Why does Deltarune have an Element System?!

Spamton's Element is cat, but that is only the beginning. There are actually over a dozen known elements in Deltarune. But why? What purpose do the Elements in Deltarune serve? Will the Element system in Deltarune be important later?

Heck if I know! Let's see what we *can* untangle though, shall we?

Youtube is being a butt and not letting me fix subtitles. So I guess I can fall asleep and fix them later- WAIT! Timestamps!

0:00 Introduction
1:30 Why we can't find the Element List
2:23 Element Reduction Script
5:16 This tells us so much yet so little
7:22 Wait Jevil's Element Translate to WHAT
8:30 What we know about Order
12:03 Do Elements Influence Relationships
14:50 Ice and Blade
18:30 Closing Observations
19:45 Credits

Link pile!

[HalfBreadChaos]

The lack of people being angry that the FAQ is weeks late, it reminds you of how kind and patient your viewers are. This fills you with Determination!

Q: Why do you think Chara is 9? Isn't 9 just the highest number?
A: At the risk of potentially rehashing future material, there's a few things wrong with this assumption.

First, consider Mettaton. Mettaton's Defense is supposed to be so high, he's completely invulnerable. Is his defense 999? nope. It's 255. In a game-sense 255 is the highest a number can be (because computers) but in base 10, 9 is the highest a single digit can be.


Here Toriel tells us that Chara used to fill their glass as close to the top as possible, no matter how thirsty they were, because "it was the most efficient way to fill the glass." Reflecting this concept of min/max (maximum water while minimizing cups).

Of course there are other little flavor things, hinting that Chara is associated with 9. The locket and real knife (chara's own items) give 99 as stats. The two times Chara attacks without the player (sans and asgore) they do and damage, When you Fight Asgore (neutral route), and try to TALK to him, the dialogue changes every time, until you reach 4, and then it starts repeating.

But what's odd here is... on TALK number 9, suddenly the dialogue says "All you can do is FIGHT. " before returning to the default message from 10 onward. Say what you will about Chara before they died, but within the bounds of the gameplay, Chara only shows up in the genocide run, only when you FIGHT *everyone*. In their current form, Chara is associated with FIGHTing to become a strong as possible, to max out every stat, until you have reached the Absolute.

That doesn't mean every single 9 in the game is secretly Chara, any more than every Fire using enemy is secretly a Boss Monster. Just that 9 is a number strongly associated with Chara.

Q: Wait Spamton is a CAT? How do you figure?

Q: Why is there a deadbody next to your desk?

Q: Cool... staff? That is a staff right? 3:08
A: Aww.. it's supposed to be a broom. Time to update the sprite!

Q: "Omega Ice-E Neo?! What?!"

I just realized this FAQ is more like a reference catalogue, oops!

Q: 1:51 Are those fingers supposed to be pointing at something or....?
A: This was my first time using the "Rich Text" tool to animate the text instead of the "Simple Text" tool. Apparently the preview is extremely inaccurate and I failed to catch that in edit. Oops!

Q: Is that why all the other text is so weirdly spaced?
A: Yeah. ):

Q: Why don't you just look at the enemy data, or the bullet data for info on the Elements?
A: As of time of writing this, the Element system is still in the very early stages of implementation, and thus there is *very very little* code to find. Only Elements 6 and 0 have bullet data, and only elements 1, 7, and 6 have Armor data.

None of the "enemies" actually have Element data (at least not directly tied to them). Instead the recruit data lists their "elements" as strings. That is to say... the Recruit Data labels the enemies but those labels aren't enforced (yet). So for now that data has to be used as a lens for what Toby intends, rather than a law.

Think of this video as me extrapolating as hard as possible with what (very little) information we *do* have.

Q: Really? You think Papyrus is related to 2 *purely* because of his Check Data?
A: I didn't wanna go into it (because I didn't want be too tin-foil-hat about it). But there are other associations between Papyrus and the number 2. When the dog salad heals for 2HP it says "Oh! There are bones!" There's the fact that he's the 2nd boss, the fact he has 2 Blue Attacks (turning your SOUL blue, and the blue bones), the fact that there's 2 ways to get past him (the fight itself and just losing to him repeatedly), the fact he is the 2nd brother (Sans is older) when you reach the point where you can spare him, his defense = HP * -2

Are these a stretch? Yes! Yes they are. They *super* are. But it's still pretty fun to think about. (sans has quite a few too, this could be a video unto itself if I'm not careful).

Q: Skymantle? Mouse Token? What are you talking about? Where is this coming from?
A: The game has data for armor that isn't currently obtainable. It's possible Toby may never use them, but the "pink bow" was previously an unobtainable piece of armor... until Chapter 2 dropped, so for now, I don't see any harm in discussing them, especially since they have so much information relating to the Elements.

If you want to hack them into your save, you need only change the Item ID of one of your armors to 18 (skymantle) or 6 (mouse token). Or you can plug your save-file into Spamton's save editor.

I wouldn't be surprised if Toby never uses the Mouse Token (even though it's practically begging to be the treasure chest at the end of the cheese maze) but I *would* be surprised if the Skymantle doesn't make an appearance, given the Shadow-Mantle dialogue from Seam.

Q: Where did you get the sprites for those?
A: I just made them, the Skymantle and Mouse Token don't' have sprites.

Q: And... how did you get Jevil as a recruit?
A: Spamton Save Editor.


Q: There's so much fun stuff in the code! I wanna look in there too! How can I get started?

Q: What's with all the Japanese?
A: I... uh... look I'll stop looking in the Japanese localization when Toby stops hiding stuff there. >:[

Q: You said Toby mentioned "Chaos" in the Deltarune stream but uhhh that stream is 4 hours long, can I have a timestamp?

If that didn't work it's 2 hours and 53 minutes in.

Q: Why are you asking if Papyrus is red or orange?

Q: Wait.. what if... Spamton is being held up by CAT6 cables?! (Theory proposed by Inter Dimensional Goober)
A: Aw... I wish I'd thought of that, that's super clever!

Q: Why is Element 7 MOUSE?
A: I... I honestly have no idea. D: Sorry.

Q: Shouldn't MIKE be Element 7 because Dust Bunnies (look for couches to hide under?)
A: Aw... that's super clever I wish I'd thought of that. D:

[interdimensionalgoober]

Spamton is clearly a cat because he’s being held up by CAT6 cables. (I’m not joking, they’re real green internet cables)

[flyingallnight]

Wait, is element 10 element TEM, and rated TEM out of TEM in terms of defense?

[marihearn]

8:15: i saw a theory a while back that the reason jevil's and spamton's arenas don't seem to be properly placed on the map is because the physical objects representing them are located in dark, hard to reach areas irl. jevil would be a joker card under the cabinet that corresponds to card castle irl while spamton would be a deleted file, as would mettaton's drawing (or maybe it'd be in the trash or have fallen under the desk), and the closet that's big enough to fit a person in would represent the castle basement and the place where mettaton neo's body is rotting away

[ourtalechara]

To me, Ralsei's cut duologue saying that Noelle is good at magic despite never using it before, feels like evidence that she HAS used it before. Although the "Maybe she'll make you a popsicle, " is DEFINITELY snowgrave foreshadowing

[skyrimlover]

I really find the element system fascinating and see it as an extra tool for toby to use for possible story telling

[MeloniestNeon]

I would absolutely love seeing Toby make more intensive battle mechanics that actually require the player to use Elements to their advantage, with most secret bosses basically requiring item prep from this point onwards. Chapter one introduced us to how Deltarune's combat works, and to a lesser extent its items. Chapter two introduced us to Elements and basic mechanics relating to them through the Castle Town and various dialogue in menus. It would make a ton of sense if chapter three tied these two aspects together more fully, with the current mechanics we have just being a sort of experienced player tactic to make fights they've been through before easier on repeat playthroughs.

[FirstnameLastname-sbhj]

Here's a thought. You know how Ice seems to be connected to being detached and distant? Well, when fighting Swatchlings, Susie and Ralsei can each change the colour of the enemy by half the amount Kris can.

Susie has the Half-Warm ACT, in which she talks about things that are hot. Ralsei however gets Half-Cold, where he talks about cold things.

And what trait does Ralsei seem to show off numerous times?

Emotional detachment. He acts as though nothing is wrong after Sapmtong NEO, tries lamely to brush off people insulting him, and shuts down entirely while explaining The Roaring.

Hell, in Chapter 1, his dialogue portraits have very little diversity to the emotions they convey, especially compared to Susie, even before she opens up. And what does Ralsei talk about in Chapter 2, where his faceset is like, 4 times as diverse?

"I even hid my face so you wouldn't see..."

Ralsei may also have the Ice element, as opposed to fire like you would expect from his resemblance to the Dreemurr family. It would fit with his character, explain his connections to Noelle, and maybe even gameplay wise substitute a Snowgrave Noelle later down the line. Like, instead of Noelle using Snowgrave to beat a strong boss, it'd be Ralsei who does it. Maybe the use of the spell removes whoever used it from the party for a while. On a normal route, Ralsei is out of the party and Noelle takes his place as the support, whereas on a Snowgrave route, Ralsei stays in your party.

[Quartereli]

I would love to believe Toby watches this stuff and is sitting here like “man these guys are way over complicating everything” great video tho! It’s very interesting

[thedistinguished]

All chaos is order that hasnt been understood yet. Thats beautiful. It has a similar vibe to "magic is science that hasnt been written down yet"

[dededeletethis]

I have to quickly mention a theory that i came up with recently. It’s not related to the element system, but i just wanted to throw it out there:
The great door. Most likely, it is the connecting door between the unused classroom and the supply closet. That would explain why lancer was able to enter castle town: if the great door (the door in the light world) was open, someone from the card kingdom (the classroom) could travel to castle town (the closet). Now, ralsei is suprised that the door is open. That implies that it usually isn’t. It also implies that you can’t open it from within the dark world. And we can also guess that the great door opens when the door in the light world opens, that would make the most sense. That means that the light world door was opened just recently. That in turn means that the classroom dark world *must be a recent creation.* If there’s a dark fountain in a place, you can’t interact with the light world there; entering the place would just bring you into the dark world. That means that someone (the knight) recently went to the classroom, opened up the closet door, and then made a fountain.

As i was typing this out, i remembered that the classroom fountain being a recent thing was literally mentioned in game, when ralsei tells you the prophecy, so the impact of my theory just lessened dramatically. Still, i just wanted to put it out there that it was probably the knight that opened the great door

[Just_Ants]

Now that I think about it, Berdly could easily be Element 2. The element that protects from Element 2 is the Sky Mantle. Berdly is a bird and birds fly in the sky. His relation with Queen might also be the reason for Elec (as in Electric).
(ngl sounds like a silly theory)

[Buglin_Burger]

The most interesting thing is there is implications that Kris knows magic due to the Blade element.

Kris somehow summoning a knife/keeping it hidden. Kris somehow removing a Soul from their body. The emphasis on Kris not using magic can be a trick to bait and switch people. Ralsei being suspicious so no one thinks anything of Kris and knows about the Soul.

We don't know something about Kris and not in the way people are thinking.

If the Dark World is the inverse of the Light World then Monsters without magic get magic.
Then Kris not having Magic in the Dark Would could very well be a major plot point and explain how Kris removes their Soul.

It would also explain how Noelle and Berdly got into the Dark World after setting up their study supplies.
Sleep Magic.

This means the Knight is... well anyone who could have Sleep Magic.
Or not.

[ThefifthBishopofGord]

My best guess with the rude, chaos, and order thing is that it could kinda work like how bending works within “The Last Avatar” with there being branches in a major element. For an example: Electric could be the branch of Holy or both being a branch of a sky element. They could all be protected by the same amor of the the element they branch off of but they can also have an amour for a branch. So Rude can be a branch of Chaos.

[marctaco]

About element 9, it could be defense against “destructive” elements, which constantly appear in RPGs as the trio of Fire Frost and Thunder. it is also common for there to be items that protect against all three.

Edit: he said element 1 is electric/holy, so it’s not natural elements nor divine.

[Julian_Pepper]

Personally, I think Rude is the in between of Order and Chaos. Think about it, the opposites of Order's attributes match up with Susie perfectly, but she doesn't match up with unmitigated insanity of the only Chaos user we know, Jevil. Rude therefore is a half and half of Order and Chaos. Susie is not so ordered that she obeys without question, but she's also not so chaotic that everything she does is up to chance. She does what she wants to do, but she always does it for a reason.

[nicegoodstylish]

I swear there's going to be a new element type pairing in Chapter 3: "Toby" and "Temmie"

[Katieanimatesrandombs]

Another small detail that slightly proves this theory: when kris spins, (in the Jevil fight) the description for the act is “random chaos”, even though it’s soothing Jevil and is order more than chaos

[andrewmetz]

Spamton could have the same element as the cats because the cats seem to have some order to them with the task manager. Spamton is very chaotic, but he represents spam mail and spam ads. Even thought those seem chaotic, they do have order in them through how ads and spam mail can be targeted to specific users. The targeting of spam ads and spam mail could be his order aspect.

[elyonsilvarath]

I think Ambyu-Lance has a cross on it to represent the medical cross that is often symbolic of hospitals