On the Subject of Gameplay Basics

Learn about power management and night length in Five Nights at Freddy's 3. Each night lasts 9 minutes, with power draining faster as nights progress.

Day Length:

Each hour of game time in Five Nights at Freddy's 3 corresponds to 90 seconds of real-world time. Therefore, each night lasts a total of 540 seconds, or 9 minutes. Knowing this can prove helpful when you're in the 5 AM hour and wondering how much time you have left before your power potentially runs out.

Power Consumption:

Your power is represented as a percentage in the lower left corner of your screen, starting at 99% and cutting off shortly after it hits 0%. Power is actually calculated in tenths of a percent, with each night starting at 99.9. The game rounds down to the nearest whole number to display your power. It will show 99% power when your actual power level is between 99.9 and 99.0, but the moment it reaches 98.9, your displayed power will drop to 98%.

The number of bars shown underneath the percentage represents how quickly your power is draining, and increases as you use more devices. There is always a minimum of one usage bar, presumably from things like the fan and the office lights which you cannot disable. The lights and cameras are all tied to a single bar; you cannot have more than one of them running at the same time. Each of the doors contributes another bar. Therefore, you can have up to a maximum of four usage bars if you have both doors closed and either have a light on or are looking at the cameras.

The game deducts 0.1 every second for each usage bar. For example, if you have one of the doors closed and are looking at the cameras, you will be using up 0.3 power per second, thus draining a full percent roughly every 3 seconds. You must hold out for 540 seconds.

Additional Power Penalties:

On Night 1, the drainage mechanic works as described. However, the remaining nights impose an additional power penalty in which it drains an additional 0.1 power every so often:

• Night 2: Every 6 seconds
• Night 3: Every 5 seconds
• Night 4: Every 4 seconds
• Night 5 onward: Every 3 seconds

As a result, your power will drain much faster the further you get in the game. At the late stages of the game, after taking into account base power consumption, you will only have a mere 27.9 power to work with in terms of camera, light, and door usage.

Foxy's Door Drain:

Foxy hitting your door when it's closed is one last way for your power to get drained. The specifics of this will be discussed when discussing Foxy's AI.