Tainted Grail Endings Guide: Every Ending and the Secret One
Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon has around a dozen endings, and all of them hinge on a single choice at the very end of the game. You reach the Charred Conclave, you stand before the grail holding King Arthur's soul, and the dialogue option you pick decides both how Avalon's story closes and which final bosses you fight. The best ending, the one most players want, is locked behind a hidden checklist of secret areas and tombs. Everything below covers the major ending families, how to reach the true ending, and the choices that quietly steer which finale is even available to you.
This is the deepest spoiler territory in the game. Read on knowing that.
How the grail finale works
At the Charred Conclave you choose what to do with Arthur's soul. Three figures lobby you before that moment: entity:caradoc the pragmatist, entity:orrin, and Arthur himself speaking through Hob. Each one pushes a different outcome, and your dialogue choice picks a side and triggers the bosses tied to it. The grail choice is the single biggest lever in the game, but the faction decisions you made hours earlier decide which characters are still alive to receive the soul and what state Avalon's factions are in for each epilogue.
The major ending families
Use the Life Spindle is the true and best ending, sometimes called Beyond the Veil. You choose to use the Life Spindle, then defeat Caradoc as the final boss. This is the only unambiguously positive ending for Avalon: you tame the Wyrdness instead of merely surviving it. It is treated as the canonical best outcome, and it is the one with extra requirements, covered below.
Follow Orrin restores Arthur. You choose to follow Orrin and defeat Caradoc. Arthur is resurrected and rules Avalon, his cycle of death and return is broken at last, and your own journey ends in sacrifice. A noble close, paid for in full by your character.
Follow Caradoc ends the cycle. You choose to follow Caradoc and then fight King Arthur, with Caradoc at your side this time rather than against you. Arthur's resurrection cycle ends for good, the throne is left empty, and Avalon's people are left to shape their own future with no king above them.
Rule Yourself is the ambitious ending. You claim the power for yourself and defeat both Caradoc and King Arthur. You ascend as Avalon's new ruler and take Arthur's crown, but the kingdom's future is uncertain, shaped by your ambition and your inexperience on a throne you just seized.
Giving the soul to someone else
Choosing to give the soul to somebody else hands Arthur's soul to an NPC, and each recipient produces a distinct epilogue. Captain Breandan builds a secular Avalon focused on independence, trade, and law over religion: prosperity and modernization at the cost of weakened spiritual roots. Erfyr the blacksmith creates a leaderless system of equals, fair on the surface, with more control left to the individual. entity:one-eye dissolves the Round Table and unites Avalon under the tribal laws of the Dal Riata. Fionola lets the Wyrdness take hold so anyone may merge with it, which buys peace at the cost of autonomy and freedom.
Which of these you can even pick depends on who survived your earlier decisions. The soul-to-One-Eye and soul-to-Breandan epilogues both assume those characters lived through the choices you made across the game.
The worst ending
There is one ending the game treats as a deliberate insult. Give a small amount of gold to the Beggar in Cuanacht and Arthur's soul passes to someone with no purpose and no vision for Avalon, a final spit in the face of Arthur and everything his people built. It is widely flagged as the worst ending, and it is exactly as bleak as it sounds. Choose it only to see it.
Unlocking the true and secret ending
The Use the Life Spindle option does not appear by default. It only shows up once you finish a hidden checklist: three secret Weaver areas and five knight tombs.
The three Weaver areas each require you to speak to The Weaver and exhaust the dialogue. The first is the Horns of the South area, reachable after you progress the main story and remove entity:excalibur. The second is in Cuanacht, available after you unlock Arthur's Shield and after the Horns area is done. The third is the Weaver's Sanctum in Forlorn Swords, hidden behind a waterfall and locked until the first two are complete. Defeat the boss in the Sanctum and you are granted the Life Spindle itself.
The five knight tombs open with main-story artifacts. The Tomb of Sir Lancelot opens via Excalibur on the starting island. The Tomb of Sir Gawain and the Tomb of Sir Dagonet sit in Cuanacht near a river west of the city and open with the Shield of Palamedes. The last two tombs are in the northeastern corner of Forlorn Swords and open with the Crown artifact.
With all three Weaver areas and all five tombs cleared, return to the Charred Conclave and the Use the Life Spindle line will be waiting. Choose it, beat Caradoc, and you get the best close the game offers.
Plan your build before the finale
The final bosses scale with your choice, and the Life Spindle path makes Caradoc your last fight while the harder paths stack two bosses against you. Going into the Conclave with a finished build matters more here than anywhere else in the game.
For the upstream decisions that decide who survives to receive the soul, the choices and endings hub maps how your faction calls feed each epilogue, and the walkthrough hub tracks the main quest into the final region.