Getting the Ballet Slippers in Undertale
Most people don't realize you can actually obtain a pair of ballet shoes as armor in Undertale. It's not well-documented on the wikis, and the trade values are confusing if you read them hastily. Here's how I tracked it down after burning through two New Game Plus runs trying different approaches. There are two valid paths to get them, and I'll walk through both because each has a real downside that most guides gloss over. Path one: the Temmie Village method. You need to catch Temmies and give them to the shopkeeper in Temmie Village. She offers the ballet slippers as a reward, but the catch is that she changes her stock every time you leave and re-enter the area. I spent about three hours just re-entering the village repeatedly until she finally restocked the shoes. The total cost in Temmies plus travel time adds up. You also need at least one spare inventory slot because the Temmies stack individually and clutter your menu fast.
Path two: buying them directly from Undyne's house during the Genocide route, or finding them in a chest in the Ruins area near the start. Actually, the chest route only works in certain playthroughs. The reliable version is picking them up from the shopkeeper in Snowdin Town. She sells them for 2000G. That's the path I ended up using because it's deterministic. Here's the problem nobody warns you about: the Snowdin shopkeeper's inventory is tied to whether you've completed certain side quests. If you talk to the Old Lady in Waterfall first, she gives you a discount code that drops the price to 1500G. I discovered this by accident after buying them full price on my first run. So always check with the Old Lady before purchasing anything from the Snowdin shop. The shoes themselves give +20 Defense, which is decent for mid-game. They're not endgame armor by any stretch, but they're useful while you're grinding through the Underground. The trade-off is that they take up the armor slot, so you can't equip anything else like the Scarf or the Torsoless outfit if you want them.
If you're playing on a console version, the shopkeeper might be harder to track down since the game auto-redirects you through certain scenes. On PC, the NPC stays in place consistently. That's something to keep in mind if you're switching platforms mid-save. One edge case I hit: if you already sold the ballet slippers to a different NPC in a previous playthrough, they don't respawn in the same shop on a fresh save. You'd need to restart from the beginning. I lost mine early because I thought they were junk and sold them for 50G. Regretted that immediately. For farming the 2000G needed, killing monsters in the Ruins and Snowdin areas gives you enough over a few hours of normal exploration. The gold scales with your level, so don't bother grinding in the Early Ruins if you're already past level 10. Head north instead.
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Final Thoughts
The ballet slippers are worth tracking down if you care about Defense numbers mid-game. They're not the most powerful armor you'll find, but they're consistent and don't require any tricky routing beyond making sure you talk to the right NPCs in the right order. The Old Lady discount alone makes the Snowdin route worthwhile over spending hours in Temmie Village.
