Beholder 2 moves the series into the Prime Ministry, where Evan Redgrave starts as a low-level intern in a totalitarian bureaucracy. Instead of managing tenants, you spend workdays processing appeals, talking to coworkers, gathering characteristics, paying bills, learning skills, and deciding whether to climb, expose, help, or ruin people on the way up.
Content warning: Beholder 2 is a mature dystopian game with violence, blood, sexual content, partial nudity, drug references, strong language, crude humor, and oppressive political themes. This guide keeps the material non-graphic and focuses on practical play.
The most important early lesson is that Beholder 2 is less about rushing and more about spending your limited hours cleanly. Dialogue and walking are free, but many useful actions consume the workday. Build a routine before you chase every dramatic option.
Essential Tips
1. Talk Before Spending Hours
Walking around and speaking with people do not drain the workday, so make conversation your first move whenever a new day, floor, quest, or coworker opens up. Early on, listening to Hemnitz and asking follow-up questions can reveal characteristics that turn into authority. The habit stays useful throughout the game: talk first, learn names and motives, then decide which timed actions deserve attention.
This also helps you avoid wasting a work period on blind errands. If someone hints at a terminal, desk, lost item, bill, password, or rival, write the clue down mentally before you start opening doors or grinding appeals.
2. Treat the Nine-Hour Day as a Budget
Each workday gives you a fixed amount of time. Some actions cost hours, while movement and conversation are free. Before you start processing paperwork, stealing, reading at home, hacking terminals, or pushing a quest step, ask what the day must accomplish.
A simple beginner rhythm works well: gather free conversation, handle required job tasks, spend one or two blocks on a quest or skill, then leave enough space for bills and home activity. Beholder 2 punishes careless planning more than slow thinking.
3. Learn the Paperwork Symbols
Your job is not just busywork. Appeals have types, and reading the symbol gives you a head start. A question mark usually means a request, an exclamation mark means a complaint, an X means a denunciation, and an i means information.
Then match the topic to a Ministry. Crime, police, and army matters lean toward Order. The Leader and propaganda lean toward Patriotism. Work issues lean toward Labor. School, housing, and health often point to Social Care. Sports and art go to Culture and Sports. Inventions and technical problems go to Science and Technology.
4. Use Mistakes as Training
When paperwork goes wrong, do not just mash through the result. The answer screen can show what should have happened, which is your best way to build pattern recognition without memorizing every appeal. Read the correction, note the keyword that misled you, and slow down on similar phrasing next time.
On later floors, conditions can stack. If an appeal matches two rules, one stamp may not be enough. If no listed condition fits, the correct move may be broader than expected. Read every line before stamping.
5. Keep Money and Authority Separate in Your Head
Money keeps Evan alive and solvent. Authority moves his career and can open information. You need both, but they do different jobs. Paid work helps with bills, while quests, characteristics, and promotions shape advancement.
Do not burn authority casually just because it solves a conversation faster. If a clue can be gained through free talk, a found item, or a completed favor, save authority for promotion pressure and bottlenecks. Likewise, do not ignore regular work because a quest feels more interesting; bills can end a run faster than a bad reputation.
6. Collect Books Early and Plan Reading Time
Books can unlock practical skills such as lock picking, terminal hacking, and bill discounts. They are not flavor collectibles. A book that reduces rent, water, electricity, or TV costs can keep your long-term economy healthier, while hacking and lock skills can open routes that would otherwise stay closed.
Reading still costs time, so do it with a purpose. Pick a book because the next few days will benefit from it, not because it happens to be in your inventory.
7. Inspect Free Containers and Public Objects
Some useful items can be found without spending work time. The early cart with papers is the clearest lesson: look around your work area before assuming every item requires a costly action. Desks, carts, shelves, food trays, lost-and-found areas, and office props can matter.
This does not mean steal everything. The game tracks theft and can punish prohibited items more harshly than ordinary stolen goods. Search thoughtfully, and treat anything illegal or sensitive as a risk, not free profit.
8. Make Manual Saves Before Big Moral Turns
Beholder 2 is built around branching choices, coworker outcomes, promotions, and endings. Save before major conversations, risky office searches, promotion attempts, boss quests, and anything involving biometric safes or career-changing leverage.
Daily saves help, but they are not a replacement for deliberate manual saves. A good save lets you see a consequence, reload if you misunderstood the rules, or preserve a cleaner path for a later ending run.
9. Track Safes Without Turning the First Run Into Cleanup
Biometric safes matter because they connect to Evan’s father and later ending options. Still, a first run can become miserable if you treat every floor like a checklist. When you find a safe, note the floor and nearby object. If opening it requires a skill or quest state you do not have yet, keep moving.
For a spoiler-light playthrough, prioritize learning the Ministry systems first. Clean routing can wait for a dedicated safe or achievement run.
Workday Flow
Start each day by checking immediate obligations: bills, promotion targets, active quests, and any boss demand that might lock progress. Once you know the pressure points, walk the floor and talk to everyone relevant. Conversation is free, so it should happen before paid work or timed searches.
Next, process enough appeals to stabilize money and authority. On Floor 1, slow down on the appeal type, Ministry topic, weekday, and office availability. On Floor 12, read every condition before stamping. On Floor 25, treat clone parameters like a matching puzzle: aim for as many good matches as possible instead of chasing perfection.
End the day with one planned extra: a book, a home call, a TV topic, a terminal lead, a lock route, or a quest step. One focused improvement per day is better than five half-finished threads.
Money, Authority, and Skills
Money pressure is constant because home bills matter. Pay them promptly, and consider bill-discount books real progression. A cheaper household gives you more freedom to spend work time on quests instead of grinding for cash.
Authority deserves the same discipline. Reporting characteristics can build it, but each report may also reflect how you are treating coworkers. Think of authority as career fuel and leverage, not a generic score. If you want a less ruthless path, be careful which opportunities you convert into promotion progress.
Skills widen your options. Terminal hacking can reveal emails, passwords, and private information. Lock picking can open rooms or containers. Both can create new choices, but both become stronger when paired with good timing: enter offices when people are away, save first, and know why you are taking the risk.
Choices and Saves
Beholder 2 often lets a small early action echo later. Helping someone, ignoring someone, reporting a characteristic, stealing an item, or spending authority can affect future quests. The game wants you to live with uncomfortable decisions, but it is fair to protect yourself from misunderstandings.
Use rotating manual saves. Keep one at the start of a day, one before a major choice, and one after you confirm the outcome you want. That structure gives you room to experiment without erasing a clean branch.
When in doubt, choose information before commitment. Talk, check your notebook, inspect terminals if you have the skill, and confirm what a quest is really asking. The more you know, the less often you will spend authority, money, or time just to undo confusion.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Do not start timed actions before talking to everyone nearby - Free dialogue often reveals characteristics, quest context, and cheaper routes.
- Do not treat paperwork as random guessing - Appeal symbols, Ministry themes, weekdays, offices, and rule text all matter.
- Do not skip the result screen after a bad appeal - Corrections teach the pattern you missed.
- Do not spend authority whenever a prompt appears - Save it for promotions, key information, and moments with no cleaner route.
- Do not ignore bills while chasing Ministry drama - Unpaid home obligations can end your progress.
- Do not read every book immediately - Pick skills and discounts that help your next several days.
- Do not steal sensitive items without a plan - Theft warnings and prohibited items can create serious penalties.
- Do not rely only on automatic saves - Manual saves protect branching choices and risky searches.
Summary
| Category | Top Tip |
|---|---|
| Time | Talk first because movement and conversation are free |
| Work | Read symbols, topics, weekdays, offices, and conditions slowly |
| Money | Pay bills early and value discount books |
| Authority | Spend it like promotion fuel, not spare change |
| Skills | Prioritize hacking, lock picking, and household savings |
| Choices | Save before moral turns, searches, and promotion plays |
| Safes | Note locations, then return when your skills and route are ready |
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8 checked for this guideEvery factual claim in this guide was checked against at least two independent sources before publication. These are the references used for Beholder 2.
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