Rift of the Necrodancer's Level Editor is a mouse-focused level editor, based on the level editor from Crypt of the NecroDancer, in which you click to select what you want and click where you want your notes to be. But there are various monsters instead of just notes, and holds.

Here are some things to worry about before you start:

• This editor uses beat subdivision to refer to rhythms. You should change it to allow finer rhythm choices because the entire chart also snaps to the beat subdivision. (except placement by fine tuning) The default starts at 6. (24ths) You can change this value anytime. A subdivision of 12 will usually suffice for nearly all charts.
  If you are from other rhythm game editors, this is like setting your snapping to a more finer subdivision, which contains other subdivisions inside.
  Beat subdivision refers to dividing a beat in pieces (1/1, 1/2, 1/3, 1/4) instead of a 4/4 measure (4ths, 8ths, 12ths, 16ths)
  
• This guide mentions Row numbers. In this guide, Row 1 is the Action Row, the arrows, and numbering goes up. Row 3 is two rows above the Action Row and Row 5 is four rows above.

If there are mentions of keybindings, they would be the default binds. If you are missing keys like Numpad, you should rebind them in the Crypt pause menu, accessible with ESC or the top left corner button. Feel free to change options in the menus. This will be talked about in a section.

I might say "chart" instead of "track", "beatmap" or "map", sorry lol

For ease of use, your audio file for your level should not be an mp3 file. They have a slight delay in starting, which might be variable, among other issues for rhythm games and will ruin your syncing efforts. Generally, Ogg vorbis and wav files will be fine.

There are various methods you can use to sync your audio file. This guide will show two, using ArrowVortex and a click track. You can also look at guides on syncing for other rhythm games like Beat Saber[bsmg.wiki] and dance games like ITG.

Levels in Rift of the NecroDancer cannot have enemies that spawn before beat 9*** because they need to travel to the Action Row, so generally this is why the official charts have a countdown.
Since Rift v1.3.0 / Editor b5470, you can adjust when the audio starts with a millisecond based offset. Positive values make the audio start earlier while negative values make the audio start later. Depending on how big your offset is, and your countdown, your offset will get capped by the editor and it might be a problem, potentially because of audio systems in Rift. You should adjust your audio file to make the offset smaller.
*** (just assume this, it isn't entirely true)

You can also set a countdown for your custom levels using the metadata field for your charts, acting the same as it would be in an official chart, with Cadence's voice. This countdown is per-difficulty. You can pick between:

• "None", the default for new custom levels and customs levels before Rift v1.3.0
  
• "4 beats", the most used countdown in officials, featuring Cadence's voice
  
• "8 beats", the countdown typically found in double BPM officials, also featuring the ticking noise

In the editor, the countdown will be skipped and will be represented as purple text on the right instead. The countdown also does not affect the offset, or the chart.
If you want to embed your own countdown sounds into the audio file, do not include a countdown. If you want to chart the very first beat in your song, you should put the countdown to 8 beats. Otherwise, you can pick whatever you like.

Prepare your audio file to sync, with your method of choice. You should also know what the BPM of your song is, and if there are any BPM changes. If there are, you should know where. This guide will assume there are no BPM changes.

ArrowVortex (AV)[github.com] is a rhythm game chart editor primarily used for StepMania and related forks. It features an automatic BPM offset detection function, which is usually reliable for constant BPM songs. Typically, they have a BPM with no decimals.
Go to "Tempo" > "Adjust sync" from the top bar to bring up this menu. You should also change your "View" to the C-mod view to bring up a waveform. You can also turn on a beat tick under "Audio" for audible ticks on the beat according to what you set in the menu.

You can click on "Find BPM" for a rough guess, or you can manually do it yourself.
Your goal is to adjust the music offset so that the grey beat lines up with your song's waveform. The music offset should make it so that the first beat in AV is when the song starts, or potentially later in multiples of four beats. If you seek later in the song and the beat ticks are a bit off compared to the song, your BPM might not be correct. You can adjust the offset quickly by clicking on the Music offset's button next to the textbox and you can also adjust in beats using the numbered buttons.

When you are finished, the values you should put in the Rift Level Editor are:

• BPM: Initial BPM
  
• Offset: Music offset in milliseconds multiplied by -1. You can omit the decimal point for milliseconds. If that is confusing, you can also go to the start in AV and look at the value in "Time" at the bottom and put the time in milliseconds, without multiplying.

Audacity is an audio editor and recording application. You can sync your song by checking its waveform, or spectrogram if you're courageous. Check for any spikes in the visuals that might indicate a beat, and click on the track where the first spike could appear. You can zoom in and out.
Click outside the track and create a rhythm track under "Generate". This brings up a menu to set up creating a rhythm track. Put the BPM of the song here, otherwise you can guess what it is. You can also adjust the number of bars to make it last longer, to extend to the end of the song.

When ready, the values you should put in the Rift Level Editor are:

• BPM: Tempo (bpm) for your rhythm track
  
• Offset: The start of your rhythm track. You can click on the start which will snap your selection. You can then read from the time values at the bottom.

The old offset, often mistaken as the millisecond offset and behind a developer toggle, is now called the Editor offset. It should be at 4 for all custom levels. You do not need to worry about this if you are just learning about it.

You can open the editor either by

• selecting the option in the Custom Track Select in-game.
  
• going to your Steam Library and either search for it (type Rift), or show Tools.
  

If you open the editor from in-game, your game will turn windowed.
You can put it back in full screen.

(i am not a linux player so i am just relaying information)

• To use the level editor at all, you need to open it up in Steam and click Properties -> Compatibility -> tick "Force the use of a specific compatibility tool" and select Proton Hotfix. If you don't do this, it will just silently fail to start when opened in-game
  
• Because of the way Proton works, the CustomTracks folders won't be shared between the game and the editor. you'll have to move files between the two folders manually or link the two folders together.

The editor might look very small.
Because this level editor is based on Crypt, some menus from that game are still present. Of importance are the Display Options for View Multiplier and Language. There isn't a resolution setting, but you can freely resize the window.
All the other options can be found on the toolbar cog icon for the editor options, which leads into 3 others. They will be explained later.

This menu is accessible by the wrench and screwdriver on the rightmost of the toolbar, or on the next row depending on how much space your window has.

Creating a new track provides a baseline level with a Medium chart, metadata, and an audio file. (It is the old tutorial theme.)

Replace the audio file with your own with "Select audio file", and put the starting BPM of your song. You can change the BPM and subdivision between different difficulties, so you can have double tempo in specific difficulties. You can also change your subdivision while charting.
If you are thinking of using shielded skeletons, use a subdivision that has a multiple of 2 or 4. If armadillos, a multiple of 3 or 6. Otherwise their timing will be rounded unless you place them with fine tuning. A subdivision of 12 will usually suffice.

The author name and subtitle will be shown in the box under Cadence in the Custom Track Select screen. The author also appears in gameplay and in results. You can think of the subtitle as a description in-game.

Difficulty and Character have dropdown menus for you to pick from. "Expert" might be seen here instead of "Impossible", but they are the same.
Intensity must be a number. Whatever number you can think of. Or whatever suits the difficulty. The official game uses a scale between 1-30.

You can create charts by using the left most button on the bottom, which creates a new chart which is a copy of the difficulty (or variant) you were on.

On the first save or on "Save as", you get to make a folder using whatever name you pick. It cannot have spaces. Or you can choose to overwrite an existing folder. The editor will also prompt you when you first save on a new session. (close and re-open) You might want to open your level again through the Open level menu though so you don't run into potential issues.
These folders will be wherever "Open track directory" takes you. They do not contain Workshop submissions, which are located elsewhere related to Steam.

File restrictions:

• Cover art must be less than 1MB. It doesn't need to be a square, but it probably should.
  
• Background videos must be less than 128MB and encoded in WebM VP8. For the Linux players.

You can hover over "Select cover art" to have it appear in the editor until you move away. If there is no cover art on the level, the hover will show the old tutorial cover art, but in-game it will show the pink note skull cover art, the icon of the Rift Level Editor.

This editor uses the same tools as Crypt, but in a different context. Notably, you are creating a chart fit for a rhythm game instead of a dungeon. You can still view around, draw freehand, with a line, an outlined or filled rectangle, select a range and move individual objects.
The tools you will probably use the most are "Pen", "Selection" and "Move object".
This guide assumes using "Pen" to place things. You can click to place things down or drag around to place more at once. This tool's icon is a pencil drawing to the right.
"Selection" creates a list of everything you selected on the bottom of the panel that you can scroll with the mouse wheel. You can also move the entire selection. This tool's icon is an unfinished rectangle with a plus on the top left.
"Move object" requires right click dragging most of the time. You can drag single objects on the board with left mouse with this tool. This tool's icon is four arrows in a plus.


You can scroll the board with the mouse wheel, keyboard controls (WASD or arrows), or dragging while holding middle mouse. On the bottom left corner, there are also additional functions with keybinds.

Press Space to start previewing the chart with your audio from wherever your Action Row is.
When previewing, the Action Row scrolls smoothly(-ish) upwards according to your beat subdivision. Anything that moves down one row per beat will appear stationary in the editor and any difference in the normal movement pattern will show in the editor. If something would be in sight as in gameplay, it will be opaque. Otherwise it will be transparent.
You can lock the timeline with "F" to make the Action Row follow your scrolling (coloured purple) or unlock it to not. (coloured blue) You can also press "E" to snap the end of the visible area to your cursor, which unlocks the timeline.

When the Action Row reaches an enemy, food item or board event, related sound effects will play. Blademaster's small icon will also do this.

Using "Pen", click on something on the panel and then click on the board to place it down.
Please place objects at or later than beat 9. You might get a scare otherwise.
When you have something to place, the beat position you are hovering over will appear near your cursor. If you are hovering over something on the board, you can right click it to delete it.
Placing something at the end of the level, dictated by darker squares, will extend the ending boundary, so place some objects along the way until the end of your song.

You can only place objects by beats in the same subdivision as your cursor says (1 1/3, 2 1/3, etc) but you can bypass this in different ways including:

• holding Left Shift to allow your mouse to cycle your subdivisions by moving.
  
• tapping Tab to cycle through all subdivisions.
  
• tapping Backtick, or number row 1-6 to cycle through 6 specific subdivisions
  
• moving the Action Row position with "E"

You can also press "V" to enter "fine-tuning" mode, setting your subdivision to 48 (by default) and allowing you to bypass holding Left Shift for finer placements. This is a different subdivision from the one you first put down and saving will toggle this off and back on. Scrolling using the keyboard will also be affected to be really slow.

Using "Selection", you can copy and paste your selected range. The cursor will either hold the top or bottom of the selection depending on where you ended your selection. If the subdivision has changed while you have a selection to paste, the positions might unexpectedly change.

You can hide any object type and placeable board events by holding Left Shift and clicking on something at the panel. Their associated sound effects will still play. If something is hidden, a restriction icon will be on the bottom right of the affected object or event. You might accidentally hide things because you wanted to place objects in a different subdivision.

Blademasters are a little similar to Traps, detailed in a later section. They have an attack row you can change, which is the row they prepare to attack a beat later. You can change this row by dragging the small icon with "Move object", and change the spawning row with the big icon. The default attack row is Row 5, illustrated by the two tile gap between both icons. This is different from the default trap spawn row, which is Row 3, which also has a two tile gap.
If there is less than a one beat gap between a Blademaster when they prime and another object, the Blademaster will move one row on the beat they prime. This is not visualized in the Editor. this behaviour also does not apply to charts under Remix Mode.
To visualize the stop in their movement when they prepare, they move up one tile on that beat in the editor. This can be affected by coal.
Blue Blademasters upon being hit once will move to Row 5. If the attack row is further up than Row 5, they will prime the beat after the first hit.

On the Misc. category is a lightning bolt symbolising a Vibe Chain. Like Blademasters, they are a little similar to Traps.
You can drag while placing it down to set the length of the chain, or you can click to have a one beat chain. You can change the length by dragging the tail with "Move object".
You should ensure that the chain starts before the object you want to start at, and a bit after the object you want to end at.

You can exclude enemies from being a part of a chain, which could be useful to delay the start or end of a chain. Using "Selection", drag across the range containing the chain and a collection of objects within on the bottom of the panel will appear. Click on an object's lightning symbol to remove it from the chain, or re-add it back in.

• Wyrms can only have lengths in whole beats, not partially. They can be placed on any subdivision.
  
• Shielded Yellow/Black skeletons are offset by an 1/2 when their shield is hit.
  
• Headless skeletons will appear to bump early if going back one more tile would cause a gap of less than one beat.
  
• Green and Blue Harpies are visualized in the editor as oscillating up and down between two tiles, and Red Harpies are visualized as moving down one tile. Enemies affected by coal will move down twice as fast one beat after being affected by default.
  
• The timing of shielded skeletons and armadillos will be rounded to the subdivision if their placement is on the subdivision and doesn't divide nicely with their timings of 1/2 (multiple of 2 or 4) or 1/3 (multiple of 3). There are people who put armadillos in charts with a subdivision of 4 and there are also people who shun those who use armadillos as such due to misleading visuals and expectations.

• You will be warned with a red triangle on the bottom left of the timing containing more than one spawn. This includes Red Harpies, whose movement patterns are faster, or grounded enemies moved by traps. You might want to resolve this otherwise.
  
• Hovering over something on the board that isn't supported by your subdivision will have the partial part in red. If this was not placed by fine-tuning, you might want to resolve this.
  
• Trust the game more, because behaviours might be inaccurate depending on how much you don't conform to the expectations of normal charts, such as placing the timing of Blademasters to be the same as a different enemy on the same lane. If your chart isn't doing gimmicks based on errant or undocumented behaviour, maybe tell Marukyu about it.
  

You can obscure the chart with traps. They are very scary. Note that grounded enemies and food are affected by traps and that Wyrms are not affected by traps.
Enemies can only be affected by one trap for each time they move, and multi-hit enemies that have been hit cannot be affected by traps, unless they're headless skeletons or Blue Blademasters.

Placing a trap will make two icons appear. The big icon indicates the trap and the small icon indicates the rows away from the Action Row and when the trap activates. This can be determined by the gap between the two icons, with the default placement of the two tile gap being at Row 3. This is different from the default Blademaster attack row of Row 5, which also has a two tile gap. Dragging up the small icon with "Move object" will pull the trap closer to the Action Row, and dragging down further away.

During placement, you can drag to set the active duration of the trap, shown by small icon trails of the trap from the big icon, in a similar fashion to Vibe Chains. If there is no trail, it will last until the start of the next beat.

You can change the row the trap appears by moving the small icon with "Move object", and change the active duration by dragging the tail of the trail, or the big icon if there isn't one. Changing where the row appears also changes when the trap activates.

For bounce traps:

• You can adjust the direction after it has been placed by right-click dragging the big icon with "Move object" when it has an active duration.

For coals:

• Affected objects have a flame visual and move faster.

For mystery:

• Affected objects have a question mark icon above them and won't hide.

For portals:

• There is an additional icon for portal exits. If an object is not immune to traps, it will be teleported to this icon when the big portal entrance icon approaches them. This is draggable in a similar fashion to positioning where the portal entrance is. This icon is different from the trap entrance.
  
• Since Rift v1.3.0, the other three colours of cyan, magenta and yellow, also appear in-game.

These are additional functions not related to placing objects or moving them in the game. Their functions will be outlined in the order left to right.

Vibe Chains have their own section under "Placing objects (mostly enemies)". You can scroll up from "Traps".

Clicking on this prompts you for a BPM for BPM changes you place next time. The BPM will change at wherever you place this with the listed BPM.
In-game, the BPM changes are only approximate and will change on whole beats, but the editor will change instantly.
There are no scroll stops.

This is an unfinished event (for Rhythm Rifts) that adds a glowy vignette flash that lasts for a very very tiny short amount of time, occurring when it's placed. Its icon is a white four pointed star.
This was found in previous editor builds and is not listed in the latest build. It can still be found in some custom levels.


Upon clicking you will get a warning asking about the effects of applying double or halve the BPM to the entire chart. This conversion is affected by subdivision and if needed, you can set a higher subdivision for finer placements. If you swap between the two, you might end up losing things, so use only one of them.
Affected objects will have a thought bubble of their original type on the top right, but this can be toggled off in the options under "Show conversion indicator".

Clicking on a trap's big icon with Mute will disable sound effects for that trap. Clicking with unmute will enable them again.
Affected traps will have a thought bubble of being muted on the top left.

Clicking on a green slime / white skeleton with the correct tool will swap between the two enemies.

Similar to Crypt, there is a cog icon leading to the Editor options. This menu can also lead into Audio options, Language options and Configure controls. Options may have descriptions along the bottom of the screen. There is also the top left corner menu button for the Pause menu.

Here are some options related to Rift you might like to know more about. They are ordered in the menu, as of writing.

At 1x, you will scroll one tile at a time on the default zoom.
If you hold your modifier button (Shift) this affects your scroll speeds on both Keyboard and Mouse Scroll.
If you are in fine tuning, this affects your scroll speeds to be slower.
Middle mouse dragging is not affected.

Toggles visibility of bottom left corner shortcuts.

This adds coloured lines on the sides of anything on the board to represent its timing, including the Action Row.
Mode toggles visibility of either left or right, while width adjusts the lines from the edge of the lanes.


Adjust the visuals of the waveform for the audio file, or the extra waveform (waveform.ogg).
To line up the main waveform to the left side of the board with beatlines, toggle on the mirror option and the waveform offset to -300%.
The waveforms adjust to BPM and zoom.

Some enemy behaviours like Slimes, Blademasters and Wyrms are not reliant on the direction they are facing. Toggle this on to show those enemies facing the opposite direction.

Toggling on "Show beat at cursor" will have text on the right side of your cursor the beat you are hovering over.
The whole beat is in white and the partial part is in purple. If the partial part is not supported by your subdivision, it will be in red instead.
You can change the partial part to be fractional (simplified) or to decimals (2 places)

Hovering over something shows the name of the thing you are hovering on the left of the panel at the top. Toggling this option adds additional text which is either the ID of the object or the event name.
If you are peeking into chart .json files, they are referred to as such here.


Toggle to prevent changing the subdivision you were on before you started previewing.

Preview overlay volume refers to the extra waveform.
You should put Editor UI volume to 0%.

Toggle to either keep the pitch or not when adjusting playback rate.
Turning this on might reduce performance.

• Hit sound / Death sound for the generic named sound.
  
• Hit voice / Death voice for enemy voice sound.
  
• Shield hit / break sound for shielded skeletons and armadillos
  
• Prepare strike sound for Blademasters attack cue
  
• Item pickup sound for food.

There are additional functions in keybinds which are mentioned in the Reassign controls menu. Depending on which menu you got here from (Editor options or Pause Menu Options) you will get Crypt's keybinds too.

Here are some functions here meant for this level editor. They are also in the order as in the menu. If you're thinking of rebinding keys here, NP is NumPad.

Keys: Ctrl + Mouse Wheel Up/Down
Zoom in/out the board, making the tiles bigger.
Depending on your subdivision, this might add additional lines referring to them.

Keys: H
With a selection, pressing will mirror the selection.

Keys: R
Rotate the board clockwise, so it scrolls left to right.
Everything except text is rotated.

Keys: End/Home
Warp your view to the end/start of the chart.

Keys: Shift + Page Down/Up
Move the entire chart one beat down / up.

Keys: NumPad Plus/Minus (Key 1073741913 is NumPad Plus)
Stretch the height of the tiles, making the chart view more zoomed in/out.
Similar to viewing zoom, this might add lines depending on your subdivision.

There are elements you can include in your custom levels that do not involve using the Rift level editor program as much. Documentation for such features are at https://vortexbuffer.com/rift/editor-advanced/
Currently, those features are:

• Custom Character Portraits
  
• Shopkeeper Mode

Further documentation for Custom Character Portraits can be found in a guide by 96 LB, the creator of the mod that the game bases the functionality of.
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3487821958
There are also undocumented events that the game has which the editor cannot represent, unused enemies variants which the editor can represent, and ways to use mods for the Editor, in a similar way to Crypt.

In the game, you can navigate to "Custom Music". You can have both the game and the editor open to check edits faster. Select the difficulties you have charted for your level and it will show up somewhere in the list, along with other local tracks and Workshop submissions. You do not need to publish your level to play it. You can use the Golden Lute modifier to enable an automated playthrough of your level.

Changes to metadata or what local tracks appear reload upon entering Track Select, while changes to an individual chart reload upon entering gameplay. You can restart while in the chart.
Workshop submissions download while in the Track Select menu. You cannot select them until they finish downloading.


If you're happy with your level, feel free to upload it to the Workshop. If you are missing the Steam icon in the editor, you should probably have Steam open, or open the editor from Steam. (mostly for Linux)


Your cover art will be on the top right during this menu, as it is used for the thumbnail on the Workshop submission.
The name and description refers to the submission name and description that will be visible while browsing the Workshop. The song information you set from before will be shown in-game.
If you have already published the current level, another field for change notes will appear. You can add difficulties later, instead of separate submissions, but there are no leaderboard resets.
You can scroll in this menu, like opening a local level.

If you need to, you can instead update a Workshop submission from a level that isn't the one you published from, by clicking "Mode". This has a warning explaining what this will do.

Subscribe to the Steam Workshop Legal Agreement and away you go with your uploads. yippee!!! You can now subscribe to your own submission.

If you have both this level's Workshop submission subscribed and your local level, it may appear that you have a duplicate level. You can differentiate them by whether the level has leaderboards enabled, or put edits on the local level.

The latest public build is b5471


You might have been scared because you placed something earlier than beat 9.
If you have saved and re-enter the level in the editor, you might find a bunch of objects on beat 9. The editor will attempt to not save anything below beat 9 and push it back to beat 9 if there were objects before beat 9.
If you have not changed levels or closed the editor and find this problem, press "E" somewhere below beat 9. There may be something hiding beneath. You can zoom out if you're having trouble.

If you don't have a BPM change, your BPM might be truncated :(
If you put one BPM change somewhere (it can be the same) saving will make the editor save a list of when beats happen.

Your level information, which includes what beat is the end, is out of date because you haven't reloaded for changes from staying in gameplay. You should go back to the Custom Track Select for it to update.

The keybind meant to playtest Crypt Levels (F5) is still here. Please unbind so you don't use this function. You could use this key to instead Play/Pause song, previewing the chart.

Pick a counterpart character that isn't Cadence. She is not a selectable counterpart character in the latest build of the editor and this is an old problem.

happy making
feel free to go to the brace yourself games discord for a community, or dont.
also feel free to panic in the comments if theres something missing or troubleshooting (im scared of troubleshooting)

this steam guide is a port of my pdf version from the Brace Yourself Games Discord, with added information. this is revision 6

updatelist

• update on 9th feb 2025 1am pst for:
  - delaying the start of your audio file for the countdown and telling you about not being able to place earlier than beat 9, earlier
  - linux information (relayed, not me)
  
• update on 10th feb 2025 10pm pst for:
  - general proofreading and clarification
  - move "Your View Multiplier" to a section under "Opening the editor"
  
• update (r6) on 23rd apr 2025 for:
  - new Rift and Editor update
  - polish