To finish Return of the Obra Dinn, follow the bodies in the order the ship makes them reachable, solve the 58 fates available aboard, leave with a correct report, then use the monkey’s paw to reveal Chapter VIII and the final two fates. If you also want Captain Did It, make a clean save copy before any correct non-Captain fate typesets and complete the deliberately bad report first.
The Roman numeral is the chapter’s place in the voyage, not the order in which its remains become reachable. Chapter X opens first; Chapter I waits behind access created by much later memories. Use the physical route below while searching the vessel, the journal and sketch while matching names, and chapter order only when entering the answer ledger.
This walkthrough avoids platform-specific buttons. The developer’s pinned thread was rechecked on August 7, 2026 and still lists PC version 1.2.122; earlier patches added acceptable fate variations. The tables therefore give one accepted wording for each fate, not a claim that every nearby verb is wrong.
A blurred face means the memories opened so far do not yet contain enough identification evidence. Keep finding remains before treating that person as a guessing problem.
Choose the bad-report branch before correct fates lock
Captain Did It asks for an intentionally false insurance report. If a correct non-Captain fate has already typeset, it cannot be edited, and that save can no longer make the Captain responsible for every available death. A player who already has locked correct groups should use a fresh slot for this branch.
- Open every memory available aboard the ship. Wait until the rain begins and the boatman calls. Rain is a completion signal, not a countdown.
- Return to the main menu and copy this clean, fully explored save into an empty slot. Keep one untouched backup.
- Identify Robert Witterel correctly. For each of the other 57 available portraits, choose axed and name Captain Robert Witterel as the killer; you do not need to solve every victim’s name first. This false method avoids accidentally matching a real shipboard fate.
- For Witterel’s own fate, choose hanged himself with the noose. Martin Perrott and Filip Dahl cannot be filled yet because Chapter VIII is still locked; leave them alone.
- Leave by the rowboat. When the insurance book appears, Captain Did It should unlock; sign the assessment, continue to the one-year-later failed letter, and wait for Abandon Ship to unlock as well.
- Only after both achievements appear, return to the main menu and choose Rewind on that save, or restore the clean copy. Back aboard, replace the unconfirmed false entries with the correct 58 shipboard fates in the ledger below.
The wrong entries remain editable because they do not form a valid confirmation set. The backup protects you from accidentally entering a real fate and letting the book typeset it before the bad report is finished.
If you are still finding bodies, follow what the ship opens
After collecting the journal and Memento Mortem from the case, return to the main deck skeleton. The table below follows physical access, not story chronology. A range such as 8 to 6 means the white trail carries you backward from Part 8 to Part 7 and then Part 6.
| Memory group | Start from | Memories opened | New access or completion signal |
|---|---|---|---|
| The End | Main-deck skeleton outside the Captain’s quarters | X-1, then the two bodies inside, then Witterel in the bedroom: X-1 through X-4 | The Captain’s rooms supply the first four memories. |
| The Doom, upper deck | Abigail’s remains in the bed | VII-8 to VII-6 | VII-6 exposes the hatch to the gun deck in both memory and present. |
| The Doom, gun deck | Body beneath the cannon near the stairs | VII-5 to VII-3 | After VII-5, the hazy bow-side gun-deck door is open. |
| The Doom, bow | Easy-to-miss remains outside the newly opened bow door | VII-2, then the trail returns to VII-1 on the main deck | The chapter now shows seven disappearance marks as well as its bodies. |
| Escape | Blood-marked midshipmen’s cabin on the gun deck | IX-6 to IX-1 | IX-1 opens the first mate’s cabin and access down to the orlop deck. |
| Murder | Leg hanging outside the first mate’s cabin window | III-3 to III-1 | This is a self-contained set of three memories. |
| A Bitter Cold | Cow skull on the orlop-deck wall | II-3 to II-1 | The large hammock scene becomes a major identity reference. |
| Soldiers of the Sea | Follow the blood around the orlop port walk | VI-7 backward through VI-1 | Completing this run opens the cargo deck. Part 8 remains separate below. |
| Loose Cargo | Flies over a barrel behind the port bow cargo-deck door | I-2, then I-1 | The hidden body opens a short pair; only Samuel Peters has a manifest fate here. |
| Soldiers finale | Crab-rider remains behind the starboard bow cargo-deck door | VI-8 | This closes Chapter VI. |
| Unholy Captives into The Calling | Severed leg behind the stairs near the lazarette | V-4 back through V-1, then IV-6 back through IV-1 | This sequence closes the remaining accessible shipboard memories. |
If the white trail appears to stall, keep it in view rather than standing on the present-day outline. The trail must finish travelling before the body becomes interactable. If no trail appears, look for the memory’s freestanding exit door; that sequence is finished and the next start is elsewhere on the ship.
If the names are the problem, narrow the manifest
Do not begin with the hardest topman and cycle through nationalities. Start with the Captain, directly spoken names, unique jobs, and cabin owners; then use those identities to separate their stewards, the three midshipmen, and the numbered hammocks.
| Evidence | Action | Why it is not enough alone |
|---|---|---|
| Direct address | Names such as Captain, Martin, Paul, Pete, Brennan, and Syed should be matched to the only compatible manifest entry, then checked against who is actually being addressed. | A spoken name is not always the dead person. Trace the speaker’s eye-line and the next action. |
| Job and cabin | Match officers to hats and authority, stewards to the officer they serve, and specialists to the room or tool where they work. | Clothing identifies a role group, not always the exact individual. |
| Hammock number | Read the number above a sleeping place and compare it with the numbered manifest. Revisit II-1 before the hammocks are emptied later in the voyage. | An empty hammock can show that its owner has already died; it is still evidence, but from another time. |
| Sketch grouping | Use the crew sketch to keep mates with stewards, midshipmen together, and work teams near one another. Cross out identities already proved elsewhere. | Standing nearby is a narrowing clue, not proof by itself. |
| Language and origin | Combine a clearly spoken language with the manifest nationality and a second clue such as hammock, job, or companions. | Accent or appearance alone is too weak; require an in-game relationship or object as confirmation. |
| Persistent object or injury | Follow tattoos, a pipe, a weapon, a missing arm, or a wound across more than one frozen scene. | A dramatic object may belong to the victim’s attacker rather than the person nearest it. |
Several early anchors collapse large parts of the roster. Robert Witterel is named by rank. Abigail’s full name connects her to Witterel and to her brother William Hoscut. The officer/steward pattern separates the four mates and their attendants. The three similarly dressed midshipmen can then be resolved with the “Pete” dialogue, the midshipmen’s cabin, and later deaths. II-1 exposes numbered hammocks for many seamen; use it before trying to distinguish the Russian, Indian, and Chinese work groups from the sketch alone.
The book normally confirms correct fates as a set. Enter two high-confidence entries beside one medium-confidence entry. If the set typesets, all three are settled. If it does not, inspect the medium clue first; changing ten unrelated names at once discards the information that the unconfirmed set gave you.
All 58 answers available aboard the ship
The tables use compact fate-editor language: outcome first, culprit second when one is required. They provide one route cross-checked against completed walkthrough records. Where the scene supports nearby wording and the game accepts a variation, do not undo a fate that has already typeset merely because its verb differs from this table.
Chapter I: Loose Cargo
| Memory | Person | Outcome | Culprit |
|---|---|---|---|
| I-1 | Samuel Peters (#60) | Crushed by falling cargo | None |
I-2 reveals the stowaway in the barrel, but that unnamed person is not one of the 60 manifest fates. Do not search the manifest for a missing identity.
Chapter II: A Bitter Cold
| Memory | Person | Outcome | Culprit |
|---|---|---|---|
| II-1 | Solomon Syed (#54) | Illness | None |
| II-2 | Renfred Rajub (#51) | Illness | None |
Chapter III: Murder
| Memory | Person | Outcome | Culprit |
|---|---|---|---|
| III-1 | Nunzio Pasqua (#20) | Knifed | Edward Nichols |
| III-2 | Hok-Seng Lau (#26) | Shot | Henry Brennan |
| III-3 | Timothy Butement (#37) | Shot | Edward Nichols |
At the execution, several guns fire but only Brennan’s shot reaches Hok-Seng Lau. Name the person who fired the fatal round, not the officer who ordered the execution.
Chapter IV: The Calling
| Memory | Person | Outcome | Culprit |
|---|---|---|---|
| IV-1 | Hong Li (#40) | Speared | Terrible beast |
| IV-2 | Patrick O’Hagan (#58) | Speared | Terrible beast |
| IV-3 | Samuel Galligan (#30) | Knifed | It-Beng Sia |
| IV-4 | Bun-Lan Lim (#23) | Clawed | Terrible beast |
| IV-5 | It-Beng Sia (#24) | Burned | None |
| IV-6 | Edward Nichols (#3) | Shot | Chioh Tan |
| Conclusion A | Aleksei Toporov (#47) | Drowned | Terrible beast |
| Conclusion B | Alarcus Nikishin (#46) | Drowned | Terrible beast |
The two conclusion entries have no recoverable bodies. Their position in the boats before and after the attack supplies the disappearance outcome.
Chapter V: Unholy Captives
| Memory | Person | Outcome | Culprit |
|---|---|---|---|
| V-1A | Chioh Tan (#25) | Spiked | Terrible beast |
| V-1B | Hamadou Diom (#55) | Spiked | Terrible beast |
| V-2 | Thomas Sefton (#12) | Struck dead by a beast’s tail | None |
| V-3 | William Wasim (#53) | Crushed by falling cargo | None |
| V-4 | John Naples (#50) | Killed with a sword | Filip Dahl |
Naples is found missing a leg; the accepted entry attributes the sword wound to Dahl. Use the sword and Dahl as the responsible person rather than treating the later medical scene as a separate attack.
Chapter VI: Soldiers of the Sea
| Memory | Person | Outcome | Culprit |
|---|---|---|---|
| VI-1 | Huang Li (#38) | Electrocuted | None |
| VI-2 | Nicholas Botterill (#42) | Speared | Terrible beast |
| VI-3 | Marcus Gibbs (#11) | Spiked | Terrible beast |
| VI-4A | James Wallace (#9) | Decapitated | Terrible beast |
| VI-4B | Jie Zhang (#39) | Decapitated | Terrible beast |
| VI-5 | Charles Hershtik (#35) | Burned | None |
| VI-6 | Emil O’Farrell (#13) | Spiked | Terrible beast |
| VI-7 | Zungi Sathi (#27) | Shot | Charles Miner |
| VI-8 | Winston Smith (#10) | Speared | Terrible beast |
Zungi is hit through the wall during the firefight. Follow the shot line to Charles Miner; the beast in the same battle is not the direct culprit for this entry.
Chapter VII: The Doom
| Memory | Person | Outcome | Culprit |
|---|---|---|---|
| VII-1 | Lars Linde (#49) | Clubbed | Nathan Peters |
| VII-2 | Edward Spratt (#18) | Crushed | Terrible beast |
| VII-3 | Abraham Akbar (#52) | Crushed | Terrible beast |
| VII-4A | Christian Wolff (#14) | Blasted with a cannon | Terrible beast |
| VII-4B | George Shirley (#59) | Blasted with a cannon | Terrible beast |
| VII-5 | Roderick Andersen (#31) | Crushed by loose cannon | None |
| VII-6 | Peter Milroy (#33) | Blasted by an explosion | None |
| VII-7 | Maba (#43) | Torn apart | Terrible beast |
| VII-8 | Abigail Hoscut Witterel (#19) | Crushed by falling rigging | None |
| Conclusion A | Omid Gul (#36) | Drowned | Terrible beast |
| Conclusion B | Nathan Peters (#48) | Drowned | Terrible beast |
| Conclusion C | Alexander Booth (#57) | Drowned | Terrible beast |
| Conclusion D | Duncan McKay (#16) | Drowned | Terrible beast |
| Conclusion E | Wei Lee (#41) | Drowned | Terrible beast |
| Conclusion F | Finley Dalton (#17) | Drowned | Terrible beast |
| Conclusion G | Charles Miner (#7) | Drowned | Terrible beast |
The seven conclusion fates are separate continuity deductions, not hidden corpses waiting elsewhere. Maba’s memory shows the boat carrying Nathan Peters, Alexander Booth, and Duncan McKay being overturned. Omid Gul falls from the rigging; Wei Lee and Finley Dalton are taken from the deck; Alfred Klestil’s dialogue accounts for Charles Miner. The completed route accepts drowned by a terrible beast for all seven, even though their last visible moments are not identical.
Chapter IX: Escape
| Memory | Person | Outcome | Culprit or location |
|---|---|---|---|
| IX-1 | Alfred Klestil (#6) | Torn apart | Terrible beast |
| IX-2 | Paul Moss (#29) | Killed with a sword | Leonid Volkov |
| IX-3 | Leonid Volkov (#45) | Shot | Emily Jackson |
| IX-4 | Olus Wiater (#15) | Shot | John Davies |
| IX-5 | John Davies (#5) | Clubbed | Henry Brennan |
| IX-6 | Thomas Lanke (#34) | Knifed | Olus Wiater |
| Conclusion A | Emily Jackson (#21) | Alive | Africa |
| Conclusion B | Miss Jane Bird (#22) | Alive | Africa |
| Conclusion C | Davey James (#32) | Alive | Africa |
| Conclusion D | Henry Evans (#8) | Alive | Africa |
The four escapees need both a living status and a destination. The post-voyage evidence places all four in Africa; entering only “escaped” does not complete the book’s requested fate.
Chapter X: The End
| Memory | Person | Outcome | Culprit |
|---|---|---|---|
| X-1 | William Hoscut (#2) | Shot | Robert Witterel |
| X-2 | Henry Brennan (#56) | Knifed | Robert Witterel |
| X-3 | Lewis Walker (#44) | Clubbed | Robert Witterel |
| X-4 | Robert Witterel (#1) | Shot himself | None – self-inflicted |
Witterel’s correct entry is the one place where the achievement branch must be reversed explicitly: change the false noose answer to the gunshot shown in his final memory.
The last two fates are outside the ship
After every accessible memory is catalogued, the boatman calls and rain starts. You can keep walking, revisit any memory, and edit the journal for as long as needed. The weather does not force departure.
Before looking at the rowboat passenger long enough to commit, confirm the book is in this state:
- All nine accessible fate chapters – I through VII, IX, and X – show their chapter achievement as solved.
- The manifest has 58 settled fates. The only unresolved people are third mate Martin Perrott and captain’s steward Filip Dahl.
- Chapter VIII remains sealed. That is the intended state, not a missed lazarette entrance.
- If you used the all-Captain branch, it is finished and you have Rewound before entering the correct ledger.
Leaving with all 58 available fates correct produces the good assessment path. After the insurance report is signed and the later package arrives, unwrap the monkey’s paw. The Memento Mortem can now use it to enter the memories that the living investigator could not reach aboard the ship.
Open Chapter VIII with the monkey’s paw
Chapter VIII is presented backward like the other memory sequences. Start from the paw, follow Part 5 into the lazarette, and inspect the bodies available inside each frozen scene. The sequence exposes Parts 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1. Most of those scenes explain actions; only two unresolved manifest people need final entries.
| Memory | Person | Outcome | Culprit |
|---|---|---|---|
| VIII-1 | Filip Dahl (#28) | Burned | None |
| VIII-4 | Martin Perrott (#4) | Spiked | Terrible beast |
When those two entries typeset, the book reaches 60 and unlocks Obra Done. If the animation does not fire, do not reopen the other 58 at random. Recheck that Dahl is attached to Part 1, Perrott to Part 4, and the identity portraits are not swapped; Chapter VIII supplies both outcomes directly.
At 60 typeset fates, the insurance book is finished. If you departed early, Rewind returns this save to the ship before the rowboat commitment; it does not make an already typeset correct fate editable, so use the untouched copy if you still need the all-Captain report.
Sources & verification
Game identity, the 16-achievement listing, and the four original screenshots were checked against the Steam store and official app data. The developer’s pinned PC thread, rechecked August 7, 2026, still lists version 1.2.122. Product details were cross-checked on the official Return of the Obra Dinn site; route and fate entries were compared across readable walkthrough and Steam Guide records. Screenshots are from Return of the Obra Dinn by Lucas Pope / 3909 LLC via Steam.