I think I nailed down a strategy to get all the beginning missable characters as well as Aster and still have more than enough time to save Ernest (and probably even recruit Audrey to have her help with Rat Hell) so I wanted to share my method. Note that this is on Survival Mode, and I don't know how viable it is on Cursed.

-At the beginning, of course kill everything (except the gawker or anything behind Vincent's locked door) so you have enough stamina to fight the Grinning Beast. 

- Feel free to raid Jeanne's apartment and bathroom, making sure to pick up the cockroach, grab the pool cue from the basement stairs, and go back to your apartment and cook to heal if needed and save. Make sure your stamina is topped off. If you do cook, make sure you leave one Bread and either one Eggs or one Tomato can for a sandwich later (unless you want to make it now)

- Equip the pool cue, go down and fight the Beast, impale - impale - table fork (if the instant kill or crit doesn't proc). You should have won and can get Lyle's key. Feel free to go chat with Leigh, but don't accept her on to the team yet.

- Go to Lyle, kiss him and get that photo paper. Avoid the bottom left room for now because there's no reason to get in unnecessary fights or waste time on new areas right now. Head straight to the upper left room instead, and don't worry about grabbing everything and prioritize not fighting the Eye Thing

- As you go through Rafta's room, try to avoid the rats or run away, both to avoid unnecessary fights but also to keep the option to get the Sewage Blade later if you want it.

- Go find Ernest's room. We aren't recruiting him right now though. Raid his hidden cheese stash since that's valuable to keep yourself alive right now.

- Head to the rat baby apartment. We want to avoid fighting the rats in the living room so I didn't really explore it, but the room with the child safety key is probably unavoidable for a fight. I equipped a cleaver -> cleave -> normal attacked the tail rat. Grab your rat baby and head out.

- Go to Apartment 13 and sacrifice whatever you desire. I decided to sacrifice my melee arm, which probably isn't a great decision so early on since I didn't have time to play Screamatorium to compensate, and Sam largely kept guarding the way through the rest of these fights. On normal mode, it turned out fine.

- At this point, it should be late evening or night. Go on and head back to your room after grabbing the disc. Clean and soothe your rat. Cook food for the roaches (but again make sure you leave the ingredients for a sandwich if you aren't making it now). Brush your teeth, and if you have enough time to make sure you can still wake up early in the morning, go shower. Then sleep.

- You should have woken up around 5-6am. Craft at least one molotov and some bandages if you haven't already. Cook that sandwich if you haven't already, and head out.

- Ignore the tooth family for now. We'll use them to help pass time later when waiting for the Landlord's Apartment to open.

- Beeline straight for Ernest, and give him his sandwich so he tags along. We will get the most out of him recruiting him early in the day like this.

- If you want to visit the Rat Hole for a free Juice Box (ask him why he wants rat tails, and then tell him you're dizzy), it's a good idea because Ernest's stamina is valuable today.

- Time to go to Apartment 11 and deal with the Rat Freak. On normal mode, this should be easily doable. I threw one molotov, and Ernest could handle most of the damage and rat minions with his Feedback skill. Grab that disc.

- Unlock the Ground Floor, and go directly to recruit Papineau. Go crash the bus, and then immediately turn right back around

- Go back to the teeth family and take care if what you want there and recruit Joel. Mr Henderson's apartment should now be open.

- After going through each and every room (except one) and even all the tents in the trenches, I had JUST enough money to make all of the payments to unlock his stage 4 apartment, and avoided nearly every fight along the way. It is probably a good idea to go back and save and maybe make some molotovs when you do though, because the enemy guarding the door to the basement key is particularly strong and hard to avoid and is probably the most dangerous enemy through all of this (though I did indeed avoid it)

- With the Basement Key, you can open the basement, But it will probably immediately notify you it is now nighttime when you do. You can go back to your room, cook for the roaches, shower, and sleep. Feel free to talk and play with the rat baby at least once each, and feed it.

- With Ernest gone, you are now free to go back to Leigh and pick her up for safety. Alternatively, you could do Audrey's quest and get her instead, but that is kind of dangerous to do right now. Either way, do NOT get both right now or Aster will not join. 

-Go ahead and pop in to say hi to Jasper now if you want the Apartment 12 stuff to be easier, and get the supplies in the rooms nearby. The Crawling Hand should now be at enough of a distance to safely access him.

- Head back to the basement and straight for the sewers. On your loop, feel free to go talk to David since there's some good supplies his way, and its just convenient to get Alice on the way in case you ever want to do that quest. Enemies should be very easy to avoid, except Leech, who may be an issue if you fight him.

- Head to the Boiler Rooms, Go north, talk to Beryl, and you have done it! Unlock the Parking Lot door and head right back to Aster and you should be able to get him.

At the time I got him and returned to my apartment, it was 13:55. This is plenty of time to get Audrey, grind some levels on the enemies I skipped, maybe get the Rat king and the crown, and save Ernest from Rat Hell. Hopefully this can be helpful for some other people's strategies too.



My "Recruit All Party Members" Starting Strategy