Lunarium Story Branches: A Guide to Choices and Endings

In Lunarium, every decision you make ripples outward, reshaping alliances, unlocking hidden paths, and ultimately determining the fate of a dying world. The journey of Ave and Lune—two very different heroes bound by one desperate mission—isn't a straight line through enemy territory. It is a living, branching network of choices that rewrites the story itself. Understanding Lunarium story branches means understanding the game's core tension: loyalty versus survival, and whether two girls can hold a fractured world together long enough to matter.

This guide breaks down every major choice point, maps the branching consequences, and explains how each ending is unlocked. Whether you are chasing the true ending or simply want to see what happens when you lean into Ave's sword arm versus Lune's memory reading, every fork in the road is covered here.

The Two Protagonists and Their Roles in Story Progression

The narrative of Lunarium rests entirely on the partnership between Ave and Lune. Ave is a light-armored agile knight who relies on close-quarters sword combat to cut through danger. She is direct, principled, and quick to act—her choices in dialogue tend toward confrontation or decisive action. Lune, by contrast, is a flaxen-haired mysterious mage whose motives and past remain deliberately obscured as the story unfolds. Her responses to the same situations tend toward caution, analysis, or magical solutions that Ave cannot provide.

The dynamic between these two characters drives every story branch. When you reach a decision point, the game often asks you which protagonist leads the response, and that single selection can shift how NPCs perceive your group. A knight who speaks first sends a different message than a mage who steps forward, even if the underlying intent is identical. This subtle mechanism means that Lunarium story choices are not always about selecting a correct answer—they are about defining who these two girls are in the eyes of the world around them.

Understanding these baseline distinctions is essential because story branches reward players who lean into one protagonist's strengths. If you consistently let Ave drive diplomatic encounters, you will accumulate Ave's reputation more rapidly. Conversely, giving Lune the floor in scholarly or magical contexts unlocks hidden lore that Lithora Archive members would never share with a sword-first knight. Both approaches are valid, but neither covers everything—some story branches require you to have built a specific protagonist's influence before they become available.

How Protagonist Influence Shapes Dialogue Outcomes

The game tracks a hidden influence score for each protagonist. This score is not displayed on screen, but it accumulates based on which character leads conversations, which responses you choose, and which faction interactions you prioritize. When the influence score for one protagonist reaches a threshold, certain dialogue options become permanently locked or unlocked for the other. A high Ave influence player might find that Lune's more cryptic responses are dismissed by NPCs as "mage riddling." A high Lune influence player might discover that Ave's directness is seen as refreshingly honest by characters exhausted by political doublespeak.

This system ensures that no single playthrough can experience every line of dialogue. It is a deliberate design choice that reinforces the idea of Lunarium story branches as genuine consequences rather than cosmetic vLunetions. Players who want to see the complete picture must either replay with deliberately different choices or consult a branching guide like this one to know what they missed.

Ave–Lune Philosophy Choice Points Across the Five Regions

Lunarium's story is shaped less by political factions than by the philosophical contrast between Ave's martial tradition and Lune's Starfarer understanding. Each of the five regions—Starfall Village, Lithora, Fireleaves, Whitesands Island, and Paradise—puts a different lens on how that contrast resolves. Your interactions with the regional NPCs are not limited to a single choice; they accumulate over the course of the entire narrative.

Early in the story, you spend most of your time around Starfall Village, where Ave's militiamen are the dominant NPCs and the regional dialogue defaults to direct combat solutions. Lithora is the opposite—a scholarly institution where Lune's approach to memory reading and starlight puzzles unlocks hidden lore. Paradise occupies a middle ground that shifts depending on which story branch you are pursuing, sometimes appearing as a neutral meeting place and other times as the closing stage where the four endings diverge.

Starfall Village Branching Paths

Focusing your early choices on Ave opens a series of combat-driven story branches that test the knight's leadership directly. One of the most consequential early branches occurs during the First Trial encounter, where Starfall Village militiamen ask you to choose between a risky frontal assault on the Forgotten Watcher and a careful stealth parry rotation. The frontal assault branch leads to a fast fight that significantly boosts Ave's reputation but triggers a rival storyline in which the Lithora Archive withholds cooperation for the next two major chapters. The stealth parry rotation preserves the Lithora Archive alliance but costs you Starfall Village trust, leading to reduced dialogue options in the Fireleaves region.

These two branches do not merely affect reputation meters—they generate entirely different companion-style dialogues. The assault path unlocks Captain Hollin, a grizzled Starfall veteran who provides tactical commentary and a unique shield-bash ability. The stealth path instead brings Brother Iben, a Lithora-aligned scholar whose insights unlock hidden passages in later levels. Neither is objectively superior, but each changes the texture of the dialogue options in every subsequent chapter.

Lithora Archive Branching Paths

Choosing Lithora Archive-aligned options shifts the narrative toward investigation, ancient texts, and magical problem-solving. A critical story branch occurs in the Lithora Archive Echoes, where a corrupted magical seal blocks further progress. Lithora Archive scholars offer two solutions: a ritual that requires rare ingredients found only in hostile territory, or a direct magical override that risks damaging the archive permanently.

The ingredient-gathering branch is time-intensive but rewards players with a Lithora Archive Legendary Tome that contains lore about Lunarium's true origin. This lore directly affects how the final chapters interpret the world's collapse—players who read the tome understand that the catastrophe was not natural but engineered, a revelation that changes the tone of the ending significantly. The magical override branch is faster but triggers a structural collapse sequence that strands several NPCs in the archive, some of whom later appear as antagonists in the Paradise Diplomatic Summit chapter.

Paradise Diplomatic Branch

The Paradise region does not present as stark a philosophical divide as Starfall Village or Lithora Archive, which makes its story branches particularly nuanced. Paradise NPCs are skilled negotiators who present options that sound reasonable from every angle—but every diplomatic solution has a hidden cost that only becomes apparent several chapters later.

One of the most significant Paradise branches occurs at the Three-Shrine Conference, where you must choose which region receives priority in a resource-sharing agreement. Choosing the Starfall-aligned path first angers Lithora representatives and triggers a scholarship revocation that locks you out of the Archive's advanced sections. Choosing the Lithora-aligned path first causes Starfall commanders to question your reliability as an ally, adding a persistent tension meter in all subsequent military encounters. There is no third option that pleases both sides—the game deliberately denies a comfortable middle ground, forcing you to accept that every choice carries a genuine sacrifice.

How Ending Unlocking Works in Lunarium

Lunarium does not offer a single "good ending" and a handful of "bad endings." Instead, the game uses a convergence system where multiple paths can reach the same general conclusion, but the emotional and narrative texture of that conclusion varies dramatically based on your accumulated choices. There are four broadly categorized Lunarium endings, each unlocked through a combination of faction reputation, protagonist influence, and specific key decisions made at critical junctures.

The first category is the Restoration Ending, achieved when both Ave's and Lune's reputations reach a specific threshold without triggering their mutual hostility flags. This ending depicts Ave and Lune successfully rallying both regions around a shared vision for Lunarium's recovery. The world is saved, but the narrative acknowledges the fragility of that peace—the characters you alienated throughout the journey are conspicuously absent, and a final cutscene shows the political tensions simmering beneath the surface.

The second category is the Sacrifice Ending, triggered when one protagonist's reputation reaches maximum while the other's drops below a critical floor. In this ending, the dominant protagonist wins the post-crisis power struggle, but Ave or Lune makes a personal sacrifice to prevent the other protagonist's complete destruction. This ending is narratively the richest, featuring extended character moments and a melancholy tone that many players consider the most emotionally resonant conclusion.

The third category, the Fracture Ending, occurs when you consistently betray or ignore both major factions, leaving Lunarium without any coalition to face the final threat. This is not a "game over" scenario—the protagonists survive—but the world they inherit is politically shattered, and the final scene establishes that rebuilding will take generations. This ending is deliberately unsatisfying, designed as a cautionary branch that rewards players for understanding the narrative cost of isolationism.

The fourth category is the Ascension Ending, the rarest and most hidden conclusion. It requires a precise combination of maximum Lune influence, completion of all Starfarer memory chapters, successful resolution of the Paradise Concord Diplomatic Summit, and the collection of seven hidden Lore Fragments scattered across non-linear exploration areas. The Ascension Ending reimagines the entire narrative as a cyclical event—Lune's "unknown mission" is revealed to be her role in preventing a future collapse, and the ending cuts to a scene suggesting the cycle begins anew.

Hidden Choices and Secret Story Content

Beyond the major faction branches, Lunarium contains numerous hidden choices embedded in exploration sequences, NPC side conversations, and environmental storytelling. These choices do not always announce themselves as decisions—sometimes the game simply presents you with a closed door and two levers, and the only way to know the consequences is to experiment or consult community data.

A recurring hidden choice pattern involves symbolic offerings at ancient shrines encountered during the multi-world journey. Each shrine accepts a different type of offering—a weapon fragment, a magic crystal, or a piece of lore text. The offering you choose does not affect the shrine's immediate reward, but it accumulates in a hidden "devotion ledger" that influences which ending narrator speaks during the credits sequence. Players who primarily offered weapons hear a Starfall Knight veteran's voice. Those who offered lore texts hear a Lithora Archive archivist. Mixing offerings produces a fragmented narrator effect that some players consider an unintentional glitch and others consider the game's most subtle Easter egg.

Exploration in Lunarium also unlocks memory fragments—short, atmospheric scenes that flesh out the world's history without directly connecting to the main plot. These fragments are missable if you follow the critical path too rigidly. The Sunken Archive is particularly dense with memory fragments: examining specific book spines, interacting with dormant magical constructs, and choosing to comfort rather than interrogate a traumatized NPC yields three separate fragments that collectively explain why the Lithora Archive's founding principles were built on a deliberate lie.

Key Decision Moments at Major Crossroads

Certain story branches in Lunarium are gated behind earlier choices that seem insignificant at the time. The Mirewalker Village sequence early in the game presents a seemingly minor request: protect a village elder's flock from predators. Completing the task earns modest reputation with both Starfall Knight (who appreciate the protective action) and Lithora Archive (who recognize the elder as a lore keeper). Failing the task—or choosing to abandon the village entirely—closes off the Mirewalker Memory Chain, a series of interconnected flashbacks that contextualize why the village was targeted in the first place.

This pattern repeats throughout the narrative. Choices made in the first two chapters influence which NPCs trust you in chapter five. Dialogue selected in a routine trade negotiation determines whether a critical informant agrees to meet you or demands payment. The game never explicitly flags these connections, which means that first-time players frequently encounter story branches that feel arbitrarily locked or unlocked. Understanding the dependency chain is what transforms a good Lunarium playthrough into a comprehensive one.

Major Story Branches

Lunarium features several major story branches that fork based on player choice. The list below captures the most consistently referenced branches.

• Protagonist influence branch: choosing Ave's direct approach, Lune's Starfarer approach, or a balanced path permanently alters late-game dialogue.
• Memory recovery branch: deciding whether Ave or Lune recovers their memory first shapes Act III.
• Save vs sacrifice branch: the final choice between saving the homeland or saving your companion.
• Hidden quest branch: optional Memory Shard side quests can unlock the Ascension Ending.
• Cloak commitment branch: choosing which Cloak schematic to master unlocks exclusive passives.

Branch Decision Priorities

Some story decisions are irreversible once made. The list below captures the most impactful decision points and their typical consequences.

• Protagonist choice locks specific late-game dialogue and side quest selections.
• Memory recovery priority determines which ending cinematic you see.
• Save vs sacrifice choice determines whether the Cloak of Pilgrimage is obtainable.
• Region exploration order affects which quick-travel points unlock first.
• Cloak commitment quests yield exclusive cloak and embroidery combinations.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many unique endings does Lunarium actually have?

Lunarium has four broadly categorized endings (Restoration, Sacrifice, Fracture, and Ascension), but each category contains subtle vLunetions based on which specific dialogue paths and faction reputation levels you achieved. The most granular count from community data suggests around 12 distinct ending vLunetions, though the game presents four primary narrative conclusions.

Does it matter which protagonist leads conversations?

Yes. The game tracks a hidden influence score for each protagonist. High Ave influence unlocks Starfall Knight-aligned dialogue options and combat bonuses, while high Lune influence opens Starfarer memory chapters and magical solutions. Some late-game story branches are completely inaccessible if you have not built sufficient influence for the required protagonist.

What is the hardest Lunarium ending to unlock?

The Ascension Ending is widely considered the most difficult. It requires maximum Lune influence, completion of all Starfarer memory chapters, successful resolution of the Paradise Diplomatic Summit, and collection of seven hidden lore fragments scattered across non-linear exploration areas. Missing any single element blocks the ending, and there are no in-game indicators tracking your progress toward these requirements. Note that several major choice points trigger permanent locks: choosing the frontal assault at the First Trial, for example, triggers a Starfarer withdrawal that restricts access to certain lore-heavy chapters for approximately two major story segments, and no sequence of later choices can fully restore that alliance. The game is designed to make choices feel consequential, and consequence is permanent in Lunarium.

Are there any story branches that permanently lock content in future chapters?

Yes. Several major choice points in Lunarium trigger permanent locks. Choosing the frontal assault at the First Trial, for example, triggers a Starfarer withdrawal that restricts access to certain lore-heavy chapters for approximately two major story segments. The game does not warn you that these choices are permanent, which is why many players use branching guides to anticipate consequences before committing.

What is the relationship between Lunarium story branches and the overall lore?

Every story branch is tied to one of the two protagonist philosophies (Ave's martial order or Lune's Starfarer understanding), plus a balanced middle path, and each branch reveals a different facet of how Lunarium's world collapsed. No single playthrough exposes the complete picture—the game's lore is deliberately distributed across branches so that understanding the full narrative requires either multiple playthroughs or community collaboration.

For a broader view of how the world's history and factions interconnect, explore the Lunarium story and lore guide, which covers the foundational events that set Ave and Lune's journey in motion.