A while back, I came across Dr. Newcestein's guide (link removed due to website not being available anymore) for getting the accursed "7 Day Survivor" achievement, obtainable in Infinity Mode.

The guide's amount of detail is pretty astonishing, not to mention it provides the reader with a Food Map, showing where (almost) every food item is located in the mall during Infinity Mode, which is invaluable help...

...however, my peanut-sized brain was immediately discouraged from attempting to get this already pretty ridiculous achievement by the way this guide walks you through it, basically telling you to "eat X at Y PM, wait fifty and a half seconds, then scratch your left buttcheek with a pink hair comb obtained from location Z".

This even went so far as to make me think this achievement was not just long to get, but also complicated.

That's when I decided to just wing it and have fun with it: it was probably gonna be tedious, but the idea of surviving in the mall for as long as possible sounded exciting, and the 14-hours-session requirement sounded so ridiculous that I basically didn't take it seriously.

By doing this, I found out two things:

• It wasn't exciting at all, and aside for a couple of moments of tension caused by either my own stupidity or my antics out of boredom, it basically amounted to that one scene in Lock Up where Stallone is forced to wake up and state "name and number" every hour until he goes insane... except, in this case, it was every 19-ish minutes.
  
  
• It wasn't hard at all, and it did not require actions as specific as the aforementioned guide made it out to be. Despite the warnings to "not plan to invest 14 hours in this if you don't know what you're doing", I got it on my second try, and only because the first try was cut short at In Game Day 4 due to a BSOD. Imagine my joy[twinpeaksgazette.com].
  
  The achievement already requires your attention every 19 minutes or so, and also requires that you sacrifice your hardware life by spending a minimum of 14 hours on it; If we can't make it fun at least let's not complicate it.

As such, I decided to give a shot at making a simplified guide with miscellaneous tips, the core method of getting it, and perhaps some specific examples of what I did that should not necessarily be used as reference.

Just in case you're going for this achievement and you don't have advanced knowledge of the game, Infinity Mode is the special game mode where you can unlock the 5 Day Survivor and 7 Day Survivor achievements since, as the name implies, there is no limit to how long you can survive.

In this mode, however, there is a limit to how much food you can find in the mall: Seon's Food & Stuff is closed, all infinite food spawners don't work, and there's only specific food items in specific places.

Frank also dies as time goes by, so you have to keep feeding him: your PP bar is replaced with a hunger bar. Every 1 minute and 40 seconds, your hunger will eat away one health square.

Also, in this mode, all of the people you met in the main game are psychopaths, spawning at precise times and places that you can look up on google. While this might sound like bad news for your health bar, the upside is that killing them rewards you with food and weapons!

Exciting, right?

Wrong.

• The Genocider Achievement: aka the Real Mega Buster. Recommended.
  
  Nothing is mandatory, of course, but in the same way as anything is a butt plug if you're brave enough.
  
  The Real Mega Buster drastically reduces your risk of dying and potentially increases your survival time if you can kill psychopaths with it before they deal damage to you.
  
  You will find this weapon in the Security Room, on the left side (coming in from the Monitoring Room) of the room with the vent, once it is unlocked.
  
  
• The Food Map: (link removed due to website not being available anymore, looking for a replacement)
  
  
• Level 50: If you're doing this, you most likely have this.
  
  Also, forget avatar strength for a minute: this guide assumes that, if you got to this point and are attempting this, you are at least decent at avoiding zombies. If you're not, the crash course is: juke zombies, lead them and then change direction, abuse Jump Kick & Landing Kick of your choice, jump often to escape grabs if you know they're coming.
  
  It's not hard, just keep it functional over fancy.
  
  Under different circumstances, I'd be telling you to use Double Lariat when in trouble, however you will have your inventory perennially full in this run, so it is recommended not to resort to the Lariat in order to not throw your precious food/health magazine/buster away.
  
  
• Set the game to Windowed Mode: I found that, at least for me, this is the only way to have time pass in the game while also being able to minimize it and do other stuff.
  
  Again, if you came so far, you probably already knew this from your experience with other achievements.
  
  
• An Alarm: I wasn't kidding with that one reference to that one 80s movie nobody knows. This achievement is basically a gluttonous baby waking you up every 20 minutes to give it one second of attention.
  
  I personally didn't use an alarm because I hate that, and I just made sure to check regularly, but the hope here is that you'll be more careful than dumb old me.
  
  
• Time & Patience: The achievement might prove to be psychologically more demanding than what it seems. This is probably the only real difficulty involved in it, though it's more like tedium.
  
  Firstly, make sure you can always tend to the game: don't go away and leave Frank in a safe spot thinking you'll be back in time unless you're 100% sure that's the case. Sometimes, it's best to turn the 14 hours into 20 or even continue the day after by pausing, if it means not risking interruption.
  
  The achievement pretty much traps you in a situation where engaging in an external activity might distract you and result in Frank's death, or at the very least it will be very annoying. I won't be the one telling you to not venture into the zombie horde sometimes, out of boredom, just to kill a bunch, since I did it a bunch of times and even lost some health in the process, but... yeah, that'd be optimal.
  
  Hopefully you have something better to do with your time. I personally read the entirety of Part 5 of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure while doing this. It was ok.
  
  Also, remember you got no Steam games to play in the meantime. Yeah.

For being a self-proclaimed simplified guide, I spent a tad too many words on this already, so let's get to the gist of it.

This is all you will need to know to make it on your own. Don't blink, or you'll miss it:

• Never leave an area you dropped food in.
  By leaving an area, I mean going through a loading screen.

(more detail on this in the next sections if you need it)

• Start the Game
  In Infinity Mode, dummy.
  
  
• Grab the Mega Buster
  In the Vent room.
  
  
• Grab all the food you can get in the Warehouse/Roof area
  Should be 2 Cabbages, 2 Squashes, 1 Raw Meat from Otis, 1 Cookies from Susan's corpse.
  
  
• Try not to eat anything yet!
  If you really have to, use the items that only heal one or two squares tops.
  
  
• Grab the Health 2 magazine
  In the Entrance Plaza, upper floor, at the end of it, in the store "The Sinister Read".
  
  
• Grab the Health 1 magazine
  In the Wonderland Plaza, upper floor, in the store "Sir-Book-a-Lot".
  
  
• Grab the Survivalist magazine
  In the North Plaza, in the double doors empty room next to Crislip.

• Select an area of the mall
  The current closest one to you is fine.
  
  
• Gather all food available in the area OR until inventory is full
  Your inventory will be Mega Buster, Health 1, Health 2, Survivalist and the rest will be food. At all times.
  
  Use the Food Map (link removed due to website not available anymore, looking for replacement). Or just explore if you want to make it interesting and risk it.
  
  
• Find safe spot from zombies
  This is usually a place they can't climb to, or a place with doors you can close from the inside.
  (more detail on this in the next section if you need it)
  
  
• If not all food from the area has been gathered, drop food in the safe spot, go gather the rest of the food, and go back to the safe spot
  
  
• Stand there and eat every time you're about to die
  THIS IS IMPORTANT:
  Frank's full health will deplete in 20 minutes.
  
  You will have to check the game every 19-ish minutes starting from your first full-health replenishment.
  
  When on your last square, wait for the yellow bar below to almost deplete as well, but be careful not to let it reach zero and take into account the time it takes for Frank to play the eating animation.
  
  Because of the 300% boost from magazines, all liquids and cooked foods will "overheal" you, meaning they will exceed your maximum health no matter what, replenishing your yellow bar along with the squares: therefore, healing right before dying maximizes the amount of survival time.
  
  This doesn't apply to food that doesn't heal all of your health. Use those however you want. (fruits, cookies, yogurt, popsicles, cabbages, squashes etc.).
  
  CAUTION: Don't wait too long to heal when on your last square; You don't have to optimize your time that much, and you don't wanna risk dying stupidly.
  
  Maybe decide a safe amount, like "when the yellow bar reaches 1/4" or something. If, instead, you like the thrill, then go ahead, but be warned that you have to keep this up for a long time and you might get tired and screw it up.
  
  
• When all of the food available to you fits in your inventory, and there's nothing left on the floor, change areas and repeat.
  OR
  When all of the food available to you fits in your inventory, and there's nothing left on the floor, and you have one free slot, change areas and repeat.
  If you find psychopaths in the way, kill them and improvise a safe spot there, otherwise their food will disappear.
  
  
• Repeat for all areas of the mall.

My favorites:

• Survivalist Magazine Room (North Plaza)
  Next to Crislip. Just close the door, drop your food there and enjoy.
  
  
• Flexin' (Al Fresca Plaza)
  It's pretty good.
  You go in? Zombies can't open the doors.
  One of the tiny glass panels breaks by accident? Zombies actually can't go through those.
  One of the big ones breaks? Move to the other side of the room, you'll be too far away for the other zombies aggro.
  Everything breaks? Hide behind the counter.
  Zombies manage to climb onto counter? The place has a limitless supply of (crappy) weapons, and is right in front of the place with chainsaws AND an exit, for any emergency.
  
  Also, bored? There's punching bags and threadmills.
  
  
• Top of the Wooden Gazebo (Leisure Park)
  You are untouchable here as long as the snipers are dead.
  BE WARNED, HOWEVER, that you cannot drop food with a rounded shape on this surface, as it will slide away from you. Do not drop fruit or wine on top of this. Pizzas are ok to drop, since they are flat.
  
  
• Tom's Knicknackery (Entrance Plaza)
  Has a door and has good weapon supplies. The only problem is it has glass windows, be careful not to break them, as it pretty much invalidates the safety of this place.
  
  
• The Upper Level of the Food Court
  Duh.
  
  
• Colby's Screening Rooms
  Duh-doy.

Now for the more generic part, there are three types of safe spots:

• Raised places the zombies can't climb onto
  Such as the gazebo thing in Leisure Park, the blue or orange ledges on Paradise Plaza, the entire upper level in the Food Court, the perfume stand top in Wonderland Plaza, and even the top of some furniture items, such as some climbable fridges around the mall.
  
  These are flawless against zombies, but can be a bit bothersome to reach or climb back after accidental falls, but overall the reward far outweights the risk for the purpose of this run.
  
  
• Closed spaces
  Since we lack a spunky high school girl with supernatural powers to create these when she's feeling down, you'll have to resort to places with doors or standing behind obstacles.
  
  Closing yourself in a place with a door entrance is pretty self explanatory, however be careful when occupying one that has glass panels: accidentally breaking them will make the place unsafe.
  
  Small tip: if you have to go out, it'd be better to leave your door open towards the inside of the room, both for quick access and to have a better "Close the Door" prompt at hand, since having the door face outwards and closing it from the inside requires a slightly more precise positioning which might get in the way when trying to close the door in a hurry.
  
  In some cases, like in Flexin' (the Gym in the North Plaza), you might be able to barricade yourself with items if one glass breaks, but you'll have to hope the zombies are unable to break said items, which usually comes down to luck (for instance, sometimes placing a bench in an inclined position prevents them from attacking it for some reason, or other times they might get stuck).
  
  In other cases, like in Ned's Knicknackery (antique shop in the Entrance Plaza), you just better not break anything, period.
  
  CAUTION: I found that, more than one time, zombies with shopping carts could kind of enter safe areas by phasing through walls, possibly when being pushed by other zombies. This has happened once or twice in several hours of gameplay and is pretty rare, but nonetheless keep an eye out from this glitch, and in general just stay as far away from zombies as possible even when you're in a safe room as to not grab their attention.
  
  Standing behind counters in some places is yet another viable strategy, since the zombies are not smart enough to pathfind their way to you.
  
  Unfortunately, the zombies also seem to be picky about what they can and cannot climb onto: for instance, they will never climb over Crislip's counter, but they will definitely climb over the Food Court's stores counters and Jill's Sandwiches' counter (restaurant in Paradise Plaza). In Flexin', they might be able to climb over by helping themselves with the stools near the entrance, but it's a bit inconsistent.
  
  Another obvious solution is the jewelry stores, which usually feature small, impassable refuges, however zombies might pile up and make your potential exit difficult, so resort to these at your own discretion.
  
  
• DIY
  As previously stated, you might be able to either fix a broken window or create your own safe place by piling up furniture, but it's very inconsistent whether this will or will not work. As a rule of thumb, the more layers of stuff, the better the chances that a zombie will get stuck and not try to break stuff. All in all, however, there are so many other options that this practice should only be considered in very specific situations... I guess.
  
  Another way to create a safe spot is, quite simply, clear the area of zombies. This is also inconsistent, as zombies might respawn out of your field of view, but from my experience this works as long as you don't move around too much from the cleared room/place, and of course it helps if the place is small.
  
  I had to use this as an emergency measure in the underground tunnels, and clearing one of the stairwells to one of the exits worked pretty well (even when I ventured back into the actual tunnels, the room stayed clear for some reason... again, this is inconsistent).

Here's the deal: I tried to do some math and see if, at least technically, all of the food in the mall amounts to a total of 14 hours of survival, which is required to get this damn achievement.

I'm bad at math, but unless I grossly miscalculated, the food in the mall should total at least 13 hours and 45 minutes of survival time.

To this, you should add:

• Food from random psychos.
  
• Your initial, free 20 minutes of survival, since you start at full health.

And you should subtract:

• Damage that you ARE going to take.
  
• Anywhere between 1m40s (a health square's worth in time) and 5s for each full health replenishment, since you will not heal back at full health while being exactly at 0 health, thus wasting a bit of health/time every time, necessarily.

Approximately, this sounds like there's not much room for error... right? However, without overthinking it too much, forget all that crap. I can tell you that:

• Supplementing your food supplies with psycho drops will help a lot, even if you don't actively look for them. (I never had to search, more details in the next section about this if you want, but to give you an idea I found: Otis, Susan, the three snipers, Bill, Rich in the Food Court, Food Court Carlito, Entrance Plaza Carlito, Maintenance Tunnels Carlito)
  
• If you follow my optimal start, you already get a massive free boost to your total survival time (this, too, explained in the next section!)
  
• By making A LOAD of mistakes in my playthrough (including being bitten several times and accidentally eating full-health items), I still got my achievement with another day worth of food to spare! And I only killed so many psychos.

So, whatever you do, don't panic. This is easier than it looks, I swear.

True, I said I wouldn't give specific directions, however there is an obligatory way to start this playthrough, which is followed by an optimal shenanigan you can pull to earn loads of extra survival time easily.

• Start the game, exit the Monitoring Room, turn left, and get the Real Mega Buster.
  You can come back here later to get another if you run out of ammo, but I personally only needed one.
  
  
• Exit through the vent.
  
  
• Kill Otis.
  Use the Double Lariat.
  Not for defeating him, no. The Mega Buster is enough.
  Use it to spin in place out of joy after his death, for Otis is the true villain of this series, responsible for most zombie bites that occur to player characters and overall more annoying than that one guy from GTAIV.
  
  Oh, and guess what: you know how the 7 Day Survivor achievement is unreasonably bothersome to get? Well, the achievement related to Otis, Transmissionary, is so annoying that it's still statistically rarer than 7 Day Survivor on Steam .
  
  
  Fear not, for the old c**t has finally perished.
  
  
• Loot all Food on the roof and in the Warehouse area.
  I won't waste time telling you what to get (again) because you should gather that from the Food Map, however the Food Map won't tell you about Psychopath drops, so: remember to loot the food items from Otis and the already-dead Susan in the warehouse.
  
  Susan might not spawn under some circumstances, in which case you'll only lose 1 Cookies. No big deal.
  
  Also get some weapons while you have the inventory space, and don't go around wasting your Mega Buster ammo.
  
  
• Head to the Entrance Plaza to get Health 2 from the library
  The shutters are open in this mode, so you can do this right away as you get out of the warehouse.
  
  CAUTION: Paul is here, sending remote-controlled bombs at you. Watch out, and don't engage in combat unless necessary (it shouldn't be necessary).
  
  
• Head back to the Paradise Plaza.
  
  
• Take the Women's Bathroom Shortcut to Wonderland Plaza
  This, too, is unlocked right away in infinity mode.
  
  
• Get Health 1 from the Wonderland Plaza library
  
  
• Head to the North Plaza to get Survivalist from the double doors room next to Crislip's
  
  
• Now use the method I explained, starting from this area
  Gather food, drop it in the safe room (same where you find Survivalist and a Wrestling magazine), go back out, gather more, drop it in there (if inventory space is not enough), heal every time you're about to die (or not, if it's low healing items).
  
  
• When your inventory can fit all of the food left, exit the room and go to Crislip's
  PREPARE YOURSELF: as soon as you enter, you will be shot!
  
  
• Immediately aim and shoot Bill with the Mega Buster, repeatedly
  This is a quick-draw match: as soon as the area is finished loading, he should already be pointing an Uzi at your face unless he's being distracted by RNJesus-sent zombies. Kill him fast.
  
  It's ok to lose one or two squares of health. Don't panic.
  
  
• Repeat method as if this was any other mall area
  Gather food. (Popsicles dropped from Bill, Apple & Radish behind counter.)
  Find safe spot. (Behind the counter. Seriously, they don't know how to get on or around it.)
  Heal when about to die.
  
  
• When your inventory can fit all of the food left, exit Crislip's and go to Leisure Park from the exit immediately to your left
  
  
• SNIPE THE SNIPERS
  Alright, this is important: if you did things in this order, even if the time wasn't precise, the three snipers should be on top of the gazebo, and you should be so far away that they can't detect you.
  
  You can snipe them with the Mega Buster.
  
  Aim at them from where you are, near the North Plaza entrance, minding the zombies and positioning yourself accordingly (of course), and then shoot a buster shot at any of them and wait for it to connect before firing the next one.
  
  This is because, when hit once, they will usually move around in panic for a second. At times, they might even drop down from the gazebo, but they will not start running away, since they can't find you anywhere near them, either to snipe you or to run away from you.
  
  Depending on how forward you are, one of them might spot you and snipe you, but you have plenty of trees to hide behind and plenty of room to start moving to avoid the bullets. It's not a problem. Use your discretion and win the fight.
  
  Do this for all three of them and, once they are dead, you will be awarded three cooked pizzas plus some extras from their drops. This equates to 60+ free survival minutes, meaning more than one hour, meaning MORE THAN HALF AN IN-GAME DAY!
  
  
• Resume the method previously discussed, by gathering all food in Leisure park, and dropping excess food on top of the gazebo, which is your safe spot
  CAUTION: Do not drop food items that roll away on the gazebo, keep them in your inventory, or they will fall from your safe spot. This includes: wine bottles, cabbages, apples, and melons. Everything else can be dropped safely, or might need to be angled correctly to stay still.
  
  CAUTION II: You will have to gather apples from trees in this area. This is frustrating to do. Use the rocks that are lying around, and always aim significantly (but not too much) higher than where the apple is to get it to fall from a close range.
  
  Or, experiment.
  
  
• Proceed with the method however you please for the rest of the game.
  I will post my progression in the next part of the guide for who's interested.

Summary of how my run went.

• Did exactly what's written in the Optimal Start part
  Therefore, put a mental "check" on North Plaza and Crislip areas.
  
• Stood on top on wooden gazebo in Leisure Park until the only food left was in my inventory
  Leisure Park: check
  
• Moved on to Food Court
  
• Killed Rich
  Rich will be on the upper level of the Food Court, where Carlito would usually be. Two times out of three, Rich was pointing his gun at something unspeficied and away from me, allowing me to sneak up on him and kill him easily
  
• Collected all food in the area and put it on the upper level
  
• Stood on the upper level until the only food left was in my inventory
  
• Exited to Leisure Park, to check the time elapsed
  
• Re-entered the Food Court immediately, now with Carlito in it
  
• Killed Carlito
  Watch out for this guy, all of the encounters with him are the most dangerous ones, but still relatively easy using the Mega Buster.
  
• Stood on the upper level until the only food left was in my inventory, again
  Food Court: check
  
• Moved on to Al Fresca Plaza
  
• Collected all food in the area and put it in the Flexin' gym
  
• Stood near the mirror until the only food left was in my inventory
  Al Fresca Plaza: check
  
• Moved on to Entrance Plaza
  
• Killed Carlito (sniper version)
  This is where I took the most damage, as getting close to him in a hurry can get dangerous.
  
• Collected all food in the area and put it in Tom's Knicknackery
  
• Stood inside the closed antique shop until the only food left was in my inventory
  Entrance Plaza: check
  
• Moved on to Paradise Plaza
  
• Collected all food in the area and put it behind the counter of Jill's Sandwiches
  
• Stood behind the Jill's Sandwiches counter until the only food left was in my inventory
  This was a bad idea. Zombies could actually get here, and spooked me out of my external activities once or twice. Moving on the right side of the counter (looking from behind the counter, in other words where you'd find the baguette) seemed to solve the issue, but I felt pretty unsafe. I recommend standing on top of the blue ledge over the camera shop or the orange one where you find the katana, for maximum safety, even if they are a bit more annoying to get back to (the orange one probably less so).
  
  In any case, Paradise Plaza: check
  
• Moved on to Colby's Movieland
  
• Collected all food in the area and put it in Room 1
  
• Stood inside the closed Screening Room n.1 until the only food left was in my inventory
  Colby's Movieland: check
  
  At this point, I already knew I had won, unless I did something particularly stupid. I had enough food to last me 170 minutes, and I was on... day 6 or something.
  
• Moved back to Paradise Plaza
  
• Exited to Leisure Park
  
• Sniped the three convicts from a distance
  80% of the time these guys are repeatedly smashing their veichle into an obstacle until you get close, and as we know there's no need to get all close and personal with the Mega Buster. I killed them from a distance, but they drop no food.
  
  At this point I had a decision to make: either take the veichle, which supposedly has the most durability of all veichles in the game, and try my luck in the maintenance tunnels, or pass up on this opportunity and just go for the safe route, dealing with Wonderland Plaza.
  
• Moved on to Wonderland Plaza
  ...I chose the latter.
  
• Collected all food in the area and put it on top of the Perfume Stand (where you find one Grapefruit)
  I hate having to climb up to this place, but it's objectively the safest.
  
  Little piece of advice: for some reason, when your Mega Buster is equipped, you can't slow walk; Frank will run at full speed no matter how light your input is. Due to this nice arbitrary rule, while moving around a little bit on this platform, I fell off several times (it seems like Frank is also committed to at least two steps every time an input is given).
  
  Don't make my same mistake.
  
• Stood on top of the Perfume Stand until the only food left was in my inventory
  Wonderland Plaza: check
  
• Moved on to the Maintenance Tunnels via the Wonderland Plaza emergency exit
  Strangely enough, you can use these exits right away and without the need to find the key, in infinity mode.
  I say "strangely enough" because then, for some reason, you lack the key to open the room in Colby's where Cheryl is supposed to be, or the cult room in Leisure Park. Huh.
  
• Descended the stairs and sniped Carlito (van version)
  I did some sick prediction headshot on the guy, wish I could have filmed it!
  
  Sniped him from relative safety by staying inside the stairwell corridor. He never even got close. The first hit was free, too, as he wasn't moving.
  
• Fought my way out and grabbed the carton of milk right outside and Carlito's food drops
  
• Moved back into the stairwell corridor
  
• Killed all zombies within the stairwell corridor
  
• Stood in the stairwell corridor until the only food left was in my inventory
  Tried to keep an eye on the entire thing and not move the camera away, just in case zombies would respawn because of it. Not sure if this is how the game works.
  
• Descended the stairs and fought my way out to the nearby Maintenance Tunnel Key room
  A mixture of queens, shopping carts and luck with zombie spawns helped me. Do not attempt this.
  
• Grabbed the carton of milk in the Tunnel Key room
  
• Stood in the Tunnel Key room until the only food left was in my inventory
  
• Fought my way out to the nearby exit to Leisure Park
  
• Hopped on red car
  
• Made my way to the Meat Processing Area
  
• Killed Gordon
  
• Killed all zombies in the Meat Processing Area
  
• Collected all food in the area and put it behind sausage racks corner
  
• Placed 3 sausage racks in front of myself, creating a small room for myself in case of zombie respawns
  
• Stood behind the sausage racks until the achievement was finally unlocked
  Unlocked the achievement with 5 bottles of wine, two coffee creamers and one steak left.
  
• Tried my luck to see how long I could survive, killed Floyd and Jennifer, was called due to IRL issues and accidentally made Frank starve to death in a Colby's screening room.
  Whoops.
  
  

Your main enemies are going to be mild annoyance, IRL, and potential technical issues during this run, moreso than zombies or hunger or people shooting you in the face.

Here's a bunch of technical stuff you might find useful?

• In order to be able to minimize/alt+tab from the game without the in-game time stopping, you need to set the game to Windowed Mode.
  As I said before.
  
  Shift-tabbing to the steam overlay stops the time regardless of full-screen or windowed, and pausing the game does too of course. Keep those in mind.
  
  
• Leave focus on the game if you're suddenly experiencing high resources usage.
  This is still just my experience, and might be my machine's fault, but I found that this game, once again much like a needy baby, starts taking up more CPU/Memory when minimized or not in focus, and tends to go back to normal as soon as I go back to it.
  
  At times, it would just take me to go back to it and then minimize it again to go on about my business without any higher than usual resources usage, leading me to believe this is more a bug than anything related to my computer's performance (or maybe it's my drivers, I don't know).
  
  In any case, if experiencing said problem, and if you need to leave the game paused because you have to go out or you want to sleep and continue your tedious journey the day after, I recommend not keeping the game minimized.
  
  
• Keep the game's audio on, even if low.
  True, it's annoying to hear Frank go "hm!" every minute or so as he curiously examines his camera for the millionth time, hearing zombies constantly gargling in the distance, and some noises from the mall might spook you or annoy you during the day...
  
  ...however, I suggest tweaking the volume in a way that all of that is reduced to extremely minimal background noise, so that the loudest sound possible, and pretty much the only one that might occurr and that should insterest you, will still be kind of audible: the sound of Frank struggling against a zombie. Resume game immediately if you hear this, because clearly your safe place has unwanted guests, and pray to the Old Gods that they're not biting you while you only have one square of life left.
  
  
• Good luck with sudden PC restarts, sudden power outages and whatnot.
  This falls within the "IRL" category, as I'm not talking about things caused by the game.
  
  Not much you can do about it, and I'm sure you don't need this warning when you've decided to invest this ludicrous amount of time on a meaningless, tedious task.

This turned out overly wordy and scatter-brained, just like me, but you basically only need to pay attention to the Method part and the Optimal Start part, in that order of importance.

I have no idea why you decided to do this, and why you think it's worth it: maybe you're plagued by OCD disguised as completionism in your rationale, maybe you just love the game and want to show your support, maybe you're dumb enough to see how "difficult" this is and consider it a taunting challenge, or maybe it's just bragging rights you're after.

No matter why, and no matter how many times you will ragequit from this task due to extremely idiotic reasons for which the run was cut short, always find comfort in the fact that at least Otis is dead.

The dumb b***h.