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Undertalewas a testament to player choice being able to alter a game’s narrative when it was released back in 2015. The stark difference between each story route was a major part of its replayability, often hiding character moments or major backstory reveals behind certain paths.
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Deltarune, in contrast, proudly states on its storefront that it only has one ending that’s available. Despite this, and especially after certain developments in the recently released Chapter 4, certain players have sought any kind of major impact their choices can have on the plot. Back when Chapter 2 was released, the first steps of what is internally dubbed ‘the Weird Route’ began, also known to the community as Snowgrave.
As the name implies, this route is odd. You’ll be embarking on a colder path, one that asks you to treat the colorful characters you meet as nothing more than XP. It is recommended you play through each chapter normally before attempting Snowgrave, but I highly encourage taking a peak once you have.
As is Toby Fox’s specialty, seeing the crueler side of the world can make you appreciate the other parts. If you yearn for the ‘possessed game’ feel ofCreepypastasof old, you’ve come to the right place. Now let’s see what happens when we start down a path we don’t know.
Your actions in Chapter 1 of Deltatune have no bearing on the Weird Route, so we’ll be jumping straight into Cyberworld. The route doesn’t start properly until Noelle joins the party, but you’re able to make later fights easier by engaging each enemy you can as the Fun Gang.
From Chapter 2 onwards, beating down your foes will end the battle with a sound cue and the text ‘you became stronger’. This indicates that the party’s stats are rising, most noticeably their max HP. Eventually, even their base attack stats will rise as well.
Of course, likeUndertale, the foes you’re facing aren’t just mindless, innumerable hordes. Each screen only has so many enemies that will stop spawning once you’ve shown them the door. Taking out everyone you can will simply prepare you for some unavoidable fights that arrive later in the route.
Play through the Chapter as aggressively as you can until Noelle pairs up with Kris. Once she’s arrived, we can start properly.
Noelle Joins the Party
Once you have our favorite reindeer, immediately backtrack to the dump Kris, Susie, and Ralsei fell into after the roller coaster. On the way, you’ll run into your first enemy with Noelle as a party member, and this is where the route begins in earnest.
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We’re getting everything, even the weird stuff.
From here on, Noelle needs to get the final hit on every enemy you fight with her IceShock spell. This cheap spell hits hard, taking out foes in one to two hits consistently. Should IceShock land the final hit, rather than run away, the enemy will be Frozen, complete with unique KO text. The end of fight text will change as well, instead displaying ‘Noelle became stronger’.
Frozen enemies are visible in the overworld, and will remain as such even after you move between screens. After your first time freezing an enemy, a strange musical cue will play, a sound that indicates that you’ve taken a step towards the Weird Route. You’re given plenty of opportunities to abort the route intentionally or otherwise, so keep an ear out for these sound bites. They mean you’re on the right track.
Continue backtracking to the trash heap and freeze every enemy there before heading back to the main path. If you’ve frozen every enemy so far, the roads will be devoid of cards and instead patrolled by Darkners. Simply keep up your pace, freezing each and every enemy that gets in your way until eventually you reach thecommercialdistrict.
All the Addisons will be missing except for one—the bright pink one on the far right of the zone that asks what Noelle and Kris' relationship is. Here, make sure to respond ‘We’re something else’. When you go to leave, he’ll stop you, offering the two kids a ‘special deal’.
How kind of him.
The FreezeRIng gives Noelle a massive spike to the damage of her IceShock spell, making further freezes easier and easier. Eventually, you’ll reach the second mouse room puzzle, and instead of clearing it normally, you’ll be given a dialogue option. Despite the repeated offers to back down, insist that Noelleproceed.Backed against a lightning gate, Noelle has no choice but to freeze the entire puzzle around you, skipping it and giving you another sound cue.
Once you reach the long road puzzle, you’ll find it similarly completely devoid of cars. Instead, enemies wander the empty streets, running from you should they spot you. Continue to freeze each one before heading to the very bottom of the second road and taking the left path.
In a normal run, this is where the annoying dog would run you over with a Fisher Price car. Instead, you’ll simply find a shuddering dumpster where a very familiar e-mail clerk lurks. He’ll offer to sell you an even better ring, but only after every enemy before the Berdly rematch is frozen. Helpfully, he provides a count of how many encounters you have left, just like the save points during the Genocide run of Undertale.
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Strap in, this one’s a doozy.
Continue to the following screens, freezing the fleeing Darkners as you catch them. Keep Spamton’s count in mind—the number lowers by one for every encounter, not every enemy. If you’ve hit everyone, the final fight should be the second Poppup you find hiding in an alley with cones.
Once you think you’ve frozen everyone you’re able to, return to Spamton’s dumpster. For 1,997 Kromer, he’ll sell you the ThornRing, one of the strongest weapons currently in Deltarune. The ring halves the cost of Noelle’s ice magic while draining her HP down to one third of its max over the course of a fight.
There’s only one place to go now: Equip Noelle’s new ring and head to the fight with Berdly. Before it starts, make sure to tell Noelle toproceed.No need to try and justify what you’re doing to Berdly of all people.
When the fight begins, you’ll notice Noelle has a new spell, Snowgrave. Snowgrave costs 100% of your TP gauge after ThornRing’s half-price cut, making it unusable without it. Defend and graze Berdly’s simple attacks to stack TP quickly, opening up use of the spell.
When you tell Noelle to cast it, she’ll appear extremely confused, simply stating that she doesn’t know any spell by that name. Keep insisting, and eventually she’ll relent, floating into the air before dealing a catastrophic amount of damage to Berdly, freezing him solid. Noelle will then wander off-screen, ‘heading home’ in her own words.
Cleaning up
That marks every specific action you have to take to complete Chapter 2’s opening for the Weird Route, but you’ll quickly see just how hard you’ve swerved the chapter’s climax off course. Following in Noelle’s footsteps, you’ll find a manhole cover. Entering it will pop you out right outside of Queen’s castle, with Ralsei and Susie happy to see you, completely unaware of what just transpired.
The run through Queen’s mansion is noticeably colder, Spamton has seemingly taken over, the shop is blocked by Rouxls' petrified form, and Pipis line the halls. Cutting through the castle will eventually lead to the roof, where Queen forgoes her normal fight entirely, immediately manning her giant robot form. Ralsei will quickly explain the concept of the Roaring, taking the wind from her sails as she surrenders.
Susie and Ralsei stay behind to comfort Queen and Noelle, leaving Kris to close the fountain alone. As they approach the spire, who jumps in to stop them but Spamton himself, having acquired the NEO body all on his own.
This prompts a very challenging solo fight against the chapter’s superboss. Nothing here has been simplified, and only having one action a turn makes it far more difficult. Luckily, beating Spamton violently is much quicker than cutting his wires in a normal run, especially with the unique ACTs Kris gains access to during this fight. X-Slash will deal the equivalent of two attacks immediately, and FriedPipis heals a hefty 120 HP.
If you’ve fought Spamton NEO normally, you understand thisfight. Just focus on dodging, play it cool, and get as many X-slashes in as you can. Eventually, Spamton will raise his DEF to such a point that your attacks deal almost no damage. Taunting Kris, new ACTs open up, simply displaying the faces of party members.
This prompts Kris to call for help, only for no one to come. Spamton encourages Kris to continue, confident that no one is coming. After Ralsei and Susie are both attempted twice, Noelle is called upon, not by Kris, but byyou. Almost immediately, she freezes Spamton solid, granting you the Puppet Scarf for Ralsei and a Shadow Crystal.
There are a few notable differences to Hometown post-Snowgrave. Notably, Berdly doesn’t wake up with the rest of the kids, instead lying comatose in the computer lab, and you’ll have a unique encounter with Noelle should you head to the hospital. Further unique dialogue is given should the player have equipped Noelle’s silver watch to Kris, giving her further evidence that everything that just happened couldn’t have been a dream.
This is where the route was left. That is, of course, until the release of Chapters 3+4. While Chapter 3 itself doesn’t provide anything new for a Snowgrave route other than unique dialogue during the ERAM encounter, Chapter 4 certainly does.
Sealing the Deal In Chapter 4
Deltarune Chapter 4 opens with a lengthy Hometown segment, culminating in Kris and Susie’s search for the Shelter codes. If you’ve loaded Chapter 4 with completion data from a file with Snowgrave on it, things will play out a little differently.
The differences begin when Noelle invites Kris and Susie over to work on their projects, rather than Susie asking to hang out. Susie even comments on the developing action being a “weird route” to their goal, but it seems to be working out. The date starts as normal until the player attempts to read the code from Dess' guitar, prompting the standard scene of Kris tearing the Soul out and attempting to stash them away.
Uniquely, Noelle will run into Kris, asking them to meet her in her room ASAP. The player is then tossed in an empty gift box like normal, but instead of getting to the guitar, we’ll want to follow the vent into Noelle’s room.
From the vent grate the player is trapped in, Noelle reveals quite a bit. She talks about how overnight, Kris managed to carry Berdly to the hospital and meet Noelle on their own, trying to convince her that the events of the weird route so far had all been some wild prank.
Noelle, relieved and comforted from having heard Kris' ‘real’ voice, makes a crucial mistake; she asks Kris a question. With the player present, they’re able to make the choice for Kris. SelectingProceedwill leave the Soul in the room itself, giving the player an opening to return to their unwilling vessel.
Failure to do so, or asking Noelle not to ask, are just two of the many opportunities given to abort the route here, but that’s not what we’re here for, is it?
Noelle starts to inch closer to Kris, further revealing that Kris begged her not to talk about any of this, for fear ofsomeonehearing. Kris will go as far as to try and cover Noelle’s mouth, but in their weakened state, she easily brushes them off before asking who they could possibly be worried about hearing them.
Answer honestly; ‘Me’. The colors grow starker, and darkness frames the two friends as Noelle recognizes the player’s voice from her dream. Again, simply be honest; tell her ‘it wasn’t a dream’.
Noelle will start to panic, stunned at how the player could be responding to her thoughts. You’ll be given another chance to abort, but you haven’t lied so far, ‘I heard’.
Noelle will try to rationalize it all as some wild coincidence, and you’re given one final chance to back out. Not that you will by this point. ‘It’s not a coincidence’.
The rest of Noelle’s dialogue is spent testing just how much of her thoughts you may read, which of course is all of them. This culminates in her refusal to believe until you remind her of just how much stronger you’ve made her, followed by a prompt to’equip'.
Kris will produce the ThornRing, slowly creeping towards Noelle as you command them to’Proceed'. With nowhere else to go, Kris forces the ring onto Noelle’s finger as the screen cuts to black, a sharp snowflake of red lines jutting from the point of contact. The all-too-familiar Snowgrave sound cue will play, morphing into a short melody to signify that a point of no return has been crossed.
Kris will then carry the soul to the bathroom, pummeling it inside a trashcan until they are prompted to leave, cutting the hangout short. Susie even laments them all not being able to hang out together before asking Kris what happened as they leave. A dialogue box appears, void of options as the screen takes on a light red hue. Kris is seemingly refusing the player options at this point.
With that, you’ve officially locked in the Weird Route, Kris will respond to any mention from the player of Noelle very aggressively, and even Ralsei has unique dialogue, noting that something important feels deeply wrong. Enjoy your power, and your unique version of the cliffhanger ending as we await the 2026 release of Deltarune Chapter 5.
How could the game possibly have only one ending after such a divergence? We’ll leave the theorizing for later. Something’s gotta keep us occupied as we wait through the cold months for more. At the very least, we’ll be doing it together, and I’m sure we’ll all become stronger by the end of it.
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