Underkeep Characters Guide: Every Class, Race, and Party Build Explained

Underkeep doesn't hand you a cast of ready-made heroes, and that single design choice shapes everything about the game. When players search for Underkeep characters, what they're really hunting for is the game's character-creation system: seven classes, six races, rolled stats, and a four-person party you assemble before you take your first step into the world. Understanding how those pieces fit together is the difference between a team that handles the Fangroot Forest comfortably and one that stalls out two floors into a dungeon. This guide breaks down every Underkeep character option confirmed by hands-on player experience, plus the party-building habits that make the system click.

How Underkeep Characters Actually Work

Underkeep is a party-based, turn-based dungeon crawler from developer Rake in Grass, and it belongs to the old-school tradition of building your whole team from scratch rather than recruiting companions with names and opinions. You create four characters up front, in the same spirit as Icewind Dale or the Solasta games.

That has a clear trade-off. On one side, none of your four heroes have their own personality, backstory, or dialogue. On the other, you get total mechanical control over every stat, skill, and build decision in the party. For players who enjoy optimizing a team, that's the appeal; for players who want a BioWare-style cast, it's the main thing to know before buying.

The creation flow runs in a fixed order: class → race → one starting skill → portrait. Stats are not something you pick at all, which we'll get to below.

Every Underkeep Class, Ranked by What It Does

There are seven classes. Player reports suggest all of them are viable, and each one brings something the others can't replicate.

The blood mage is the most distinctive design in the roster: it consumes bones as a spell resource and falls back on self-damage when your supply dries up. That means a blood mage is partly a crafting and inventory problem — you keep it stocked or you pay in hit points. The ranger earns similar praise for a structural reason: because so many enemies attack in melee, a ranger that gets a clear line of sight can deal damage for several turns before anything reaches the front row.

Class is also where most of the game's reactivity lives. Magical obstacles often open a special dialogue option for wizards; martial situations favor warriors and thieves. If you want to see the most content on a single playthrough, four different classes beats four of the same.

Underkeep Races and Their Real Trade-offs

After class comes race, and each one nudges your stat spread in a specific direction. Races also add a small number of dialogue options, though noticeably fewer than classes do.

The raven is the most interesting gamble in the game: you get a bonus and a penalty the moment the character exists, and both are random. That's either a fun constraint or an instant reroll, depending on your temperament.

Where race really matters is the interaction with your class's primary attribute. Dwarves lean hard into Strength and Endurance, so a dwarf wizard rolls with less Wisdom — and therefore less mana — than a raven or Slugman wizard would. The game lets you build any race/class combination you want, but the stat roll quietly punishes combinations that fight each other.

Stats, Skills, and Portraits: Finishing Your Character

Stats are rolled, not allocated. You reroll until you like the spread, and the spread is determined by your class (which sets the primary attribute) plus your race (which shifts the secondary values). You never manually assign points.

Skills come slowly and last. Every character picks one skill upgrade during creation, then earns one skill point per level. Most skills have five ranks, and the level cap sits at 15 — which means a focused build can max out roughly three skills by the end of the game. Two reviewers independently described passive skills as more important than they first appear, and both recommended committing to a single active skill while pushing spare points into passives.

Portraits are more alive than the writing. The character portraits are detailed, well-colored, and available in a wide range of male and female options. They also animate: characters blink at random, and their eyes close while the party rests. It's a small touch that gives your silent foursome a bit of personality the script never provides.

If the creation screen itself doesn't appeal to you, both reviewers note that a quick start party option exists. It drops you into the world with a pre-built, functional team and skips the whole process — a genuinely useful shortcut for a first run.

Party Composition Tips for Underkeep Characters

Once your four are built, the tactical layer begins. A few habits make an immediate difference.

• Fill the two front slots with melee. The front two characters absorb most melee damage and are the only ones reliably swinging melee weapons. Casters and rangers belong in the back.
• Give back-row casters reach weapons. Staves count as reach weapons, so your wizard or blood mage can still contribute if something closes in.
• Drink potions freely. Using an item doesn't consume your character's action for the turn, so chugging a potion mid-fight is a legitimate free move rather than a wasted turn.
• Diversify classes over races. Class reactivity appears far more often than racial reactivity, so four distinct classes is the highest-value team shape.
• Stockpile bones and food. Bones are a blood mage's ammunition, and resting costs food that scales with your level — the higher you go, the more you burn to recover between fights.
• Skip a turn when nothing can reach. If only your ranged characters have targets, passing with the melee pair is better than wasting their action on nothing.

One caveat worth knowing before you get attached to a build: the level cap is 15 and a full playthrough is a fairly compact affair. Reviewer estimates ranged from roughly 15–20 hours in one case to 25–40 hours in another, depending on how thoroughly the player explored and how much optional content they chased.

What Underkeep Characters Are Not

Anyone coming from story-driven RPGs should reset expectations. Your four heroes never speak, never banter, and never develop. NPCs are not voice acted either. The premise — a dwarven expedition seeking help — exists mainly to point you at the map, and it's on you to invent why your party showed up.

The game also refuses to hold your hand. Quests give a general direction, the map lets you type your own notes on tiles, and that's the extent of the guidance. Puzzles can hard-block progress. For the right player, that's the whole appeal; for the wrong one, it's a refund. If you want to check the official pitch and current store details before committing, Underkeep on Steam is the place to look, and the developer's Steam news post on classes, races, and skills is worth a read for future updates.

FAQ

Can you create your own Underkeep characters? Yes. You build all four members of your party at the start of the game, choosing class, race, a starting skill, and a portrait. A quick start party is available if you'd rather skip creation.

How many classes are there in Underkeep? Seven: Warrior, Paladin, Thief, Ranger, Void Caller, Wizard, and Blood Mage. Each has active and passive skills, and most skills cap at five ranks.

Do Underkeep characters have personalities or voice acting? No. Your party is silent, there is no party banter between them, and NPCs are not voiced. The narrative focus sits on exploration, combat, and puzzle solving rather than dialogue.

What is the best party composition for Underkeep characters? Four different classes, with two melee characters in the front row and two ranged characters in the back. Because class-based dialogue options are the most common form of reactivity in the game, a diverse party sees more content — and earns more experience — than a stacked one.