Underkeep Secrets: How to Find Hidden Buttons, Passable Walls, and Optional Dungeons

Underkeep rewards curiosity more than it rewards raw damage. The game is a first-person, grid-based dungeon crawler in the Eye of the Beholder tradition, and its developers have confirmed that classic Underkeep secrets — hidden buttons, passable walls, tucked-away rooms — are part of the design. That matters because those secrets are optional by intent: they hide extra gear, extra encounters, and extra routes, and skipping them won't lock you out of the main story. What follows is a practical set of habits, tools, and community-reported tricks for finding more of what the dungeon is hiding, without a walkthrough open on a second monitor.

Underkeep Secrets Are Optional on Purpose

The clearest statement on how secrets work comes from a developer reply in the Underkeep Steam discussions, where a team member answered a player worried about pixel-hunting for hidden switches. The reply confirms that hidden buttons and passable walls are both in the game, and that examples already existed in the demo build.

Just as important is the design philosophy attached to that answer. The developers said they aren't aiming for invisible or unfair secrets, and that a hidden thing should usually carry some subtle visual or contextual hint — though not in every single case. They also stressed that these secrets are not meant to gate story progression, and in most cases they lead to optional areas or rewards.

That single detail reframes how you should explore. If a wall refuses to open, you are probably not stuck; you are probably early. Underkeep secrets sit parallel to the critical path, not on top of it.

Habits That Turn Up More Underkeep Secrets

Click Everything, Even the Pointless Stuff

On the Underkeep Steam store page, the pitch is a dungeon crawler about descending into danger with a hand-built party — and in practice, a huge share of that danger is decorated with clickable props. Gameplay footage shows mushrooms harvested along forest paths, berry bushes that yield restorative fruit, gravestones that produce flavor text, and stumps that do absolutely nothing.

That last part is the point. Testing a prop costs a click. Ignoring a prop costs you whatever was behind it.

A player in the same Steam thread noted that interactable objects — berry bushes, fruit trees, flowers, tombstones, torches, and secret buttons — are reasonably easy to spot once you're actively scanning each side of a corridor, and recommended clicking everything and checking the map when a room feels suspicious.

Read Tooltips and Talk to Everyone

A beginner tips video from Dean the Game Alchemist makes a strong case that Underkeep's tooltips are written with real care and often contain mechanical information you would otherwise miss. The same video argues that NPC dialogue is worth sitting through, partly because some conversations hand out experience points for free.

For secret hunters, both habits feed the same loop: text in this game tends to describe something you can act on later.

Mark the Map Before You Forget

The minimap in the lower-left corner is the single most underrated tool for tracking Underkeep secrets. According to the same beginner guide, pressing M and then left-clicking lets you write notes on essentially any tile.

Gameplay footage shows why that matters. A dwarf character found a gold vein and was told he lacked the knowledge to extract gold from it — a clear signal to return later with the right skill. Locked doors display key sockets. Strange claw marks appear on a wall with no explanation. None of that survives a 40-minute dungeon crawl in your memory. A marker does.

Tools and Environmental Clues Behind Underkeep Secrets

Most of the Underkeep secrets that aren't buttons are geometry problems, and the game hands you the answers as loot.

• The pickaxe. Found in the dungeon, it lets you break through specific rubble walls. Gameplay footage shows a wall opening into a chamber full of hostile undead — so treat every cracked wall as a possible fight, not just a shortcut.
• Throwables. Daggers and other low-value items can be picked up and thrown at the center of the screen. In one recorded sequence, throwing a dagger at a switch opened a door and triggered a stone-sliding sound effect. Junk loot is ammunition for puzzles.
• Breakable furniture. Crates and barrels crack open for potions, food, and crafting-looking materials such as moon petals and empty flasks.
• Loot behind scenery. One session found bread tucked behind a stone block, which is the dungeon's way of telling you to sweep rooms instead of walking through them.

The beginner guide's most cryptic tip is worth quoting because it lands: "rocks are your best friend. Wink wink." Combined with footage of stones that crumble to reveal keys, it's a strong nudge to treat loose rock as an interactable rather than scenery.

Death Pits, Optional Depths, and Why Falling Is Sometimes Correct

The most counterintuitive piece of Underkeep exploration advice is that a hole in the floor is not always a punishment.

In recorded gameplay, the party fell through a pit in a forest area and dropped into a multi-level underground complex full of slimes, worms, undead, and logic puzzles. Later, after climbing back out, the player realized the exit returned them to the same forest — meaning the entire descent may have been skippable. The video's author described that as good design: optional subterranean content layered beneath a route you can simply walk past.

Practical takeaways for anyone hunting Underkeep secrets underground:

• Falling into a pit can drop you to a lower floor, and lower floors hold their own secrets, so a deliberate fall is a legitimate scouting move.
• Tunnels contain tripwire traps that fire once and then hang broken — a free hit on whatever is chasing you.
• Some passages loop back on themselves, so a dead end is often a shortcut in disguise.

If you want to sweep a floor fully, budget for it. In the same footage, resting cost roughly four food for the party, and a diseased character could not regenerate health, mana, or stamina during rest at all — which makes long optional detours genuinely expensive.

Party, Skills, and Settings That Support Secret Hunting

You can build a custom party, and footage shows races and classes ranging from human paladins to dwarf warriors, slug-man wizards, and elk rangers. For a first run, though, the beginner guide recommends the quick start party, which supplies a frontline fighter, a frontline healer, a ranged damage dealer, and a caster — enough coverage to survive whatever a hidden room throws at you.

A few more habits worth adopting:

• Take passive skills early. They're the low-risk choice when you don't yet know what a character needs, and they make optional fights survivable.
• Use saves to test outcomes. The guide explicitly recommends saving before questionable situations and reloading to see alternatives.
• Check equipment for granted abilities. Loot can hand characters tools outside their class — gloves that throw fireballs, amulets with bonuses — which broadens what you can try in a puzzle room.
• Turn off camera shake and move/turn animations if first-person motion bothers you. The same guide notes both options, plus a choice of cursor styles, and calls the camera setting the difference between playable and unplayable.

FAQ

Are Underkeep secrets required to finish the game? No. The developers stated in the Steam discussion thread that hidden content isn't meant to block main story progression and generally leads to optional areas or rewards instead.

How do I find hidden buttons in Underkeep? Click along walls that look subtly different, and cross-check the room against your minimap. The developers said hidden things should carry some visual or contextual hint, and community players report that interactables are visible if you're actively scanning both sides of a corridor.

Does falling into a death pit kill my party? It can drop you to a lower level rather than end the run. Gameplay footage shows a fall leading into a large optional dungeon with its own sublevels, so treat pits as possible routes and save first.

Are Underkeep secrets missable? Some almost certainly are on a single pass, which is why map marking matters — the beginner guide recommends noting tiles you can't act on yet, like veins you lack the skill to mine. A pre-launch tips video also estimated roughly 40 hours of play for a thorough first run, so there is room to circle back.