Demon Shaft Walkthrough - Dark Cloud
Demon Shaft is the post-game dungeon available on the American version of Dark Cloud. This dungeon is 100 floors in total and every 20 floors it has a difficulty jump as well as an "elemental shift". There is no town connected to this dungeon and no Atla or story associated with it. On the bottom floor of this dungeon you will fight an optional boss but aside from that it's designed to be one long grind.
As aforementioned, every 20 floors there is a jump in difficulty - the enemies you encounter will also change every 20 floors. Sometimes the enemies you fight will correspond to the elemental theme of the floor you're on - for example in the Fire Zone (Floors 1 - 20) you'll encounter more fire based enemies.
There is only a single enemy you can encounter throughout all of the Demon Shaft and his name is Gemron. Every 20 floors the Gemron enemy will change his element to correspond with the elemental zone you're in, for Floors 1 - 20 he is a Fire Gemron, Floors 21 - 40 he is an Ice Gemron and so on and so forth. More details about all of this can be found below.
Below are the main 3 items you'll be searching for in order to navigate the Demon Shaft dungeon.
Black Knight Crest: You'll need to collect this item on every floor to progress to the next one.
Silver Key: Sometimes you'll encounter a locked door that needs opening - the Silver Key is the item needed.
Crystal Eyeball: This item will allow you to access the Back Floors in the Demon Shaft.
There isn't much else I can tell you about the Demon Shaft dungeon that you don't already know. It works like every other dungeon we've progressed through up until this point with the main exception being there is no Atla at all in this entire dungeon. For those of you struggling with the first 20 floors of this dungeon I recommend you check out my Ultimate Weapons Guide and/or my Best Leveling Locations Guide.
Both of these guides have a lot of information that will help you level up your weapons and choose the correct weapons for your characters. I strongly recommend you check out both guides but most important is probably the Ultimate Weapons Guide because you need to know which weapons are the best for each character and what to evolve to make that weapon.
You will encounter the most annoying enemy in the entire Demon Shaft pretty early on, they go by the name White Fang. When you attack this enemy you'll most likely see "No Effect" regardless of what Attribute you try to use on it. This is because you can only damage White Fang enemies if your weapon has no active Attribute on it.
You can defeat them by having no Attribute on your weapon.
White Fang enemies are only on the first 20 floors of the Demon Shaft so once you get past the first 20 floors you don't have to worry about dealing with them again in the future. That said, you will occasionally run into some enemies throughout later floors that are immune to about half the Attributes on your weapons. So you'll still have to go into your inventory on some fights and fidget with the Attributes on your weapon.
The most help I can give to you when it comes to clearing the Demon Shaft dungeon is letting you know what enemies you're going to encounter on what floors. So, below you'll find a complete list of all 5 zones in the Demon Shaft and which enemies you'll encounter in each of them. You've encountered most of these enemies already throughout the game... They're a bit beefed up though in this dungeon.
Floors 1 - 20 (Fire Zone)
Arthur
Diamond
Fire Gemron
Halloween
Master Jacket
Mummy
Nikapous
Sil
Vulcan
White Fang
Floors 21 - 40 (Ice Zone)
Auntie Medu
Club
Corcea
Hornhead
Ice Gemron
King Mimic
Mimic
Rockanoff
Steel Giant
Witch Hellza
Yammich
Floors 41 - 60 (Thunder Zone)
Bishop Q
Captain
Cave Bat
Gol
Gyon
King Mimic
Mimic
Mask of Prajna
Rash Dasher
Spade
Thunder Gemron
Floors 61 - 80 (Wind Zone)
Alexander
Bomber Head
Crabby Hermit
Cursed Rose
Heart
King Mimic
Mimic
Pirate's Chariot
Silver Gear
Space Gyon
Wind Gemron
Floors 81 - 100 (Holy Zone)
Crescent Baron
Evil Bat
Gacious
Holy Gemron
Joker
King Mimic
Lich
Living Armor
Mimic
Statue Dog
Titan
As you can probably imagine the last 5 or so floors of this dungeon will be the hardest. In particular the Gacious enemy will stand out to you as one of the harder ones to defeat in this area. Holy is what they're weak to and I strongly recommend you use Holy as your Attribute on at least one character throughout all of these floors.
I recommend you get to Floor 99 then leave the dungeon to save your game and stock up on some items before you challenge the final boss. You'll want at least 3 or 4 Stand In Powders along with a handful of Premium Chickens to heal yourself, Stamina Drinks (optional), Repair Powder and everything else you typically need for boss fights.
When you are ready to challenge this boss advance to Floor 100 and the fight will begin.
Demon Shaft - Black Knight Pendragon Boss Strategy
This boss has 2 phases, the first phase is a ranged phase where you'll have to use one of your ranged characters - I recommend Osmond or Xiao. For the second phase you're supposed to use a melee character but you can get away with using a ranged character too if you want to cheese the fight a bit.
If you'd like to see a video of me fighting this boss instead of a text guide check out my Black Knight Pendragon Boss Strategy Youtube Video.
Phase 1
He has 2 attacks during this phase, the most annoying one is where he surrounds himself in a blue aura and dashes at your character. You can dodge this dash if you're far enough away from him when he starts dashing and/or if you break target on the boss and run to the side. Dran's Feather will help out a lot as far as dodging the boss's attacks go during this phase.
As for the other attack, he throws a spinning blade at you that is pretty easy to dodge. Just remember to keep a solid distance away from the boss during this entire phase and you will be fine. I recommend trying to stay in the middle of the arena too so that when he runs into one of the walls and turns around to dash again you're not anywhere close to him.
Phase 2
Once you beat phase 1 of this boss he'll dismount and fight you himself. I think it's intended that you use a melee character during this fight since the boss will teleport to you if you try using a ranged character... However I didn't find a melee character to be a requirement, just a recommendation.
Most of the attacks the boss uses during this phase are typical melee attacks. He spins his swords around like Ungaga to block damage, he has one or two quick sword strikes if you stay within melee distance for too long and he also throws the same spinning blades at you from the first phase. Although, during this phase the spinning blades have significantly less distance - they're kind of like a short range but still ranged attack.
If you'd like to use a melee character during this phase you can, I would recommend a lot of Stamina Drinks to cut down on the incoming damage if you do. Alternatively, you can use Xiao or Osmond and fight the boss the same way you see me doing so in the video I made of this fight. Essentially what I did was hold down on the analog stick and keep backing up between all of my attacks. When I saw the boss teleport I stopped attacking momentarily to avoid his attack then kept shooting him.
You'll definitely take some damage using a ranged character during phase 2... But you'll likely take damage using a melee character too so... All in all you should find phase 2 to be much easier than the first phase.
Upon beating the boss you'll be rewarded with Toan's other Ultimate Weapon, Chronicle 2. This is the most powerful sword for Toan in the game and a solid reward for completing this entire dungeon... Sadly though there isn't much use for this weapon now that you've beaten the entire game!