Equipment Guide: Gear and Party Loadouts

Gear is the quiet difference between a party that clears the next floor and one that limps back to a shrine. Underkeep hands you four character slots, one shared bag, and a dungeon that punishes sloppy positioning, so what your team wears matters as much as the square it stands on. This Underkeep equipment guide breaks down how armor, weapons, inventory, and resting actually interact, so you can build loadouts that hold up deeper in the tower. Treat it as a standing Underkeep equipment guide and come back to it every time you roll a fresh party or hit a difficulty wall.

How Equipment Works in Underkeep

Underkeep keeps gear deliberately plain, and that plainness is what makes it readable. Each of your four adventurers has an individual stat sheet, so armor and weapons are equipped per character rather than pooled across the team. Anything nobody is wearing drops into a single shared inventory sitting on the left side of the screen. That one design choice shapes everything else in this Underkeep equipment guide: you are not juggling four separate bags, you are managing one pile and deciding who deserves what.

The game also briefs you up front. The opening menu includes a short how-to-play section — a couple of pages of bullet points covering the moving parts, including a blunt reminder to save often. Skim it before you build a party, because the rules listed there are the same rules your gear decisions depend on.

Party Slots and Gear Priorities

A party is four characters arranged inside one grid square, and that lineup decides who absorbs hits. The two characters in front trade blows with whatever stands ahead of you. The two in back stay out of melee reach but cannot swing ordinary melee weapons at all. Gear priorities therefore split cleanly down the middle: durability in the front, reach and utility in the back.

A random-rolled party shows the tension immediately. Put a stone-man warrior up front, a void caller in the second rank, and an elf ranger plus a human wizard in the corners, and the void caller becomes the awkward slot — he fights from the front line without the frame for it, so he takes pressure first. Either armor him properly and accept he is a support bruiser, or hand him a staff and let him poke from the second rank.

Weapon Reach and Who Fights From Where

Facing is the whole game here. Underkeep runs turn-based combat inside a first-person grid, so the direction you point decides who can hit whom. Move with WASD, then use Q and E to strafe and turn. Because your party occupies one grid square together, the front two characters are the ones trading melee blows, while the back two need weapons that ignore that distance rule.

Flanking is the trap that catches new players. When a fight opens up across more than one grid square, enemies can end up beside or behind you, and suddenly your squishy back-rank caster is the one bleeding. Any Underkeep equipment guide that ignores positioning is only half a guide — check your back-row health every round, not just the two characters in front.

Inventory, Food, and Money: Managing Your Resources

Everything unequipped lives in the shared pile: spare armor, spare weapons, potions, keys, and assorted dungeon junk like bits of bone. Treat that bag as a junk drawer you will eventually cash out. In the early dungeon no shopkeeper has turned up yet, so plan on hoarding rather than selling.

One specific habit is worth adopting early: resting sits on the T key, which is uncomfortably close to the loot-all button. A single mispress can burn a stack of food for a heal you did not need. Remap rest to a key you will not hit by accident, and your food economy stretches noticeably further. That single change does more for your survivability than most armor upgrades in this Underkeep equipment guide.

Skill Trees, Evasion, and Gear Synergy

Characters earn experience at different rates depending on how much they contribute, so level-ups arrive at different times and skill trees unlock unevenly. Some nodes are ready immediately, others are level-gated, and individual skills can be pushed up to level five. Passives matter as much as gear — a void caller, for example, can run a protective aura that supports the front line while he fights.

Evasion is the clearest example of gear driving a build. Load a ranger with evasion pieces and she approaches the game's evasion cap, which turns her from a fragile back-row target into a genuinely annoying one to hit. Meanwhile, armor on the two front characters reduces the frequency of shrine trips — and shrines are rare, with resurrection only available at those sparse checkpoints. Death is expensive in time and food, so prevention beats recovery.

Loadout pass, in order:

• Read the how-to-play pages so you know the save and rest keys.
• Slot your sturdiest character in front and give them the best armor in the pile.
• Put a reach weapon on anyone in the second rank who cannot survive melee.
• Keep bows and spells in the corners; stack evasion on the lightest-armored character.
• Remap rest away from the loot key before you lose food to a mispress.
• Save before every new floor, puzzle room, or boss door.

FAQ

Does every character need their own gear in Underkeep? Yes. Stat sheets are individual, so armor and weapons are equipped per character. The inventory is shared, which makes swapping easy, but nothing is worn by the whole party at once — a core point in any Underkeep equipment guide.

Which weapon type should I prioritize? Match the weapon to the rank. Front-rank characters want solid melee and heavy armor; second-rank characters want reach weapons like staves or spears; back-corner characters want ranged weapons or spells.

Can back-rank characters be hit? Yes, when the party is flanked during multi-square fights. Watch the health of your casters and rangers, not just your frontline.

How often should I save? Constantly. Save before fights, after loot runs, and before any puzzle or drop. Shrines are few and far between, so a bad situation can leave a party stranded without one.