Last checked: July 29, 2026

Hellhole Beginner's Guide – Survive the Descent & Go Deeper

By Money Lord — Founder & Editor | Updated: July 29, 2026

Hellhole is a roguelike horde-shooter where the only way out is down. This guide teaches the full descent run loop, the exact controls for PC and controller, how Salvage and Coins work, which gamepasses unlock extra weapon and perk slots, and the beginner tactics that actually carry you past the first boss floor and deeper.

Live Roblox stats for Hellhole (by Game Chefs, universe 10309128556) as of July 29, 2026 — 80,592 likes vs 1,807 dislikes across 82,399 votes. The game is in ALPHA (created June 11, 2026), and our radar logged a 7-day concurrent peak of 6,590 players. Codes live on our separate Hellhole codes page — this is a mechanics guide.

What Is Hellhole? The Descent Run Loop

The premise, straight from the developer: "THE SURFACE IS GONE. THE ONLY WAY OUT IS DOWN. HOW DEEP CAN YOU GO?" Hellhole is a roguelike descent. You drop into a shaft, gun down a horde of enemies, crack open loot, stack upgrades, then descend to the next floor — and when you die, you run it back. There is no "beat the game" screen; the entire hook is going one floor deeper than your last attempt.

Every run follows the same four-beat loop, and learning to read it is 90% of getting good:

1. Drop — you fall into a floor with your weapon and whatever perks your build is carrying.
2. Clear — eliminate the horde. Enemies pour in, and deeper floors ramp their health hard, so how you spend upgrades matters more than raw aim.
3. Loot — open Treasure Chests scattered on the floor to bank Salvage and Coins, the game's two currencies.
4. Upgrade & descend — spend what you earned to strengthen your build, then take the drop to the next floor and repeat, going as deep as you can before you die.

Because it is a roguelike, a run ending is not failure — it is the reset that lets you push further next time. With over a million players and a 97.8% approval rating as of July 29, 2026, the loop is clearly landing, but it is unforgiving early. The rest of this guide breaks each beat into concrete actions.

Controls & Your First Run

Hellhole plays like a twin-stick-style shooter mapped to standard Roblox inputs. You do not need to memorize a huge scheme — five inputs cover the whole run. Here is the full control map for both PC and controller:

For your very first run, keep it simple and focus on staying mobile:

1. Launch a solo run first. Solo runs save progress, so your early Salvage, Coins and upgrades stick — that makes solo the safe way to learn without losing everything.
2. Keep moving while you shoot. Hold Shift to sprint out of enemy clusters; standing still is how new players get surrounded and downed on the opening floors.
3. Reload during lulls, not mid-swarm. Tap R the instant a wave thins so you never get caught with an empty clip when the next group rushes in.
4. Use Ctrl to interact. Ctrl unlocks and interacts — it is how you open Treasure Chests and take upgrades. Sweep the floor for chests before you drop.
5. Only descend when the floor is clear and you have looted. Descending early wastes the chests you left behind.

Weapons & Loadout

You start every run carrying one weapon. That single gun is what clears the early floors, so how you upgrade it decides how far you get. The most reliable, source-backed piece of advice here is simple: prioritize weapon damage upgrades early. Enemy health scales sharply the deeper you go, so a gun that shredded floor-one enemies can feel like a water pistol later if you poured your upgrades into things like reload speed or magazine size instead of raw damage. Keep your killing power ahead of the HP curve and everything else gets easier.

If you want more flexibility, the "2 Guns" gamepass (added July 21, 2026) lets you carry and swap between two weapons instead of being locked to one. That means you can pair a fast crowd-clearer with a heavier single-target option and switch based on what the floor throws at you — genuinely useful once you are pushing past the first boss and enemy variety picks up. It is optional; plenty of players go deep on the default single weapon by leaning hard into damage.

Currency & Upgrades: Salvage, Coins & Chests

Hellhole runs on two currencies: Salvage and Coins. You do not grind them from kills alone — you earn Salvage and Coins by opening Treasure Chests that appear on each floor. That is confirmed by the game's own "Treasure Chest X-Ray" gamepass, which advertises helping you find chests to "earn salvage and coins." So chest-hunting is not optional flavor; it is the economic engine of the whole descent.

1. Clear the horde first. Opening chests while enemies swarm you is how you get downed — win the floor, then loot in relative safety.
2. Sweep every corner for Treasure Chests. Walk up and press Ctrl to open them; each one adds to your Salvage and Coins.
3. Spend before you drop. Convert your currency into upgrades — leading with damage — while you are still on the current floor, so you descend stronger than you arrived.
4. Bank on solo. Because solo runs save, the Salvage and Coins you secure are reliably yours to build on next time.

If you routinely miss chests in the chaos, the optional Treasure Chest X-Ray gamepass highlights them so you collect more currency per floor — a compounding advantage, since more upgrades early means you survive deeper, which means more floors of chests. Treat Salvage and Coins as the resource you are really "playing for" on every floor.

Perks & Build Slots

Alongside weapon upgrades, Hellhole gives you perk slots — the passive modifiers that shape your build for the run. By default you have two perk slots to fill. The "3rd Perk Slot" gamepass adds a third, letting you run one extra passive at the same time. That third slot is meaningful in a roguelike: an extra perk stacked on top of your weapon damage is often the difference between stalling out on a rough floor and pushing through it.

How to think about your two (or three) slots as a beginner:

1. Lead with survival on your first slot. Anything that keeps you alive through a swarm buys time for your damage to work — staying up is worth more than a marginal offensive bump early.
2. Pair it with damage or clear-speed. Your second slot should reinforce your ability to delete the horde before it deletes you.
3. Commit to a direction. Two coherent perks beat two random ones — decide whether the run is a tanky grind-deep build or an aggressive fast-clear build and pick perks that agree.

Bosses & Going Deeper

Boss floors are the punctuation marks of the descent. They break up the standard clear-and-loot rhythm with a single tougher fight, and clearing the very first one is a real milestone: Hellhole's in-game "First Blood — You killed your first boss!" badge has been awarded over 1,001,900 times as of July 29, 2026. That tells you two things — beating the first boss is a core progression beat every player aims for, and it is achievable, since more than a million people have done it.

Deeper than that, gameplay footage confirms floors reaching well past 100, so there is a long descent ahead once you get the fundamentals down. To actually go deeper, stack the verified basics:

1. Enter every boss floor with a full clip. Reload before you take the drop into a boss — you do not want to be tapping R while a boss closes the distance.
2. Have your survival upgrades already in place. Spend Salvage and Coins before the boss floor, not during it.
3. Keep damage ahead of the HP curve. Bosses and deeper enemies have inflated health — if your damage stalled a few floors back, this is where the run ends.
4. Run it back. When you die, you have banked currency (on solo) and know the fight — the next attempt starts from a stronger baseline. That is the whole roguelike loop.

Solo vs Co-op & Beginner Survival Tips

Hellhole servers hold up to 50 players, so co-op is available and chaotic-fun. But the single most important progression fact for a new player is this: solo runs save progress. If you want to reliably bank Salvage, Coins and upgrades to build toward deeper floors, grind solo. Bring friends in for the spectacle, but do your foundational farming alone where your progression is guaranteed to stick.

A handful of survival habits that pay off from your very first descent:

1. Never stop moving. Sprint (Shift / L3) to peel off the edge of a swarm; kiting the horde in a wide arc keeps you alive far longer than trading shots toe-to-toe.
2. Loot every floor fully. Skipping Treasure Chests to rush the drop starves your build of the Salvage and Coins it needs to keep up with scaling enemy HP.
3. Damage first, always. When in doubt about an upgrade, take the one that makes enemies die faster.
4. Treat deaths as data. Because it is a roguelike, each run teaches you the next — go one floor deeper than last time and you are winning.

Stay in the group's loop for updates, too. Game Chefs (Roblox group 9165165, verified badge) says in the description to "join the group for updates" — that verified group is the only official channel, so ignore any random Discord invite claiming to be Hellhole's.

More Hellhole & Similar Games

For the current, dated list of any working codes and exactly where to redeem them, see our sibling page — this guide deliberately leaves codes to it:

Into tense round-based survival too? Check The Intruder codes for another trust-no-one survival game, and if you want Robux to spend anywhere, read how to get free Robux in 2026.

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