DORM TILL DAWN 2
FULL GUIDE, HINTS & TIPS
Dorm Till Dawn 2 is a non-linear adventure, so under its relatively simple appearance of a visual novel it’s got some complex choice-making mechanisms in place. To reach specific outcomes, detailed paths need to be taken, and the things you do early in the game can open up or limit opportunities later on. It also has time-based elements; you have a limited amount of time to explore different areas before the game moves on, so it’s not possible to do everything in one go.
This guide gives an overview of how the game works and is split into stages so you can get a good idea of how to navigate it overall, followed by tips to get into all the nooks and crannies on offer. I have not covered everything here, so you may find other options and hidden opportunities, purely because I can’t remember now everything that’s possible in the game.
I’ve split the guide into the following subsections:
The Main Objective
The important thing to discover is that Jet’s plan is flawed: if you set out simply to poison Bayley, you are unlikely to survive. Your actual objective, to survive the night, is to find ways to connect with the giantesses so they won’t kill you if you are caught. This means collecting clues and using items that might help you win them each over.
There are multiple ways to survive, but the real path to getting out with your life and freedom comes from surviving three key encounters, in order: successfully navigating a dialogue with Najma, and then with Bayley, and finally with Jet. To solve these, you must first explore the dorm.
The Dorm and Characters
The game is split roughly into three environments, each dominated by one giantess:
- The Living Room / Communal Space: This is largest environment, where you begin, and the primary domain of Dakota. She is sleeping when you enter, but will wake up if disturbed, or after enough time passes. In the living room, you can visit the kitchen and explore both the counter and island, or the sofa, to explore the coffee table, shoes and Dakota herself. You can also move freely around both sides of the room and reach the hall, where there are doors to the two bedrooms. The rear door cannot (currently) be accessed.
- Najma’s Room: Here, you can explore a wardrobe, go under two beds, or climb Najma’s desk; Najma herself either sits at the desk (limiting exploration) or on her bed.
- Bayley’s Room: Here, you can explore the desk, two beds, a bedside table, some clothes and shoes and a chest of drawers. Bayley is usually sat on her bed.
Not all areas of the dorm are available at all times, so watch out for the giantess’s movements and new information that might open up different choices.
Game Stages
The game is split into a prologue and six rough stages, each impacting what you can and can’t do. The following information contains spoilers!
Prologue
The introduction is mostly passive as Jet reminds you of your situation and encourages you to scheme against Bayley. However, your answers to Jet in this early stage will determine how friendly she is to you later. You have to be positive to keep Jet completely on your side!
Stage 1 – Entering the Dorm
The first stage is essentially limited to the living area, where you can freely explore all the common room and hallway options. At this point, Bayley and Najma are arguing in her room and if you enter either bedroom Bayley will kill you. Fairy soon, Bayley stomps out of Najma’s room and goes into her own.
Stage 2 – Exploring the Dorm
With Bayley in her room, you are now free to explore her bedroom, and can explore most of Najma’s room. While you can go ahead with Jet’s plan and try to find the best way to poison Bayley, what you should really be doing in this stage is gathering information to help you connect with the giantesses.
If you encounter Bayley or Najma in this stage, they are likely to kill you.
To progress to the next stage, you need Najma to stop working, which is triggered when you take break to rest. This can be done in multiple locations including: resting under Najma’s spare bed; resting in Dakota’s shoe; resting in Bayley’s shoe; hiding for longer under the sofa; hiding for longer in Dakota’s pocket.
Main Challenge: Dakota Stirs
If you explore and rest for too long, Dakota will eventually wake up and spot you. Beware!
Stage 3 – Facing Najma
After you rest, Najma will move from her desk to her bed, making it possible to now explore her desk and her boots. The rest of the environment remains the same. You can now approach Najma for a conversation.
Main Challenge: Winning Over Najma
This stage concludes with a more complex dialogue where you have to win Najma’s sympathy, or die.
Stage 4 – Getting to Bayley's Room
This is a short stage, where Najma takes you to Bayley’s door and you have to get in while she creates a distraction. If you reach this stage too late, Dakota will stir and prevent you getting in.
Stage 5 – Defeating Bayley
Your main aim here is to gain enough leverage to confront Bayley; there are two new options that open up to you in this section: (1) you’ll be able to get in her jewellery box and (2) you’ll be able to successfully drug her mug on the drawers. The rest of the environment is no longer explorable as before, as trying to leave Bayley’s room will get you attacked.
Main Challenge: Confronting Bayley
Eventually, you will have to face Bayley head on. Depending on everything else that’s brought you here, you’ll have different options to try and get through the dialogue with her. Ultimately, you can only progress with a combination of gathered information and items, and to move on you need to get her to drink her drugged mug, making her shrink…
Stage 6 – A Tiny Troop
This is the endgame, where you have Bayley and Najma as shrunken companions. You can try to escape through the common area, facing either Dakota or Jet, or you can try to get to Najma’s Buddy button.
To complete the game, you need to join forces with Bayley to hit the Buddy button, but you’ll still have to navigate a tricky conversation with Jet… Do this, and you may go free!
Main Challenge: Confronting Jet
There’s no way around it, you’re going to have to face Jet. Maybe if you can keep her busy long enough you’ll survive.
Quest Items
These are the major items that affect how the game plays out.
The Shrooms
The drugs Jet has given you can be placed in numerous locations, and if they’re consumed they’ll generally lead to a giantess shrinking. However, planting them can just as easily trigger someone into attacking you. These are your main options for planting the drugs:
- The Mug: This the main object that Bayley will drink from, if you can navigate her dialogue in Stage 5. However, you can only plant the shrooms here if you have Najma to distract Bayley.
- The Burger: Investigating the burger opens up dialogue options which lead people to the burger, but mostly these result in you being eaten, whether you drug it or not (later, it can also cause Bayley to eat Najma).
- Dakota’s Glass: If you drug Dakota’s glass and wait around long enough for her to wake up, she’ll take a swig and shrink.
The Cup, Bottle and Fruit Bowl: You can try and drug Bayley’s cup on her bedside table, or the wine bottle and fruit bowl on the kitchen island, but you won’t get away with it.
Bayley's Ring
You can find Bayley’s ring in Dakota’s pocket. This opens up dialogue options with all characters and the chance to plant it somewhere else. However, if you’re carrying it when you’re caught, all the characters will react to this before anything else.
Most of the planting locations aren’t much help, but if you plant it in Najma’s room she may attack you or you can use it to get Bayley to attack her. If you leave it with Dakota you can make Bayley confront her.
The best place to plant it is back in Bayley’s jewellery box, so it can be used to win sympathy from Bayley.
Bayley's USB Drive
This can be found in Bayley’s jewellery box in Stage 5 after Najma gives you the key. It’s essential for buying enough time with Jet to survive the final encounter, but you have to hide it securely in Bayley’s clothes pile. If you alert Bayley to this, mostly she will kill you for taking it.
The Buddy Button
In St Fiacre’s, Buddy Buttons are the best way to signal for help from a trusted Big. Jet’s kept you from yours and Bayley won’t use hers, but you can get access to Najma’s in the endgame. To reach it, you have to climb the chair in Najma’s office in Stage 6, or you can send Bayley to do it if you can buy enough time from Jet intruding.
The button can be in one of 4 pockets; you might find it by chance, or you can ask for the location from Najma (before leaving Bayley’s room) or Bayley (costing you time in Najma’s room).
Character Notes
Here are more detailed notes on tackling each of the main characters, in the order that they’ll primarily be faced.
Getting Around Dakota
Dakota is an ever-present threat. It’s difficult to survive an encounter with her, and if you push other characters into confronting her she is likely to come out on top. Trying to manipulate Dakota will mostly lead to her killing you.
There are many ways you can interact with Dakota, though, and there is a dynamic in place that will alter your options depending on how infatuated you become with her. Spend too long staring at Dakota or getting too close to her and you’ll become more drawn to her, opening up different dialogue options and limiting some of your choices (if you like her too much, you will automatically side with or approach her, given the chance).
She will wake up after a certain amount of time and come hunting for you. If you don’t get Najma on side quickly enough, she’ll stop you from returning to Bayley’s room. If you get too close to her while she’s asleep, or hide in her shoes for too long, there are various ways she may stir and kill you, accidentally or otherwise.
You can get Dakota to shrink by drugging the glass on the coffee counter and waiting until she wakes up. If you’re nearby, you can interact with her when she’s shrunk, but you’re likely to get caught and/or killed by Bayley. If you’re with Najma when she shrinks, Najma will attack her, and likely lose control and attack you, too. If you cause Bayley to confront her, Dakota will either fight back and make Bayley shrink or she will grow giant and kill you both.
In the endgame, Dakota will leave on her own accord, as Jet comes in to interrupt her.
It is possible to survive as Dakota’s pet if you grow infatuated with her and help her in her confrontations with Bayley. Play your cards right and she’ll eat Bayley but keep you for herself, carrying you away in a pocket.
Persuading Najma
The second main challenge of the game is winning Najma to your side, which involves a similarly difficult conversation, but it is somewhat easier to navigate than Bayley’s encounter. It’s harder to flatter Najma, but you can gain favour by investigating her writing on the desk, the posters on her walls (from climbing the wardrobe or climbing on her desk), and the recipe on the kitchen counter. As with Bayley, the order in which you tackle different topics can help, as she might be more receptive to touchy subjects after gaining a little sympathy.
Once you have persuaded her to join forces, she will bring you to Bayley’s room, no matter your choices (though if you upset her she might still kill you).
Defeating Bayley
Getting through your dialogue with Bayley when she catches you is the main challenge of the game. You will have to navigate a maze of options to gradually win her over, and the more prep you do before confronting her the more options you’ll have. It’s important not to encounter her too soon.
The main things you can do to give yourself a chance are (a) returning her ring to the box and (b) reading her diary on the desk. You can also sling blame at Jet or Najma to get more favour, but this can affect your standing with other characters.
The order in which you offer up different points can affect how she reacts – so suck up to her a little before presenting more dramatic points. She might react better if you’ve gained some sympathy.
To escape her grip, you’ll need to get her to drink from the drugged mug. Other options, however, include getting her to keep you as a pet (she’ll drop you in her pants) or getting her to confront either Najma or Dakota over the ring (this can lead to possibly shrinking each of the three girls, or it can cause Dakota or Najma to grow giant).
Defeating Jet
If you’ve successfully shrunk Bayley, you need to get into Najma’s room and activate the Buddy Button to get out of the dorm successfully. You will be caught by Jet and forced into another dialogue where your earlier actions will open up different options. You can’t do much to persuade Jet, but you can stall her – every dialogue option that doesn’t tip her into killing you will bring you a little closer to help arriving.
It is also possible to be captured by Jet, without being rescued, if you manage to keep her on side and let her kill Bayley.
Achievements
Below is a brief list of hints to help with getting all the trickier achievements.
Achievements
- It’s a plan… – Get past the intro
- Survival of the Smallest – Beat the game; this basically means following all the guide above to get Ms Collins to come in and rescue you.
- At Some Cost… – Get captured by Jet; this requires not upsetting her too much before you reach the endgame, so your choices at the very start can prevent this.
- Inevitable – Get eaten; this is hard not to achieve!
- Splat! – Get crushed; again, plenty of options for this but the quickest is to go directly to Bayley’s room before she enters it.
- Sharing is Caring – This is a trickier one to pull off as you need to get Dakota to call Bayley to her after capturing you; I believe this requires seeing the ring in her pocket and Bayley’s diary, but not managing to turn them against each other, so they eat you together.
- Did What to Who? – Get killed unaware; possible by being squashed unseen in Bayley or Dakota’s shoes, by being sat on or squashed by Dakota while she sleeps, or by being drunk in Dakota’s glass of wine when she’s half asleep.
- Left Breathless – Get smothered to death; approach Dakota’s foot on the sofa and she’ll pin you and suffocate you under those big toes…
- She Chews You Lose – Dakota chews you up in a burger; occurs if you hang around the burger when she wakes up, or you see the burger before getting caught by her and manage to persuade her to eat it.
- Split End – Get torn in half; a very specific one where you get caught by Bayley and try to tell her Najma has her ring, but fail to say where, upsetting her enough to pull you apart.
- Handy Like That – Get squashed by a hand; happens either if you spend too long on Najma’s desk so she spots you, or if you let her kill shrunken Dakota.
- In It Together – Get eaten after another character has been eaten; plenty of possibilities for this!
- Butter Me Up – Get flattened by a bum; wander behind Dakota while she’s sleeping.
- Death by Snu Snu – Dakota uses you to please herself; if you stare at her enough earlier, building your lust, when you climb on her lap you’ll be drawn to her crotch with disastrous results…
- Cracked – Get captured forever by Bayley; essentially beat the Bayley dialogues to win her over (see above) but without managing to spike her drink.
- Positive Foreign Relations – Get captured forever by Dakota; quite a tricky one, following various routes to get Bayley shrunk and caught by Dakota along with you. If you make it that far, and encourage Dakota to eat Bayley, if you have stared at Dakota enough earlier and/or helped her by encouraging her to fight Bayley first, then she may keep you as a pet.
- Let It Happen – Don’t stop Bayley eating Najma after she has shrunk.
- Fast Food – You have become the ingredients of a burger; essentially the same as She Chews You Lose, so you get two achievements in one for getting eaten in Dakota’s burger! Yeah this is basically my bad. I think there were originally more options for getting chewed up…
- I’ve Seen it All – See all the animations in the game; there are 43 total, and I can’t map out exactly where to spot all these but if you get all the achievements that’ll cover a lot of them. A few things that might help to note are that a lot of the animations have male/female variations, including the ending, so you need to play all the way through as both genders to see them all. There are also three different stomach animations in both male and female; which one you see when eaten is random. A couple more obscure ones not covered in the situations above are listed below.
Tricky Animations
- getting stomped by Najma (spike her burger and tell her about it when she takes you to Bayley’s room)
- getting eaten by Dakota in the hall (take too long to get Najma to take you to Bayley’s room and Dakota will interrupt en route – run to get eaten)
- seeing Najma eaten in the burger (two options; one is to get her to distract Bayley with the burger when she takes you to Bayley’s room, the other is to persuade Bayley to eat the burger when she has caught both you and Najma)
- getting eaten in Bayley’s shoe (hide in Bayley’s shoe for too long after she’s caught Najma)
- Najma eats Dakota (spike Dakota’s drink and take too long to get Najma to take you to Bayley)
- Jet stomps Bayley (in the endgame, either try to escape through the living room and get caught by Jet while Bayley is running away)
- Dakota stomps Bayley (in the endgame, try to escape via the far wall)
- Bayley stomps or eats Najma (persuade Bayley Najma stole her ring, respectively before or after Najma has shrunk)
- Dakota grows (push Bayley and Dakota to fight but choose Bayley’s side)