Goals:
- Explore Vincent's place
- Kill the Injured Neighbor / Leering Husk
- Get Sam to level 3

Water and talk to your plant.
Pick up your money and the medkit.
Interact 4 times with your bookshelf to get Screamatorium.
Play SuperJumplad twice to learn Jump Attack and reach level 2.

We will be using Jump Attack for the Leering Husk fight.
You're likely to have a random encounter. If you see a merchant, I advise you to keep your money.

Now, go to the hallway and head to Vincent's apartment


Explore all rooms (except the top left one that requires a key) and loot what is easily accessible.
You want to avoid all fights. It's relatively easy to avoid the enemies by hugging the walls.

I'm listing below the important items to pick up:

• The Carving Fork in the living room
  
• The fridge
  
• The cleanerex in the bathroom
  
• The shocky bar

Equip the Carving Fork and go to the apartment below.

I find the Glasses difficult to loot safely. If you're able to get them, they're great for the Leering Husk fight.


Pick up the baseball bat (you will probably need it)
Engage with the wounded Neighbor

There are few things to know for this fight:

• After 3 turns, the Wounded Neighbor transforms into the Leering Husk (after stabbing himself multiple times), setting his HP to 200 (all previous damage is cancelled). It's best to guard on the 3 first turns.
  
• It's possible to kill the Wounded Neighbor on turn 3 with a critical hit (I witnessed it with a critical home run). I don't recommend going for this in a casual run.
  
• The Leering Husk guards and ripostes every 2 turns, starting on turn 5 (when it closes its eyes). Guard on these turns.
  
• Jump Attack deals exceptionally high damage against him, seemingly applying a 2x damage modifier on top of the piercing damage weakness. Jump attack deals 100 damage (maybe average, but it was consistent on my testings), killing it in 2 attacks and thus making Carving Fork + Jump Attack what I think is the most optimal way to beat him (for a casual run, again).

Knowing this, proceed as follow:
turn 1: guard
turn 2: guard
turn 3: guard
turn 4: Jump Attack
turn 5: guard
turn 6: Jump Attack

Some more information:

• The wounded Neighbor can cause Sam to panic. It’s quite rare, but if that happens, you have to start over because you need your skills.
  
• If you miss one jump attack, it's fine, just guard one more time and do another Jump Attack. You have enough HP for this situation.
  
• It's also fine to be left with 1 HP because of the heavy bleeding. You can use a bandage (if that stops the bleeding) for safety. I've already done the steps that follows while having 1 HP

Now that you defeated the Leering Husk, grab the Kitchen Knife and the key.

Now head toward the staircases.

You don't want to be engaged, especially if you're left with 1 HP. Having to unlock the door gives them another window to attack you so it can be dangerous.
I recommend you to lure them one by one in the hallway. The door is much easier to reach when you lure 2 of them this way. This may require some practice.

Go down to the ground floor and pick up the Pool Cue.
Go back up to the 2nd floor

Loot the area. The most important items are the cleaver, the mop and the cleanerex.
Don't forget to loot the bathroom too.

Now you can go back home.
Be careful of the "shadows" entities, they can ruin your attempt. If you start hearing them, go back and forth in a room to make them disappear (you might have to do it multiple times)

Also to avoid the onlookers consistently, run straight down, then once you reach the wall, run straight left.

Once you're home: equip the Pool Cue, unequip the Glasses (if you managed to get them), eat TV Dinner and save the game. You don't need to be full hp for what follows.


If you find this sub-part difficult, you can alternatively go straight home after besting the Leering Husk (you can save despite the danger meter not seemingly being charged enough as of version 2.17). However, if you opt for this, you need to play a video game once (Screamatorium or Madwheels) to reach level 3, then eat the TV Dinner to have 24 STM and save the game. Don't forget to grab the pool cue and loot Jeanne's apartment.

Goals:
- Recruit Leigh
- Get the Earth disk and the Mars disk

As the title's name imply, you may have to reset quite a bit for this part. Recruiting Leigh with Sam only on Cursed mode requires either to land an Instant-kill or a critical hit using the Impale skill.
I really tried looking for an alternate solution that doesn't rely on RNG, but it requires to wait 1 or even 2 days to get another party member with the door encounters. Joel can't be recruited before Leigh as we need Eugene's shop to get enough toothpaste (I'm not 100% sure about it, but I believe it requires the 1st floor to be opened for Eugene's shop to open).
So yeah, between RNG that consumes times and RNG that doesn't, I chose the latter.


Go to the 2nd floor and pick up the apartment 21 key and fight the Grinning Beast.
Now, use Impale twice and pray. If you didn't get an instant-kill or a critical hit, try again.
Fortunately, the odds aren't that bad, I averaged an instant-kill about once every 5 tries (big "about"). So the rng isn't that bad.

If you land a critical hit (it's a 5% chance), you should know the Grinning Beast has 437.5 HP in Cursed mode. You likely will have to consume the Tonic on turn 4, and can use the Whiskey on turn 5 to perform a 3rd Impale, or use 2 table knives/forks to finish her off.

After besting the Grinning Beast, if Sam is bleeding use a bandage, then go left (yes, don't go right or you fought her for nothing!) and recruit Leigh. Leigh will ask 100 bucks for the gun and it's perfectly ok to let it go (and you probably don't even have enough cash at this point anyway).

Equip Leigh with the Cleaver and Sam with a Mop.


Loot the apartment
Smooch Lyle, it’s worth it.
Bottom left room: take the broom and the drain cleaner, the other items can be too risky to pick up and they’re not that important (for now)
Go to the bathroom (top left room) and loot what you can. Avoid the enemy.

Proceed to the 1st floor.


Take the exit at the bottom.
If you can, avoid fighting the rats. There’s a merchant among them (available after getting the Rusted Crown) that sells the Sewer Blade, which is a very good weapon you might want later. You can decide to kill them if you want, Leigh can kill most of them with a Cleave and Sam can finish the job with basic attacks.


Go left and take the 1st door (bottom) you see that links with the umbilical cord.
Walk across the room.
Again, go left and take the 1st door (bottom) you see.
You have arrived at the apartment where lies the Rat Baby.

Here, it's hard to avoid encounters. Fortunately, we are prepared:

• Leigh can kill most of the rats with a single cleave
  
• Sam with the mop deals enough damage to kill most of the rats in one hit

Loot the apartment and pick up the Rat Baby, then go back to the hallway.


Go right, down and left.
Give the wall a treat (you know what I mean)
Pick up the Earth disk
Go back to the hallway


Go left, up, right, up and left.
Lure the Rat Freak to one side to pickup the Mars disk.

Now that we have everything that we wanted, it's time to go home.


The path to the staircases from the apartment 11 is: right, up, up and right.
Don't forget to pick back up the Earth disk when leaving. I bet it happened to everyone at least once.
Also, as your danger meter is high, be careful of the "shadow" enemies, once more.

If you followed thoroughly this guide, you should arrive home at 22:40.

Save the game and go to bed.

Goals:
- Recruit Ernest
- Recruit Papineau
- Prepare landlord's apartment


Water and talk to plant.
Take a shower (preferably).
Make a sandwich (for example tomato can + bread).
Save the game.


Go to the 2nd floor, Eugene's shop is now open.
You can buy the 4x cleanerex by haggling 3 times, dropping the price under 80$. Now, you have 6 cleanerex.
You can only haggle 3 times per day.


Go to the 1st floor.
Starting at the staircases, the direction is: left, left, up.
Give Ernest the sandwich you made earlier.
Ernest will refuse to join the party if we already started to explore the ground floor


The landlord's apartment opens 4h after the bus crashes. The following route aims at having the apartment available as soon as possible.

Go to the ground floor, and go straight to the main lobby. We'll pick up Papineau a bit later.
Now that the bus crashed, explore all the available areas and loot everything. You don't need to use the herbicide, you can save it for the room of your choice.

When you go to the men's bathroom, recruit Papineau.

If you end the ground floor exploration with the laundry room, you should be seeing the hand cursed in the hallway when exiting it. And if it's not the case, exploring a couple more rooms will be enough to trigger the event.

Now you can go back home to save the game.


And that's the end for this guide.


By this point, it's day 2 and you have a full party perfectly capable of reaching the basement floor before day 3. It might even be possible to beat Antoine before day 3 with this setup (you can reach him, but beating him is a true challenge). You can also take things more slowly and chose to do the Teeth apartment, give the laundry to Jeanne, do the Frederic apartment or even kill the Rat King.

Overall, you now have a lot of options at your disposal with a strong party, and I'd say the most annoying part of the Cursed mode is now over.


I'd be happy to hear about your feedback, whether it's an idea for a strategy, some additional information, or if you found this guide useful.