Devil May Cry 5 – FAQ/Walkthrough

Bloody Palace

The Bloody Palace is a stage based survival mode that pits you against 101 stages of increasingly difficult enemies and a timer. Each arena (aside from certain boss fights) is identical with just minor changes in dressing. As you progress, the difficulty will increase up until Dante Must Die difficulty for the last 21 Stages.

If you go slow, get hit too much, or just aren't stylish enough, you'll get knocked out and *have to start over again.

For fans of the series, this version of the Bloody Palace seems to be the easiest I can remember, but the last four stages are essentially a boss rush that is drastically more difficult than the rest of the mode, so don't get too over-confident.

Are There General Tips and Strategies?

First, a disclaimer -- this is a really difficult mode. You'll have to be VERY good to finish this mode. I can offer level specific tips and a couple of general tips, but you're going to have to master the combat system. You'll need to make use of every tool as often as possible to be able to get through this quickly and cleanly. Get good with using Exceed and charge shots in particular.

There are three main general tips that are important to keep in mind throughout this whole mode.

1. Speed ALWAYS matters. Don't let the easy earlier levels let you get complacent. Get every second you can in the earlier levels because you're going to likely start hemorrhaging time in the later levels when enemies start using their own DT ability.
2. Don't let your DT go to waste. In the normal mode, wasting DT cause your gauge is full isn't the end of the world. In Bloody Palace, not using DT when it's full means you're doing less damage and thus losing time you could have kept. That time can add up and do some serious damage.
3. Abuse the camera! Enemies who are off-screen will not initiate attacks (bosses aside). While engaging an enemy, try to spin the camera so as many enemies as possible are not on screen. Be careful, however, as enemies only need to be on screen briefly to start an attack. You may put an enemy out of mind once it's off screen, but that doesn't mean it didn't start charging up an attack and will come rushing at you a few seconds later. Make sure to keep an ear out for that.

Beyond that, there's little help that I can offer specific to this mode that doesn't apply to other high-difficulty sections of the game. This guide will focus on tips specific to each stage. For more generally applicable tips, I would recommend you check out the Difficulty Based Mini-Walkthrough section and the Bestiary for enemy specific strategies. In this section, you will find encounter specific tips.

How does the timer work?

The timer counts down any time you're in an arena with enemies. The timer stops once all enemies are defeated or if you're on a Rest Stage. Take that time to charge your weapons, power your Exceed gauge, and (for Nero) pick up some Breakers. The only way the timer goes down is through counting. There are no time penalties other than going slow.

The following will either increase the timer directly or amplify your increases:

• Killing Enemies - Each enemy gives a set amount of time. Tougher enemies give more time when defeated. These increases pop-up at the top of the screen in a blue box. Because the pop-ups are slow, the displayed bonus may not be accurate, but the time IS going into your timer.
• No-hit Bonus - If you finish a level without being hit, you'll get a bonus of (on average) 20-30 seconds. You don't need to do anything else to get this.
• Stage Clear Bonus - This ONLY appears if you finish a stage and get hit. This is otherwise rolled into the no-hit bonus. This is usually only about 5-10 seconds or so except for boss stages.
• Style Bonus - They never show the math for this, so I'm not sure how this is actually calculated or declared, but you get some kind of bonus from style at the end of the level (not per-enemy as far as I can tell).

The Style bonus is by far the biggest bonus. An S or higher style bonus can earn you minutes for your timer, whereas others are static or measured in seconds. If you have a choice between getting hit or ratcheting up your style (most incoming hits in DT don't decrease your style unless you get knocked over) then go for style. There's one exception to this, however.

On earlier or easier stages, you'll want to try for the No-hit bonus. Weaker enemies provide less opportunity for a good style rank in a timely fashion, so your bonus will be minimal. For many of these stages, if you don't get the No-hit bonus, you'll lose time instead of gaining.

Is There a Pattern to Stages?

Aside from 90+, there's a pretty consistent pattern.

• Mini-Boss stages - 10, 30, 50, 70. These use normal but high-tier enemies in difficult combinations to pose a serious threat. Regular arena.
• Boss Stages - 20, 40, 60, 80, 90. These are proper boss stages. You will fight full-size bosses in their original environment. Recover full health in between.
• Special Boss Stages - 98, 99, 100, 101. These are like the other boss battles except that you don't recover health between 98, 99, and 100. You also can't Suspend at any point in between any of these stages, so make sure you suspend at 97. All four of these will have to be done consecutively without failing.
• Rest Stages - These aren't numbered. They take place in a separate area before stages 1, 11, 21, 31, 41, 51, 61, 71, 81, and 91. Use them to collect yourself and stock up on Breakers
• Easier Stages - This is a much looser pattern, but generally speaking, the stage before and the stage after a boss fight are usually easier than the rest. The one before frequently has enemies that drop green orbs to get you to full health while the stage after is designed to ease you back into the regular combat flow.

*Have to start over again?

Sort of.

If you die, run out of time, or close the game/mode without using the Suspend option from the pause menu (only available once all enemies are dead in that stage), the game will wipe your progress. The suspend function allows you to save your progress and quit out. You may resume afterward, but once you use it, that save is deleted and it goes back to the normal rules.

Thankfully, at least on PS4 (and likely XBO), this suspended data is saved locally and not on a Capcom server. What this means is that you can manually back-up this save on an external drive or on the cloud (make sure you turn off auto-sync). Suspend at stage 20, back-up the save, continue to level 30 and lose? Restore your back-up and reboot the game to have your suspended save back at stage 20 again!

This may get patched in the future, but no reason not to use it now. This mode is measured in hours, and who has time to redo hours worth of combat? In fact, abuse this. It'll save your sanity!

How Does it Pay?

If you're looking to earn Red Orbs, this is probably the best bang for your buck, assuming you can make it a decent way in. Over the course of my two-hour run, I made roughly 1.4m Red Orbs without using Faust. You go through enemies and bosses very quickly.

You also get bonus orbs every 10 stages (except at 100, which is delayed until 101). Along with this bonus is an additional bump for time remaining. You get an extra 5% on top of this bonus for every five minutes on the clock.