Casualties: Unknown has three endings. Developer Orsoniks confirmed “three separate endings” for the full release, and Steam’s achievement list has a hidden achievement for each one: Company’s Best, Company’s Worst and To Be Continued.
All three come after you reach the cargo at the bottom of the tenth layer and make it back out, but they ask very different things of your run. This guide covers how to reach each ending, what the run settings have to be, what finishing unlocks, and how rare each ending is so far. It names the endings by their achievements and keeps story details out, so you can read it before your first finish.
The Three Endings at a Glance
| Ending | Achievement text | How to reach it | Earned by (Steam, Nov 10) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Company’s Best | “Complete the mission.” | Finish a normal, chipped run | About 3.3% of players |
| Company’s Worst | “Get your freedom.” | Finish an unchipped run carrying a gun | About 0.4% |
| To Be Continued… | “Fail the mission. Catastrophically.” | A secret, multi-layer task on a later run | About 0.3% |
Dying anywhere along the way is not an ending. It ends the run, and your save with it. Only about 3.7% of players on Steam had even obtained the cargo by November 10, one day after launch, so every ending is rare for now.
How Every Ending Starts
Every ending begins the same way:
- Descend through all ten main layers to the bottom of layer 10, where the cargo is.
- Obtain the cargo (the Millions to One achievement).
- Make your way up through layer 11, the shorter final layer, to the surface.
What happens after that depends on how you set up the run and what you are carrying. Our guide to how many layers there are covers what each of those ten layers throws at you.
Company’s Best: The Standard Ending
This is the ending most players see first. Finish the game on an ordinary run, with your experiment’s chip in place, and follow the instructions you are given at the end. The achievement for it, Company’s Best, reads simply “Complete the mission.”
A chipped run cannot reach the escape ending at all, so if you play with the default settings, this is the ending you will get.
Company’s Worst: The Escape Ending
Company’s Worst, “Get your freedom”, is the escape ending. It needs two things:
- An unchipped run. Unchipped is a run setting you choose before you start. Without the chip, the health panel shows you far less about your body, and the 1.0 patch notes say it also turns off the rad-line, the radiation line tied to the chip.
- A gun. Carry a working firearm all the way to the end.
The ending itself turns into an escape sequence, and there is a separate hidden achievement, Pacifist, for killing no guards during it. Bring medical supplies, because the run is not over the moment you choose to fight.
To Be Continued: The Secret Ending
To Be Continued…, “Fail the mission. Catastrophically.”, is the hardest ending to find, and the game never tells you it exists. As of version 1.0, it needs:
- A previous finish. You must have completed the game with one of the other two endings first.
- The right run settings. A chipped run with Endless mode switched off.
- An early discovery. On that run, a special device appears in the first layer. You must find it and read what it gives you before you leave layer 1.
- A crafting chase. It points you to a set of chips hidden across the later layers. Collect them all and craft a special scarf from them, a recipe that needs a very high intelligence score.
- The surface. Reach the surface with that scarf in your inventory.
Miss the first-layer discovery and the rest of the chain never starts, so if you are going for this ending, comb the first layer carefully before you descend.
What Finishing Unlocks
Finishing a run with any ending unlocks the next playable character. You start as the Experiment; finishing as the Experiment unlocks the Milky, and finishing as the Milky unlocks the Dune. Each has its own stats and playstyle, and each has a hidden achievement for finishing a run with them: Cannon Fodder, The Marksman and The Cannibal.
Endless mode is the exception to all of this. With Endless on, the cargo sends you back up to the first layer instead, and the run continues until you die, so there is no ending to reach.
Tips for Reaching an Ending
- Save at every layer break. You can only save at the bottom of a layer, and our guide to saving in Casualties: Unknown explains why quitting mid-layer ends the run.
- Carry more. A long descent needs supplies, and our best container guide covers what to wear.
- Play the unchipped run on purpose. Without the chip you lose some health information, so get comfortable with the game before you try it.
- Try it with friends. In the fan-made co-op mod, different players can reach different endings in the same run. Our guide to whether the game has multiplayer covers it.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many endings does Casualties: Unknown have? Three. Each has its own hidden Steam achievement: Company’s Best, Company’s Worst and To Be Continued.
What is the easiest ending? Company’s Best. It is the ending a normal, chipped run reaches when you finish the game.
How do you get the escape ending? Play an unchipped run, chosen in the run settings, and carry a gun to the end of the game.
Can you get an ending in Endless mode? No. Endless mode loops you back to the first layer after the cargo, and the run only ends when you die.
Does dying count as an ending? No. Death ends the run and deletes its save, but it is not one of the three endings.