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Party and Companions
September 12, 2026 at 07:37 AM
Updated internal link states after new pages were added (2026-09-12)
Tianji: Shadow of the Ancients is a single-player turn-based RPG built around a travelling party. Shangguan Shuo picks up companions as the story moves, and those companions matter twice over: they fight beside him, and each of them carries a skill used outside battle.
Justdan's announcement and both hands-on accounts of the September 2026 demo agree that a maximum of three characters stand on the field in any battle. Combat screenshots back this up, showing three portraits with separate HP bars along the bottom of the screen.
The size of the full roster is less firmly established. One hands-on account puts it at six playable main characters, with three selected for each fight, and notes that characters join the party and temporarily leave it as the story progresses. Justdan has not confirmed a roster count as of 12 September 2026, so six should be treated as a figure from a single source rather than a published number.
Only three characters have been described anywhere, and only one of them is named on a surface Justdan controls.
Character | What is known | How firmly |
|---|---|---|
Player character. Amnesiac member of the Tianji Guard. Fights with a sword. | Named and shown on Justdan's own surfaces. | |
Li Ling | A fellow member of the Tianji Guard who rescues Shangguan Shuo before the Xuanxin Order ritual completes. Uses a bow and fire-attribute arrows. | Described in both hands-on accounts of the demo. Not named on any Justdan surface. |
Su Jin | A healer, and the last member to join during the demo. | One hands-on account only. Treat as provisional. |
Justdan's own description of the game states that every companion has a unique skill used outside combat, that these skills cover cooking, refining equipment, upgrading Cores and trading for rare items, and that they keep developing as each companion's personal side story unfolds. What none of that tells us is how any of it plays, because none of it was playable in the demo.
Companion skill | Status as of 12 September 2026 |
|---|---|
Cooking | Named by Justdan. Present as a camp function that the demo did not open up. |
Equipment refining | Named by Justdan. Appears as the camp blacksmith, also not playable in the demo. |
Core upgrading | Named by Justdan. Core enhancement is a camp function, and the Core system as a whole was locked in the demo. |
Trading for rare items | Named by Justdan. Not demonstrated in any build shown so far. |
Hands-on impressions describe a camp that grows as the party does, with each new member unlocking one function. The functions listed are a blacksmith, cooking, Core enhancement and the raising of summoned beasts. None of it was playable in the demo, and the summoned-beast line rests on a single account and has no first-party confirmation at all, which makes it the thinnest claim attached to this game. The camp should be treated as announced rather than shown.
Question | Status as of 12 September 2026 |
|---|---|
The full roster | If the roster is six, three members have never been described. No portraits, names or classes have been published for them. |
Party-building rules | How the three field slots are chosen, whether reserve members gain experience, and whether any member is locked into the party are all unpublished. |
Voice cast | Not credited for any character. |
Character skill lists | No skill list has been published for any party member. |
