Grave Decision
The branch that asks nothing of your bank balance, and the most commonly held of the three ending achievements. One phone call settles it — and it settles it the moment you make it, which is both the appeal and the trap.
Last verified 11 September 2026 · game version: 29 July 2026 patch
| Condition | Call Sheriff Clyde when the choice appears after Shift 12 |
|---|---|
| Does money matter? | No — your savings stop counting the moment you take the call |
| Outcome | Your pet gets the surgery and survives. Clyde dies. |
| Steam unlock | 34.6% (13 August reading: 33.1%) — description hidden |
| Xbox | 100G |
| Rank among the three | Most common, by roughly two to one over True Ending |
Global unlock rates move as more people buy the game, and this wiki now holds two readings taken a month apart. Where they differ, both are given — the 7 September 2026 figure first, the 13 August 2026 figure in brackets. Neither is wrong; a percentage of a growing player base is a moving number, and nothing on this page depends on which of the two you use.
The choice is not a trick
It would be easy to file this as the wrong answer, and that reading misses what makes the decision work. Calling Clyde does the thing the whole run has been about: your pet gets the surgery, and no financial target stands between you and that outcome. For a run that went badly — a Hunt that ate the takings, a shift lost to a doppelganger you waved through — it is the option that still produces something worth having.
The cost is a life, and it is charged after the decision is locked. That ordering is the whole design: you are not asked to weigh Clyde against your savings while you can still see both, you are asked to commit and then shown the bill. Nothing in the moment tells you this is the branch where he does not come home.
What the call closes off
Taking it resolves the ending immediately. Whatever happens across the final night, and whatever you are holding when it ends, the outcome is already written. That has one practical consequence worth stating plainly: if you were already above the $250 threshold when the choice appeared, calling Clyde converts an outcome you had effectively earned into this one. Players do it for reassurance, which is exactly when it is most expensive.
If the balance is genuinely short, the arithmetic runs the other way. Refusing with no realistic path to $250 does not produce the best ending — it produces Empty Home, where Clyde survives and your pet does not. Refusing is only the better line when the number is reachable. The endings overview lays the branches out in one table.
What the unlock rate suggests
At 34.6% this is comfortably the most held of the three, and roughly double True Ending at 16.1%. That gap is the sort of thing you would expect when one branch guarantees a survivable result and the other is staked on how thirteen nights of trading went. First-time finishers default to the certain outcome, which is a reasonable thing for first-time finishers to do.
Add all three ending achievements together and you do not get a completion rate, because a player who replays can hold more than one. What the numbers do support is the broader picture on the achievements page: the drop-off is not at the ending, it is long before it.
What happens on the final night
This wiki documents Shift 13 as the Dentist's night — the final shift's pursuer, immune to weapons, unaffected by traps, ended only when Sheriff Clyde takes over in a cutscene. The endings overview names the Dentist specifically in the True Ending line, where Clyde helps destroy him. Whether the encounter plays out identically on this branch is not confirmed by anything published here, and we are not going to describe a scene we cannot source. What is safe to carry into the night either way: gear does not help, and preparation spent on weapons is preparation wasted.
If you are collecting all three
The conditions are mutually exclusive inside a single run, so three completed stories is the floor. This one is the natural second or third pass rather than the first, precisely because it has no financial requirement — take True Ending while you still care about the balance, then spend the follow-up runs on the two outcomes that ask nothing of it. That sequencing is our suggestion, not something the game states. The completion tracker has all three as tick boxes.
Common mistakes
- Calling for safety while already above the line. The one genuinely avoidable way to lose a True Ending you had earned.
- Refusing on principle with an empty balance. Refusal is not a better ending, it is a different gamble, and the losing side of it kills your pet.
- Expecting money to rescue the run afterwards. Once the call is made, savings are irrelevant. Banking through Shift 13 does nothing here.
- Looking for this ending in Endless Mode. Endless unlocks after the story and has no endings of its own — see nights and Endless Mode.
Sources on this site
- Endings overview — conditions, outcomes, Xbox gamerscore and the 13 August unlock rates.
- All 10 achievements — the hidden descriptions and the shape of the curve.
- The Dentist — what Shift 13 is, and why gear does not help.
- Nights and Endless Mode — where the 13-shift story ends and Endless begins.