thought the in-built-mic IS the default).

The devs also added another option if you do not have a microphone (or have significant troubles with it), so you can just push a button and move your mouse to ‘read’ the lines. This is especially useful with Baba Yaga, since she is not patiently waiting in a pentagram but actively trying to kill you as you struggle with voice recognition.


KNIFE
From level 6, you can start stabbing creatures. Super easy to use (in theory - you need to get close to them and are likely to get hit yourself). Will destroy Drak, Domowoy (note that Domowoys are invisible unless you are drunk on sake), Siren (drink sake to avoid getting charmed!) and Djinn. Djinn has to first kidnap you into his dreamland by touching you, and then you can start stabbing.

If you successfully stab them enough times, they will start burning.

KATANA
The very last way, unlocked at level 7, reserved for two Japanese creatures: Yuki Ona and Shojo (Shojo is only visible when you are drunk!).


Once done with exorcism (or if you can't yet exorcise the creature), you finish the mission either by clicking on the steering wheel or clicking ‘Finish job’ in the Esc menu.

In general, the more you interact with the creature, the more active it becomes. You interact through your voice (or recently, they added an option to just use a button for those without a microphone). It also helps if you stay in the dark. If you never speak to the creature and keep the lights on, you can pretty much walk around the house for ten minutes without anything happening.

If you want the creature to be more active and to hunt, the fastest way is to start saying various expletives and/or religious words like ‘Jesus’, ‘Jesus Christ’, ‘God’. I like to sing various verses from the musical Jesus Christ Superstar and it works like a charm!

What does a hunt look like? You will realize that immediately. Your character starts breathing like they have a panic attack. You cannot leave the location (the door closes). The creature will become visible and will give you EMF reading if they have it (unless it is one of the invisible creatures like a Phantom – some of those can be seen by first getting drunk on sake, you unlock that at level 4). And of course the creature will walk straight for you and start hitting you. Some creatures, when you first make physical contact with them, will first transport you to their special location and only start killing you there. Depending on the difficulty, you can take different number of hits before dying.

There are various ways of defense in this game. But not all of them work on all creatures. On each of the creature’s page in the journal, you can see what items will work.

CHALK – in my opinion, the OP most important defense item. I would suggest ALWAYS having some chalk on you, because it works on ALL BUT THREE creatures. It’s just that some will step in and get trapped inside the pentagram, while others will avoid it and walk around it. So placing it in a doorway or other narrow place will create the perfect barrier between you and any creature. Only a Siren, Phantom and Domowoy will go straight through without minding it. Beware that the pentagram will wear off after some time and the chalk is a one use item. And you cannot place a new pentagram over the old one. It’s a good idea to have one in your hand at all times + at least one more in your trunk. Get it from the very start!

SALT – you can place 3 piles of salt with one pack. It is a one use item. Don’t place it too long before the hunt (or ideally just do it during the hunt), because it disappears after some time has passed. Some creatures cannot walk through salt, so if you place the salt to block off a door entrance (or a hallway, anything narrow), you can safely place yourself on the other side from the creature. It is your only way of defence against a Phantom and a Siren.

HOLY WATER – unlocked at level 2. With certain creatures, you can instantly end a hunt by splashing them. Works on 13 out of 22 creatures. It may seem like it should be, but it's not one use. Very useful to carry this with you alongside chalk at all times. This is your only defence against a Domowoy.

SHOTGUN – unlocked at level 3. If you load it with SALT (by clicking on the bullets in the middle of the trunk), you can use it to instantly end a hunt. Again, doesn't work on all of them. You have two bullets, then you have to go load it again in the trunk.

HUNTING KNIFE (level 6) and KATANA (level 7) - although they have their 'icons' among the defence items in the journal, no creatures can currently be defended against by these items, they are only for exorcism. So unless you suspect you might be dealing with a creature exorcised by one of these (or you are in multiplayer with everyone bringing in a bit of something), there is no sense carrying them.

Staying in the darkness too long lets the creature slowly start affecting your mind. Your vision will start going blurry and you might experience black-and-white hallucinations that can stun you for a moment. You get gradually better if you go outside the house or turn on the lights.

This is mostly perfectly prevented if you stay in lit up rooms. You are more likely going to be affected on larger maps since you wouldn't light up all the rooms you search through for notes/artifacts (the four lights limit on the fuse box is too annoying for that).

It seems to take about 3-5 minutes of staying in the dark. It is affected by the type of creature you are dealing with, some cause fear to kick in sooner than others. Surprisingly, the difficulty doesn't matter.

In Metaphysical, you quickly realize you need a LOT of money. Many items are one use only. If you die with any equipment on you or in the house, it’s lost forever and you have to buy it again.

To get ANY money from a mission, you must either correctly identify the creature or destroy it (or both of course). DYING DOESN'T MATTER! You get no penalty for dying and still receive money for what you accomplished (so fill in the creature!).

Additionally, you will receive money for collecting artifacts that are laying around on the map somewhere – a music box, a goblet, a teddy-bear, a book… There seem to always be three artifacts on the map.




More money is received for correctly marking in the evidence the creature exhibits in your journal. For each evidence you correctly mark or not mark/cross out in the journal, you get a little bit of money. So after you identify the creature, make sure to check what evidence it has on its page and make sure it is all marked on the ‘Evidence’ page. After that, select the creature type! Every time you change anything about the evidence, it will put the creature selection on default and you have to choose it again!

Playing on multiplayer will give you money for correctly guessing the creature and/or killing it even if you die just like on singlepayer. Everyone always gets the full payout for what your team did. This makes multiplayer SO much easier than singleplayer in this game. You essentially get more lives.

Playing on higher difficulty will result in a higher reward for killing the creature (not for identifying it or getting the artifacts though). Rookie gives a 100, Hunter 150 and Winchester 200.
Interestingly, sometimes you might make less money on higher difficulties! This is the case for Shapeshifter or Ghoul, because you need to draw more pentagrams and thus lose more chalk.

Playing on a larger map currently doesn't lead to higher rewards (you only increase the risk of not finding all the artifacts). So I don't recommend larger maps if you are trying to get rich fast.

Once you get access to your own headquarters, you will be getting JOBS. Those jobs are scripted (the creature is not random) and they have specific requirements (map, difficulty, items available). Most importantly, they give massive payouts! 100% worth it. They can be done in multiplayer as well.

You will be offered to get your own bunker by a guy creepily standing behind your car. It's all extremely suspicious, a property for 2 000 dollars can be nothing but a scam. But fear not! Brave players before you accepted the offer and did not end up robbed or kidnapped! So once you get the money, go for it! Don't make it your first goal in the game, though, you might want to get all the essential equipment as a priority - it's an investment to make money faster.

The bunker is huge, with a giant library, a dormitory and a garage.

In the garage, your car is waiting for you and you can buy items and enter missions.

In the dorms, you have your own room that you can decorate for a bit of money (magazine is on the board next to the door).


In the library, there is a glass stand with all the different types artifacts you have collected. But most importantly, there is Billy (the sus guy), offering you some very lucrative jobs on his ancient computer! If you complete them, they pay really well. But some of the jobs come with different requirements, like not using your flashlight. Next to the computer, there is also the newspaper that can be used to enter normal missions. And to the right, a giant globe lets you go online to play on multiplayer. On one of the tables in the middle of the library, you will find a magazine to buy items.

For destroying creatures, you get expert points (the amount you get seems random to me, sometimes I get three points for a kill, sometimes nine, no idea if there is any rule for that). You can view it in the ‘Statistics’. For each creature, every ten points it reveals some additional information about the creature on its page. You will get to know if the creature can interact with light switches, disrupt your flashlight, turn crosses…

Once you become an expert on a creature (at 30 points), you unlock some customization for a certain item on the ‘Customization’ page.