Chapter 5 of Deltarune, subtitled Festival Day, sends Kris and Susie into a new Dark World built around flowers Asgore has kept since an old festival bouquet. That world is populated by Darkners you can fight, and the same recruit system from earlier chapters still applies here. Spare the right enemies, and they show up as residents tied to Castle Town; kill any of them violently, and you lose the chance for good.
Quick answer: To recruit everyone in Chapter 5, spare every standard enemy of each type, never defeat any of that type violently, and check the Recruits menu at a SAVE point to confirm each entry reads as fully recruited before you reach a point of no return.
How recruiting works in Chapter 5
The mechanic is unchanged from when it was introduced in Chapter 2. Each enemy type needs a set number of individuals spared before that type is recruited. Recruiting only applies to standard enemies, never bosses, so the chapter’s main flower antagonist cannot be added to your roster.
The single biggest pitfall is violence. If you ever defeat an enemy violently, that entire type becomes LOST and can never be recruited, even if you had already recruited it earlier. Violent kills do raise your party’s maximum HP, so this is a real trade-off, not a bug. If you want a complete recruit list, resolve every encounter by sparing.
Note: Fights in the Party Dojo do not count toward recruitment, so you can battle there freely without turning any enemy LOST.
The flower-themed Darkners in Festival Day
The Chapter 5 Dark World introduces six Darkners patterned after the colorful flowers Asgore has maintained in the attic. These are the new standard enemies you encounter as the party crosses the area toward Flower Castle, and they are the targets for this chapter’s recruiting. Floradinn is among the flower-styled Darkners revealed for the chapter.
Recruits carry across the whole game in a single save, so your Chapter 5 additions sit alongside everyone you brought in from earlier chapters. For reference, here is how many enemy types each Dark World contributed before Festival Day.
| Chapter | Recruitable enemy types |
|---|---|
| Chapter 1 | 8 (added automatically) |
| Chapter 2 | 10 |
| Chapter 3 | 8 |
| Chapter 4 | 8 |
| Chapter 5 | Six flower-themed Darkners |
How to verify you recruited everyone
You do not have to guess whether a type is complete. The game tracks it for you, and there are two clear signals to watch.
Why a recruit may not count
If a type refuses to complete, the cause is almost always one of these:
- You defeated at least one of that type violently, marking it LOST and removing it from the recruit pool permanently.
- You have not yet spared enough individuals of that exact type, so the counter is still short of its target.
- You only fought that type in the Party Dojo, which never advances recruitment.
Once a type is LOST in your current save, the only way to fix it is to replay the chapter from a save where that type is still intact and spare it instead.
One thing to keep in mind for Festival Day specifically: after the opening visit, you do not return to Castle Town for the rest of the chapter, so you will not see your new recruits settle in during this run the way you might in earlier chapters. The recruitment itself still happens normally in the Dark World, so focus on sparing every flower Darkner you meet and use the Recruits menu at SAVE points as your final check before any point of no return.
