Deltarune: How To Recruit Everyone

June 29, 2025

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RPGs are no strangers to big casts, especially when it comes to enemy variety. In most, the shape and number of your foes fluctuate to set the tone or help build the world, and Deltarune is no different.

Where Deltarune does differ is in how you interact with these foes. Just like in the game’s forebear Undertale, violence is not the only solution to conflict, and many of your opponents are no more excited to face you than you are them.

Deltarune’s Chapter 2 solidified the mercy system with the Recruit mechanic, where once a certain number of an enemy type are befriended, they will join the player’s Castletown in subsequent chapters. This system lets you interact with and show off your favorite of the game’s massive variety of designs, and gives merciful players a number to shoot for, like their more aggressive contemporaries.

How to S-Rank the Chapter 3 Minigames in Deltarune Thumbnail

Just don’t try for the T Rank, it’s not worth it.

We’ll be discussing how exactly to secure every recruit as they come, and how to avoid losing anyone you really care about.

Deltarune’s first chapter doesn’t actually have Recruiting as a mechanic! Playing through it will retroactively recruit every enemy to your town at the start of Chapter 2, so don’t worry about missing anyone!

Spoilers ahead for Chapter 3 + 4 of Deltarune!

Chapter 2

The vast majority of recruits throughout every chapter are obtained by simply playing through the chapters peacefully, with the required recruit counts even reflecting expected encounters throughout the story. As long as you aren’t actively dodging enemies, you should be able to snag each!

One More Fountain, One More Crystal, One Hundred More Questions

Certain recruits are mini-bosses, acting as progression gates until you deal with them. For Chapter 2, it comes in the form of Tasque Manager, who will quiz you on the differences between four portraits of her beloved Tasques.

The questions themselves aren’t important, however, as failing will simply lead to a fight with the Manager herself, one of the most enjoyable in the chapter. Whether you answer her correctly or not, you’ll end the encounter with her as one of your recruits!

Larger plot bosses are notable exceptions to the recruit rule. But they’ll still follow you back to your town.

Chapter 3

Chapter 3 shakes up the formula by introducing proper stakes to earning the recruits. If you don’t have enough, the Knight’s attack on Tenna in the chapter’s closing moments will actually prove fatal, leaving him shattered in the Light World. Should you manage to recruit the whole Chapter cast, however, he’ll be right as rain come Chapter 4, even opening up a mini-side quest to find him a new home!

Chapter 3 opens with a pretty intimidating recruit goal for you to hit right out of the gate, as the recurring ShadowGuy enemy asks you to spare them a whopping 25 times throughout the chapter. While this number is easy, if time-consuming, to hit if you’re willing to grind out encounters in the chapter’s letter hours, the number isn’t just arbitrarily huge.

How far are you willing to go to defy fate?

Once you’ve begun the escape from the Dark World, you’ll be ducking between sets backstage, eventually leading you into a room where Shadowguys are sitting shoulder to shoulder on a game. Speaking to the Pippin on the right will reveal that the ShadowGuys are bound to work for Tenna by contract, as represented on the giant monitor.

Luckily for them, there’s a free controller beside the Pippin, allowing Kris to shred the contracts with a lawnmower. As thanks, the ShadowGuys will pledge themselves to your Castletown, granting you the vast majority of recruited ShadowGuys then and there! You may still be missing a few (I was during my first playthough), so go back to the previous Shadowguy encounter a few rooms back to confirm your standing with them.

Otherwise, requirements are low enough that you’re bound to hit them as long as you’re playing pacifist through the Chapter, including Elnino and Lanina after freeing them from Rouxls’ ill-fated throuple.

Make sure you’ve snagged everyone at the save point before fighting Tenna proper, and you’ll be good as gold!

Chapter 4

Chapter 4 spends plenty of time in the light world, giving you an opportunity to head to school and check in on your recruits before even heading into the new dark world. There are plenty of small moments to enjoy among your recruits, but eventually, the pull of the church will get you started on your next adventure.

The enemies in Chapter 4 are a bit more spread out than previously, and a few are only found while hunting for the secret boss, so don’t try looking up the solution to the Golden Piano unless you’ve already met them all!

Securing the notes for the Golden Piano will task you with backtracking to various early points in the chapter with Kris’s new climbing gear, opening up previously inaccessible areas. The backtracking is far from unrewarding though, with each path introducing new enemies, background on the enemies, and new passages of the prophecy.

These prophecies, alongside the fight dialogue from the chapter’s secret boss, give us a pretty good idea of who may appear in Chapter 5. Be they main story or secret boss, seeking out each and every recruit will naturally inform you on the possible future, as if securing every enemy is itself part of some grander design…

Deltarune Chapter 4 100% Guide thumbnail

Strap in, this one’s a doozy.

Either way, the game will warn you if you’re missing anyone before heading into the final leg of the chapter, an important distinction since, as with Chapter 3, the life of a new friend hangs in the balance. Should you fail to recruit every possible ally in the Dark Sanctuary, Jackenstein will sacrifice himself to assist in the party’s ascension to the Titan.

Recruiting the new rogue’s gallery means there are plenty of friends ready to catch Jackenstein before he falls, each giving you their blessing before you race off to fight Deltarune’s biggest boss yet. After all, if Kingdom Hearts has taught us anything, when facing down Darkness itself, you’ll need all the friends you can get.

Reloading a Chapter 4 file with completion data will even open a route back to Castletown before the final encounter, giving you a chance to enjoy all your new recruits and find out who’s hiding in the mic-shaped room in the back of Tenna’s studio.

For now, that’s all the recruits to be found throughout Deltarune. More will inevitably come once future chapters of the game are released. If the tease during Chapter 4’s credits are any indication, we may not have to wait quite as long as you’d expect.

In the meantime, enjoy the friends you’ve got, no matter how you met them. The greatest of bonds can be forged from adversity, and a good rival always makes a story stronger!