Brave Dungeon Guide: Maps, Characters, Syega & Cheats!

Brave Dungeon Guide

Brave Dungeon is finally out in the US for 3DS and Nintendo Switch, this is the RPG spin off of the Legend of Dark Witch series! Here I’ll compile useful information much like my Dark Witch 2 Guide. Note Brave Dungeon on Switch has a couple new characters over the 3DS version as well as being bundled with an exclusive game Dark Witch Combat, making it the “definitive” version.

A guide for Dark Witch Story: COMBAT, the side game the Switch release comes with, is also available on this site!

As always leave a comment or otherwise contact me if you have a comment, question, or correction!

Updates

Brave Dungeon Gameplay

Brave Dungeon plays like a simplified RPG designed around speedrunning. Brave Dungeon is extremely open though difficulty will likely gate your initial playthrough in a way that largely fits the intended game design. Later playthroughs can take advantage of Syega Shop upgrades and increasingly break the game based on your skill/unlocks for lower times.

Mechanics

Stats

Character Stats are simplified from most RPGs, having only HP, Attack, Defense, Mind, and Speed. Leveling up actually only improves HP, and the other stats are increased by spending Tres, equipping items, or using Lunch Tokens. There’s no difference between physical and magical, Attack and Defense affect all kinds of damage.

Though leveling up doesn’t affect other stats directly, it’s factored into how much damage you do.

Mind works a bit strangely, affecting your rate of success with debuffs and status ailments but it’s pretty hard to determine your exact chance of success. 200 seems to be the threshold to almost always apply a debuff.

Class Change

Brave Dungeon throws you a big scary warning that class changes are permanent, but if you listen to all the info in the Inn you’ll learn that eventually you unlock all ‘classes’ and keep all their benefits and stat boosts. They’re not really ‘classes’ in any standard way, just skill tree nodes.

You can change class at levels 10, 20, 30, 35, 60, and 80.

There’s three tiers of classes, you’ll be offered one from tier one, then one from tier two, then the next two times you get to pick from the two classes you missed. Then the last two choices are the tier 3 skills.

Don’t worry about it much and just pick whichever skill or stat buff that seems more effective in the short term. You’ll eventually have it all.

Difficulty

Brave Dungeon’s Difficulty can be changed at any time for no penalty whatsoever. On higher difficulties enemies have higher stats of course, but also drop more experience and Tres (money), so it’s often in your best interest to fight on the highest difficulty on which you can actually win. Grinding will take much longer if your difficulty is set lower than it needs to be.

The exact effects of upping the difficulty can be seen in the Enemy Book; changing difficulty will change the stats displayed there immediately.

Difficulty appears to multiply Syega earned for some actions too, most certainly for beating the final boss, and is possibly a multiplier for every action. At least for the final boss’s

The highest difficulty, Lunatic, can be unlocked upon beating the game and paying a small amount of Syega. It should be unlocked as soon as possible as it’s very useful for grinding.

Difficulty is somewhat exponential; Expert is around “normal” and maybe slightly on the hard side at times, while Easy isn’t extremely different from Casual that I can tell. Lunatic Mode however is over twice as hard as Expert subjectively speaking. If you’re defeating enemies in one hit on one difficulty you should usually be okay to jump a difficulty, but Lunatic can be a surprising leap from Expert.

Fighting alone also causes you to earn double the Tres a full party would have earned and likely more total xp.

Damage Formulas

Damage depends on level a lot, more than stat numbers it would seem. GameFAQs user DeltaInferno theorizes that the formula is

(Level * Attack) * (Move strength) – (Level * DEF)

Where Move Strength is the hidden number that most attack skills have associated with them (weak, normal, medium, etc).

Also 250 is a potential soft-cap for stats, as effects seem to be lower or nil when increasing stats beyond it, but this still needs more testing.

Dungeons

Dungeons are meant to be explored by breadth, not depth; that is to say the order is Dungeon 1 level 1, Dungeon 2 level 1, Dungeon 3 level 1, etc. rather than continuing through the whole of dungeon 1 in one go. Each drop in floor is a significant increase in difficulty, though if a floors boss isn’t particularly hard exploring just one level down might not be impossible.

Dungeons have an automap and upon both beating the floor’s boss and completing the map 100% you unlock the ability to escape from enemies (which has a 100% success rate) which also allows the Through Pendant to let you just run through enemies.Note you have to “see” every possible tile, including inaccessible ones. Hug every corner to be sure you uncover a map 100%.

Requests

In town there are Requests at the Inn where you can turn in some items for a “Lunch Token” and some Tres. They will generally ask for some random crafting materials, a variable amount of Tres, and always give a single Lunch Token. Defeating a boss or having your whole party knocked out will refresh the request list.

Lunch Tokens permanently buff stats for a random character and a random stat for between 1 to 4. You can remove characters from your party to ensure who gets the buff if you’re picky.

Lunch buffs are just like having upgraded your stats with Tres; the cost to upgrade that stat for that character will be higher afterwards, except you didn’t pay for the extra levels you just got. But it’s probably not worth hoarding as using your lunch tokens ASAP will help you progress faster, thus earning more Tres, thus getting more upgrades.

Many items needed for rare accessories are extremely frustrating to grind for, so I’d recommend only filling requests with either very low costs, very high amounts of extra stock in your inventory, or items you know you can get more of (coin requests are pretty much always fine).

In your first playthrough you can just do whatever though; it’s likely you’ll do your accessory grinding on a New Game Plus with some Syega shop unlocks, so “wasting” things on your first file doesn’t matter much.

Revenge

Brave Dungeon has Revenge skills just like Legend of Dark Witch 2; upon taking damage of any amount your meter will begin to fill. After about 4 hits you can cast the revenge skill, which is different for each character.

Revenge skills have double effect if the Revenge meter is 100% full (indicated by a change to Green, or the character background becoming solid again if you’re colorblind). The Revenge items instantly fill you to 100%. The boost is all or nothing, 100% does double the effect of 50%, but 75% is no different than 50%.

An unlock in the Syega shop will multiply Revenge meter gains by 1.5x.

The super expensive per-character items upgrade Revenge in some way, still trying to work out exactly how. It seems unlikely that it’s worth the extreme effort and item slot though.

New Game +

As is standard in the Dark Witch series, Brave Dungeon has a New Game Plus mode with a Syega shop to unlock effects like buffed stats, better item drops etc.

Unlocks in the Syega shop do not affect all save files, you have to manually turn on specific unlocked benefits for a new file. This means you’ll eventually abandon “weak” files as you unlock better features. However, old save files can be useful to keep for carry-overs (Tres, Magic Items, and Accessories can be carried over).

3DS/Switch Version Differences

The Nintendo Switch version of the game includes some improvements and additions over the 3DS version. The Switch version exclusively includes:

  • Two new characters, Klinsy and Neville
    • It’s Neville’s first time being in a game as she’s from Dark Witch 3, which released after this game
    • The characters are fully featured with unique skills, high quality art, Playing Levels, and Syegacha prizes for both of them
  • New title screen and art for each of the new characters
  • Dark Witch Story: COMBAT, a card RPG side game with characters from Dark Witch/Brave Dungeon
  • New shortcuts due to the extra buttons, allowing items/accessories/map/help to be accessed immediately while in dungeons
  • New battle layout which lets you view more of the characters’ stats at a glance to use the extra screen space

Items

Accessories

Brave Dungeon only has Accessories for equipment, meaning each slot can equip one of any item, and almost all items of the same type will in fact stack as well.

Syega

In Brave DungeonSyega are pure stat boosting items and are regular drops rather than hidden in special locations (that are also used in crafting some other accessories). Refer to the table below for their specific effects.

Color Normal Beautiful Pure
Red +10 Attack +20 Attack +40 Attack
Yellow +10 Defense +20 Defense +40 Defense
Green +5 Speed +10 Speed +20 Speed
White +5 All Stats +10 All Stats +20 All Stats

Notably Mind based characters get the short end of the stick (in a number of ways) so the late-game White Syega are the only way to buff Mind. Fortunately Mind is cheaper to buff with Tres as a tradeoff.

Attack Buffs

Earrings, Magic Earrings

These don’t sound very impressive from description alone, but they’re notably more effective than their respective Reg Syega (Red Syega for Earrings and Pure Red Syega for Magic Earrings).

Magic Earrings seemed to do roughly 50% more damage per normal hit in a quick test. For a speedy run through the game they’re good to inherit.

Multi-Attack Items

Double Striker, Triple Striker, Quadruple Striker

Simple but brutally effective, these let you repeatedly use your normal attack. The effect doesn’t stack, so you can only attack as many times as the strongest booster you have equipped.

With these items you’ll find much less need to spend Capacity on attack skills, and with Quad Attack a normal attack can actually do more damage on a single target than most Revenge Skills would!

Attacks will only target one enemy, so if you have four attacks and defeat your target in one hit you will not continue attacking a different target. Sometimes it’s best to let a character with multi

Quad Striker is one of the most important accessories to inherit for a new playthrough.

Passive Buffs

Auto Heal, Speed Booster, Miracle Power, Speed Star

Auto Heal has a per-turn regen that’s initially underwhelming, but due to the delay-based turn system, by using Wait many times in a row you can heal a significant percentage of a character’s health at extremely low risk.

Speed Booster boosts your speed throughout the battle and though there’s no exact numbers known it’s very powerful. You’ll often get two turns after an enemy’s turn if your speed stats are at least on par.

Miracle Power combines these two okay sounding buffs into something surprisingly effective; you’ll act more often, be able to heal by delaying a turn, you’ll get more turns to heal, and by delaying and taking so many turns to heal by waiting you’ll build up Capacity for flashy attacks too!

Miracle Power is one of my go-to items and a good one to inherit for future playthroughs.

Speed Star works a bit differently, not actually buffing your speed but giving you a high chance of acting first in battle. It’s only really valuable if that first turn is vital for you. It’s useful for Mari (to debuff the whole crowd first thing), anyone who may die in one hit without it, and possibly Speedrunners.

Health Items

25% Ring, 50% Ring

Basic but effective items that multiply your current health by 1.25 or 1.5 respectively. Often one of the safest and most reliable defensive items to bring, especially for long or difficult dungeons like Nightmare.

Pairs decently with Miracle Power as your increased HP will also increase the absolute value of health you passively regenerate. Note that healing skills are not percentage based however, so you may find healing skills a bit less useful while wearing these.

Grind Reducers

Exp Booster, Tres Booster

Tres Booster increases Tres earned by 50%, regardless of who defeats the enemy. Does not stack (whether multiple people equip Tres Booster or the same person equips multiples). I believe the Exp Booster has the same logic, though for Experience points of course.

Armor

Half Armor, Quarter Armor, Perfect Armor

These items block random attacks a certain percentage of the time, reducing damage by 50%/75%/100% respectively (Perfect Armor seems to occasionally reduce damage to 1 instead of 0).

One of the best defensive items though it’s all or nothing; damage will not be consistently blocked so there’s some risk involved. Overall Brave Dungeon is mostly offensively geared due to it’s speedrunning focus, but these can help if you’re feeling stuck and reduce the amount of healing you have to do especially in Nightmare.

Character-Specific Items

Explorer’s Heart, Proud Leader, Dream of Liberal, Soul of the Unchanger, Banquet of the Madwoman, Arm of Dark Witch, Contracts of the Garder, Pray of the Genius

These items upgrade the character’s Revenge Skill to a new, more powerful version, renaming the skill too. Despite being the hardest items in Brave Dungeon to get, they’re not really that great.

Al: Heaven Freeze, unsure how it differs from Hyper Freeze
Papelne: Spirit’s Claw, deals triple the damage of Mirage Claw
Rudy: Astral Rush, 9 hits instead if Miracle Rush’s 6
Stoj: Come Here Minions♥, adds Regen effect to Come on Minions♥
Mari: Black Matter, deals more damage with less variance than Dark Matter
Zizou: Hyper Dark Arm EX, deals Defense Down to all enemies (that survive)
Klinsy: Dark Side Phoenix, Attacks all enemies, unknown if other effects
Neville: Dark Illusion, Adds Attack Up to Neville and damages all enemies

These are extremely hard to craft, requiring multiple Pure Syega and other top-tier crafting materials. I’m not sure they’re really ‘worth it’ as there’s some really great, much easier to get items and a proper run probably wouldn’t need these items. It also takes much less time to just force unlock the Playing Level for all accessories than it does to craft these.

Capacity Savers

Capacity Saver, Economizer, Ultimate

These reduce Capacity use for skills by 20%/40%/60% respectively, and are extremely important for Mari and Stoj, as casting more than one costly skill per battle can be extremely difficult and/or time consuming without them. They’re not very critical for attacking characters, as by the time you can make Ultimate you’ll probably have double or triple striker at the very least.

It’s good to inherit at least one of these for Mari or Stoj if you use them.

Other

Revival

Revives character once per battle for full health. Is not consumed upon use. Essential for solo-runs, and can be used as a full heal if you can carefully take a KO just before ending a fight. Also guarantees at least a single hit of survival when grinding extremely under-leveled characters. Multi-hit attacks can still hurt you if you die, revive, then get hit again as long as the attack has ‘hits’ left when you’re revived.

Magic Items

In Brave Dungeon, Magic Items are no longer “cheating lite” like they might be considered in Dark Witch 2, but instead function somewhat like items in any other RPG. They’re how you’ll heal out of battle and perform other functions.

Magic Items refill for free upon leaving the dungeon, making them work somewhat like a Dark Souls Estus Flask; use them frequently, but wisely.

The Escape, Jump, and Speed Boost magic items are cheap and very useful for speeding up the game so they should be bought almost immediately.

Most of the rest of the magic items are healing items, which you should buy as you have money and the need for heals. Try to optimize the use of them by not “wasting” them e.g. use a 40% heal if you’ve taken 45% damage instead of using a 75% heal. Magic Items generally won’t win battles for you, but they will greatly increase your longevity in dungeons, making them essential for the secret dungeon and useful for holding out in tough boss fights.

The “Random” healing item has random single target or full party effects for the enemy or ally party. In a quick test the effect ways always positive but inconsistent enough to not really be worth it except for fun when you have a lot of Tres to waste.

Characters

Brave Dungeon lets you swap out characters at any time in Town, though the Secret Character of course must be unlocked first, and Al will be required in your party until after beating the game once.

Al

Your standard slightly overpowered Main Character. She has attacks to target multiple enemies, buff all allies, and generally is a great all-arounder only somewhat lacking in the debuff/status condition field of things. She’ll end up your best character in your first playthrough if only because of your inability to remove her.

Her Revenge Skill has very high damage against the whole enemy party and nothing special beyond that. It’s one of the best due to it’s simple dependability and high damage output even on a single target.

Rudy

Rudy is self-sufficient almost to a fault, having abilities to heal or buff herself but nothing to directly heal or buff other party members. She has decent offensive skills, but can’t be relied on as a healer or (de)buffer.

Her Revenge Skill is a stronger and perfect-accuracy version of her Rudy Rush, hitting random enemies for decent damage several times.

Papelne

Papelne is probably your most standard character, having a variety of single-target attacks, a wide ranged attack, a single-ally heal. She’s very easy to use and fit on any party.

Stoj

Stoj is a much more standard healer than anyone else, having single and multi heals, as well as a full-party debuff. She’ll need higher MND stat than most characters, and is most effective with Capacity-saving items as she’s less useful without her expensive skills.

Stoj’s Revenge Skill heals the whole party, though a bit less than her normal skills would. However, it revives characters as well.

Mari

Mari is your standard Debuffer with a single heal skill that can target any player. Mari is a bit hard to use without Capacity-usage reducing items, as most of her skills cost around 50 Capacity and thus you won’t be able to actually use most of them without capacity savers, lot so of Wait turns, or very prolonged battles.

Mari’s Revenge Skill is just like Al’s, a full-party attack, except hers has a random unseen multiplier applied to it. Generally you can expect it to deal less damage than Al’s especially since Mari has to focus in MND and will probably have lower attack to begin with.

Story/Gameplay spoilers

You’ll eventually be able to remove Al from your party in New Game Plus playthroughs, and build a party of any 3 you want.

Zizou

I mean, obviously she was in this game, right? Zizou is unlocked by beating the Nightmare dungeon and buying her chapter for 3,600 Syega pieces. You’ll play a solo quest as her, making her ideal for the “beat the game with one person” Playing Level achievement.

Zizou can also be used in a normal game by holding L+R when selecting Change Party at the Inn, she’ll be able to be selected like anyone else. I’m unsure if Zizou’s chapter needs to be unlocked first.

Zizou is the real overpowered main character, having extremely good skills for relatively cheap. Brave Dungeon’s design also makes having a solo character pretty rewarding, as all Lunch Tokens and Tres can be spent on your one character and you keep all the experience for yourself. Zizou makes for a great speedrun due to this. She also doesn’t need to buy any magic items designed to revive or affect the whole party.

Zizou has all the abilities she could want: A normal damage full-party hit, a single target damage + debuff, a skill to remove enemy buffs. She works best with the Revival item, her best safety net and compensation for being solo.

Klinsy (Switch Exclusive)

Revenge Power: Red Flame Phoenix
Standard Hits-All-Enemies-For-High-Damage skill.

Neville (Switch Exclusive)

Revenge Power: Zone of Dark
Standard Hits-All-Enemies-For-High-Damage skill. It’s descriptive text implies it only hits one target, but it hits all enemies for equal damage

Party Structure

Due to the limited set of characters and range of abilities, there isn’t really any “wrong” character set up. You’ll always have at least one character able to heal characters (unless you use the secret character, Rudy, and Al), there’s only two “support” characters so you’ll always have a DPS character.

Basically pick your favorites but note any weaknesses you find your team having. It can be useful to bring Mari for debuffs, but careful use of other characters’ debuffs can be almost as effective. Try to have two decent damage dealers, at least one with a multi-target attack, and at least one character that can heal someone other than themselves. Almost every combination fulfills those qualifications anyway.

Stoj is the only character I would say is noticeably less effective on average, but it’s only one party slot out of 3 and she’s perfectly workable if she’s a character you like; you get easy heals and a full-party Sleep spell which isn’t too bad. She just plays as a defense focused character in an offense-focused game.

Playing Levels (Achievements)

Brave Dungeon brings back Playing Levels just like Legend of Dark Witch, and they give 100 Syega each, a sense of “completion”, and more importantly some concept art and developer’s notes. You can find out a lot of info about Brave Dungeon’s development by unlocking them and reading the notes!

  • Treasure Fighter
    • Clear Godshill
  • Brave Hero
    • Clear Nightmare
  • Speed Star
    • Beat the game in 3 hours or less
      • Definitely going to take a second playthrough and lots of Syega power ups for most players
      • Not actually that hard with the secret character’s story especially with some Syega shop unlocks. Beat the first level of the dungeon before Godshill to grind a bit, then you should be able to grind on the enemies in Godshill 1. Drei Warden and a Revival accessory will help a lot.
  • Solved by Myself
    • Clear Godshill using no more than 1 character from the start of the game
      • Probably best to do this with the Secret Character obtained after beating Nightmare, since you have to play her story in this manner anyway.
  • Do Your Best!
    • Clear Godshill with no party member being above level 20
      • Not nearly as hard as it may sound; this doesn’t have to be your first game clear on this save file.
      • Beat the game normally with the characters you do NOT plan to use, leaving the other characters level 1 to 20 (be very careful not to level past 20). Grind for Tres and upgrade your low level party members over 200 Attack and defense using Tres. Remove the low level party members any time you need to resume grinding.
        • A solo party member can do it at Def 250 as Bajel will do very little  damage on Easy mode at this point. A group of 3 can go a little lower.
      • Quadruple Striker and Revival are probably the safest two accessories to use.
      • Since Bajel doesn’t give XP you can be exactly level 20 when you enter Godshill, just wear a Through Pendant to be sure you don’t fight any enemies before Bajel.
  • Ultimate Damage
    • Deal over 30,000 damage to an enemy in one hit
      • Should be pretty easy by the time you’re ready to play Nightmare
      • If you’re having trouble, buff attack with Al and debuff a target’s defense with Mari. You’ll need well over 100 attack. Magic Earrings can help too.
  • Abyssflamer
    • Defeat Abyssflamer without anyone being KO’d
      • You can rematch him, even on easy mode, at any time to get this even in a completed game
  • Parasicolder
    • Defeat Parasicolder without anyone being KO’d
  • Kanpon
    • Defeat Kanpon without anyone being KO’d
  • Trider
    • Defeat Triderwithout anyone being KO’d
  • Bajel
    • Defeat Parasicolder without anyone being KO’d
  • Dark Witch
    • Defeat the boss of Nightmare
  • True Dark Witch
    • Defeat the boss of Nightmare on Lunatic difficulty
      • Only possible in a second playthrough, unlocking Lunatic in the Syega shop
      • She’s very hard even at level 200, mostly because she will still OHKO a level 200 character without extreme defense. Use Al’s Aura Barrier, Defense Up skills, Perfect Armor, and other defensive strategies to ensure someone will always survive all her attacks, especially her (rare) casts of Hyper Dark Arm and Drei Warden, which hit all party members.
  • Al Master
    • Al level 200
      • Only possible in a second playthrough unlocking level 200 (which is very cheap in the Syega shop)
      • Easiest if you grind in the late parts of Nightmare. The floor 8 boss is particularly easy/high reward if you bring lots of Reset magic items, but the Nightmare Blubber on FLoor 7 & 8 is very valuable as well and can be used a lot more than the level 8 boss.
      • The EXP Booster item seems to about double XP earned so obviously it’s useful for this
      • You also get more XP if only one character is left standing. Let the other 2 get KO’d if you can survive the Nightmare Blubber alone to make this the fastest. You get more XP total fighting alone than is split across the 3 characters it seems.
  • Papeline Master
    • Papeline level 200
  • Rudy Master
    • Rudy level 200
  • Stoj Master
    • Stoj level 200
  • Mari Master
    • Mari level 200
  • Klinsy Master
    • Klinsy level 200
  • Neville Master
    • Neville level 200
  • Complete Materials
    • Obtain every material
      • Should be pretty easy with access to Nightmare. A few will likely have to be crafted in town.
  • Complete Accessories
    • Obtain every accessory
      • This is such a horrific grind it’s best to unlock with Syega instead, see the Syega Grinding section below for how. Unlock it as early as possible, as the cost of unlocking goes up several hundred every time.
        • If you insist on doing it the grindier way it’s going to be pretty hard without multiple playthroughs and the “increase drops” and “carry over accessories” bonus effects from the Syega shop.
        • You’ll need to grind specific areas for some items (see the enemy/material book for locations) and others will be found in Nightmare.
        • Note that Nightmare pulls from almost the entire pool of items in Brave Dungeon so you can get basically anything, but in lower amounts. If you need a lot of a specific item, grinding specifically for that in a different area is often best.
  • Complete Enemies
    • Defeat all enemies
      • Should easily be obtained upon beating Nightmare
  • Complete Syega Shop
    • Buy all power ups in the Syega shop
      • This will require several playthroughs
  • Master of Syegacha
    • Get over 70% of Syegacha pictures in the Mini Games section
      • This is the one where it may actually be easier and cheaper to just force unlock for 7,200 Syega (since playing level prices don’t go up constantly anymore)
  • Brave Master
    • Obtain all other playing levels
      • You can’t force unlock this one, unsurprisingly

Syega Shop

The shop unlocks after beating Brave Dungeon once like always. You’ll earn Syega, mostly for beating the game and earning Playing Levels, and buy upgrades that affect new game +.

Haven’t found a secret second shop like Dark Witch 2 does, let me know if you find one!

  • Max Level 200 (cost: ?)
  • Inherit 1% of Tres (2,000)
  • Inherit Maps (960)
    • Nightmare maps will never be inherited or kept
    • Still doesn’t allow escaping before a floor boss is beaten
  • Inherit Accessories (6,500)
    • Only inherits what the current party was wearing at the moment you import the file, so choose wisely. Only up to 12 can come over due to this.
  • Inherit Material Book (?)
  • Inherit Accessory Book (?)
  • Inherit Magic Items (9,600)
  • Lunatic Difficulty (?)
  • Unlock Party (?)
  • Zizou’s Solitary Journey (3500)
    • Unlock by beating the secret Nightmare dungeon’s final boss
  • Double Syega Fragments earned (12000)
  • Movement Speed Up (?)
    • Highly recommended to speed things up
  • Increase Revenge Power (2000)
  • No Tres (50)
    • Only for challenge seekers!
  • Half Tres (10)
  • Double Tres (3,500)
  • Triple Tres (10,000)
  • Material Drop Rate Up (2,000)
  • Accessory Drop Rate Up (2,000)
  • Buff Time Up (1,600)
  • Debuff Time Up (6,500)
  • Debuff Success Rate Up (6,500)
  • All Damage Doubled (?)
    • Good for a faster but harder playthrough
  • Life + 500 (1,500)
  • Life + 1500 (3,000)
  • Attack + 20 (2,000)
  • Defense + 20 (2,000)
  • Mind + 40 (2,000)
  • Agility + 10 (2,000)

Maps

Here’s some amazing maps put together by Lord Vermithrax! Every map in the game is in here. I’ll try to work out a better way to display these soon.

Download the maps PDF (big but complete!) in case the above embed does not work for you or JS is disabled.

Nightmare Layouts

Layouts in Nightmare are not actually random, but instead selected from a pool of around 11 possible layouts. The order is random, but comparing your partial map to these you can tell which map you’re in. The position of enemies/key points is always the same on a given layout.

Brave Dungeon Nightmare dungeon maps
Bosses

Floor 4: Orange Priestess. Bring sleep prevention.

Floor 5: Black cat, will take incredible damage from poison, susceptible to sleep

Earning Syega

Brave Dungeon’s Syega rewards are unusual compared to Dark Witch, fluctuating quite a lot. I’m not entirely sure what all affects the amount you earn. From the numbers I’m guessing levels and possibly Boss Key collection affects your earnings. If you know any exact factors please tell me!

Each difficulty level you go up doubles the Syega earned by an action, so if Easy would earn 1, Casual earns 2, Expert earns 4 and Lunatic earns 8.

  • Beating a boss
    • 50/100/200/400

Grinding Syega

The best method for earning Syega in Brave Dungeon is to farm bosses with the Reset item, the most convenient boss to do so for a quick clear is the last one in Godshill. Buy 9 Reset magic items, have a Through Pendant to rush through the dungeon, and be strong enough to destroy Bajel with normal attacks (Quadruple Striker helps a lot).

Simply rush to floor 5 of Godshill, defeat and reset the boss of floor 5 (the pheonix), then beat Bajel quick after running out of resets. Note you can also collect the items on Floor 6 after each Reset too if you want them; Reset resets all floors not just the active one.

With Lunatic difficulty, Syega Doubler, this method earns 7,200 Syega and I timed it at 3 minutes 20 seconds, or >2,000 Syega per minute!

This method works with less resets, lower difficulty, and without the Syega doubler, but it of course will be slower. To shave a few extra seconds off, remove Al from your party (to avoid cutscene dialog) and only use Paplne if you can solo with her; her attack animation is the fastest.

Cheat Codes

Unsure if there are more, but these are the “cheat codes” discovered so far. Despite the name, they’re largely cosmetic and do not prevent unlocks or negatively impact progress, they’re just codes for fun.

Dark Witch 3 costume for Al

Hold L+R from starting the game until you open the main menu. Al’s portrait and map graphics will be changed to her new Dark Witch 3 costume! This will not permanently affect the save file and must be re-done each time you launch Brave Dungeon to keep the outfit.

This only unlocks when you unlock the final playing level.

In the Switch version tL+R should be held at the game selection screen (with Brave Dungeon and Dark Witch Story) and a noise will play when entered correctly. Zizou will also be in her Dark Witch 3 costume on Switch.

Unlock Zizou

Hold L+R when selecting Change Party at the Inn to allow Zizou to be selected when not in Zizou’s solo chapter. Only works if Nightmare has been beaten at least once, but it works on any save file once it’s been done on any other file.

Endings

For each character you can get one of two endings, based off (from what I can tell) whether you used/leveled them up in the playthrough before beating Brave Dungeon. Here’s most of the endings, I couldn’t seem to get a “good” ending for Rudy, who is a lazy loaf despite being in my main party.

Mari's "bad" ending. She's enjoying time by forcing the adventurers in Newport to drink her new medicines.

Addendum

Lord Vermithrax’s big spreadsheet of maps, character stats by level, and skill tiers.

Credits

 for the Zizou cheat

Supah Loren Enterprises in the comments for the Al outfit cheat

@Crippeh for some spelling corrections

Winberuberu and DeltaInferno of Gamefaqs for finding out the Character-Specific Items’ functions!

Support SirTapTap and these guides and articles on Patreon!
Become a patron at Patreon!
Avatar for SerTapTap

Author: SerTapTap

Gaming guide writer, content creator, streamer, UX designer, web developer, and a bunch of other stuff.

13 thoughts on “Brave Dungeon Guide: Maps, Characters, Syega & Cheats!”

  1. Such a helpful guide, even in 2020! Thank you very much! One question though, there isn’t any information on the EXP Boosters. Do you know if they’re stackable or how effective they are? Thanks again.

    1. I don’t exactly remember, but I think they’re the same as the Tres booster (50%). If you test and find out, let me know. Fairly sure they did not stack. But it’s been a long time

  2. Would you still like the credits scenes for the other characters with “good” clears? I can clear Nightmare again to get those for you if you want.

    1. Sure if I’m missing something. I can’t entirely tell what triggers them or if not everyone has different ones. I always get the same for Rudy (I think it was) for example

  3. First of all – great guide! Secondly I have another cheat for you: once you get the final playing level it is revealed though I don’t know if you need to have it for the cheat to work. Hold L+R when you boot up the game and Al will get a change of appearance.

    1. Ah, THAT’S what that was about! I couldn’t get it to work but I Think I figured it out. That’s her Dark Witch 3 costume btw.

    2. i’m assuming you NEED all the playing levels cause i can’t get it to work
      from start up meaning as soon as you launch the game from home screen, or on the title screen before loading the game
      neither works so i’m lost
      just beat the game on expert (godshill final boss only) and tried yet again, still doesn’t work

      1. Probably, I’d test it myself but unfortunately I don’t think I can do that without risking deleting my save data. Seems reasonable it’d be a hidden bonus though, since it’s a tease toward Dark Witch 3

Whatcha Think?