🗺️ Main Story Walkthrough - Quest Order & Route

Follow the main chain from Certificate, Please through Sweet Dreams (your first zombie workers) and First... Sludge? (your first battle), keep every character quest running in parallel, and finish with Friend or Foe and The Last Battle. The game has 110 quests in total — 41 main story, 51 character and 18 side quests across 254 steps — and the ending is gated by reputation, not by raw quest count: before the final battle, all six key NPCs want 90 reputation each, and character quests pay +10 apiece. That math means the "optional" character chains are effectively mandatory for the best ending.

The story opens in the Inquisitor's dungeon and funnels you through the setup chain: Certificate, Please gets the graveyard economy legal, Dust in the Kitchen and Yummies feed the first townsfolk relationships, and Sweet Dreams delivers your first two zombie workers via the Plague Doctor. The First... Sludge? quest is your first taste of the sequel's combat — it pays the First Blood achievement. Somewhere in this act, Holy Moly! starts the church line (Words of Faith) and Jack in a Boat introduces Jack, the Workshop foreman whose tools you will lean on all game.

• Certificate, Please — the burial-certificate economy starts here.
• Sweet Dreams — Plague Doctor gives your first 2 zombie workers.
• First... Sludge? — first battle, First Blood achievement.
• Holy Moly! — church line begins (Words of Faith).
• Jack in a Boat — Jack the Workshop foreman (A Man of Many Talents).

The middle game is six parallel relationship tracks: Jack at his Workshop, Gunter at the Astrologer's Tower, the Nun at the church, Herbert, Albert and Linda at the Dockside Club. Each character quest is worth +10 reputation with that NPC, and quests like Supply and Demand, Wharf Rats, Safe Harbor, Workshop Hours and the fishing chains (Fish for the Fisher, Plenty of Fish in the Sea) braid the tracks together with the Town's restoration. Around Written in the Stars, Gunter adds three more zombie workers — a good moment to expand automation. The named battle series (Battles in the Sewers, Plaza Battle, the district Purges) starts punctuating the calendar in this act.

• Six NPCs to court: Jack, Gunter, the Nun, Herbert, Albert, Linda.
• Every character quest = +10 reputation with that NPC.
• Written in the Stars — Gunter gives 3 more workers.
• Town battles enter the six-day rotation as the Purges begin.

The ending does not check levels or gear — it checks standing. Before the final battle, all six NPCs need 90 reputation each, and since character quests pay exactly +10, reaching 90 on everyone effectively requires completing the full 41 main plus 51 character quest set. The Friend or Foe quest then hands you the Red Eye dilemma, the run's biggest branch: hand the Red Eye to the Old God for a special sermon, or keep it and fix up the attic of your house for the Old God to live in — which raises every NPC's reputation requirement to 100 and adds extra requests like the Elegant Prosthetic. Keep it only if you are committed to the long haul.

The endgame chain — Campaign of Thrones, A Good Example is the Best Sermon, I Love You, Man, Love Story — closes out the political and romantic threads while the Final Battle series (Break Through to the Port, the last district Purges) clears the map. The Ancient One unlocks with Friend or Foe, The Other Keeper waits near the end of the mystery, and The Last Battle pays the run's capstone achievement, The End of the Journey. Walk in with a restored, fortified Town and a real fighter corps — that is what the previous eighty quests were for.