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Nov 20, 2025

Getting The Most Out Of Deltarune Chapters 1+2+3+4: A Guided Experience.

Experience Deltarune the same way we did as it was releasing

Want to read this as a google doc instead?

If you are the rare person who heard about Deltarune (the parallel story to Undertale, by Toby Fox!) through the recent Nintendo Switch 2 Direct, this is for you. This is also a good resource for anyone that's just been out of the loop, or wants to make sure they've "seen it all" before getting to the next chapter.

It details not just what to play before Deltarune's new release content, but also has tips to make sure you don't miss anything important while getting through it without wasting time and detailing what happened between releases so you can go in with the same full experience I've had waiting for it to release for the past 7 years. The best time to get started was 2015, the second best time is now. All of it is below this read more, and it comes with only the necessary spoilers to save you some time. You can read it all in one go before starting any of the games, if you want. It's like, 10 years of stuff in here though. Take your time. If I missed anything, tell me and I'll edit it in. The best way to read this post is on my blog so you can see any of these edits. Feel free to share this around, make a video essay where you just read this off word for word, and/or repost it in any other fashion. I just want people enjoying the games! Credit is appreciated of course.

The Undertale Essentials

Go play Undertale! (you can skip any steps you've done before) It's on Steam, Xbox, Playstation, Switch. You can find android mobile ports of it pretty easily too, apparently. You can find a way to play it, I promise.

Just get to the end however you want, it largely doesn't matter what you do since a large appeal of the game is it reacting to your decisions. But if you get an encounter with no enemies, that means you've killed enough of them to activate an optional mode that skips a lot of the normal stuff in the game. So I would quit out to reload your save in that instance. You absolutely need to experience the game that started it all because a lot of Deltarune's enjoyment comes from the knowledge you'd have after playing this game first! Including the music! Don't mute the game just because you think the Ruins music is kinda mid!

Play Undertale...Again! This time, you need to be going for the True Pacifist Ending. Which just means you do all the important side quests, and don't kill anyone at all.* Don't worry about this being boring, there's actually plenty of unique dialog for a second playthrough.** If you don't super-kill The Flower™ from the trailer and all the marketing during a playthrough, he'll give you tips and hints on how to do it without having to look up a guide after the normal final boss. But really just try and maximize the dialog you see in this playthrough and you should get it. Just make sure you pour water on the blue lady after she passes out in the lava area, if you leave the screen on accident before pouring the water on her it locks you out of a side quest and you'll have to load a save from before the boss fight. If you save after this, that means you have to start all the way over...again again! *If you never killed anyone in your first playthrough and didn't lock yourself out of any important side quests, you can just hit continue to load into the room before the finale, and go back to do the side stuff you missed. **If you can't tell that the dialog is new, that means you can't complain about it being boring since you didn't remember the original dialog anyways! (This is a spiteful remark towards my biological older sister)

Play Undertale...Again Again Again! In step 1, I mentioned an optional mode that skipped a lot of the normal parts of the game. Well now you're going to do that on purpose, by not fighting an area's boss until you've exhausted the encounter limit. It's one of my favorite parts of the game to play. This can only be done by Fighting enemies until they fall to ashes before you, and stop showing up entirely. After the first area, save points start giving you an enemy count so you can't miss them on accident. Do this for the whole game, and you'll be able to reach The Final Conclusion to Undertale.

...Or...

You could watch someone else do it. (Don't click that out of curiosity if you're not at this step yet, it starts with super spoilers for the True Pacifist Ending!) This video playthrough features no commentary and uses YouTube's chapters feature, allowing you to skip through the monotonous enemy grinding if you just want to see what's new. Not everyone wants to do this playthrough, for obvious reasons.

This step might feel optional, but it's so important that I would highly recommend watching the video if you don't want to play it yourself. (You can check the end of this video yourself even if you played it, as this ending does change some things in other parts of the game!)

Congratulations! You've now finished The Undertale Essentials! (or you already did all of this like 10 years ago) Time to move on to...

The Extracurriculars!: Part 1

I don't believe any of this section is skippable if you want to really get the most out of Deltarune, despite the name. Feel free to use this time to think about Undertale even more, on a deeper level. These are events that happened between Undertale and the surprise release of Deltarune Chapter 1. Starting with...

The UNDERTALE Anniversary Q&A

Just make sure you read those instructions! It's not very long, so you could read it all in a single bathroom break.

The UNDERTALE 2nd Anniversary Alarm Clock announcement

This has since been cancelled, but it has some unique dialog for the characters found nowhere else. Again, very short.

The trailer for UNDERTALE's Switch release I guess?

This one is just funny, I really like this trailer. It didn't even release for the third anniversary on time outside of Japan. However, there is a fan favorite Exclusive Boss Fight and also Whatever This Is (<- 1/100 chance) that you'll miss if you didn't play the game on Switch! These are essential to know about going forward, as it's effectively two entirely new characters.

Here's the Exclusive Dog Shrine for the Playstation release, which is...Not Important...I'm watching this just now for the first time and it kind of sucks...badly. Okay just this one is skippable.

The Deltarune Essentials: Chapter 1

I want to take a moment to set the mood here for you. We just had the Switch release for Undertale, for the third anniversary. Nobody is expecting anything from Toby, who's now a multi-millionaire off of game sales alone (official merch comes from Fangamer, I wouldn't look at it yet though as you might run into spoilers) and if he does release anything else, we expect it to be just his "next project."

Then, the morning of October 30th, the day before Halloween, the official Undertale account tweets this and this. (<- start that one at the bottom I formatted it wrong) Then, after waiting a full 24 hours and finally downloading the new thing it greets you with THIS terrifying premise. We were terrified!

Now, after reading that, it is finally time for...

Playing Deltarune! But just chapter 1. It's free! After installing it, if it's the steam version, right click it and open up the "properties..." menu. Then go down to Betas and set it to "chapter1.2.lts.test - 11-25-24" to make sure you're playing the latest version, if you can't it's not a big deal but this does make some changes that will be in the final game. Meaning it's just a way to play the final-ish version of chapter 1+2 a bit early!

It's your first playthrough, just do whatever you like. It's only a single chapter rather than an entire game, so replaying it won't take nearly as long even if you mess something up. I will warn you though, you will need at least 90 minutes in a row after fighting the final boss of Card Castle to complete the next section that has no save points. This is, technically, for the best. You'll see. But please, for your own sake, do not start Chapter 2 yet. I promise, it's worth it.

Playing Deltarune But Just Chapter 1...Again! Or don't. While I do personally recommend playing through it again and doing the opposite of what you did the first time, that's not really important. At least not that we can tell yet. What you will want to do is load your first save file, and then making sure you have the White Ribbon armor item and watching the chapter 1 portion of [PENDING REPLACEMENT] to make sure you didn't miss anything important for Chapter 2! (it starts in partway through the video to avoid spoilers, make sure you stop the video before he starts talking about Chapter 2) You will need to get to the ending cutscene again to make sure any changes to your file transfer to Chapter 2 properly.

This is just a general playthrough tip: When you're in town, you can just go all the way down to the bunker at the south-most area first thing. This will let you explore through the town in "layers", making it hard to miss anything that isn't hidden (the guide does mention the hidden part of the town!) Really, the most important part is just talking to sinks before anyone else in the room though.

FOR NOW: Just a short checklist for Ch1

Now that you've finished Chapter 1, it's time for...

The Extracurriculars!: Part 2

At this point, you're probably thinking to yourself "Why should I wait? Why would I not just go into the next part of the game now? Why do all these extra parts?" The simple answer is, Deltarune uses its Chapter releases to give you time to think about it. Probably, too much time, given the way some of us react to it. But this does play into its strengths as a series, giving us tidbits and mysteries to dive into. Trying to predict and figure out what's being foreshadowed and find the characters hidden and all the little interactions you could of missed. This really is the true strength of the series, and why people love talking about it. There's so much to find, there's almost always more you haven't seen.

This section covers the events that happened between chapters 1 and 2 of Deltarune. It's honestly quite a doozy, but less of it as vital as last time. Starting with:

Toby Fox talking about his thoughts on the game he's been working on since 2012.

Yeah, it turns out Deltarune started development before he even started working on Undertale. This is more or less unimportant if you don't care about Toby Fox or the creation of the game.

Honestly a lot of what's here and between the 5th Anniversary is mostly little tweets here and there. If you DO care about a little behind the scenes stuff, you'll just have to open the Toby Fox's twitter account and scroll down until you see the big blue "Windows protected your PC" images because everyone's PC's thought he was releasing a virus because he called the game "SURVEY_PROGRAM" lol. (then you can start scrolling up to see the stuff!)

Also the Chapter 1 Demo released on Switch with a very funny trailer

Seriously though, it's all just other stuff he's worked on, jokes, behind the scenes/scrapped content, or previews for chapter 2 which you're about to play anyways.

This all changed on the 5th anniversary however...

THE UNDERTALE 5th Anniversary Orchestra Concert

This doesn't have much exclusive in it (excluding the music itself, of course) other than a commercial for some merchandise that was released on the 5th anniversary. There are also some piano covers from Toby Fox himself at the 3:03:00 mark, including a song you might not have heard yet. It's a very fun listen and watch, but it isn't vital if you just care about the story and characters instead of the music. Somehow. (If you played through the game muted you're doing it wrong [Unless you're deaf. Sorry.])

The UNDERTALE 5th Anniversary Alarm Clock Dialog

Unlike the other alarm clock dialog, this is actually very entwined with the characters, to the point where despite it being their Undertale versions, it actually gives insight for their Deltarune versions as well. A very important read, if you ask me, and very enjoyable if you just like the characters. Not nearly as short as last time, but it's sectioned so you can come back to your spot easily if you get interrupted.

The UNDERTALE 5th Anniversary Deltarune Status Update

This is more or less just talking about how far along chapter 2 was, and why it's been taking so long! Non-vital if none of that interests you, but there are some cool screenshots of Chapter 2.

Microsoft (probably) paid Toby a ton of money to release the game on Xbox for some reason lol

Again: really funny trailer. Here's most of the Exclusive Xbox Stuff (the rest can be found here, thanks @undertale-encyclopedia for having such a good pinned post) which doesn't sucks and gives more information on a few characters, even some we only meet in Deltarune!

Now for the 6th anniversary we have something very special.

The UNDERTALE 6th Anniversary SO WE PLAY deltarune CHAPTER 1 FOR SOME REASON live stream featuring 3 dads

This is really cool and important to the experience if you ask me! I genuinely recommend watching it, beginning to end, skipping nothing and keeping your eyes peeled throughout. It's not a very "normal" playthrough, and the waiting periods have exclusive songs & information.

You'll see why at the end of it, but now that you've definitely watched that entire video (it's okay if you did it at 2x speed) it's time for...

The Deltarune Essentials: Chapter 2

More spooky tweets...So Spooky... (again, bottom to top. Just like manga!)

Playing Deltarune Chapter 2! Your first playthrough, do whatever you want. There aren't any long stretches without save points this time either. I highly recommend getting at least 1 of everything you come across and keeping it safe, with your new storage ability this shouldn't be too hard. There's plenty of secrets to find too, so keep an eye out!

This will save you a lot of time though: There is a part in Chapter 2 where the party changes in some meaningful way I'm being intentionally vague about. As SOON as this happens, use the new Chapter 2 save menu to copy your save into an unused save slot (I recommend the bottom slot) and don't touch it or save over it for the rest of this playthrough.

There is a hidden B-side route, requiring either a guide to go through it or someone behind your shoulder telling you what to do. Saving at this moment will allow you to do this B-side route, without having to start the chapter over from the beginning. Having someone telling you what to do is the recommended way to do it.

Do the hidden B-side route, which is significantly shorter than a normal playthrough. If you saved in the correct spot, you should have a save file ready to go right before the branching point. Again, someone else telling you what to do is recommended. But if you need a guide for it, there's one on the wiki in the "Method" section near the top. Try not to read anything outside of it.

I recommend to stop reading the guide as soon as possible, as once the route is initiated a low-pitched sound will play whenever you successfully keep the route going. If a different sound plays, you have aborted this B-side route, meaning you need to reload your last save. If you get stuck, you can go back to the guide as necessary. Do note that you WILL need to find The Dumpster and buy from it.

After you Do-The-Thing with the Dumpster-Thing-You-Need-To-Remember-To-Equip, you'll be locked in, so you won't need to consult the guide anymore for the rest of the playthrough.

You can now watch the entire [PENDING REPLACEMENT] video beginning to end.* I originally linked it at the 6:40 mark, so you can watch what was before that to see what spoilers I skipped. If you just want the Chapter 2 guide portion, it starts at 13:30. This step of "making perfect save files" is technically skippable, but there are some REALLY good items in Chapter 2 that are VERY missable! This will make sure you get them all, maximizing your Chapters 3 & 4 experience. But this one really isn't vital if you're enough of a gamer to not need strong items for "optional" hidden bosses. Oh, and make sure you talk to sinks before people whenever possible.

FOR NOW: All I can give is this checklist *if you’d rather just read a checklist, here’s one by @brixbraxium. It covers both chapters 1 & 2, so I couldn’t link it earlier. It doesn’t cover absolutely everything like the video guide, but if you just want the big points this is perfect.

The Extracurriculars!: Finale

The Finale. All the extra bits and pieces that have been dropped for us here and there as we've been waiting for the past 3 and a half years for that Trailer. You may not want to read this section until after you're done with Chapter 2! It's easily the longest section to get through. But I'm sure you've been wondering...

Who the hell is that guy from the intro that's been making those spooky tweets before chapter releases? and Part 2 of it. These videos are, of course, not gospel (something like this really can't have one) But it's a very good summary of the information we have and what the common consensus was/is for some things.

Also there's been this unused code that has a person talking the entire time lol. This actually changed between the chapter 1 and chapter 2 release. This is probably Dess? Who you may or may not even know exists at all. Hope you've been paying attention!

The UNDERTALE 7th Anniversary Deltarune Status Update

This one has content you, someone who just played Chapter 2, will actually care about! It previews content and music for chapters 3 & 4, but still effectively tells us nothing! It's awesome! More importantly though it tells you about

THE SPAMTON SWEEPSTAKES

Don't watch the video at the top. This is for your own safety. You can't handle it. Not Yet. This features tons of exclusive music, previews of stuff you already saw and other stuff that wasn't featured in the Switch 2 direct trailer, and ads that you actually SHOULD click on. Can you find all 40 hidden pages? No? Are you sure you checked the product descriptions really thoroughly? Both homepages? Okay here's the wiki page that lists them all. Really do go through them all though, there's a lot of character building that just won't happen in the game here! Also, here's a live Spamton FAQ that got buried in Fangamer's twitter for some reason. Very funny and informative.

Successfully managing to get through all 40 hidden pages, and reading all of the text on the normal pages, and the FAQ, should inoculate you to [Spamton's Essense] allowing you to now watch the video at the top of the sweepstakes page. I am not liable for any [injures] you suffer.

THE NEWSLETTERS

After this, everything became consolidated into Seasonal Newsletters (sign up here, I recommend truck freak) that are archived here on Toby Fox's website. Just click into the Newsletter archive, and scroll down to the bottom first and work your way up. Seriously, just go up through them and enjoy what we've been waiting for months apart. The Chapter 3&4 spoilers start in the Undertale 10th anniversary Newsletter.

These talk about everything Toby Fox has been working on and have cool stuff like interviews with the characters and also real people who work on the games! It'll cover a couple things that happened before this section too, so don't worry about me missing anything if you think I haven't mentioned it here. However, there are some Famitsu articles linked, and you may notice that when you try to read them...that you do not speak Japanese...

Here's translations by @chartcarr of pretty much every Toby Fox Japanese only interview! You can find the one's mentioned in the newsletters under the "Toby Fox's Secret Base" link if they're not on the front page. (Chartcarr is going to re-do most of these at some point. That might have already happened, check’em out again if you’ve already read them!)

Newsletter Issue #5 Has 3 Random Valentine's Day Cards. Here's All Of Them In One Page. We had to hunt these down as a community, together! It was brutal! A lot of them only went to a few people, and if those people weren't online or aware we didn't have theirs yet, we just didn't have it! It was great.

All that's left for you now is to remember to click the snowman at the bottom of Issue 8.

Don't want to miss anything once Chapters 3&4 come out? Here's a speculative checklist by @brixbraxium (again!) that predicts everything we'll need to do based on the previous chapters. If I never update this, it can't ever be spoilers! Woohoo!

Big Questions FAQ:

This Series Has Irrevocably Rewired My Brain How Do I Cope With This

Watch this. It's a great video, even if you don't have this problem. It's basically what happened to me.

How Do I Become A Theory Lord With All Of This In My Brain Now?

Here's Device Theory, by @m0llystars, it should get your gears turning just watching it. Yes all 3 parts are out. It's especially worth your time if you like thinking about this game perhaps a bit too much really.

I Really Need Specifically More Undertale Not Deltarune Right NOW!!!...Please?

Here's an [PENDING REPLACEMENT] on the show "That's Never Happened Before." You can probably just google "Undertale Theory" or scour the wiki.

I Need To Give This Man More Than The $1-$35 I Have Already Given Him For His Game(s), How?

Official Merch can be found here, there are also EU and JPN sites linked at the bottom of the page. Here is the Bandcamp page to Buy the digital versions of the soundtracks (also on most streaming platforms)

I Like Music Theories

Here you go!

All Of This Happened So Fast I Need Something To Help Analyze The Characters In This Largely Character Driven Series! Help?!

Here's Dorked's Undertale & Deltarune Analysis playlist who you can also find on this website running the blog @megaderping

I've Managed To Consume All Of This Before Deltarune Chapters 3 + 4 Released, Or Came Back After They Released, And I Crave More. Now What?

The biggest inspirations for Undertale and Deltarune are Earthbound, Mother 3, Live A Live, OFF, Yume Nikki, MOON: Remix RPG, Brandish, Cave Story, and the TouHou series. (and a few more not mentioned here!)

OFF The RPG is getting a re-release on Switch & Steam soon with new music (some is by Toby Fox!) and revamped combat, so look forward to that. Or you can play the original OFF for free.

Earthbound is on every Nintendo console ever. Here's an excellent Let's Play of Earthbound you can watch if you don't want to play it yourself. It will show you more than you could possibly find on your own. A great series just in general, if you need something to watch.

Here's a video on how to play Mother 3.

Live A Live can be purchased on Steam or Nintendo Switch, and is excellent. Each campaign is relatively bite sized so you'll never be stuck on anything for long. I recommend disabling tutorials and starting with Imperial China, it's very linear and simple so it's perfect to learn with. Looking up guides to make sure you don't miss anything is fine though!

Cave Story is just free.

Yume Nikke is just free.

MOON: Remix RPG is on steam and Nintendo Switch. If you're a theory head, I highly recommend playing this one through to the end.

TouHou has a very dedicated unofficial translation scene, as there is no official translation for most of the games, so you'll need to go through them to play the games unless you can read Japanese.

I don't really have anything for the Brandish series, I just absorbed information about it from a blog that's no longer active. If anyone knows a truly exceptional let's play of it or the best way to play it, I'll edit it in here!

Stuff from other people who worked with Toby Fox

Temmie Chang has made a couple short games that Toby Fox has helped with

Splendidland (Mickey’s Dicksmasher Person) has done several things, including making Franken RPG. Which is fantastic.

Space Funeral isn’t really related at all but if you liked Franken it’s an obligatory recommendation. A friend of mine played it because they just got into Deltarune and didn't want to burn out replaying it before release, then immediately recommended it to me.

Toby Fox helped with the music for Soul Of Sovereignty, by ggdg, who did some art for Undertale and got interviewed in one of the newsletters.

Fred Wood has his own website, definitely check out LOVE 3.

Taxiderby, creator of UNDERTALE RED, has their own itch page also.

I can also strongly recommend ZeroRanger & Void Stranger if you just want that feeling of digging deeper. Finding obscure interactions and details buried deep within the game, challenging but deeply rewarding in gameplay and lore discovery...Also play them both if you want to hear the music do that thing where the motif is established in the first game to give hints towards stuff in the second game in action. It's very cool.

Wait that's really how you're ending it? A random game rec where all you say is they're very cool without explaining anything about them? One of these wasn't even a question!

ohandcounting

Guide Updated, unable to look for/create replacement materials right now so Ch1&2 are non-comprehensive.

undertale-encyclopedia

oh this is an amazing post!! wonderful wonderful

#ramblings

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