Tactics to the devil dungeon

Your next move starts before the battle.

Tactics to the devil dungeon is a dark fantasy, turn-based tactical RPG where recruitment, class changes, skills, and equipment shape what your party can do in combat. Prepare in town, read the terrain and movement ranges, then choose each companion's action.

Decide which status to inflict first, whether to spend MP on a powerful skill, and what to keep in reserve. Carry the experience and equipment you gain into your party's next challenge.

A campaign of 100 battles

The main campaign contains 102 stages outside the towns: 100 battle stages and two story scenes. Travel between them on a voxel world map, and examine each battlefield's starting positions and routes before choosing how your party will approach.

Fifteen towns line the route. Each has a recruitment board with its own companions and a shop stocked for that part of the journey, so choosing whom to bring and how to equip them becomes part of building your tactics.

The ending does not close the map: replay cleared battles against stronger enemies, or take on post-game challenge tiers.

Change the ground beneath the fight

Elevation affects movement costs and approach routes. An enemy may look close while still requiring a careful route across different heights. Check reachable tiles and decide where each companion should stop.

Terrain can change during combat. Fire can spread through forests and wood that contain fuel, while water extinguishes flames and wets the ground. Freeze wet ground to block a route, then thaw it with fire to reopen it. These interactions unfold across actions as you reshape access through the battlefield.

Make status effects part of your attack order

Make an enemy wet, then follow with ice or lightning to seek extra damage and freezing or paralysis. A non-elemental physical hit deals more damage to a frozen target, but replaces Frozen with Slow. Decide how to use that window of control and when to follow up.

Burns deal damage over time, while Shock weakens accuracy and attacks. Skills that establish a status and skills that exploit it give you reasons to reconsider which companion should act next.

Find a route through 61 classes

The class system includes the Adventurer and 60 other classes across 10 base-class families. Meet level and progression requirements to reach branching and advanced classes, or return to a class you have experienced and try another branch.

For example, a Warrior can explore a branching class, return to Warrior, and pursue a different route. A companion who joins as a Paladin has already walked the Adventurer path, so the other base classes are open to them as well. Staying with your first base class can also develop its particular strengths. Give each companion a role and build a path that suits it.

Eight skill trees and choices that carry forward

Spend SP earned through leveling on active and passive skills. Each tree runs from Foundation through Convergence to Mastery, with auxiliary skills alongside, and shows at a glance which skills are learned, learnable now or still waiting on a prerequisite. Check the required level and any prerequisite skills, then decide whether to add a new action or reinforce an existing role.

Skills purchased with SP remain learned after a class change, and the trees of classes you have experienced remain available to study. Mixing skills from other families brings trade-offs in effectiveness and MP cost. Knowing a skill and choosing when to use it are separate decisions.

Companions with a signature of their own

Because classes and skills are open to everyone, two companions in the same class could otherwise end up with the same numbers. So each of the 106 companions also has a signature: a personal trait written from their own story, not their class. It stays through every class change and cannot be bought with SP.

• Dario Redwin, Flat Side Up: he turns broken stones flat side up. After a turn without attacking, he and adjacent allies take 10% less damage.
• Ines Son, Until They Yield: she never steps back before hearing a surrender. At 50% HP or less, she deals 15% more damage and takes 10% less.
• Owen Vailen, Matched Pairs: he checks the children's feet before the contract. In round 1, adjacent allies gain 1 movement.

Signatures grow with battle experience or story progress. Sarah Bellone's Close Ranks begins as an aura that reduces the damage allies beside her take and widens with experience. After her personal chapter, she can tighten or spread the formation once a turn without spending her action.

Recruits join low and catch up in plain sight

Raising your companions is the heart of the game, so the ones you recruit later do not arrive finished. A regular recruit joins about a third below the campaign's recommended level (Lv 20 when the campaign is at Lv 30). Most town boards also hold a veteran, their most seasoned companion, who joins about a sixth below (Lv 25). The board shows each companion's join level before you recruit them.

• Catch-up EXP: +25% for every level below the battle's recommended level, up to ×3.
• The bench grows too: companions left out of a battle receive 40% of the deployed party's average EXP, with the same catch-up bonus.
• No runaway leaders: a companion more than two levels above the recommended level earns a tenth of the usual EXP.
• The last promotion is yours: recruits join in at most a second-tier class, and the final promotion is always your choice.

See what every victory changed

The victory results screen shows every deployed companion's EXP with its catch-up bonus, level-ups, stat gains, SP, signature progress and class changes, along with how the companions on the bench grew.

The unit management page, available from the victory screen and the world map, marks companions who gained levels and shows each one's unspent SP and catch-up bonus for the next battle, so you can learn skills, change equipment or change class before the next fight.

Complete each role with equipment and supplies

Combine swords, bows, daggers, maces, staves, spellbooks, and gear for the head, body, and off hand. A shield can reinforce a front-line role; a staff that increases magic and maximum MP can support a caster.

Compare proficiency effects as well as raw stat changes. Healing and mana items can support companions during combat, so equipment swaps and the supplies you pack both matter when preparing for the next fight.

Development priorities before release

As we prepare for release, our focus is on refining the existing combat and progression systems. Our current review priorities are:

• Combat and progression balance: Playtest class, skill, and status combinations alongside campaign battles.
• Progression and stability: Check stage transitions, saving and loading, and extended play sessions.
• Controls and clarity: Improve the readability of movement, attack, and status information and menus.
• Languages and performance: Review Korean, English, Japanese, and Simplified Chinese text and test performance and release builds on Windows.

Priorities and details may change as testing continues.