Danganronpa V3 Bonus Mode starting guide

Danganronpa V3 has several interesting bonus modes, but the game doesn't explain them perfectly and the purpose of this pastebin is to help newer players understand how/what they're doing in these modes.

STARTING OUT

When you first finish the main story, several new modes and options unlock. First up is "Love Across the Universe", which is the salmon circle icon you've unlocked. This is simply the new "School Life" mode, allowing you to learn more about the cast outside of the killing game. This mode is self explanatory for anyone that has played a past Danganronpa game, although they did leave out the resource management aspect this time.

Outside of LATU, the bonus modes have a loop, where you play the Ultimate Talent Development Plan board game, and then play the RPG mode Monokuma's Test, and then use gold from that mode to unlock new characters to use in the board game to use in the RPG to unlock more characters. It's more fun than it sounds.


ULTIMATE TALENT DEVELOPMENT PLAN

After beating the main story you now have an icon labeled "Talent Plan", which opens up into a board game called "Ultimate Talent Development Plan". In this mode, you take a character, represented by a "Death Card", and level them up and give them skills. Why do this? Because it's mandatory for Monokuma's Test, which we'll cover later! For now we'll go over the basics of the board game, specifically the things the game won't tell you directly.

BASICS
The board game segment consists of 3 "years", with each month of the year representing a turn, resulting in 36 total turns to upgrade your character. Each "year" you explore the board, and if you manage to cross the starting line you'll have a short turn-based RPG battle that can further upgrade your character if you win, followed by your choice of a new board for the next year as long as you passed the starting line again. The 3rd year replaces this choice of a board with 2 extra RPG battles, each of which will further upgrade your character on a win. Failure to pass the starting line will result in a punishment board called the Despair Course for the next year, and no RPG battles.

Each turn 2 NPCS will be placed within reach of your character (1-6 squares), and if you land directly on one they will reward you with a usable card, and occasionally give you a small stat boost as well.

OPTIONS WITHIN THE BOARD GAME

Small Move: Rolls a die that always lands on a 1, 2, or 3.

Large Move: Rolls a die that always lands on a 4, 5, or 6.

Card: Use a card to replace or augment a dice roll. On top of cards that move you a specific amount you have a variety of other cards we will cover later

Check Course: Move the view to plan ahead

Obtain Skill: Spend Talent Fragments to gain skills, which are used in RPG battles in the end of year battles and the RPG mode Monokuma's Test. You can buy up to 5 skills, which all can be upgraded up to level 10 with further Talent Fragments.

Check Talents: View the Talents at any time.


TILES

Growth tile: This tile is blue and depicts a man flexing, and will result in your character gaining levels. Each level gained will give small stat gains across all stats to your character, but levels cap at 99 and excessive level gains do nothing, turning the Growth tiles into worthless spaces once you reach 99.

Talent tile: This tile is orange and depicts a lightbulb. When you land on one, you can pick between Red, Blue, or Green points you can redeem for skills.

Event tile: This tile is a green !. Events will show you a pixel-art scenario independent of your character choice, and often allow the player to choose between 2 options, each resulting in a different predictable stat increase for your character based on the result chosen.

Friendship tile: This tile is pink, and depicts two hands holding within a heart. Friendship tiles lead to a Visual-Novel style scene with your selected character, and will result in your character gaining a stat increase with no choice on the player's end.

Despair tile: A black and red square depicting Monokuma's red eye. No special event or benefit, simply a loss of some random stats.

BOARD CHOICES

There are 3 boards starting out that you may pick from.

The Normal Course is mostly Growth tiles, with stretches of X2 tiles that give 1 extra level (not actually double in all cases).

The Talent Course is mostly Talent tiles, with some X2 stretches.

The Friendship Course has less Growth tiles and Talent tiles, but more Event tiles and Friendship tiles.

The Despair Course. This isn't a choice, it's a punishment! If you don't pass the starting square by the time the year ends, you are forced into this course without any option. It's full of despair tiles, with random other tiles you can pray you land on.

There is an extra unlockable course you can get by gambling at the casino (lucky button?), which is high risk high reward with a mix of all tile types in a more equal balance, including Despair tiles.

CHARACTERS AKA DEATH CARDS

You start out with one copy of each V3 cast member, all marked with a rarity of N. You can unlock Danganronpa 1 and 2 characters, and higher rarity characters from the option "Draw Death Cards" using G, a money you earn from Monokuma's Test, another mode we'll cover later. You cannot grind out stats, each board game run is independent and restarting with an N-ranked Himiko will result in the new Himiko overriding the old one, not augmenting it. This is where rarity comes in, as not only do S and U ranked cards have seperate slots, but they grow faster as well.

N rarity cards gain "normal" benefits from the board game, with a level up tile giving 1 level and a X2 level up tile giving 2 levels. S rarity cards give roughly double to triple the benefits, with level up tiles giving 2 or 3 levels, and X2 tiles giving generally 3 or 4 levels. U rarity cards are the highest, and gain roughly 5 or 6 times the benefits, for example 5 or 6 levels from level up tiles, or 6 or 7 from X2 tiles. These benefits span across everything from levels to talent points gained to event benefits, with the sole exception of the benefit from clearing an RPG battle at the end of the year, which seems to be unaffected by character rarity.

There are 3 main character types, Sports characters gain Strength easily, Intelligence characters gain Intellect easily, and Variety characters are more balanced. Each character is at least a little different, big characters like Sakura and Nekomaru tend to gain extra HP and Defense while small or nimble characters like Ryoma tend to gain more speed, and there are other quirks like Lucky students gaining tons of the Luck stat. Experiment with characters you like!

Note any character can learn any Talents, there is no limit on mixing and matching them. Outside of Strength attacks drawing from the Strength statistic and Magic attacks drawing from the Magic statistic all characters are equally good at everything from healing to buffing to afflicting status effects.

STATISTICS

These statistics are used not only for the RPG battle at the end of each year in the board game, but for the separate mode Monokuma's Test as well.

Influence: HP, plain and simple.

Focus: MP, plain and simple. You cannot regenerate MP outside of a specific move that drains focus from enemies, and Focus is important for ALL characters, not just ones with Magic.

Strength: This augments physical damage, and it makes your basic attacks AND physical special attacks deal extra damage.

Defense: This reduces incoming physical damage. In the RPG mode some enemies will take 1 damage at a time from physical moves because they have very high defense.

Intellect: This augments magic damage. Magic doesn't have a basic attack, but it has a variety of elemental attacks to choose from.

Fortitude: This reduces incoming magic damage. In the RPG mode some enemies will take 1 damage at a time from magic moves because they have very high fortitude.

Agility: This determines move order, highest agility will always move first. You can have up to a party of 4, and the game checks the agility of your party and the enemies all at the same time.

Luck: Tricky, with multiple effects. This affects critical hit chance, it seems max 999 luck will guarantee every attack is a critical hit. Luck determines if you successfully run from a battle, the game checks only the highest luck member of your party for this roll. This seems to also allow you to have a better chance at hitting "slippery" enemies that dodge attacks, although Agility may play a role in this as well.

CARDS

Move 1/2/3/4/5/6: Basic die replacement card, moving you the amount it says it will.

Move 0: Stay in the same spot, getting the tile under you to activate while moving forward 1 month.

Success: Automatically pass a Monokub Surgery. So, randomly the Monokubs may offer you a "surgery" to level you up, giving 10/20/30 instant levels and some Talent Points as well. Without this card in your inventory, it can fail and backfire. Keep this card if you get it, it's the key to an overpowered character!

Hope: The next despair tile you land on won't hurt you, but consumes this card instead.

Straight: You move forward until yyou stop on the last tile in that line.

Double Square: The next square you land on is doubled, meaning the actual result it would give you is doubled. This can even double the rewards from Events and Friendship squares, but also Despair tiles. Pair this with a guaranteed Move card for best results.

Change Course: Teleports you onto a random other course. You can land on despair course if you aren't already there, so beware! This is mostly useful for getting out of the despair course ASAP.

Double Move: The next die roll is doubled. Can be used with cards.

Encounter: Move until you land on another character.

Goodbye: The randomly generated NPCs are shuffled.

High Jump: Teleport to a random square on the board you're on, taking up your turn.

Each character gives the same card every time:

Asahina: Move 4
Byakuya: Success
Celeste: Double Square
Chihiro: Encounter
Genocide Jack: High Jump
Hifumi: Move 6
Junko: Double Move
Kiyotaka: Move 2
Kyoko: Move 3
Leon: Course Change
Makoto: Move 1
Mondo: Straight
Monokuma: Double Square
Mukuro: Double Move
Sakura: Double Move
Sayaka: Move 5
Toko: Move 0
Yasuhiro: Goodbye
Akane: Straight
Chiaki: Move 0
Fuyuhiko: High Jump
Gundham: Encounter
Hajime: Move 2
Hiyoko: Course Change
Ibuki: Move 4
Izuru: Success
Mahiru: Move 6
Mikan: Success
Monomi: Double Move
Nagito: Hope
Nekomaru: Double Move
Peko: Straight
Sonia: High Jump
Souda: Move 1
Teruteru: Move 5
Togami Imposter: Double Square
Usami: Double Square
Angie: Move 1
Gonta: Straight
Himiko: Move 0
K1-B0: Hope
Kaede: Move 3
Kaito: High Jump
Kirumi: Move 6
Korekiyo: Course Change
Maki: Move 5
Miu: Success
Ouma: Double Square
Rantaro: Move 2
Ryoma: Goodbye
Shuichi: Move 3
Tenko: Double Move
Tsumugi: Move 4

BOARD GAME STRATEGY:

You want to maximize stats on your character, and for N and S rank that usually means hoping for good events and getting as many X2 squares as possible. For U rank characters getting to level 99 is feasible, and the strategy is to get to 99 as close to the end as possible, to avoid wasting precious turns. You want to balance gaining talent with gaining levels, and any excess moves would best be spent on Event/Friendship tiles as those have no real limit to how much they can help, unlike levels which are worthless once you hit 99.

MONOKUMA'S TEST

So, you spent all that time building characters, now what? After your first board game run ends you unlock an RPG mode, where you take a party of 4 characters you built in the board game, and adventure with them! Here you can earn money called G, which is used to buy equipment in this mode and more importantly used in the Death Card machine for new character cards. Simply open chests, fight enemies, and defeat bosses to gain G. Every 10th floor is a boss, and every time you enter a floor after a boss your Death Card Machine upgrades, which increases the chance of S and U cards appearing from rolls. Elevators are placed every 5 floors, and as long as you activate them and save afterward you can return to any of them from the menu at any time.

FAQ:

Does "Ultimate X" item have a special effect with the Ultimate X character?: There are items that mention specific character's names, but they don't seem to do anything special when added to them.

Why can't I hurt this enemy?: If you're dealing 1 damage at a time, the enemy is resisting your attacks and you need to switch attack types. Some enemies highly resist physical moves, some highly resist magic moves. If the attack "misses" you need higher luck/agility in order to hit them consistently. There is one specific optional boss that resists both physical and magical attacks, it is however extremely vulnerable to poison.

How do I beat X boss?: What what moves it has, and if your party can't counter it, make a new character. If the boss has a wind AOE that wipes your party, try Wind Barrier. If the boss inflicts an annoying status effect, try Cure, which can be comboed with Ultra Defense to stop AOE status effects. If the boss doesn't take damage from physical attacks, try 4 magic attackers for that one fight, or put the physical attackers on heal duty.

More will be added in the future, hopefully.