Deltarune: On the Elements (Part 1)
Deltarune has a whole-ass elemental attacks system that is both deeply interesting and also barely ever utilized in gameplay. Over the years I have grown deranged with it, amongst other things, so here's a blog post trying to compile my thoughts.
I meant to make quick summary of what we know before delving into theories, but at some point i lost the plot on what a "summary" actually is. So here is literally everything we know about Deltarune's element system. If you already know, you can ignore this post. Or go to the TL;DR table at the end.
If you rather want the theories, here they are.
Section 1.1: Mentions with no effects
When you check the recruits menu, you will see that every recruit has 1 to 3 elements listed as their elements, ranging from Ice, Water, Fire, to more bizarro shit like Puzzle, Dust or Smell. That's a gameplay implementation, right? WRONG. These elements are never actually assigned to the monsters in battle or in any capacity, they're just a piece of text that pops up when you open their menu page. Toby could put anything in this section as text, in fact, he does do that once. In the japanese version of the game, Jevil's voice saying "Chaos! Chaos!" while you battle him is translated as "Chaos-dayo!, Chaos-dane!". So, in his unused recruit info (Jevil has unused recruit info in the game data. He's the only unrecruitable character to have recruit info. Let's never bring this up again, ok?) toby also made his elements "Chaos-dayo;Chaos-dane" (in japanese) instead of "Chaos;Chaos". Which is to say, the elements on the recruit info screen have 0 effect on gameplay or any ties to the game's code.
Similarly, some of the character's spells mention dealing elemental damage, like Noelle's Ice Shock dealing Ice damage or Susie's Rude Buster dealing Rude damage, but this has literally 0 interaction with anything and only exists in the text blurb that mentions it.
Section 1.2: [Elemental pairs]
Elements in the code are assigned as integer numbers on select bullets. So when the game assigns "Element 5", that corresponds to the Dark/Star element, or "Element 6" corresponds to the Puppet/Cat element. That's the second thing, for one number there can be multiple elements slotted into it acting identical to each other. In an answer for the Spamton Charity Twitter Q&A, Spamton names these "Elemental pairs", implying that each number only has two elements. I see people sometimes conflate Pairs and the Elements themselves, but i think there's a distinction to make. For example, the Black Shard mentions "striking the weakness of Dark-element enemies", but that doesn't mean it strikes Star-element enemies. Having never seen a Star-element enemy, we have no way to know.
In the same answer, Spamton also mentions 4 elemental pairs directly: [Thunder/Light], [Dark/Star], [Puppet/Cat] and [Scythe/Death]. The last of which is particularly interesting, because we have seemingly never seen it in any capacity anywhere in the game. Emphasis on "seemingly".
Section 1.3: Elemental Equipment (that is used)
Every equipment in the game has a space in the code to specify an element and a percentage of damage it reduces for that element, although the vast majority just leave it empty. The only ones that uses this feature are: Frayed Bowties, the Mannequin and the Dealmaker which protect against Puppet/Cat attacks, and of course, Mr Shadow Mantle, who protects against Dark/Star attacks.
The attacks that count as Puppet/Cat attacks are Tasque's, Tasque Manager's (Cats), Spamton Neo's (A Puppet) and the yarn balls thrown by shadow guys in Roulx's Ch3 Fight (close enough). Regular Spamton's attacks aren't Puppet/Cat, for some reason, even tho you can get the mannequin before that fight. And the Mikes' many cat-themed attacks aren't either, because..? Maybe mr Tobers forgor? or maybe elements can't be applied to them because their attacks work separately from every other attack in the game. i really don't know...
Puppet/Cat is the easy part. The Shadow Mantle is where it gets fucked. The resistance value assigned to it in the code is 67%, and it does reduce the Knight's attacks by 67%, all of which are assigned the Dark/Star element and all of which look Dark or like Stars of some kind. Cool. Tenna has three attacks, two of which use star-shaped bullets, and the other one uses thunderbolt-shaped bullets. The two star attacks use the Dark/Star element whereas the thunderbolt one doesn't. Makes sense. Then, Lanino and Elnina, use the Dark/Star element for the singular attack they have across both Ch3 and Ch4. Why? First of all, why do they have only one attack for both fights when there are several fully functional unused attacks for them in the code that look cool and are fun to play? Second, why is their implemented attack assigned the Dark/Star element? The bullets look either suns, moons, water droplets or ice crystals each round and yet all of them do Dark/Star damage. I guess the Sun is a star, and if you really wanna stretch it, the Moon is related to the Night Sky, like Dark and Stars are. But that leaves half of it, just, wrongly assigned??
Then we get to the Titan. The Titan is not assigned the Dark/Star element to its bullets. They're just elementless bullets, then the game manually checks if the target has the shadow mantle and if so reduces the damage by 50% rather than the mantle's 67%. See, i think you have to take these things at face value. In universe, it's pretty clear the Titan is meant to use the Dark/Star element, it's just that between the Shadow Mantle and the Black Shard, the Shadow Crystal path made the Titan fight too easy, so the devs opted to nerf the Mantle a bit for that fight. And the easiest way to do that was to unassign the element in the code and just reduce damage in a different way. So even though the Titan's bullets aren't Dark/Star, lore-wise they're still Dark/Star. Hopefully this isn't controversial. Can it even be controversial? Does anyone other than me care about this stuff? (Oh, and, Titan Spawns work exactly the same. Let's not dawdle)
And last of the Dark/Star users, it's Gerson Motherfucking Boom. That's right, the big green shell that bounces off the walls and that you dodge in red soul mode, you know the one. It leaves a trail of stars behind it as it moves, and also makes a bunch of star bullets fall from above when Gerson smashes it into the ground at the end. Those are Dark/Star, babey. Or, well, they're not, it's the same deal as the Titan, considering it's only one part of one attack, Toby went "i better pump up those numbers", made it elementless and got the Shadow Mantle to reduce their damage by a whopping 85%.
And last is the Black Shard. At last is the Black Shard. The Black Shard says it "strikes the weakness of Dark-element enemies", but, as established in section 1.1, there is no such thing as a anything-element enemy in the code. Nor is there data in the black shard specifying an element to be effective against and by how much like how the armors do it. The game just checks, once again, directly in the damage script, if you're holding the black shard and if you're facing the Titan or Titan Spawns, and if so, multiplies your damage. I think the effect doesn't even work if Noelle is the one using it, because the game only makes this check for Kris.
Section 1.4: Unused Content
Come with me, dive into the data, and discover shit you were never supposed to see. Or were you? Before we even touch these waters i'll put my foot down and say: "No. No you weren't". Everything in this section can be seen as informative, very informative, but none of it is unquestionably canon. The same level of quality control isn't applied to cut content, and so anything here is prone to be a mistake or misunderstanding.
First up, we can learn a bunch by looking at the script that handles elemental damage reduction. Elements 1 through 8 are all treated the same, "if you've got a piece of equipment that reduces that element, that element's damage is reduced", but 9 and 10 are different. If you have equipment that protects against Element 9, it'll also protect as much against Elements 2 and 8, specifically. And if you've got equipment that protects against Element 10, then it also protects against Elements 1 through 9. This has led many people to conclude 10 is as high as it goes, and that Element 10 is essentially a "protect against all" element, which makes sense. Don't get me wrong, it makes sense. But i feel the need to point out, the "10" number isn't a hard set limit, they could always add some elements 11 or 12 which bypass it or change the script itself. Element 10 also doesn't cover Element 0, assigned to elementless bullets. Worth keeping in mind. (EDIT 2026/05/21: Element 10 protects against every single element other than 0. you could set an ID of 11, or 1997 or -2. it would all work. So there very much isn't any hard set limit, you could have any number of elements in the system.)
Jumping to items, we have the Sky Mantle, an unused piece of equipment from chapter 2 which states it "Protects against Elec and Holy attacks". And it does. In the code it grants a 50% reduction reduction against Element 1. So we can chalk down Element 1 as Elec/Holy, which is probably the same as Spamton's "Thunder/Light". We have several Electric-element enemies: Werewire, Werewerewire, Tasque, Zapper, so if we look at their attacks they should have Element 1 attacks, right? WRONG. The devs almost never put elements where it could not affect normal gameplay, so the only one to be assigned Element 1 across all 4 chapters is one of zapper's two attacks. Even Tenna's attack that hits with literal thunderbolts isn't assigned Elec/Holy. For the Holy side of the pair, we don't actually have any Holy-element recruits, but it is mentioned in Miss Mizzle's description stating that she "isn't even 'HOLY' elemental" so at least it must exist, right? Even tho it doesn't even show up once during the entire Church level. There's also Berdly naming his weapon the "Holy Halbird", Noelle and Ralsei's Heal Prayer reading "Heavenly light restores a little HP", The track "The Holy", innumerable references to "Heaven"... Ties to the Holy element seem to be everywhere in this game, yet what they connect to always remains just out of sight... But i'm dipping into theories here, let's move on.
We have another Armor piece, the Mouse Token, which protects against Element 7, but this time what Element 7 actually is isn't directly stated. Instead, the description only reads "A golden coin with a once-powerful mousewizard engraved", referring to the item's stats being +2 magic. When equips it Noelle she remarks on it being "... from the family entertainment center?", referencing Chuck E. Cheese. Fortunately, i'm not american, so i couldn't tell you what the fuck a Chuck E. Cheese is, but it might be relevant or something. No bullets are ever assigned Element 7, but "Mouse" is an element, one that has several enemies in Chapter 1 and 2, where "+2 magic" wouldn't have been totally 100% outclassed yet as an item. So, that's something.
Ok, let's end this with unused attacks that have elements assigned. And by "unused attacks" i mean "Lanino and Elnina's unused attacks", because they're the only one that have any. There's this one attack where they bring down a giant sun and it starts spitting moons at you that orbit around, that's a Dark/Star attack. The Moon isn't really Dark or a Star, but i guess the sun is big enough, why not. Then we have another attack where a giant cloud appears and starts snowing and raining on you. Also a Dark/Star attack?? Is it because snowflakes are kinda lowkey star-shaped? No. I choose to believe it's just an omission, a case of copy-pasted code that wasn't fixed since it's an unused attack. The last attack is the one that actually tells us something new. It's an attack where raindrops fall down while flooding the battle box with a rising water level, and it's assigned Element 3! 3, i say! A whole new Element fresh from the juice! So yeah, i'm putting Elem 3 down as Water. I mean, yes, it's true that the same thing could be said as for the previous snow attack, that it could be "just an omission, a case of copy-pasted code that wasn't checked over since it's an unused attack", but the difference here is that... i need this. Please let me have this.
Section 1.5: Stuff that's worth mentioning, but that there's not really much to say about.
Alright, so, this is gonna be a vaguer section, but i want to point out a few distinctly elemental-looking attacks and spells. Most of these i probably won't have much to say about, so it'll be more like a list.
1. that young man Burghley, he fires tornadoes when he attacks. From Lanino, we know that Wind is an element, so Burghs might be using that.
2. Noelle's "Sleeping Mist" spell is described as "Cold Mist", so, it could be Ice-Element, because cold, but it could also be Water-Element.
3. Queen electrifies the box in one of her attacks, plus she's a computer and those run on electricity here on earth.
4. Zapper's single Elem 1 attack doesn't really look electric, tv remotes work by sending infrared light, so it could be that this is a Light-Element (aka Holy) attack.
5. Ralsei has one act when battling Balthizard where he uses Fire magic, which is reminiscent of how the Dreemurrs in Undertale used fire magic. Except for Asriel who used sta- nope, not going down that rabbit hole, section over.
I'm skipping stuff like "Sweet Cap'n Cakes are Music boxes", or "TVs run on electricity" because i don't think that's really interesting or relevant.
And, TIME! That's time! I've exhausted everything there is to say without delving into straight-up theories (as much as i could), so, here's the final compilation.
I'll edit this post if ever something new comes up or i feel i missed something.
