The Folk Hero
4.3%Defeat Brencis alone.
Achievement: The Folk Hero
Every ending, and how many people actually got it
Most ending guides tell you how to trigger each one. This one also tells you how rare it is, using Steam's own achievement data — which turns out to be the more interesting number.
The Patricide
3.1%Defeat Brencis with Lacra, after completing her questline.
Achievement: The Patricide
The Knyazmaker
1%Defeat Brencis with Crake and the Manumits, after completing Crake's questline.
Achievement: The Knyazmaker
The Turncoat
1.3%Take Brencis's deal and betray your allies.
Achievement: The Turncoat
A Hero They Deserve
4.3%Leave the valley for good, by the road over the broken bridge in north-west Briar Sloughs. At the open pass beyond it you choose to leave or stay; leaving rolls the credits, then a short post-credits scene, and there is no epilogue. Polygon says to go at night.
Achievement: A Hero They Deserve
PC Gamer says you need Corruption 11 and the second level of Shadow Dweller, which lengthens Shadow Step enough to cross the gap. Polygon says a levelled Shadowstep crosses it in one go, and that without one you can go down into the valley from its eastern edge, just west of the Coward's Path shrine, and climb up with Planeshift and Shadowstep.
Together Forever
0.4%Stay in the Home Sweet Home nightmare. Repeat the loop and talk to Esme.
Achievement: Together Forever
Loop count: Polygon says repeat the sequence 3 more times; PC Gamer and Fextralife say 4 more (triggering on the 5th); Game8 says 5. Three sources, three numbers — most likely three ways of counting the same thing.
Time runs out
no achievementLet the 30 days elapse. The family dies, the timer disappears, and the goal changes from rescue to revenge. No game over, and you can keep playing untimed.
Kill Brencis in the prologue
rate not separableCounted separately by Game8 and PC Gamer; PowerPyx and Fextralife fold it into The Folk Hero as an alternate method.
Achievement: The Folk Hero (shared)
What decides which ending you get
- Your dialogue in the final quest. A Deal with the Devil is where it is actually settled. PowerPyx identifies two specific lines: “Enough. Time to End this.” leads to The Folk Hero, while “I just want my family back” followed by “I’ll do it” leads to The Turncoat.
- Which ally questline you finished. Lacra’s chain ends in The Patricide; Crake’s ends in The Knyazmaker. Doing neither leaves you fighting Brencis alone, which is The Folk Hero. What each ally changes about that fight is on the bosses page.
- Whether you beat the 30 days. This decides whether your family is alive at the end, which changes the epilogue regardless of which of the above you picked.
- Clearing the three boyars first. Ambrus, Bakir and Xanthe have to be defeated to reach maximum Infamy — which is what court activities are for — then you skip to the next day to unlock the final quest. If Ambrus or Bakir is still alive, they turn up as bosses inside the castle assault instead; Xanthe’s fate changes it differently, as the Xanthe page explains.
Seeing all of them in one playthrough
Keep a manual save from just before A Deal with the Devil and reload it after each ending. Fextralife’s guide video says manual saves work any time you are out of combat. The two endings that are not reachable this way are the ones that branch much earlier — A Hero They Deserve, where you cross the broken bridge in north-west Briar Sloughs (PC Gamer says this needs Corruption level 11 and Shadow Dweller rank 2; Polygon describes another way over), and Together Forever, which needs you to deliberately fail the Home Sweet Home nightmare loop.
Can you keep playing afterwards?
This is asked a lot and the answer has two halves, which is why it gets muddled. If the 30-day timer expires, the game continues with no timer at all — you keep playing, now trying to avenge the family rather than save them. That is well attested. If you trigger an ending, PowerPyx says you return to the title screen with no free roam, Insider Gaming’s review says “when your story ends, it ends”, and NorZZa’s beginner guide says you lose access to the open world after the epilogue. GamesRadar+ describes being able to carry on. That is three against one, so plan as if the ending closes the game: finish what you want to finish first. There is no New Game Plus to carry your character into a second run yet, though the director says one is planned. He has also said Coen and your choices are meant to carry forward into the next games in the Dawnwalker saga, not just a second run of this one — Rebel Wolves was hiring a lead writer for that next chapter within a week of launch.
About the percentages
Each figure is the global unlock rate of the matching Steam achievement, read in the game’s first week. They are real, but they are early: most owners have not finished yet, so every number here will rise. What is already meaningful is the ratio between them — Together Forever at 0.4% against The Folk Hero at 4.3% tells you which branches people are actually finding. One of the eight outcomes has no achievement at all and one shares another ending’s, so for those two there is no rate that belongs to them alone.
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